Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1

by Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

Settler, never become a lumberer, if you can avoid it.

But, as we have in this favourite hobbyhorse style of ours, which causes description to start up as recollections occur, accompanied the lumberer on his voyage to that lumberer's Paradise, Quebec, whither he has conducted his charge to The Coves, for the culler to cull, the marker to mark, the skipper to ship, and the lumber-merchant to get the best market he can for it, so we shall return for a short time to Lower Canada, to talk a little about settlement there.

As I hinted before, Lower Canada is too much decried as a country to re-commence the world in; but the Anglo-Saxon and Milesian populace are nevertheless beginning to discover its value, and are very rapidly increasing both in numbers and importance. The French Canadian yeoman, or small farmer, has an alacrity at standing still; it is only le notaire and le medécin that advance; so that, if emigration goes on at the rate it has done since the rebellion, the old country folks will, before fifty more years pass over, outnumber and outvote, by ten times, Jean Baptiste, which is a pity, for a better soul than that merry mixture of bonhomie and phlegm, the French Canadian is, the wide world's surface does not produce. Visionary notions of la gloire de la nation Canadienne, instilled into him by restless men, who panted for distinction and cared not for distraction, misled the bonnet rouge awhile: but he has superadded the thinking cap since; and, although he may not readily forget the sad lesson he received, yet he has no more idea of being annexed to the United States than I have of being Grand Lama. In fact, I really believe that the merciful policy which has been shown, and the wise measure of making Montreal the seat of government, and thus practically demonstrating the advantage of the institutions of England by daily lessons in the heart of their dear country, has done more to recall the Canadians to a sense of the real value of the connexion with Great Britain than all the protocols of diplomatists, or all the powder that ever saltpetre generated, could have achieved.

Pursue a perfectly impartial course, as you ought and must do, towards the Canadians, and show them that they are as much British citizens as the people of Toronto are, and you may count upon their loyalty and devotion without fear. They know they never can be an independent nation; that folly has been dreamed out, and the fumes of the vision are evaporating.

They now know and feel that annexation to the great Republic in their neighbourhood will swamp their nationality more effectively than the red or the blue coats of England can ever do, will desecrate their altars, will portion out their lands, will nullify their present importance, and render them an isolated race, forgotten and unsought for, as the Iroquois of the last century, who, from being the children and owners of the land, the true enfans du sol, are now—where? The soil, had it voice, could alone reply, for on its surface they are not.

We must never in England form a false estimate of the French Canadian, because a few briefless lawyers or saddle-bag medical men urged them into rebellion. Their feelings and spirit are not of the same genre as the feelings and spirit which animated the hideous soul of the poissardes and canaille of Paris in 1792. There is very little or no poverty in Lower Canada; every man who will work there, can work; and it is a nation rather of small farmers than of classes, with the ideas of independence which property, however small, invariably generates in the human breast; but with that other idea also which urges it to preserve ancient landmarks.

It is chiefly in the large towns and in their neighbourhood that the desire for exclusive nationality still exists, fostered by a rabid appetite for distinction in some ardent and reckless adventurers from the British ranks, who care little what is undermost so long as they are uppermost.

The hostility of the British settlers to the French is by no means so great as is so carefully and constantly described, and would altogether cease, if not kept continually alive by Upper Canadian demonstration, and that desire to rule exclusively which has so long been the bane of this fine colony.

It reminds one always of the morbid hatred of France, which existed thirty years ago in England, when Napoleon was believed, by the lower classes—ay, and by some of the higher too—to be Apollyon in earnest.

I remember an old lord of the old school, whose family honours were not of a hundred years, and whose ancestors had been respectable traders, saying to me, a short time before he died, that Republican notions had spread so much from our peace with infidel France, that he should yet live to see those who possessed talent or energy enough among the middle class, take those honours which he was so proud of, and with the titles also, the estates.