Canada To-day and To-morrowCopping, Arthur E. (Arthur Edward)
History
Canada To-day and To-morrow
Copping, Arthur E. (Arthur Edward)
Canada
Simultaneously the attractions of the Dominion are being proclaimed
through the machinery of publicity. Modern means of stimulating public
interest, no less than modern means of quick, safe and cheap
transportation, give the present day a great advantage, so far as
populating a distant country is concerned, over an era when newspapers
cost fourpence and passenger ships were innocent of steam. When the
United States were at an early stage of development, and urgently
needing people, there was no halfpenny press through which to
communicate with the democracy of Europe, for the democracy of Europe
had not learnt to read.
Canada was discovered by Canada about fifteen years ago, by the United
States a little later, by England—well, England is discovering Canada
now. For we are a slow, if sure, people. One day England will discover
the British Empire. Meanwhile we are ruled by a generation which was
taught at school that Canada is one of our Colonies.
In thinking of Canada the earnest and logical man in the street has been
led inevitably into a gigantic misconception. As a matter of fact,
without a sense of humour it is difficult to make head or tail of the
history of North America. Every schoolboy has been taught that Canada
existed before the United States were created. Yet the United States
have grown to be a mighty and wealthy nation of 92,000,000 people; while
Canada, with a slightly larger area, still has a population of only
8,000,000. Naturally enough, the man in the street concluded there was
something wrong somewhere with Canada.
One can, of course, only elucidate the position by stating facts which
seem, on the face of them, quaint, not to say funny. As the upshot of a
fierce war that took place a century and a quarter ago, part of North
America became an independent country, while another part remained in
allegiance to the English sovereign; and the curious circumstance has to
be noted that, ever since then, Great Britain has been sending out
millions of men, not to the country she retained, but to the country she
lost. To be strictly accurate, those people were not sent—they went.
They succumbed to the spell of the newly arisen United States. As though
to heap coals of fire on the heads of those who had revolted from our
rule and beaten us in battle, we set to work to make them mighty among
the nations of the earth; British contributions to that end heavily
outweighing those of other peoples. Meanwhile—there being apparently no
end to our self-abnegation—we were content to leave our own part of
North America practically unrecruited by emigrants from the British
Isles. Nay—the daughter becoming, as would seem, infected by the
mother’s magnanimity—our own part of North America made generous
contributions to the neighbouring population, it being the strange fact
that during the past fifty years 3,250,000 people have gone from Canada
to the United States—indigence sparing of its poverty to increase the
riches of affluence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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