The Clan Fraser in Canada: Souvenir of the First Annual GatheringFraser, Alexander
History
The Clan Fraser in Canada: Souvenir of the First Annual Gathering
Fraser, Alexander
Clans -- Canada; Fraser family
MR. E. A. FRASER said: Mr. Vice-chairman, Chairman and Clansmen,
although hailing from the other side of the line, I am a Canadian-born
clansman, my native place being Bowmanville, near this beautiful Queen
City. I passed my younger days in this province, attended the schools
here, and am as familiar with the affairs of the country and with our
clansmen in the country as those who have not left it to reside under
another flag. I can therefore speak with confidence to this toast, but
you will excuse me if I speak briefly, as the honor was unexpected, and
I do not wish to make it appear that any words of mine that may come on
the spur of the moment would be sufficient to lay before you, in proper
form, what our Clan has done for Canada and the position which it
occupies to-day in the affairs of the country. It is easy to speak of
Louisburg and Quebec; it is easy to dilate on the names of distinguished
clansmen familiar to us all for the prominent positions they have taken
among their fellows, but the work performed by the Clan in Canada would
not then be half told. We must go back to the hoary forests, to the
backwoods, where the early settlers bent their energies to the opening
up of the country. That noble pioneer work in which our clansmen shared,
and shared in large numbers, it seems to me, has an importance that is
not as often recognized as it ought to be. It is difficult for the
imagination even to grasp the peculiar task that lay before the early
settlers of this vast, heavily-timbered, unbroken, unopened, untravelled
country. Now that we can take a seat in the railway car at Halifax and
leave it at Vancouver, we can form but the very faintest conception of
what this country was one hundred years ago, when those hardy
mountaineers ranged themselves alongside the Lowland Scot, the
Englishman, the Irishman, the German and the Frenchman, to hew down the
lords of the forest, to turn the wilderness into well cultivated fields,
to turn the log cabins into the mansions that now adorn the plains, and
to form, as they do, a sturdy peasantry second to none in the world.
When the pen of a genius has dealt with those times, a chapter will be
written for the civilized world more interesting, probably, than any yet
penned. We have to leave the high places of military fame and
statesmanship and enter the factory and the counting-house to trace
there the career of the pioneers of industry and commerce, and among
them we find our clansmen performing those duties which the necessities
of the country demanded. If we turn to the professions, our Clan is
found to hold its own. To the church, to law, to medicine, to art, to
politics, we have given men of whom we are proud. The walk of life in
Canada that has not been trodden by a clansman would be only an
undesirable one for any man to tread. If I may be permitted to say
it--coming as I do from the great State of Michigan--I would say that in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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