Canada Part 1

Canada.

by J. G. Bourinot.

THE STORY OF CANADA.

I.

INTRODUCTION.

THE CANADIAN DOMINION FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN.

The view from the s.p.a.cious terrace on the verge of the cliffs of Quebec, the ancient capital of Canada, cannot fail to impress the imagination of the statesman or student versed in the history of the American continent, as well as delight the eye of the lover of the picturesque. Below the heights, to whose rocks and buildings cling so many memories of the past, flows the St. Lawrence, the great river of Canada, bearing to the Atlantic the waters of the numerous lakes and streams of the valley which was first discovered and explored by France, and in which her statesmen saw the elements of empire. We see the tinned roofs, spires and crosses of quaint churches, hospitals and convents, narrow streets winding among the rocks, black-robed priests and {2} sombre nuns, _habitans_ in homespun from the neighbouring villages, modest gambrel-roofed houses of the past crowded almost out of sight by obtrusive lofty structures of the present, the ma.s.sive buildings of the famous seminary and university which bear the name of Laval, the first great bishop of that Church which has always dominated French Canada. Not far from the edge of the terrace stands a monument on which are inscribed the names of Montcalm and Wolfe, enemies in life but united in death and fame. Directly below is the market which recalls the name of Champlain, the founder of Quebec, and his first Canadian home at the margin of the river. On the same historic ground we see the high-peaked roof and antique spire of the curious old church, Notre-Dame des Victoires, which was first built to commemorate the repulse of an English fleet two centuries ago. Away beyond, to the left, we catch a glimpse of the meadows and cottages of the beautiful Isle of Orleans, and directly across the river are the rocky hills covered with the buildings of the town, which recalls the services of Levis, whose fame as a soldier is hardly overshadowed by that of Montcalm. The Union-jack floats on the tall staff of the citadel which crowns the summit of Cape Diamond, but English voices are lost amid those of a people who still speak the language of France.

As we recall the story of these heights, we can see pa.s.sing before us a picturesque procession: Sailors from the home of maritime enterprise on the Breton and Biscayan coasts, Indian warriors in their paint and savage finery, gentlemen-adventurers and pioneers, {3} rovers of the forest and river, statesmen and soldiers of high ambition, gentle and cultured women who gave up their lives to alleviate suffering and teach the young, missionaries devoted to a faith for which many have died.

In the famous old castle of Saint Louis,[1] long since levelled to the ground--whose foundations are beneath a part of this very terrace--statesmen feasted and dreamt of a French Empire in North America. Then the French dominion pa.s.sed away with the fall of Quebec, and the old English colonies were at last relieved from that pressure which had confined them so long to the Atlantic coast, and enabled to become free commonwealths with great possibilities of development before them. Yet, while England lost so much in America by the War of Independence, there still remained to her a vast northern territory, stretching far to the east and west from Quebec, and containing all the rudiments of national life--

"The raw materials of a State, Its muscle and its mind."

A century later than that Treaty of Paris which was signed in the palace of Versailles, and ceded Canada finally to England, the statesmen of the provinces of this northern territory, which was still a British possession,--statesmen of French as well as English Canada--a.s.sembled in an old building of this same city, so rich in memories of old France, {4} and took the first steps towards the establishment of that Dominion, which, since then, has reached the Pacific sh.o.r.es.

It is the story of this Canadian Dominion, of its founders, explorers, missionaries, soldiers, and statesmen, that I shall attempt to relate briefly in the following pages, from the day the Breton sailor ascended the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga until the formation of the confederation, which united the people of two distinct nationalities and extends over so wide a region--so far beyond the Acadia and Canada which France once called her own. But that the story may be more intelligible from the beginning, it is necessary to give a bird's-eye view of the country, whose history is contemporaneous with that of the United States, and whose territorial area from Cape Breton to Vancouver--the sentinel islands of the Atlantic and Pacific approaches--is hardly inferior to that of the federal republic.

Although the population of Canada at present does not exceed nine millions of souls, the country has, within a few years, made great strides in the path of national development, and fairly takes a place of considerable importance among those nations whose stories have been already told; whose history goes back to centuries when the Laurentian Hills, those rocks of primeval times, looked down on an unbroken wilderness of forest and stretches of silent river. If we treat the subject from a strictly historical point of view, the confederation of provinces and territories comprised within the Dominion may be most conveniently grouped into {5} several distinct divisions. Geographers divide the whole country lying between the two oceans into three well-defined regions: 1. The Eastern, extending from the Atlantic to the head of Lake Superior. 2. The Central, stretching across the prairies and plains to the base of the Rocky Mountains. 3. The Western, comprising that sea of mountains which at last unites with the waters of the Pacific. For the purposes of this narrative, however, the Eastern and largest division--also the oldest historically--must be separated into two distinct divisions, known as Acadia and Canada in the early annals of America.

The first division of the Eastern region now comprises the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, which, formerly, with a large portion of the State of Maine, were best known as Acadie,[2] a memorial of the Indian occupation before the French regime. These provinces are indented by n.o.ble harbours and bays, and many deep rivers connect the sea-board with the interior. They form the western and southern boundaries of that great gulf or eastern portal of Canada, which maritime adventurers explored from the earliest period of which we have any record. Ridges of the Appalachian range stretch from New England to {6} the east of these Acadian provinces, giving picturesque features to a generally undulating surface, and find their boldest expression in the northern region of the island of Cape Breton. The peninsula of Nova Scotia is connected with the neighbouring province of New Brunswick by a narrow isthmus, on one side of which the great tides of the Bay of Fundy tumultuously beat, and is separated by a very romantic strait from the island of Cape Breton.

Both this isthmus and island, we shall see in the course of this narrative, played important parts in the struggle between France and England for dominion in America. This Acadian division possesses large tracts of fertile lands, and valuable mines of coal and other minerals.

In the richest district of the peninsula of Nova Scotia were the thatch-roofed villages of those Acadian farmers whose sad story has been told in matchless verse by a New England poet, and whose language can still be heard throughout the land they loved, and to which some of them returned after years of exile. The inexhaustible fisheries of the Gulf, whose waters wash their sh.o.r.es, centuries ago attracted fleets of adventurous sailors from the Atlantic coast of Europe, and led to the discovery of Canada and the St. Lawrence. It was with the view of protecting these fisheries, and guarding the great entrance to New France, that the French raised on the southeastern sh.o.r.es of Cape Breton the fortress of Louisbourg, the ruins of which now alone remain to tell of their ambition and enterprise.

Leaving Acadia, we come to the provinces which {7} are watered by the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, extending from the Gulf to the head of Lake Superior, and finding their northern limits in the waters of Hudson's Bay. The name of Canada appears to be also a memorial of the Indian nations that once occupied the region between the Ottawa and Saguenay rivers. This name, meaning a large village or town in one of the dialects of the Huron-Iroquois tongue, was applied, in the first half of the sixteenth century, to a district in the neighbourhood of the Indian town of Stadacona, which stood on the site of the present city of Quebec. In the days of French occupation the name was more generally used than New France, and sometimes extended to the country now comprised in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec, or, in other words, to the whole region from the Gulf to the head of Lake Superior.

Finally, it was adopted as the most appropriate designation for the new Dominion that made a step toward national life in 1867.

The most important feature of this historic country is the remarkable natural highway which has given form and life to the growing nation by its side--a river famous in the history of exploration and war--a river which has never-failing reservoirs in those great lakes which occupy a basin larger than Great Britain--a river noted for its long stretch of navigable waters, its many rapids, and its unequalled Falls of Niagara, around all of which man's enterprise and skill have constructed a system of ca.n.a.ls to give the west a continuous navigation from Lake Superior to the ocean for over two thousand miles. {8} The Laurentian Hills--"the nucleus of the North American continent"--reach from inhospitable, rock-bound Labrador to the north of the St. Lawrence, extend up the Ottawa valley, and pa.s.s eventually to the northwest of Lakes Huron and Superior, as far as the "Divide" between the St.

Lawrence valley and Hudson's Bay, but display their boldest forms on the north sh.o.r.e of the river below Quebec, where the names of Capes Eternity and Trinity have been so aptly given to those n.o.ble precipices which tower above the gloomy waters of the Saguenay, and have a history which "dates back to the very dawn of geographical time, and is of h.o.a.r antiquity in comparison with that of such youthful ranges as the Andes and the Alps." [3]

From Gaspe, the southeastern promontory at the entrance of the Gulf, the younger rocks of the Appalachian range, const.i.tuting the breast-bone of the continent, and culminating at the north in the White Mountains, describe a great curve southwesterly to the valley of the Hudson; and it is between the ridge-like elevations of this range and the older Laurentian Hills that we find the valley of the St. Lawrence, in which lie the provinces of Quebec and Ontario.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View of Cape Trinity on the Laurentian Range.]

The province of Quebec is famous in the song and story of Canada; indeed, for a hundred and fifty years, it was Canada itself. More than a million and a quarter of people, speaking the language and {10} professing the religion of their forefathers, continue to occupy the country which extends from the Gulf to the Ottawa, and have made themselves a power in the intellectual and political life of Canada.

Everywhere do we meet names that recall the ancient regime--French kings and princes, statesmen, soldiers, sailors, explorers, and adventurers, compete in the national nomenclature with priests and saints. This country possesses large tracts of arable land, especially in the country stretching from the St. Lawrence to Lake Champlain, and watered by the Richelieu, that noted highway in Canadian history. Even yet, at the head-waters of its many rivers, it has abundance of timber to attract the lumberman.

The province of Ontario was formerly known as Upper or Western Canada, but at the time of the union it received its present name because it largely lies by the side of the lake which the Hurons and more famous Iroquois called "great." It extends from the river of the Ottawas--the first route of the French adventurers to the western lakes as far as the northwesterly limit of Lake Superior, and is the most populous and prosperous province of the Dominion on account of its wealth of agricultural land, and the energy of its population. Its history is chiefly interesting for the ill.u.s.trations it affords of Englishmen's successful enterprise in a new country. The origin of the province must be sought in the history of those "United Empire Loyalists," who left the old colonies during and after the War of Independence and founded new homes by the St. Lawrence and great lakes, as well as in Nova Scotia {11} and New Brunswick, where, as in the West, their descendants have had much influence in moulding inst.i.tutions and developing enterprise.

In the days when Ontario and Quebec were a wilderness, except on the borders of the St. Lawrence from Montreal to the Quebec district, the fur-trade of the forests that stretched away beyond the Laurentides, was not only a source of gain to the trading companies and merchants of Acadia and Canada, but was the sole occupation of many adventurers whose lives were full of elements which a.s.sume a picturesque aspect at this distance of time. It was the fur-trade that mainly led to the discovery of the great West and to the opening up of the Mississippi valley. But always by the side of the fur-trader and explorer we see the Recollet or Jesuit missionary pressing forward with the cross in his hands and offering his life that the savage might learn the lessons of his Faith.

As soon as the Mississippi was discovered, and found navigable to the Gulf of Mexico, French Canadian statesmen recognised the vantage-ground that the command of the St. Lawrence valley gave them in their dreams of conquest. Controlling the Richelieu, Lake Champlain, and the approaches to the Hudson River, as well as the western lakes and rivers which gave easy access to the Mississippi, France planned her bold scheme of confining the old English colonies between the Appalachian range of mountains and the Atlantic Ocean, and finally dominating the whole continent.

So far we have been pa.s.sing through a country {12} where the lakes and rivers of a great natural basin or valley carry their tribute of waters to the Eastern Atlantic; but now, when we leave Lake Superior and the country known as Old Canada, we find ourselves on the northwestern height of land and overlooking another region whose great rivers--notably the Saskatchewan, Nelson, Mackenzie, Peace, Athabasca, and Yukon--drain immense areas and find their way after many circuitous wanderings to Arctic seas.

The Central region of Canada, long known as Rupert's Land and the Northwestern Territory, gradually ascends from the Winnipeg system of lakes, lying to the northwest of Lake Superior, as far as the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and comprises those plains and prairies which have been opened up to civilisation within two decades of years, and offer large possibilities of power and wealth in the future development of the New Dominion. It is a region remarkable for its long rivers, in places shallow and rapid, and extremely erratic in their courses through the plains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rocky Mountains at Donald, B.C.]

Geologists tell us that at some remote period these great central plains, now so rich in alluvial deposits, composed the bed of a sea which extended from the Arctic region and the ancient Laurentian belt as far as the Gulf of Mexico and made, in reality, of the continent, an Atlantis--that mysterious island of the Greeks. The history of the northwest is the history of Indians hunting the buffalo and fur-bearing animals in a country for many years under the control of companies holding royal charters of exclusive {14} trade and jealously guarding their game preserves from the encroachments of settlement and attendant civilisation. French Canadians were the first to travel over the wide expanse of plain and reach the foothills of the Rockies a century and a half ago, and we can still see in this country the Metis or half-breed descendants of the French Canadian hunters and trappers who went there in the days when trading companies were supreme, and married Indian women. A cordon of villages, towns, and farms now stretches from the city of Winnipeg, built on the site of the old headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, as far as the Rocky Mountains. Fields of golden grain brighten the prairies, where the tracks of herds of buffalo, once so numerous but now extinct, still deeply indent the surface of the rich soil, and lead to some creek or stream, on whose banks grows the aspen or willow or poplar of a relatively treeless land, until we reach the more picturesque and well-wooded and undulating country through which the North Saskatchewan flows. As we travel over the wide expanse of plain, only bounded by the deep blue of the distant horizon, we become almost bewildered by the beauty and variety of the flora, which flourish on the rich soil; crocuses, roses, bluebells, convolvuli, anemones, asters, sunflowers, and other flowers too numerous to mention, follow each other in rapid succession from May till September, and mingle with

"The billowy bays of gra.s.s ever rolling in shadow and sunshine."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Upper end of Fraser Canon, B.C.]

Ascending the foothills that rise from the plains {16} to the Rocky Mountains we come to the Western region, known as British Columbia, comprising within a width varying from four to six hundred miles at the widest part, several ranges of great mountains which lie, roughly speaking, parallel to each other, and give sublimity and variety to the most remarkable scenery of North America. These mountains are an extension of the Cordilleran range, which forms the backbone of the Pacific coast, and in Mexico rises to great volcanic ridges, of which the loftiest are Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. Plateaus and valleys of rich, gravelly soil lie within these stately ranges.

Here we find the highest mountains of Canada, some varying from ten to fifteen thousand feet, and a.s.suming a grandeur which we never see in the far more ancient Laurentides, which, in the course of ages, have been ground down by the forces of nature to their relatively diminutive size. Within the recesses of these stupendous ranges there are rich stores of gold and silver, while coal exists most abundantly on Vancouver [Transcriber's note: Island?].

The Fraser, Columbia, and other rivers of this region run with great swiftness among the canons and gorges of the mountains, and find their way at last to the Pacific. In the Rockies, properly so called, we see stupendous ma.s.ses of bare, rugged rock, crowned with snow and ice, and a.s.suming all the grand and curious forms which nature loves to take in her most striking upheavals. Never can one forget the picturesque beauty and impressive grandeur of the Selkirk range, and the ride by the side of {17} the broad, rapid Fraser, over trestle-work, around curves, and through tunnels, with the forest-clad mountains ever rising as far as the eye can reach, with glimpses of precipices and canons, of cataracts and cascades that tumble down from the glaciers or snow-clad peaks, and resemble so many drifts of snow amid the green foliage that grows on the lowest slopes. The Fraser River valley, writes an observer, "is one so singularly formed, that it would seem that some superhuman sword had at a single stroke cut through a labyrinth of mountains for three hundred miles, down deep into the bowels of the land." [4] Further along the Fraser the Cascade Mountains lift their rugged heads, and the river "flows at the bottom of a vast tangle cut by nature through the heart of the mountains." The glaciers fully equal in magnitude and grandeur those of Switzerland. On the coast and in the rich valleys stand the giant pines and cedars, compared with which the trees of the Eastern division seem mere saplings. The coast is very mountainous and broken into innumerable inlets and islands, all of them heavily timbered to the water's edge. The history of this region offers little of picturesque interest except what may be found in the adventures of daring sailors of various nationalities on the Pacific coast, or in the story of the descent of the Fraser by the Scotch fur-trader who first followed it to the sea, and gave it the name which it still justly bears.

The history of the Western and Central regions of the Dominion is given briefly towards the end of this {18} narrative, as it forms a national sequence or supplement to that of the Eastern divisions, Acadia and Canada, where France first established her dominion, and the foundations were laid for the present Canadian confederation. It is the story of the great Eastern country that I must now tell in the following pages.

[1] The first terrace, named after Lord Durham, was built on the foundations of the castle. In recent years the platform has been extended and renamed Dufferin, in honour of a popular governor-general.

[2] _Akade_ means a place or district in the language of the Micmacs or Souriquois, the most important Indian tribe in the Eastern provinces, and is always united with another word, signifying some natural characteristic of the locality. For instance, the well-known river in Nova Scotia, _Shubenacadie_ (Segebun-akade), the place where the ground-nut or Indian potato grows. [Transcriber's note: In the original book, "Akade" and "Segebun-akade" contain Unicode characters.

In "Akade" the lower-case "a" is "a-breve", in "Segebun" the vowels are "e-breve" and "u-breve", and in "akade" the first "a" is "a-macron" and the second is "a-breve".]

[3] Sir J. W. Dawson, _Salient Points in the Science of the Earth_, p.

99.

[4] H. H. Bancroft, _British Columbia_, p. 38.

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II.

THE DAWN OF DISCOVERY IN CANADA.

(1497-1525.)

On one of the n.o.ble avenues of the modern part of the city of Boston, so famous in the political and intellectual life of America, stands a monument of bronze which some Scandinavian and historical enthusiasts have raised to the memory of Leif, son of Eric the Red, who, in the first year of the eleventh century, sailed from Greenland where his father, an Icelandic jarl or earl, had founded a settlement. This statue represents the st.u.r.dy, well-proportioned figure of a Norse sailor just discovering the new lands with which the Sagas or poetic chronicles of the North connect his name. At the foot of the pedestal the artist has placed the dragon's head which always stood on the prow of the Nors.e.m.e.n's ships, and pictures of which can still be seen on the famous Norman tapestry at Bayeux.

The Icelandic Sagas possess a basis of historical truth, and there is reason to believe that Leif Ericson discovered three countries. The first land he made after leaving Greenland he named h.e.l.luland on account of its slaty rocks. Then he came to a {20} flat country with white beaches of sand, which he called Markland because it was so well wooded.

After a sail of some days the Northmen arrived on a coast where they found vines laden with grapes, and very appropriately named Vinland.

The exact situation of Vinland and the other countries visited by Leif Ericson and other Nors.e.m.e.n, who followed in later voyages and are believed to have founded settlements in the land of vines, has been always a subject of perplexity, since we have only the vague Sagas to guide us. It may be fairly a.s.sumed, however, that the rocky land was the coast of Labrador; the low-lying forest-clad sh.o.r.es which Ericson called Markland was possibly the southeastern part of Cape Breton or the southern coast of Nova Scotia; Vinland was very likely somewhere in New England. Be that as it may, the world gained nothing from these misty discoveries--if, indeed, we may so call the results of the voyages of ten centuries ago. No such memorials of the Icelandic pioneers have yet been found in America as they have left behind them in Greenland. The old ivy-covered round tower at Newport in Rhode Island is no longer claimed as a relic of the Norse settlers of Vinland, since it has been proved beyond doubt to be nothing more than a very substantial stone windmill of quite recent times, while the writing on the once equally famous rock, found last century at Dighton, by the side of a New England river, is now generally admitted to be nothing more than a memorial of one of the Indian tribes who have inhabited the country since the voyages of the Nors.e.m.e.n.

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