When we are not spoken of as inhabitants of the polar regions we are described as French. Now, the inhabitants of Quebec have always contended that they are the Canadians, and what the rest of us, the great majority, are I can scarcely make out.
Once I was in an office in Broadway, New York, and happened to state that I was a Canadian. The Yankee manager of that office remarked “that he as yet hardly knew how to classify Canadians—whether as Englishmen or Americans—and, in fact, that the world had not yet made up its mind what we were.” If we were all French (and I am not for a moment speaking disparagingly of our habitants), we could then be easily classified. But to be called “only a colonist” in Europe, and in New York neither an Englishman nor an American, makes one’s position as a genuine Canadian a little foggy. The effort to distinguish by the spelling “Canadians” for the English-speaking, and “Canadiens” for the French-speaking, is all very well, and will no doubt work well enough at home. But abroad the average Englishman, if you spell Canadian with an “e,” will simply put you down as an ignorant fellow and a poor speller. And now can you wonder what the people of continental Europe will think of us, if they think of us at all, as apart from the United States? The plain truth of the case is that we are far too modest, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, and do not “blow” enough about our own country to cause it to be better known abroad. The great west of the United States was surely made and settled by the Yankee “blowing.” Their papers are ever full of “spread eagle,” and always telling about their boundless country, always praising their own institutions, and pulling down those of the “oppressed monarchy of Great Britain,” and always representing their country as the earthly paradise.
Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the course of a visit to Ontario, frankly admitted—privately, of course—that our free school system, and likewise its management, were superior to those of the American States. Then let us wake up, and since it seems to be absolutely necessary to “blow” about ourselves, let us copy the apt example of the Yankees and do it—and do it so strongly as to make up for past deficiencies.
Guide books of travel, published both in America and Europe, for travel in Canada, send the tourist invariably from New York City up the Hudson by steamer to Albany; then by the New York Central Railway to Niagara Falls. They do admit that the Falls are worth seeing. Then they send the tourist by steamer to Toronto, and tell him to take the Richelieu steamers, down the St. Lawrence from there, and run the rapids to Montreal. From Montreal he is to take the night boat for Quebec and come back again to Montreal by the day boat, and then go south to Lake George, and this is all the tourist is to see of Canada. Thousands of American and British tourists form their opinions of us from what they see on this water tour through Canada. Of course, going down Lake Ontario they see next to nothing of us or our country, because the lake is too big to see much on the shore. Entering the St. Lawrence, they view shores studded with rocks, and have not the faintest idea of our fertile lands and rich farms, which give to Ontario its wealth. The wealth of Ontario is certainly in her comfortable homesteads and fertile fields. Of this the tourist knows nothing, and he goes down to Quebec city to see, as best he may in America to-day, the best example of a city in the eighteenth century style; and he passes out of our borders, having come almost wholly in contact with our French population, and goes away considering our land a land of stones peopled by Frenchmen.
The tourist travels too quickly to get proper impressions of a country, I think I hear many readers say. Granted, but still many impressions are got of countries by tourists by such rapid travelling, and we cannot help the fact. The only way we can help the matter appears to me to be for our railways to join and offer a general tourist ticket, taking the tourist all over our country at a reasonable rate, and allowing him to stop off when and where he will. Such tickets ought to be advertised in Great Britain and the United States, and be on sale there. If once bought they would be used. While using such tickets the tourist could scarcely fail to get considerable knowledge of us and of our country. Tourists, as a rule, are persons of means and of influence at home. Many of them might thus be induced to bring capital to our country and make it their home, to our and their advantage.
Ontario would make a grand State, the Americans tell us, when they look with coveting eyes over this way. Yes, indeed, she would, and any other one of the States would not keep pace with us; but they are not going to get us. Give our people a reciprocity treaty, so that we can trade with our American cousins, and leave Ontario to manage Ontario’s affairs, and she will remain content. If a vote of Ontario farm-owners were taken to-day on the reciprocity question, nine out of every ten would vote for it, and we should have it. Our people are loyal and attached to the Mother Country, and have no thought of severing the tie, but Britain is 3,000 miles away, and the United States is beside us. It is obvious that we can more easily trade with the United States than Britain; hence, to us, a treaty is to-day the greatest element in our politics. Even with all the restrictions now imposed by the United States and ourselves, our trade with the United States is enormous.
Politicians may wrangle and fritter away our money at Ottawa, and cause us to many times feel well-nigh disgusted at them; still, so long as they do not resort to direct taxation at Ottawa our country people will stand an almost untold amount of fraud without much complaint. If the Mother Country desires us to be joined into the talked-of universal confederation, we would first like to know how we are to be benefited thereby. For, as we now feel, we think that Ontario bears nearly all the burdens of our Dominion, and we do not want to have tacked on to us any more burdens or some other poor relatives of colonies. If the Mother Country would put on a tariff against all the world except her own colonies, and allow us free trade with her, we could see some use to us for such a gigantic union. Just now, as it is, we do not want to join any such scheme for an idea, although we reverently love and honor our common Mother Country.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Few positions for young Canadians of ambition—American consulships—Bayard Taylor—S. S. Cox—Canadian High Commissioner—Desirability of men of elevated life—Necessity for developing a Canadian national spirit.
It has occurred to many of our young Canadians that there are very few positions attainable to us as Canadians really worth striving for. We are so peculiarly situated, that we seem to be in a large measure debarred from obtaining positions which would ordinarily fall to the lot of those attaining eminence among five millions of people. To become a member of a Provincial Legislature is, perhaps, the first position ambitious young men ordinarily aspire to; and while the position itself is really honorable, and also one of usefulness, yet it is not wholly satisfactory. As to becoming an M.P., and spending three dreary months or so in Ottawa, it is not a desirable situation. In fact, most aspiring young Canadians, who come from good homes, do not take kindly to the idea of being forcibly banished for three months out of the twelve. In Washington, on the other hand, since consuls and charges d’affaires of all civilized nations are resident there, it naturally follows that that capital must be the place of social activity and the like, and a place where one can meet persons worth knowing, and who are wholly different from ourselves.