Delphi complete works of.., p.728
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 728
But as between American and British claims, Oregon was no man’s land. The Hudson’s Bay Company set up their forts on the inland rivers, Yale and Berens on the Fraser and, later on, Fort Simpson on the northern coast. After 1843 their chief centre was Victoria on Vancouver Island, beside it presently Esquimalt. The situation of Victoria rapidly advanced it over all other points. At this time the trade in furs and supplies went in part around the Horn. From the inland posts the ‘brigades’ wound A. G. Brown, “British Columbia,” 1912 their long way over the Rockies and the plains to Norway House. The need of supplies led the Company to set up farms around Victoria, to build mills and tanneries and even to mine the Vancouver Island coal. Thus originated the Fort Nanaimo of 1852. American settlers began to come in over the mountains. Missionaries brought their little flocks. As the Oregon dispute grew, what we now call ‘propaganda’ joined with missionary zeal to bring in American settlers. When the treaty boundary line was drawn (1846) some of these were converted into British. But till the days of gold the fur trade was still above all, and life as quiet and undisturbed as in the Spanish missions to the south. Gold in California brought a burst of activity to Victoria, the sole harbour of supply beyond San Francisco. To promote settlement the British Government turned over Vancouver Island to the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose own original jurisdiction was only to the Rockies. They were to pay a rent of seven shillings every first of January, to bring out settlers, provide for law and order and sell land on a ten per cent commission. Under these auspices settlers came in. Victoria was laid out in streets in 1852. Things moved slowly, but they moved. The town had 300 souls in 1855 and Nanaimo 125. To these were added the 1,700 Indians of the island, docile and accepting Christianity with pleasure.
HAL ROSS PERRIGARD, A.R.C.A., MONTREAL, P.Q., 1941
“Then came the discovery of gold and quickened the pace of life” — page 173
Then came the discovery of gold and quickened the pace of life. The first findings were on the coast and on the Queen Charlotte 1856 Islands. These proved of no great value but presently the gold on the Fraser River brought a rush of miners to the ‘diggings.’ Victoria shared in the glory of its Australian cousin. In one season twenty-five thousand miners landed, took on supplies and went on through. Two hundred buildings went up in six months. Town lots sold at a thousand dollars a foot frontage. Prices and profits rushed up, with flour at thirty dollars a barrel. Then the boom broke and the diggers came floating back on the ebb-tide. The mining was not poor man’s gold, loose in shallow rivers. It had to wait for capital and machinery. But the ebb-tide at least freshened growth.
Vancouver Island was reorganized as a British colony in 1856. Douglas was its Governor, and presently it had an elected Assembly. A little later the island settlements were grouped as another colony. With them began the name British Columbia, J. M. Gibbon, “Steel of Empire,” 1935 suggested in a letter from the queen. The French, in compliment to Scotland, had taken ‘New Caledonia’ for their future convict island. Columbia, the queen noted, was used by itself for the United States “in poetry.” The capital was laid out at New Westminster, James Douglas the governor also of this second colony. A detachment of Royal Engineers was sent out from England under Colonel Richard Moody to make surveys, construct roads and preserve the peace. A representative legislature was called in 1864. As a matter of common sense the colonies of the island and the mainland united as British Columbia in 1866 with Sir James Douglas as governor.
It was in these circumstances that the proposal of Confederation with Canada found the people of British Columbia. They were half-hearted about it. Some, it is said, even dreamed of union with the States. Others, of Victoria, were British enough to want to be left alone. But Macdonald’s pledge to start a Pacific railway in two years and finish it in ten, carried the day. The province saw a vision of Pacific steamers, of cargoes of silk, of ocean ports facing a new world, in other words a vision of exactly what happened — only later on. As it was, seven years passed with nothing of a railway except a railway scandal. When Lord Dufferin visited the province in 1876 his carriage was confronted with an arch carrying the legend Carnarvon Terms or Separation. The tactful governor had it altered to “or Reparation.” But the grievance remained.
After British Columbia followed Prince Edward Island. The Island up till that time had on the whole done well. Its original French settlers, its Loyalists and Lord Selkirk’s Highlanders had been followed by a more or less steady influx of immigration. It had 24,000 people in 1822, 62,000 in 1848, and by this time (1871) the population was 94,000. The ill-advised system of the grant of its public land to a few score of favoured proprietors had left a perennial dispute as between landlords and tenants. The Island suffered also from the difficulty of access in winter. Moreover, it had shared the railway mania of the period and had a toy railway on its hands. It looked back on its first refusal of Confederation and decided, like the Scottish old maid in the song, that it had been ‘daft to refuse.’ By the purchase of its railway, a liberal subsidy, the extinction of the proprietors’ claims and help across the Northumberland Strait, the Island was coaxed in (1873). Later repentance came too late.
With each year the discontent in the Maritimes and the demand from British Columbia for secession, was weakening Macdonald’s hold on power. Nor had his government gained much prestige from its dealings with the United States. It had proved impossible to renew Reciprocity. The famous Washington Treaty of 1871, which settled the Alabama Claims and therewith laid down laws of neutrality, remained as a monument of international law, while international law remained a monument. But it was settled, so Macdonald said, “no matter at what cost to Canada.” The United States moreover refused to consider any payment for Fenian damages.
Sir J. Pope, “Sir John Macdonald,” Vol. II, 1894
Macdonald was sustained in the election of 1872. But it is doubtful if his government could have carried on long. In any case it had no chance to. Its unhappy attempt to initiate a Pacific railroad brought it to disgrace and disaster. It was felt that the Dominion could not itself finance the road. The government invited company support with a land grant, and, finding G. Denison, “Soldiering in Canada.” two rival companies, invited subscriptions to its party funds. This was dramatically revealed in Parliament. Subscription to funds as a tribute of admiration is one thing, as a quid pro quo another. Conservatives fell away. In particular the defection of Donald Smith, the new power in the West, hit Macdonald hard. He did not say, gently “Et tu Brute.” He said he “could lick Canadian Hansard that man Smith quicker than hell could frizzle a feather.” The government resigned.
The Liberal government organized by Alexander Mackenzie in 1873 fell heir to ill-fortune. It has often been observed that British governments naturally alternate in office while governments in Canada tend to strike root and stay. Mackenzie had no chance. The general panic of 1873 broke as he took office, leaving Canada stranded in the ebb-tide of six years of depression. Mortgages fell on the Ontario farms like snowflakes. Public revenue dwindled and deficit was inevitable. Seen in retrospect the Government, for all its honesty and goodwill, went into a decline in its infancy.
The public finance of Canada at Confederation was on a modest scale. The whole expenditure of 1868 was only $13,486,000. Duties were still moderate, the Income Tax undreamed of. The public debt, assumed from the provinces, stood at $75,000,000 in 1867 and had risen to only $100,000,000 in 1873. But even on this scale the government failed to carry on. Budget deficits of over a million a year looked like impending disaster. Nor had the public policy of the administration called forth enthusiasm. A new pilgrimage to Washington for Reciprocity fell flat with a United States Senate refusal of 1874. The Pacific railway problem was like a ghost behind the scene. British Columbia bubbled with secession. Macdonald had offered a Pacific railway as easily as a juggler would take a rabbit out of a hat. Mackenzie stood appalled at the cost. His plain honesty could not see how to pay for it. The whole project seemed to many fantastic. A Pacific railway, said Edward Blake, the Minister of Justice, would never pay for the axle grease of its locomotives; or if he didn’t say it, people said he said it. So the government undertook to crawl across the West, in and out of the water, like a duck.
On this rail-and-water route they spent over $37,000,000. Of this $28,000,000 went on the construction of 710 miles of railway, built or building; $200,000 for a meaningless Rainy Lake Canal, and over $3,000,000 on endless surveys — and they were still nowhere. But they had at least such credit as came from the completion of the Intercolonial Railway in 1876. To keep far from American danger it wound its course the longest way round, like a person hugging the wall to avoid a spectre. It was understood that on these terms it could hardly be expected to pay. The understanding proved correct.
As the allotted life of Parliament ran out, Mackenzie called an election in the bright after-harvest of the autumn of 1878. Macdonald and his party were out with a big new idea, noisy as a circus parade and comprehensive as a circus tent. This was the ‘National Policy’ — Canada for the Canadians, and something for everybody — in its own words, as expressed in Macdonald’s motion to the House of Commons in 1878: —
“The welfare of Canada requires the adoption of a National Policy which, by a judicious readjustment of the tariff, will benefit and foster the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing, and the other interests of the Dominion.” The fight was as between ‘do-somethings’ and ‘do-nothings.’ The issue was never doubtful. The result gave the Conservatives a majority of eighty-six and eighteen years of power.
ORIGINAL PAINTING BY ADAM SHERRIFF SCOTT, A.R.C.A., MONTREAL, P.Q., 1941
“. . . through . . . rock and gorge and forest” — page 184
CHAPTER VII. BETTER TIMES. 1879-1896
ADMINISTRATION OF SIR John A. Macdonald — The National Policy — The Canadian Pacific Railway — The Manitoba Boom — The North-West Rebellion — Unrestricted Reciprocity and the Election of 1891 — Manufacture and the Growth of Cities — The Manitoba School Question — Fall of Conservative Government.
The Conservative administration entered upon office in October, 1878, and was destined to hold it for almost eighteen years. The opening of the new régime coincided with the departure of Lord Dufferin and the advent as Governor-General of the Marquis of Lorne, whose wife, the Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria, now became the châtelaine of Rideau Hall. This seemed specially fitting to Conservative politics as a mark of what was called in those days the “loyalty” of Canada to “England.” Both words are now out of fashion. “Loyalty” is called “co-operation” and England must not be named without Scotland.
Macdonald himself chiefly guided the course of policy till his death in 1891 but he had as his right arm Dr. Charles Tupper. Sir Charles, 1879 Etienne Cartier was gone but Hector Langevin helped to hold d. 1873 the Blues to the party. Yet it was Macdonald’s own peculiar gift to keep the party united. He held the Orangemen of Ontario by his allegiance to Queen and Empire, and he held the French-Canadians by keeping faith with church and nationality. The E. B. Biggar, “Anecdotal Life of Sir John Macdonald” 1891 rank and file of his countryside followers he held with cigars, jokes — specially selected — by the geniality of his visits to their taverns and town halls, and by the little compliments treasured, repeated, and remembered to garrulous old age. This is democracy. While Macdonald lived union remained; Macdonald gone, Sir Joseph Pope, ‘The Day of Sir John Macdonald’ “Chronicles of Canada,” 1915 the party melted asunder.
On the opposition side Edward Blake became the leader. With him was presently Wilfrid Laurier who had already sat in the Parliament of 1872 and in Mackenzie’s ministry. Laurier was a French-Canadian country-town lawyer and editor, educated at L’Assomption College with a final touch of McGill. He had no start or influence beyond his own ability and background. But he had somehow contrived to take on the gracious manner of an old-world statesman, the rounded English of a British orator and the moral pose of a British Liberal. Many will agree that in intellectual power he was outranked by such of his colleagues as William Mulock, the later Chief Justice of Ontario, whom Sir William 1902 Canada congratulates, as this page is written, on his ninety-seventh Jan. 19, 1941 birthday, as the most eminent and respected of our citizens. But as compared with Mulock’s higher talent, Laurier was fortunate in his greater availability. He was a French-Canadian who had somehow turned into a British institution; a ‘moderate protectionist’ who yet received the Cobden medal, an ardent imperialist except as to who should pay the bill, and with it all, courteous and undisturbed, a gentleman. His appearance in one of the carriages of state at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee of 1897 seemed to put, if not a crown, at least a silk hat on imperial unity. In a sense Laurier was the gifted child of good fortune, floating on a wave of prosperity. Macdonald dominated Canadian politics; Laurier presided over them.
The first task of the new government was to put into effect the new National Policy. Mr. Tilley’s budget of March 14, 1879, Canadian Hansard, March 14, 1879 brought on the new tariff. The peculiar point of it was not the height of the duties on imported manufactures, (although they ran to 30 per cent), but in the avowed purpose of favouring the home producer. This, to Liberal opponents of the school of Sir Sir Richard Cartwright, “Reminiscences,” 1912 Richard Cartwright, the financier in opposition, and to British observers was like an open confession of sin. We must recall the tone of the times. The triumph of British free trade had given to that policy not only the endorsation of statesmen and economists, but a sort of peculiar and irritating sanctity. Speakers deplored colonial protection in Victoria (Australia) and in Canada as due to colonial ignorance and colonial crookedness. A leading English economist, Sir Robert Giffen, declared in 1881 Sir R. Giffen, Essays, 1879-84 that in a few years the last of the protectionists would be extinct. The truth was the other way. Within a generation a Cobdenite — free trade for everybody everywhere in everything — was only to be found in a museum.
But Macdonald cared nothing for theory. His party pleaded the swamping of the Canadian market by slaughtered American goods. Even as theory, they could plead John Stuart Mill’s unlucky admission that protection was in place in a new country for a short time on behalf of an appropriate industry. This ‘infant industry’ argument lasted till the huge infants rolled off their mother’s lap. They had to be picked up as too big to abandon, and the argument altered to suit. But the real claim to the National Policy was that there was such a lot of it, in fact something in it for everybody — farmers, fishers, woodsmen as well as manufacturers — whether they needed it or not. The legend gives us a picture of Sir John A. sitting in the famous old Red Parlour of a Toronto hotel, handing out tariff favours as freely as cigars. The result showed that protection was there to stay. No later government removed it. The Liberals denounced it as evil, from their opposition of 1879 till their Ottawa Conference of 1893. British writers, whether Conservative or Liberal, still deplored it. A brilliant London journalist, visiting Canada, E. Porritt, “Sixty Years of Protection in Canada,” 1908 presently wrote of “Sixty Years of Protection in Canada” as who should say, sixty years of sin. Even the protected manufacturers carried, if not an uneasy conscience, at least a special willingness to subscribe to all charities, as medieval robbers knelt at the altars of the saints.
Yet protection, whereby came home manufacture, proved part of the economic life of the country. With it came greater urban concentration, and quickened intellectual life. Art and science clung on protection, as parasites on a bear, or let us say, more fittingly, as mistletoe on oak. Let it be granted that tariff protection had its evil side, that it gave new opportunity for jobbery, for doubtful fortunes, for wider divergence than ever between worth and wealth. But at least these advantages did not hold from generation to generation as landed privilege had done. Fortunes that the relaxing hand of the dead could not carry away went to colleges and hospitals. The consumer lost out; but the consumer in Canada was dead, or survived only in the British settlers living on money from ‘home’. The typical Canadian viewed himself as a producer, thinking in terms of earnings not of costs. The system became part of the complex of our life. No one could tell that fifty years later it would degenerate into the hopeless aberration of the economic nationalism that has helped to destroy Europe.
The one exception that the government made in their protective policy was their continued quest for American Reciprocity. This became for twenty years the Holy Grail, so to speak, of Canadian politics. Mark Twain, in his description of the Knights of King Arthur’s Court, explains with illuminating irreverence that every little while the “boys went grailing.” So they did from Canada as, for example, George Brown in 1874 and, for this new government, Sir John Rose. It was all in vain. Each new light in the south that called out a pilgrimage proved a will-o’-the-wisp over a marsh of difficulty.
With the new impetus of the National Policy was associated the forward drive for a Pacific railway. This enterprise, initiated with the charter of 1881 and completed with the famous gold spike driven by Donald Smith at Craigellachie, B.C., on November 7, 1885, was one of the greatest triumphs of our history. The United States had opened its first transcontinental railway in 1869. But it did not do so till there were nearly three-quarters of a million people on its Pacific coast and over six million in the States and Territories between the Mississippi and the mountains. We commenced ours with only 24,000 white people in British Columbia; with Winnipeg a town of 7,985 inhabitants; O. Skelton, ‘The Railway Builders’ “Chronicles of Canada,” 1916 Regina a pile of bones; Calgary not on the map, and on all the plains little but the forts of the fur trade and the tepees of wandering Indians.
