* * * * * CHAPTER II THE HOME OF A NATION Canada is the splendid and spacious home of a great nation now in the making. It is not so much a country as half a continent. It marches conterminously with the United States for 4,000 miles at a latitude corresponding to that of the south of Europe. Its Eastern Provinces are washed by the Atlantic waves and blown on by the Atlantic breezes: 3,000 miles westward British Columbia and the Yukon territory face the Pacific: northward from the United States Canada stretches into the Arctic Ocean. It is curious to think that the first English hold on what is now Canada was limited to three or four forts and trading stations on the Hudson’s Bay. Trading stations are still there in charge of servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but that Company has been shorn of its glory, although it is still doing a prosperous trade between its collection of furs from the Indians, its Stores in the Prairie Provinces, and the selling of its lands. North Central Canada, however, with the development of its Prairie Provinces, ceased to be the mere commercial backyard of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It has ceased also to be a collection of British “Colonies.” You cannot offend the modern Canadian more than by describing him as a “Colonial.” He is a Canadian—an Imperialist, a man who claims his full share in the concerns of the British Empire—a man who has firmly convinced himself that within a hundred years Canada, so far from being a British Dependency, will be the most stalwart protector of the Mother Country. The epoch-making offer of a gift of seven millions for the addition of three super-Dreadnoughts to the British Navy is the first expression of the Canadian sense of Imperial destiny. That offer will certainly be only the first of many Canadian contributions to Imperial defence and British supremacy on the seas. It was not merely inspired by the feeling of men of all political parties in the Dominion that the Atlantic and Pacific coasts must be safeguarded against foreign attack and the blocking up of the outlets and inlets of Canadian trade, but by the over-mastering consciousness of the Canadian people that they are a Nation of Destiny and that in the near future they will play a great and increasing part in the shaping of the industrial and political history of the world.