The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of Carleton — John Shaqi
The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of CarletonWood, William
History
The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of Carleton
Wood, William
Canada -- History -- 1763-1867; Canada -- History -- 1775-1783; Dorchester, Guy Carleton, Baron, 1724-1808
Lady Dorchester burnt all her husband's private papers
after his death in 1808; so we have lost some of the most
intimate records concerning him. But 'grave Carleton'
appears so frequently in the letters of his friend Wolfe
that we can see his character as a young man in almost
any aspect short of self-revelation. The first reference
has nothing to do with affairs of state. In 1747 Wolfe,
aged twenty, writing to Miss Lacey, an English girl in
Brussels, and signing himself 'most sincerely your friend
and admirer,' says: 'I was doing the greatest injustice
to the dear girls to admit the least doubt of their
constancy. Perhaps with respect to ourselves there may
be cause of complaint. Carleton, I'm afraid, is a recent
example of it.' From this we may infer that Carleton was
less 'grave' as a young man than Wolfe found him later
on. Six years afterwards Wolfe strongly recommended him
for a position which he had himself been asked to fill,
that of military tutor to the young Duke of Richmond,
who was to get a company in Wolfe's own regiment. Writing
home from Paris in 1753 Wolfe tells his mother that the
duke 'wants some skilful man to travel with him through
the Low Countries and into Lorraine. I have proposed my
friend Carleton, whom Lord Albemarle approves of.' Lord
Albemarle was the British ambassador to France; so Carleton
got the post and travelled under the happiest auspices,
while learning the frontier on which the Belgian, French,
and British allies were to fight the Germans in the Great
World War of 1914. It was during this military tour of
fortified places that Carleton acquired the engineering
skill which a few years later proved of such service to
the British cause in Canada.
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