GRAIN-ELEVATORS IN PRINCE ALBERT, CANADA
NEW GRAND TRUNK PACIFIC ELEVATOR AT FORT WILLIAM, ONTARIO
I remember sitting in a London club one day at the time of the jubilee of the late Queen Victoria. Near me sat two Canadian army officers who were with the contingent of troops sent to the celebration in England. They were tall, raw-boned, leathery-skinned youths of the type now known to Europe as American. Seated in the club window, quietly and observantly watching the passing crowd, one of them suddenly blurted out to the other, “Well, there’s one thing I’ve learned on this trip, if nothing else.”
“What’s that?” inquired the other.
“Well I’ve learned that I am not an Englishman, as I’ve always supposed myself to be. I’m a Canadian. We don’t know them, and they don’t know us; and what is more, while we are interested enough to try to know them, they just don’t care one way or another. Our point of view is different; and I’m going back home more of a Canadian than I ever was.”
When the Hon. William S. Fielding, formerly Canadian Minister of Finance, introduced his now famous budget to the Canadian Parliament several years ago, in which Canada virtually declared a tariff war upon Germany, he said quite frankly that the important feature of this action was not the apparent hostility to Germany, but that such hostility might serve as a warning to the United States and to England. In brief, it was notice to the mother country that Canada was quite able and ready to act for what she might consider her best interests in fiscal matters, regardless of the wishes, feelings, or dictation of her august parent.
Canada has given to English goods preferential duties a third less than those assessed against the goods of other countries; in times of recent trouble she has given men and money; and now comes a contribution to the expense of British armament amounting to nearly five dollars per capita for every man, woman, and child in the dominion. In return, England has talked of preferential customs duties, but cannot give them; she has talked of changing the law under which a Canadian citizen is not necessarily a citizen of England, but has not done so; she has talked of an armed defense, which is not needed and never will be, for, unlike Australia, the Canadians are protected from all possible enemies by the mere facts of geographical isolation and the presence to the south of a great and powerful nation which would in her own interest, if for no other reason (and there are others), permit no foreigner to alienate a square yard of Canadian soil. England must have the products of Canadian soil, and English emigrants would go to Canada in no greater or lesser numbers if the political tie between the two countries were sundered. As a matter of fact, English immigrants are accorded the same treatment by Canada as those from other lands, and are not as welcome, because of the kind that England has sent.
The ties between five sevenths of the people of Canada and the people of England are those of tradition, sentiment, and blood, while the like ties of the other two sevenths are to France and the United States. It may be true that such ties constitute a tangible force, but that is a matter open to debate, and not to be settled until it comes to a question of international disputes. The ties between Canada and the United States are those compelling bonds of geographical and economic likeness, reciprocity of needs and markets, natural routes for trade and transportation, sympathetic financial exchanges, individual investments one within the confines of the other, to say nothing of the fact that more than a million Canadian-born—a number equaling one seventh of the present population of Canada—have found homes and profitable occupation in the United States, within easy hailing distance of their native land; and in that land are perhaps half a million or more people who were born in the United States.