Canada; its Defences, Condition, and Resources / Being a third and concluding volume of "My Diary, North and South"

by Sir William Howard Russell

In the War of Independence the Indians served on both sides, but the odium of employing them in the first instance against the colonists must undoubtedly rest on the British ministry of the day.

Although the distance from Montreal to Quebec, taking the course of the river, is but 180 miles, there is considerable difference in climate. The scenery around the capital of the Lower Province, and the present seat of Government, is more elevated and picturesque; but the quality of the soil is not so favourable to agriculture. The habitant is a very different being from the Scotch or English farmer; he regards with aversion agricultural implements of the new school, and woos the earth to yield its fruits with the most simple appliances; he is stubborn in his attachment to antique customs, and if he has most of the virtues, he assuredly has some of the faults of a purely rural agricultural population.

The events of the rebellion induced us, perhaps, to underrate the military capacity of the French Canadians, but they may point with pride to the deeds of their ancestors in defence of their soil against American invasion, and they would, no doubt, maintain in the field the reputation of the race from which they spring. The great defect of the native is, perhaps, his want of enterprise. He rarely emigrates to new scenes of labour, and even the inhabitant of the town shrinks from an encounter with the active American or Anglo-Saxon. Thus it is, at the present moment, that nearly all the agricultural and industrial enterprises of Lower Canada have originated with or been developed by persons of a different stock. Want of capital is the great evil which afflicts the inhabitants of both Canadas, and even the oil-wells and gold mines have, to a large extent, fallen into the hands of the solid men of Boston, and of the hard men of New England; but the Canadians would behave in the face of an enemy with the spirit, courage, and conduct which they have exhibited on their own limited battle-fields.

It would be of little value, within the limits of this volume, to attempt a recapitulation of the principal events of Canadian history, either in connection with its early founders or with the English government; but surely the materials are not wanting for an interesting record of the struggles of the enterprising Europeans who contended so fiercely with barbarous races and an inclement clime to found what already promises to be a great nation. The savage has died out, or he has been civilised into a degraded creature for whom no place seems left at the great table of nature, and the civilised man his successor has learned to control and mollify the influences of climate, and to extort from the soil fruits in abundance. But Canada is by no means as cold as it has been painted, or rather, it would be more proper to say, the cold there is not so intolerable as we think. It would astonish many people in this country to learn that the Northern States of America suffer more from cold than does the vast frontier region of Canada which borders on the Lakes. In Iowa, for instance, the cold is more intense than at Montreal. Grapes and peaches ripen on the Canadian shores of the great lakes; plums, melons, tomatoes, and apples thrive and grow to perfection in the provinces. As cultivation advances the rigour of winter is appreciably diminished, although the farmers, with that customary want of submission to the will of Providence which characterises all people who live in dependence on the seasons, complain that the frost is not as severe as it was in the good old times, and that they are deprived of the advantages of long-enduring snow and rigid winters.

What glorious visions of shooting now and of fishing in spring had opened before me, if the Federal army would only stay quiet! Not, indeed, that there is much sport for the rifle or fowling-piece now left in this part of Canada in winter, except moose, for which I did not care much, but that such strange scenes could be visited and described. In open weather there is a little shooting of quails, partridges, and ground game; before winter sets in there is plenty of wild ducks, but it is in fishing that the province is most tempting. The Godbout, uncertain as it is, would tempt any fisherman to a pilgrimage—a river in which one man, Captain Strachan, played and landed forty-two salmon and grilse in two half-days. But then the black-flies and musquitoes! Well, of this more hereafter. Though little that more must be, as long as there is such a guide-book as that of Dr. Adamson—the charming, amiable, and accomplished gentleman, in whom I was rejoiced to recognise the type of le vrai gentilhomme irlandais; who knows every thing that ever was done or thought by Canadian salmon, and is ever willing to impart his knowledge.

To a young officer fresh from a Mediterranean or home station—unless he were at Aldershot or the Curragh, perhaps—Quebec must appear rather dull. He has none of the excellent sporting for great and small game which India affords. Society presents itself under a new aspect. A people speaking a different language are not his servants, nor his kith and kin, and yet he must protect and fight for them. He has no sympathy with a nationality which is prouder of Montcalm than of Wolfe, and which claims, nevertheless, the lions and the harp as “notre drapeau.” So if he be unwise and unreasonable, he takes dislikes and ascribes every inconvenience he endures, not to the policy of the mother-country he serves, but to the people of the province.

I was present one evening at a ball given by one of the ministers, a French Canadian, at which there was a large assemblage of all the best people in the city, and I was struck by the absence of young officers, although many of higher rank were present. A lady, to whom I mentioned the circumstance, said, “Oh! they rarely come among us, so we have left off asking them. If they do come, they stand with their backs against the wall criticising our style and our dresses, and never offer to dance till supper is over, when they vanish.” This is by no means universally applicable to all societies or regiments, but it is no doubt the truth in some instances.

One must regret that the English language was not introduced into the law courts and legislature. Experience proves that there are no instruments so powerful in sustaining the existence of a nationality, as the tongue and pen. The Canadians of to-day affect to be French, more because they speak a French at which Paris laughs, than from any real sympathy founded on mutual interests or present history between France and Canada. I was assured by one earnest Canadian, that France had never forgiven the Bourbons for the fault of Louis XV., in ceding Canada to Great Britain. He had more reason probably for asserting that, but for the establishment of our supremacy in 1765, the rebellion of the thirteen colonies of North America would not have occurred when it did. But the conquest by Wolfe, confirmed by treaty, put an end to most cruel and barbarous massacres, outrages, and petty border wars, between the French and English settlers and their auxiliary tribes of Indians, and if it had been attended or followed by any wise and liberal acts of government, must have produced very great results on the tone and temper of the Canadian mind.

It would have been wonderful indeed, if, a century ago, when our statute book was written in blood, when our fellow-subjects at home were under the ban of religious disability, and beaten to the earth beneath the weight of penal enactments, any traces of wisdom had been exhibited in the management of a distant dependency. Keeping alive the feelings of a distinct nationality by the powerful machinery of different national laws and customs, the conquerors ruled the province by military law for more than ten long years; but the tempest which agitated the American colonies was already felt in the air. The ministry, anxious only to drain money from their distant dependencies, were engaged in devising taxes, whilst the colonists prepared to vindicate, by force of arms, their great principle, that representation was the basis of taxation. The two Acts of 1774 were passed to enable the government to raise revenues for the maintenance of the local government, and for the appointment of a council of government, nominated by the Crown. By the capitulation of Quebec, the free exercise of their religion was accorded to the Canadians. By the Act of 1774, the Roman Catholic Church was recognised as established, and the “Coutume de Paris” accepted as the foundation of civil and equity administration.

Is it not strange that Great Britain should have accorded such concessions to Roman Catholics and colonists, when the penal system was most rigorously enforced in Ireland? But is it not stranger still, that the people of the American colonies, who were about to set themselves up as the children and the champions of freedom of faith and conscience, should have taken bitter umbrage at those very concessions! The Americans of the North bore an exceeding animosity to the French Canadians. They remonstrated in fierce, intolerant, and injurious language with the people of Great Britain, for the cession of these privileges to the Canadians, and the Continental Congress did not hesitate to say that they thought “Parliament was not authorised by the constitution to establish a religion fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets.”