Canada Part 17

XXVIII

CANADA AS A NATION: MATERIAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT--POLITICAL RIGHTS.

Up to the dissolution of the 1904 Parliament in October, 1908, the Dominion had had ten Parliaments. During the first thirty years the Conservatives were almost continuously in office. They were defeated in the general election of 1874, owing to some grave scandals in connection with the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway; but were again returned to office in 1878. In the election of 1878 they were returned on a platform of protection for Canadian industry, and in 1879 Parliament enacted a National Policy Tariff, which was at once vehemently attacked by the Liberal Opposition. Seventeen years, however, elapsed before the Liberals had the opportunity of revising the tariff, and it was not until 1897 that there was any modification in the protective duties. In 1896, however, after several years of profound depression in trade in the Dominion, the Liberals succeeded in obtaining a large majority, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier succeeded to {414} the premiership, which after the death of Sir John Macdonald had been held successively by Sir J. J. C. Abbott, Sir John Thompson, who died at Windsor, where he had gone to take the oath of office of privy councillor, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and Sir Charles Tupper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Wilfrid Laurier (_From a photograph by Ernest H.

Mills._)]

The following year (1897) the Liberal Government revised the tariff, retaining the protective features, and enlarging the system of bounties for the encouragement of industry which had been commenced in 1883.

The tariff was modified, however, by the establishment of a preference for Great Britain, which, beginning at a reduction of one-eighth from the general tariff, was increased to one-fourth, and finally in 1900 to one-third. This reduction remained in force until 1906-7, when the tariff was again revised and arranged in three lists--general, intermediate, and British preference. The intermediate tariff was intended as a basis of negotiation whereby Canada might obtain concessions from foreign countries. After the concession of the British preference in 1897, Great Britain, at the request of Canada, denounced her commercial treaties with several foreign countries, under the terms of which concessions granted by the colonies to the mother country would have had to be extended to the treaty countries. Germany was one of these countries, and on the expiration of the treaty Germany showed her resentment by applying her maximum tariff to Canada. Canada retaliated by the imposition of a surtax on German goods, and a tariff war ensued, which resulted in a much higher degree of {416} protection for Canadian manufacturers whose products came into compet.i.tion with imports from Germany. The British preference was extended by Canada to other British colonies, which in return granted advantages to Canada, and in 1908, with the consent of Great Britain, Canada negotiated a commercial treaty with France on the basis of the intermediate tariff, though with numerous further concessions.

Railway building in Canada had begun as far back as 1836, when a short length of line from La Prairie to St. John's, in the Province of Quebec, was opened for traffic. The first link in what is now known as the Grand Trunk Railway was constructed in 1845, when Montreal was connected with the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railway, now the Portland (Maine) Division of the Grand Trunk System. In 1851 the Grand Trunk Railway Company was incorporated, and took over about a hundred miles of constructed line. Soon afterwards the Legislature of the United Provinces of Quebec and Ontario pa.s.sed the measure which is now known as the Guarantee Act. Under this enactment Government aid was given to railways of not less than seventy miles in length; and it was with this aid that the great development of the Grand Trunk system began. In 1854 the Grand Trunk line from Toronto to Montreal was opened. By 1856 Toronto was connected, _via_ Sarnia, with the State of Michigan. In 1859 Toronto was brought into railway communication with Detroit; and by 1869 the Grand Trunk had leased the International Bridge across the Niagara River, and by this means {417} its system was connected with the State of New York and the numerous centres of population in the Eastern States, which are reached _via_ Buffalo.

Most of this development of the Grand Trunk system had preceded Confederation; but at Confederation the greatest need of the Dominion was easy means of communication between the provinces heretofore known as Upper and Lower Canada. One of the first undertakings of the new Dominion Government was the construction of the Intercolonial Railway, the object of which was to connect the maritime provinces with each other and with Quebec, and the building of which by the Government was one of the conditions on which the maritime provinces had consented to Confederation. It still remained to push out a railway to the far west, and in 1881 work was begun on the Canadian Pacific Railway. In four years this great highway across the continent was ready for use, and in 1887 the Canadian Pacific Railway established a line of steamships across the Pacific in connection with its Pacific terminals.

With the opening of the great North-west and the creation of the new provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905,[1] the railway communication was found to be insufficient, and a new line to the Pacific was begun by the Grand Trunk Railway, which had been the pioneer in railway work in Ontario, and which before the beginning of the new line had already over 3,000 miles of road. {418} The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway is divided into two sections. The eastern runs from Moncton to Winnipeg, a distance of 1,875 miles, and is being built by the Government. On its completion it is to be leased to the Grand Trunk Railway Company for fifty years. The western section runs from Winnipeg to Prince Rupert on the Pacific, a distance of 1,480 miles, and is being constructed and equipped by the Company, the Government granting a subsidy, and guaranteeing the Company's bonds up to 75 per cent. of the cost of construction. The first stretch of the new line to be completed was that from Winnipeg to Wainwright, a distance of 666 miles. It went into service in September, 1908, and was completed by the end of 1915.

At the same time, the Great Northern began to push out to the North-west, for the sake of the immense trade in grain which the opening up of the new provinces had created. A little later work was also begun on the Hudson's Bay Railway, which was intended to connect the more northern waters with Ontario and the Great Lakes. In 1908 the Dominion had twenty-two thousand miles of railway completed, in addition to the long stretches then under construction. In 1918 it was 38,879 miles.

Almost as important to Canada as her railways are her ca.n.a.ls and her waterways. In 1897, on the accession of the Liberal Government to office, it was determined to deepen the St. Lawrence ca.n.a.ls and enlarge the locks sufficiently to allow the pa.s.sage from the great lakes to the sea of vessels {419} drawing not more than fourteen feet of water.

These ca.n.a.ls afford a through water route, with a minimum depth of fourteen feet, from Montreal to Port Arthur on Lake Superior, a distance of 1,223 miles, 73 of which are by ca.n.a.l. The total expenditure of the Dominion on ca.n.a.ls up to 1919 amounted to over $127,000,000.

Alongside the improvement in the means of communication--railways and ca.n.a.ls--has gone a considerable growth of Canadian manufacturing industries. The iron and steel industry was scarcely in existence at Confederation. The Marmora plant at Long Point, Ontario, and a smaller plant at Three Rivers, Quebec, had been in existence since the forties; but the iron and steel industry, as it exists to-day in Canada, is largely the creation of the national policy of protective tariffs and bounties. The bounty system was inst.i.tuted in 1883, chiefly for the benefit of a blast furnace of 100 tons capacity at Londonderry, Nova Scotia, which was then in difficulties. Besides this furnace, only two others--charcoal furnaces with an aggregate capacity of fifteen tons, at Drummondsville, Quebec--came on the bounty list in 1884. In 1897, when the Liberals came into office, furnaces had also been erected at New Glasgow, Radnor, and Hamilton, and the aggregate daily capacity of the furnaces of the Dominion was then 445 tons.

At the revision of the tariff in 1897 the bounty system was greatly extended, and under its aegis two great modern iron and steel plants--one at Sydney, N.S., and one at Sault Ste. Marie, O., came {420} into existence. Modern furnaces have also been established at North Sydney, Hamilton, Welland, Midland, and Port Arthur, and in 1908 the output of pig-iron from all these plants was a little over 600,000 tons. A large proportion of this pig-iron is converted at the Sault Ste. Marie and the Sydney plants into steel rails, for which the constant extension of the railways furnishes a steady market.

Next to iron and steel the most important manufacturing industries are the textiles. Both woollens and cottons were manufactured in Canada in small quant.i.ties before Confederation. A small woollen mill was established at Coburg, Ontario, in 1846, and even earlier than this there were woollen mills in Nova Scotia which had made the province notable for their Halifax tweeds. In 1908, however, the woollen industry generally was not in a flourishing condition. Of the 157 mills in existence when the census of 1901 was taken, 28 had disappeared before 1908, and several of the 129 that remained were closed either permanently or temporarily. The value of the woollen goods produced in 1908 did not exceed seven million dollars.

The cotton industry, which is well organised and financially strong, has its largest centres at Montreal and Valleyfield, Quebec. The mills, of which there are about twenty-three, are large, modern, and well-equipped, and the value of their output is more than double that of the woollen mills of the Dominion.

The industry which ranks next in importance is probably the manufacture of farm implements and {421} machinery, which is located at Brantford and Hamilton. Hamilton is also the centre of the manufacture of electrical equipment, stoves, wire, steel castings, hardware, and many other products of metal. At Montreal are the Angus shops, which rank with the finest on the North American Continent, at which locomotives are built for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and in 1908 the Grand Trunk Railway established similar shops on a correspondingly modern scale for locomotive building at Stratford, Ontario.

Shipbuilding was an important industry in the maritime provinces and Quebec in the old days of wooden sailing ships; but with the incoming of steamships of iron and steel the maritime provinces entirely lost their old pre-eminence and world-wide reputation for shipbuilding. It was July, 1908, before a steel ocean-going vessel was launched in the maritime provinces. This was a three-masted schooner of 900 tons burden, the _James William_, which was built in the Matheson Yard, at New Glasgow, N.S. Steel vessels had, however, been built for lake service at Toronto, Collingwood, and Bridgeburg from 1898 onward. At Collingwood and Bridgeburg the largest and finest types of lake freighters and pa.s.senger vessels are built. In 1908 a new steel shipbuilding yard was installed at Welland, and plans were completed for the establishment of a large yard at Dartmouth on Halifax Harbour.

Until the development of the prairie provinces, all manufacturing in the Dominion was carried on {422} east of the great lakes. With the opening out of the great wheat-growing regions of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, however, Winnipeg is gradually becoming a great manufacturing city, and many miscellaneous industries on a factory scale have been established there. The most western iron plant--puddling furnaces and a rolling mill--is situated on the outskirts of the city.

According to the figures of the Canadian Manufacturers' a.s.sociation, as given by Mr. E. J. Freysing, President of the Toronto Section, in July, 1908, there were in Canada at that time 2,465 firms which were either members of the a.s.sociation or were eligible for membership. These firms employed either on salary or wages 392,330 men, women, and children. This number includes 80,000 engaged in the lumbering business--the largest number engaged in any one trade. Lumbering is carried on in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and the annual value of the product is over one hundred million dollars--a value only exceeded by the food products of the Dominion.

More important than all other industries put together is farming. The extent of this industry may be judged from the fact that each year from 1900 to 1908 from 20,000 to 40,000 homesteads were taken up. The usual size of these homesteads is 160 acres, and the acreage thus newly under cultivation varied during the eight years from one to twelve million square miles a year. In 1907 alone the new farms represented an immigration {423} of 105,420 persons. The total number of farms in the Dominion in 1908 was estimated at 600,000, representing a population directly dependent upon farming of over three millions. The princ.i.p.al crops in the prairie provinces are oats, wheat, and barley. The total crop of wheat in 1908 was about 130,000,000 bushels, of oats 270,000,000, and of barley 50,000,000.

In Ontario, Quebec, and the maritime provinces, dairying, fruit-growing, hog-raising--for bacon and ham--and mixed farming have taken the place of grain crops. In 1908 Canada had gained a strong position in the markets of Great Britain for cheese, b.u.t.ter, and canned goods, a position which was largely due to the work of the Dominion Agricultural Department in providing cold storage for farm products on the railways and steamers, and also to the educational work which the Department had been steadily pushing among the farmers.

The Dominion is rich in metals and minerals, and mining is an important industry in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia. The largest coal-fields of Canada are in Cape Breton and in Pictou and c.u.mberland Counties, Nova Scotia, from which over five million tons of coal are mined each year. There are no coal measures between New Brunswick and Manitoba, and the lignite beds of Manitoba yield a much less valuable coal than that of Nova Scotia. The coal area of the Rocky Mountains, though not so large as that of the maritime provinces, yields the best coal so far found in the Dominion. The centre of this formation is at the Crow's Nest Pa.s.s. {424} There is another coal area on the Pacific Coast in the neighbourhood of Nanaimo and in Queen Charlotte's Island.

The total amount of coal mined in the Dominion in 1908 was 10,510,000.

Besides coal, there are in Canada rich deposits of iron ore, lead, nickel, copper, silver, and gold, and the non-metallic minerals include petroleum, asbestos, and corundum. Diamonds have been found in Quebec in a formation not unlike the diamond fields of Kimberley. Gold is found chiefly in the Klondike country and in British Columbia; but some gold is also obtained from Nova Scotia, and a fair amount from Ontario and Quebec.

Ever since the settlement of the maritime provinces fishing has been an important industry on their sh.o.r.es, and many of the disputes with the United States have arisen out of the privileges granted to United States fishermen in the treaty of 1818. These disputes have, however, concerned Newfoundland more closely than the Dominion, and the final settlement of all questions between the sister colony and the great republic is hardly yet in sight. A _modus vivendi_ pending settlement was again signed in August, 1908. The fishing industry is not confined to the maritime provinces. River and lake fishing are carried on in Ontario, Manitoba, and the new provinces; and British Columbia has fisheries and canneries of great importance on her coast and rivers.

The total value of the yield of the fisheries for 1908 was about twenty-five million dollars.

The population of the Dominion in 1908 was {425} estimated to be about six and a half millions, with a yearly immigration of between 150,000 and 200,000. The French Canadians numbered about 1,500,000, and of the rest the majority were English, Scotch, and Irish. The new immigration is introducing each year a large number of non-English-speaking people, and also some very desirable settlers in the American farmers from the Western States. Among the more important foreign settlements are those of the Doukhobors, who were received in Canada as refugees from persecution in Russia, and who have repeatedly given trouble to the authorities on account of their fanatical resistance to orderly government.

The revenue of Canada for 1907-8 was $96,054,505, and the expenditure was $76,641,451, leaving a surplus of nearly twenty million dollars.

At the close of the fiscal year the debt of Canada amounted to $277,960,259. Ca.n.a.ls, lighthouses, railways, Government buildings, and other public works are the a.s.sets which Canada has to set against this debt, which represents the expenditure necessary for the development of a new and widely extended country.

In education the Dominion ranks almost equal to the Northern States of America. Every province has a public school system, and the primary and grammar schools, especially of Ontario, are a pride and a credit to the people of the province. In 1908 there were seventeen universities in the Dominion. Among them may be mentioned McGill in Montreal, Laval in Quebec, Queen's in Kingston, Dalhousie {426} in Halifax, University of Toronto in Toronto, and the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. The University of Alberta was founded in 1906, that of Saskatchewan in 1907, and British Columbia in 1908.

Every city in Canada and every town of any size has its newspaper or newspapers--daily, bi-weekly, or weekly. Canadian journalism has a character quite of its own, leaning more to American ideals than to those of England. A great change in this respect has come over the Canadian Press since about 1885, up to which time the more important daily newspapers in Montreal, Toronto, Halifax, and St. John had been on the English rather than the American model.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Old Parliament Building at Ottawa.]

Self-government exists in the full sense of the term. At the base of the political structure lie those munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions which, for completeness, are not excelled in any other country. It is in the enterprising province of Ontario that the system has attained its greatest development. The machinery of these munic.i.p.alities is used in Ontario to raise the taxes necessary for the support of public schools, Free libraries can be provided in every munic.i.p.ality whenever the majority of the taxpayers choose. Then we go up higher to the provincial organisations governed by a lieutenant-governor, nominated and removable by the government of the Dominion, and advised by a council responsible to the people's representatives, with a legislature composed, in only two of the provinces, of two houses--a council appointed by the Crown, and an elective a.s.sembly; in all the other provinces, there is simply an a.s.sembly {428} chosen by the people on a very liberal franchise, manhood suffrage in the majority of cases. The fundamental law, or the British North America Act of 1867, gives jurisdiction to the provincial governments over administration of justice (except in criminal matters), munic.i.p.al, and all purely local affairs. The North-West Territories are under the Department of the Interior. Yukon Territory is governed by a Gold Commissioner, appointed by the Governor-General in Council, and a Council of three members elected by the people, The central or general government of the Dominion is administered by a governor-general, with the a.s.sistance of a ministry responsible to a Parliament, composed of a Senate appointed by the Crown, and a House of Commons elected under an electoral franchise, practically on the very threshold of universal suffrage. This government has jurisdiction over trade and commerce, post-office, militia and defence, navigation and shipping, fisheries, railways and public works of a Dominion character, and all other matters of a general or national import. Education is under the control of the provincial governments, but the rights and privileges of a religious minority with respect to separate or denominational schools are protected by the const.i.tution. The common law of England prevails in all the provinces except in French Canada, where the civil law still exists. The criminal law of England obtains throughout the Dominion.

The central government appoints all the judges, who are irremovable except for cause. Although the const.i.tution places in the central government the {429} residue of all powers, not expressly given to the provincial authorities, conflicts of jurisdiction are constantly arising between the general and local governments. Such questions, however, are being gradually settled by the decisions of the courts--the chief security of a written const.i.tution--although at times the rivalry of parties and the antagonisms of distinct nationalities and creeds tend to give special importance to certain educational and other matters which arise in the operation of the const.i.tution. All these are perils inseparable from a federal const.i.tution governing two distinct races.

The relations of Canada with the United States have been increasingly close and cordial as years have gone on. Many old standing causes of friction have been removed; and in other cases, such as the fisheries dispute, and the extremely high duties levied on Canadian goods in the Dingley Tariff, there has been no recent aggravation of the irritation.

In 1894 an end was made to the dispute over the right of America to exclude other nations from taking the seals of the Aleutian Islands outside the three-mile limit. Canadian vessels had been seized and confiscated by America, and a state of high tension existed, which was relieved by a reference of the dispute to arbitration. This time the award was in favour of Canada. The exclusive right of pelagic sealing was denied to the United States, and damages amounting to $464,000 were awarded to the Canadian fishermen.

The year 1896 is memorable, not only for the general election which brought Sir Wilfrid Laurier {430} into power, and for the beginning of an uplift in trade which lasted until October, 1907, but also for the discovery of gold in the Yukon and in Alaska. The great rush of adventurers induced by these discoveries continued for the next two years, and Dawson city grew up with mushroom haste as the metropolis of this Arctic region. Gold discoveries in both Canadian and American territory brought to a crisis the long-pending dispute over the international boundary in the far North-west. In 1898 a joint High Commission was created, whose duties were to settle a number of questions which had long caused friction between Canada and the United States. The sessions of this Commission extended over eight months without accomplishing anything. No formal ending was made to the work of the Commission, but it never re-a.s.sembled after its adjournment in February, 1899.

It was not until 1903 that an agreement was reached between Great Britain and the United States concerning the Alaskan boundary line. In that year a treaty was concluded by which this long-disputed question was relegated to a Commission of six jurists, three British and three American, who by a majority vote were empowered to determine the boundary line. The British members of the Commission were Lord Alverstone, Chief Justice of England, who was made president, with a casting vote in case of a tie, and two Canadians, Sir Louis Jette and Mr. A. B. Aylesworth, both eminent jurists. The American members were Mr. Henry C. Lodge, Mr. Elihu Root, and Mr. George Turner. The {431} report of the Commission, which was transmitted to the Governments of the United States and Great Britain in October, 1903, was somewhat disappointing to Canadians, as, on the whole, the Americans gained their contentions. Canada was shut out from water communication with the Yukon as far south as Portland Channel. The treaty in which this report was incorporated, and which was finally ratified in 1905, was, however, beneficial in removing a long-standing cause of irritation between the two nations, and Canada's need for a port was met in some degree by bonding concessions at the American ports on the Alaskan coast. An International Commission to mark out the boundary line was at work in Alaska in the summer of 1908.

Serious disturbance to a number of Canadian interests, especially those of the lumbermen, was caused by the pa.s.sing of the Dingley Act, with its high duties on all Canadian exports except some raw materials. To the attack on Canadian lumber Ontario replied by prohibiting the export of saw logs cut on Crown timber limits, a step which led to the transfer of a considerable number of saw mills to the Canadian side of the border line. Another cause of complaint against the United States has been the strict and harsh enforcement of the contract labour laws on the American side of the boundary line.

It is the not unfounded boast of Canadians that as the nineteenth century was the century of growth and development of the United States, so the twentieth is to be the century of Canada; and the outstanding feature of Canadian development in {432} the last decade of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth is the awakening of her national consciousness. In all her relations with Great Britain this sense of nationality has been continuously manifest.

In the Colonial Conferences which have been held at intervals in London since the first Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, Canada has been acknowledgedly first among the self-governing colonies. In 1897, partly as a result of the enthusiasm created by enactment of the preference for Great Britain by the Dominion Parliament, Sir Wilfrid Laurier was the foremost figure among the colonial statesmen who were in London for the Diamond Jubilee. Another evidence of loyalty and of the close connection between Canada and Great Britain in the Jubilee year was the inst.i.tution of two cent postage between Great Britain and Canada. Canada's domestic rate of letter postage from 1868 had been three cents, a rate which was extended to the United States by a postal convention, by which the domestic rate of Canada was made applicable to all letters and papers entering the United States, and that of the United States to all mail matter for Canada. This rate of three cents remained in force until January, 1899, when the two cent rate was made general for Canada, the United States, and Great Britain. In 1907, the rate for newspapers and periodicals between Great Britain and Canada was again lowered, and in August, 1908, a one cent rate for letters within the area of a town or city was adopted by the Canadian Post Office.

When the South African War broke out in 1899, {433} Canada was the first of the colonies to come to the help of the mother country; and the Canadian contingents, the first of which left Canada for South Africa in October, 1899, rendered excellent service in the Boer War, especially in such work as scouting and the guerilla fighting in which the Boers were so adept.

The treaty-making power is still withheld from the Dominion; but since the Alaskan boundary treaty Great Britain has given more and more attention to the demands and needs of Canada when treaties have been in negotiation, and in 1907 Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mr. W. S. Fielding, Minister of Finance, and the Hon. Mr. L. P. Brodeur went to Paris to negotiate directly a commercial treaty with the French Government.

During the years from 1904 to 1907 the British Government gradually withdrew all the troops and warships which had been stationed in the Dominion. Canada a.s.sumed control of the fortifications of Halifax and Esquimalt in July, 1905, and the replacing of British by Canadian soldiers was complete by February, 1906. The naval dockyard at Halifax was handed over to the Canadian Government authorities in January, 1907; and from end to end of the Dominion Canada is now in complete and undivided control of her own territory.

[1] The boundaries of the new provinces were finally settled by an Act of Parliament pa.s.sed in 1908--an Act which also greatly enlarged the boundaries of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.

{434}

XXIX.

FRENCH CANADA.

As this story commenced with a survey from the heights of Quebec of the Dominion of Canada from ocean to ocean, so now may it fitly close with a review of the condition of the French Canadian people who still inhabit the valley of the St. Lawrence, and whose history is contemporaneous with that of the ancient city whose picturesque walls and buildings recall the designs of French ambition on this continent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Quebec in 1896.]

Though the fortifications of Louisbourg and Ticonderoga, of Niagara, Frontenac, and other historic places of the French regime in America have been razed to the ground, and the French flag is never seen in the valley of the St. Lawrence, except on some holiday in company with other national colours, nevertheless on the continent where she once thought to reign supreme, France has been able to leave a permanent impress. But this impress is not in the valley of the Mississippi. It is true that a number of French still live on the banks of the great river, that many a little village where a French {436} patois is spoken lies hidden in the sequestered bayous of the South, and that no part of the old city of New Orleans possesses so much interest for the European stranger as the French or Creole quarter, with its quaint balconied houses and luxuriant gardens; but despite all this, it is generally admitted that the time is not far distant when the French language will disappear from Louisiana, and few evidences will be found of the days of the French occupancy of that beautiful State of the Union. On the banks of the St. Lawrence, however, France has left behind her what seem likely to be more permanent memorials of her occupation. The picturesque banks of the St. Lawrence, from the Atlantic to the great lakes of the West, are the home of a large and rapidly increasing population whose language and customs are so many memorials of the old regime whose history has taken up so many pages of this story.