Chapter 8
Epilogue of The Winning of Popular Government. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Brusca Chuck. The Winning of Popular Government, a Chronicle of the Union of 1841, by Archibald MacMeekin.
Epilogue. The twelve years that followed Elgin's regime saw the flood tide of Canada's prosperity. Apart altogether from the advantage of the reciprocity treaty, the country flourished. The extension of railways, the influx of population, developed rapidly the immense natural resources of the country. Politically, however, things did not move so well.
The old difficulties had disappeared, but new difficulties took their place. There was no longer any question of the Constitution, or the relation of the governor to it, or of orderly procedure in the mechanics of administration. But there was violent strife between parties too evenly balanced. The remedy lay in the formation of a larger unity,
and in 1867 the four provinces effected a confederation which was soon to embrace half the continent from ocean to ocean. Dominion Day, 1867, was the birthday of a new nation, and a true poet has preceded Canada's relation to Britain and the world in a single stanza. A nation spoke to a nation, a throne sent word to a throne.
Daughter am I in my mother's house, but mistress in my own. The doors are mine to open, as the doors are mine to close. And I abide by my mother's house, said Our Lady of the Snows. Quis Seperabit The confident prophecies of cutting the painter have all come to naught.
In the supreme test of the Great War, Canada never for a moment faltered. She gave her blood and treasure freely in support of the Empire and the right. No severer trial of those bonds that knit British peoples together can be imagined. To look back upon the time when British soldiers had to be sent to suppress a Canadian insurrection from a time when French Canadians and English Canadians are fighting side by side
three thousand miles from their homes for the maintenance of the empire is to envisage the most startling of historical paradoxes. That old bad time seems as unsubstantial as a dream. This seems the only reality, and yet the two periods are separated only by the span of a not very long human life. The truth is that in those days there were no Canadians. There were French on the banks of the St. Lawrence, but their political horizon was bounded by the parish
limits. Their most renowned leader had no vision but of an independent French Republic, or of one more state in the Union. The people of the western province consisted of diverse elements. The solid kernel was of United Empire loyalist stock, which gave the province its distinctive character. The Scottish, Irish, English immigration could not be reckoned among the genuine sons of the soil. They built their log huts in the wildwood clearings, but their hearts were in the
ceiling, the cabin, the cottage they had left beyond the sea. Their allegiance was divided, a fact of which the perpetuation of the various national societies is indubitable evidence. They were the pioneers, they made the wilderness a garden, and their children entered into a large inheritance. More inharmonious still was the immigration from south of the border of persons brought up on the Declaration of Independence and Fourth of July oratory. Colonel Cruickshank's
researches have proved how numerous they were and how disaffected. Mrs. Moody found them and the Americanized natives just as disagreeable in Ontario as Mrs. Trollope did in Cincinnati, and for the same reasons. Except the Loyalists, all these elements were divided in their political affections and ideals. Their leaders saw only two possibilities. British connection was the sheet anchor of the old colonial Tories, but their vision of the country's future was an aristocracy,
a landed gentry, a decorous union of church and state, in short, a colonial replica of old Tory England. On the other hand, the radical leaders, French and English alike, saw before them only an independent republic, or fusion, with the United States. How limited was the vision of both, time has made blindingly clear. The instinct of the nascent nation decided for the golden mean, and chose the middle path. Canada has stood firm by the empire. How firm, let the blood-soaked
trenches of Flanders attest, and yet she had stood just as firmly by the creed of democracy and her determination to control her own affairs. One son of the soil had a vision wider than that of his contemporaries. Years before the rebellion, the editor of a Halifax newspaper saw the scattered, jarring British colonies united under the old flag and bound together by fellowship within the empire. He saw iron roads spanning the continent, and the white sails of Canadian commerce dotting
the Pacific. Canadians of this day see what Hal foresaw, the eye among the blind. Let it be repeated. In those old days there were no Canadians of Canada. Confederation had to be achieved. A new generation had to be born and grow to manhood before a national sentiment was possible. These These new Canadians saw little or nothing of provinces without worn feuds and divisions. They saw only the dominion of Canada.
Their imagination was stirred by the ideal of half a continent staked out for a second great experiment in democracy, of a vast domain to be filled and subdued and raised to power by a new nation. In spite of many faults and failures and disappointments, Canadians have been true to that ideal. The Canada of today is something far grander than the Mackenzies and Papineaus ever dreamed
of. She has disappointed the fears and exceeded the hopes of the Durham's and the Elgin's, and she stands on the threshold as Canadians firmly trust of a more illustrious future. End of Epilogue End of The Winning of Popular Government A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
By Archibald MacMeekin
