The Masques of Ottawa Part 18

This unusual Entente was held between the rancours of the bilingual dispute of 1916 and the Quebec revolt against conscription in 1917.

Those present who doubted the sincerity of pa.s.sionate speakers anch.o.r.ed a timidly steadfast hope to the practical, broad-angled Premier of Quebec, who, had he sat between Mr. Boura.s.sa and the Premier of Ontario, would have inclined his ear to Ontario.

Nothing is more certain than that four French-Canadian leaders, had they been given or had they asked for the opportunity and had acted together, could have put a different face on Quebec's relation to the war. Four men namable in that capacity are, Sir Lomer Gouin, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Ernest Lapointe, and Cardinal Begin. Of these, Gouin was at that time the most able. For ten years he had been uninterruptedly Premier of Quebec with a moral guarantee that he could occupy the Premiership by an overwhelming majority until he should be gathered to his fathers.

Again and again rumour slated Sir Lomer for Ottawa. He wisely declined. He had a peasant's attachment to "le pays" and its white villages. In Quebec he was the Chief of Ministers, the little elected father of his country. In Ottawa he would have been perhaps a grand Minister of Public Works building docks in Halifax, customs houses in British Columbia, post-offices on the prairies, armouries in Ontario and court-houses in Quebec. Yes, there would be surely armouries in Ontario.

I met Sir Lomer but once, in his office in the Parliament Buildings.

There was no particular reason for seeing him except the pleasure of encountering a descendant of the people who so gallantly fought under Montcalm so that posterity could enjoy a city in part exclusively English and for the most part idiomatically French. A few evenings previous I had talked on the Terrace to a glowing Nationalist, a young expert in cynical idealism, who spoke very curtly about the Premier.

An ardent patriot, he talked freely and interestingly, as we gazed out at the blue-hazed domes of the n.o.ble hills that mark the valley of St.

Lawrence. The roofs of Old Lower Town were sizzling in heat. Drowsy, lumber-laden bateaux and ocean-liners crept and smoked about the docks.

Beyond the grey-scarped citadel the vesper bells of parish after parish clanged a divine discord into the calm of the great river.

"What do you think of Gouin?" I asked him.

A cynical smile flicked over the Nationalist's face. For a moment he did not answer.

"Pardonnez-moi," I mumbled. "I am Anglais."

"Oh!" he said, sharply, laughing. "Have you seen the Montcalm suite in the Chateau here? Do so. The C.P.R. discovered an old bed and some creaky chairs said to have been used by the great general. They placed them in a suite of rooms which they rent to curiosity-hunting Americans who sentimentalize over history at twenty-five dollars a day. Such is Quebec when she is commercialized into a highway for tourists."

"But what has that to do with Sir Lomer Gouin?"

"Directly--nothing. Sir Lomer is not even a director of the C.P.R., or of the Bank of Montreal, though one never knows what he may do with his money and his talents when he gets tired of manipulating elections."

"Oh, you mean that Gouin--does not reflect the idealism of Quebec; its love of the land that bore our fathers, its poetic isolation among the provinces----?"

He blew a shaft of cigarette smoke.

"Sir Lomer," he said, "is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Province of Quebec. His chief duty is to go about inspecting and improving properties and to sit at directors' meetings declaring provincial dividends instead of deficits."

I remarked that since Quebec is so prosperous and so large and populous with so many cradles, the Premier need not perhaps vex himself deeply about ideals such as the French language in schools outside the province.

"What!" was the reply, as a gla.s.s banged upon the table. "Would you cage us in here like Indians on a reservation? Has the French-Canadian nation no rights outside Quebec?"

"What would you do?" I asked him. "What could you do?"

"Secede!" he exclaimed. "Become the Sinn Fein of Canada."

"What about the Pope of Rome?"

"Has as much to do with Quebec," he laughed icily, "as the President of France. If the Pope should issue instructions to the bishops of Quebec, asking the clergy to educate the people of Quebec on their duty to go to war or to vote for either of the old line parties, the people would openly disregard them. We would as much resent the interference of Rome in our affairs as the American colonies did the tyranny of George the Third."

Here was the superb inconsistency of the French mind wedded to a single magnificent idea. This Nationalist admitting the possibility of secession, made sure that it would not be to the United States which puts the French language on a par with Choctaw. When I suggested as a recipe for national unity that French and English be learned by both English and French all over Canada, he flouted the idea of French-Canadians learning more English than they needed in business, and of English-Canadians learning French at all. He fervently held to the Keltic notion of making a preserve of the French-Canadian race, language, literature and customs whatever may become of the religion; yet he objected to penning the race into a reservation like the Indians. He observed that in 1911 the Nationalists bucked reciprocity with the United States.

"I think we should become an independent republic," he said as he plopped a fresh cigarette. "We have the main part of the St. Lawrence.

No, you will not find Gouin say so. Gouin is a Tory prefect. He plays politics, not nationalism."

I observed that the band was about to play.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, stretching his legs with a yawn. "And the concert will conclude with that amiable farce, 'O Canada,' followed by 'G.o.d Save the King.'"

This Nationalist interview is given at some length because it ill.u.s.trates much of what Sir Lomer Gouin is not, and if he were would not openly say so, because he stands for a majority the watchword of which is "Stop, Look, Listen". I went at once to see the Premier. He was closeted with confiding--perhaps confederate--priests, and with simple habitant folk who stood, not in awe but in affection, of the Premier. He might have been himself a father confessor.

Talking to him I found Gouin peculiarly on his guard; broad-faced, heavy-jawed, slow of speech, almost devoid of gesticulation, he was as unamiably dispa.s.sionate as a bank manager. There was no militant pa.s.sion of the minority in this man; no heroic tilting against windmills; no expression of ideals; no suggestion of a delightful outlaw. He was amazingly practical, with no inclination to discuss freely the native peculiarities of either race. He understood Ontario--as a politician only; England as a democracy and a form of government. He had no absorbing idiosyncracies and made no attempt to pose or even to be interesting. After the bounce of the young Nationalist he was as tame as a grandfather's clock.

I felt that Sir Lomer was asking himself--what did the stranger want?

He would have been infinitely more at ease discussing with a bishop how to prevent a strike in a cotton mill; or with a political outposter what to do to keep some seat for the Administration. If I had made to him such a statement as once I had made with such volcanic results to Boura.s.sa, that nine-tenths of the population in a village like Nicolet could speak no Anglais, he would have been eloquent. Had I observed that 70 per cent of the operatives in a great Quebec industry cannot read and write French, that Ontario has a policy of good roads comparable to that of Quebec, that Orangemen do not dominate Toronto, that the Ontario farmer is a better producer than the habitant, or that Protestant clerics do not interfere in politics, he would have bristled with information to set me profoundly right. But he created no atmosphere of free discussion with a stranger. He was coldly aloof, yet earnestly endeavouring to say something worth while.

What I really wanted to tell Gouin was that he was personally very much like the late great Tory, Sir James Whitney. But he did not warm up to personal comment. The bilingual question was too complicated. The atmosphere of the Bonne Entente was lacking. Gouin and myself were in different envelopes. He was the Premier.

From what is said of him I am sure most of the fault was my own. I did not understand him. He was too much the Premier; the master executive.

The Nationalist was almost right; Gouin suggested the dividend and the census. He was the chief executive of a Province larger than almost any country in Europe but Russia, and with a population about half that of Roumania, of whom about one-sixth are the Anglo-Saxon minority. He seemed to know Quebec from Montreal to the edge of Labrador almost by telegraph poles. You recall that the French in Canada evolved the modern census with its intimate penetration into the affairs of the people, some time before the Germans did it. The Premier of Quebec was a handbook encyclopaedia of Quebec. He knew the precise location by the roads of almost any white village, pulp-mill, water-power, mine, timber limit; knew as much as a man can about the number of horses and cattle and cradles to a township; could talk with enthusiasm about the pioneer arts of the habitant--the rugs, the baskets, the furniture, the hand-made churns, the open-air bake-ovens. He could give the address and the full name of many and many a priest.

But beyond this there is a Quebec which Sir Lomer Gouin did not know, because he himself with his _bourgeois_ excellences and his great good citizenship has not the Gallic sparkle in his mentality. He never deeply knew the soul of Quebec. He was too much concerned with its practical and useful politics to be conscious of its pa.s.sions. From the shrug of his shoulder, and a certain twinkle in his eye when he mentioned diplomacy with clerics, one surmised that among the clergy he was the master among politicians who must walk warily. But he was too stout, too thrifty, too much of a high type of budgeteer to be spiritually informed of the crude but basically beautiful pa.s.sions that undercurrent all peasant communities. There was no poetry in Gouin.

No fire. Little imagination.

"Those Nationalists?" he repeated shrewdly, slowly. "Yes, I know their talk. Oh, they are not so dangerous, but a troublesome minority. I think--I know Quebec better than they do. You have, I daresay, Nationalists in Ontario?"

What he perhaps expected was some statement about Orangemen, who of course are nearly all Imperialists. Yet these very Orangemen represent an intense phase of Canadian life; the backwoods era, the simple industries, the old villages, the quaint settlements of the U.E.

Loyalists as picturesque on the Upper, as the dormer-windowed villages of the French are on the Lower St. Lawrence. To these men the Empire is as visual, as to the intense Quebecker it is nebulous. And as the politician in Ontario has to regard carefully the Orange vote, so the Premier of Quebec had to be wary of the franchises of his emotional friends, the Nationalists. He was somewhat afraid of the minority as all masters of majorities are. Clearly--it was Gouin's main business to continue being elected. Had he gone out on behalf of enlistments, to educate his people, even to speak for France, he would have been in danger of converting Gouin Liberals into Nationalists.

Ontario cannot fail to make an a.s.set of Gouin's anti-Nationalism. He was never for any of the violent doctrines propounded by my friend on the Terrace. He would not oppose Quebec going to war. I am sure he G.o.d-speeded the 22nd who died at Courcellette. He was the Premier of a free Province. Those men had freely gone. Others--the majority--had freely stayed. But an election was coming; where everybody would be free to vote.

Then there were the clergy; most of them friends of Gouin. The Cardinal at Quebec had been interviewed by Sir Sam Hughes on aid to enlistments. Gouin could have told Hughes that he would fail; that Begin, though not a Nationalist, was a reactionary. The bilingual controversy was still acute. Gouin could not have gone out or sent emissaries out, to reason with French-Canadians about marching with a Province which had denied the French language rights in contrast to the Government's own claim that it had given rights to the Anglo minority in Quebec.

Conscription was coming. It was a precarious time. The master of Quebec had to move cautiously. His loyalty to Britain was never questioned. His faith in a United Canada was never doubted. Had Quebec been all for Gouin instead of Gouin all for Quebec, the Premier's way would have been easier. Better let well enough alone; encourage those to enlist who really wanted to go--because Quebec was a free country.

Then there was the Laurier influence. Had the old man gone in with the Premier to help the Ottawa Government--

Impossible. Neither of them was asked before Coalition came on the heels of conscription. And when conscription came, the minority of Nationalists opposed to the war became the majority of Quebeckers who preferred not to comply with the law. From disregarding the law to rebellion, to Nationalism was not far. Gouin had the balance to hold.

The Cardinal's att.i.tude on conscription made Gouin's position still more difficult. His letter to the press bluntly put the Roman Catholic Church above temporal law. One heard of no rebuke from the Premier of Quebec to the Cardinal. A Cardinal may be above politics.

Sir Lomer was playing the game of safety, when from his own temperament and position and unbacked by other leaders he could do little more. He stood for the law and did not hinder its operation. But if there was a chief executive in Canada who wished the war were righteously over, it was Sir Lomer Gouin. No Premier had such a predicament; so much at the end to lose; so much at first to have gained--if only he could have foreseen, as n.o.body did, that conscription was coming and that law would be more awkward than liberty.

The Premier of Quebec had experience in keeping his Government immune from agitators. It was not alone the Nationalists who had made him uneasy. On the other extreme there had been for some time one G.o.defroi Langlois, former editor of _La Patrie_, and later founder and editor of _Le Pays_, whose platform was compulsory State education away from control of the clergy and in defiance of the Archbishops. Gouin did not endorse Langlois. How could he? _Le Pays_, when it condemned clerical schools, attacked the Administration. Politically Gouin was right in opposing Langlois. Nationally he was playing provincial.

Langlois had a mission, in line with a broader, nationalized Canada; the same mission which is now being reflected in the National Council of Education.

So, between the reactionism of Boura.s.sa and the radicalism of Langlois, Gouin was the compromise; and Langlois was conveniently given an official post in Europe.

Gouin has compromised his whole political career. With the leverage of enormous success in elections and administration, he never had the vision to declare himself in favour of a bigger Quebec than could be got by extending its boundaries to Ungava.

He was too old to begin. Quebec to him was a vast prefecture to be administered; not a vision to be realized. Ontario--except politically--was almost as far away as British Columbia. He was seldom in Toronto. Montreal was as a rule the last west for this voyageur.

He seldom or never went to the Maritimes. He knew the people down there regarded the _bloc_ Quebec as a denationalizer. He had little or no desire to see the prairies. He wanted Quebec to prosper. He delighted to see pulp mills and cotton factories and power plants and railways and trolleys vibrating along the St. Lawrence. He loved to dream of the great unpeopled hinterland--all Quebec; of the other hinterland--all the rest of Canada; of the transcontinentals converging at Montreal; of the steamship lines terminating there; of a land where there are few empty cradles or idle factories or wasting farms.

All these things Gouin, growing stout and somewhat heavy of face, loved to behold; and out of that grew all the vision he seemed to have. In this enormous prefecture within the Empire he beheld a far more comfortable State than the Nationalist dream of a separative Quebec; glad when he could find time to motor grandly and amiably out among the villages and be greeted as _le grand seigneur_ of politics, even when he lacked the grand manners of the eminent patrician.

At any conference of Premiers in Ottawa he held himself somewhat aloof, studying the lot, respecting them all, cordial with all, anxious to do all that const.i.tutionally in him lay to further co-ordination. But Gouin always sagaciously knew that there was no Premier in the pack who already had so much, with so little to ask, from Federalism as he. His was the pivotal province of Confederation, the grand compromise of Old Macdonald with Cartier; the basic sixty-five members of Parliament, unchangeable except by ripping up the B.N.A. Act, an instrument of Empire. He could wink the other eye and reflect that from the political concessions of the Act in official bilingualism and a fixed representation, in the outlet of the St. Lawrence, in the possession of the historic city, in the control of ocean navigation, in a solid clergy, in fundamental virtues of thrift and an established peasantry--he and his had more than any of the others could ever ask.