The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions

by R. E. Vernède

(2) The Canadian born, who are not French.

(3) The English who have immigrated.

(4) Foreign immigrants; e.g. Scandinavians, Galicians, Italians, Doukhobors—all that strange assortment of people who have flowed in from the poorer countries of Europe.

The Americans themselves represent at present only a small fifth in this conglomeration of nations. Still, they have this in their favour, that they start in while Canada is still an unfixed nation. French Canadians—a small third—only number about three millions. Non-French Canadians about the same. The whole population is under ten millions. It may in fifty years be ten times that number. So that anything may happen.

Meanwhile, many effective American influences are at work. Their order of effectiveness is not easy to define, but when one considers their representatives of business enterprise, capital, journalism and farming at work in the country, one can see that the Americans are likely to go far.

What is their present value to the Dominion? Take American farmers. They are an undoubted gain to Canada in so far as they possess energy, capital, a knowledge of the local conditions, versatility and adaptability. I hardly know if it is an example of their versatility or their adaptability, but as soon as they cross over the line, American farmers who were Tariff Reformers instantly become Free Traders. It is not, of course, that they have adopted nobler principles in their new country. It is merely that, having become Canadians, they have now to support Canadian manufactures, and pay more for their farming machines and shoddy clothes. Naturally they think tariffs a mistake.

Setting aside for a moment this political elasticity as of doubtful value, Canadians may still wonder if the American farmer is all gain to them. Is it an objection, for example, that the American introduces the purely commercial spirit into farming? Not entirely. Not certainly so far as love of gain induces promptness and enterprise. It is, however, an objection if it destroys that love of the land which causes the English farmer to stick by his farm, generation after generation. Perhaps American farmers have not that land love in any case. If they had, they would not have crossed the line. In most cases, they have crossed it to make money—more money. It may be argued that the English farmers come further for the same purpose, but that is not really the case. English farmers who come are mostly men who were tenants, and find themselves either not making money or expecting to have their rents raised if they do. Or they are the sons of farmers who have not the capital to start farming in the old country, or cannot get the land. The American farmer is usually quite ready to admit that he is in Canada to make money, and his enemies will admit for him that though this ideal may lead him to adopt new methods of farming which are good, it also induces him to adopt that very old method of farming which consists of getting all you can out of the land, putting nothing into it, selling it to a fool and moving on to fresh land—which is a bad method. Any one who is acquainted with the States at all, knows how at present people there are awakening to the viciousness of this practice. All their papers and speakers are full of the wastefulness which Americans practised in the last century thinking it to be smartness. Fine land, they say, was spoilt by it; forests were annihilated; water supplies were overdrawn; people were made restless. It was getting rich quick at the expense of posterity, and it bred in Americans a nomadic spirit, and an imprudence in considering the future, which has become a menace.

Canadians cannot altogether condemn the American farmer, for just these methods spoilt so much of the land in Ontario; and only now are their farmers beginning to improve on them. Still, they would do well to indicate to American farmers that they are welcome only as improvers and not as wasters of the new country. The trouble is to give an effective indication of that kind. Settlement of the land is still reckoned, especially by the railway companies, as the first of virtues, covering a multitude of sins; though even they, I think, are recognising a little that the English farmer, whose aim is not an immediate fortune, but a home which he can retain for his life and hand over to his children after him, is not to be scorned as he was a few years ago. The ready-made farms, made possible by the irrigation work of the Canadian Pacific Railway, are the chief example of the attempts made to draw the Englishman. 'We hope,' said one of the Canadian Pacific Railway officials, speaking a few months ago before the London Chamber of Commerce, 'that the Englishmen on these farms will leaven the lot.' A few years ago, compliments of that sort were not being offered to the English farmer in Canada. Probably he was not so good a type as comes in now. But it is to be remembered that the English immigrant has always had more adaptations to make than the American. To the American from the northern States, Canada is the country he is used to—only a little more north. The Englishman finds a new soil, new climate, new manners, and new methods. I should say that man for man, the English farmer knows at least as much as the American about farming, and a great deal more than the average Canadian. But when he goes out to Canada he has to put this knowledge behind him and learn afresh—a difficult thing for a conservative race. The American can hold on to what he knows and simply go ahead. The accident of birth has given him a fine start over the Englishman.

The same advantage belongs to other Americans in Canada. Business men, capitalists, journalists have only had to cross a non-existent line, instead of an undeniable ocean. When Canadians complain that Englishmen take no interest even in those Canadian schemes for which they have found the money, they forget that capitalists cannot always be close to their investments. I repeat, the Atlantic is not a thing to be denied, nor is it fair to call the English mere moneylenders because they have not always personally accompanied their loans. At least they have shown themselves trustful of the men on the spot.