Canada: The Neighbor to the North Author(s): Walter N. Sage Source: The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May, 1951), pp. 111-121 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3634852 Accessed: 25/11/2009 10:54 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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PACIFIC Volume XX

HISTORICAL REVIEW May, 1951

Number 2

Canada: The Neighbor to the North* WALTER

N. SAGE

[Walter N. Sage, professor of history in the University of British Columbia, was president of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association in 195o. He is the author of Sir James Douglas and British Columbia (1930), and, with F. W. Howay and H. F. Angus, British Columbia and the United States: The North Pacific Slope from Fur Trade to Aviation (1942).]

AMERICANS on the whole take Canada for granted. Unlike the Latin American republics Canada does not have revolutions. She is a steady, rather stodgy, northern country, chiefly known, apparently, as a vacation land peopled by Indian or French Canadian guides, black bears, and scarlet-coated Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen. Canadians, as a rule, are not considered foreigners in the United States. Officially, of course, they are, but socially they are accepted as being fellow Americans. For a matter of fact, Canadians do not much care to be called fellow Americans, but they will gladly accept the title of fellow North Americans. The American Revolution, as Herbert Eugene Bolton has well said, produced not one but two new nations on the North American continent, the United States and Canada. Only thirteen of the British North American colonies rebelled and formed the United States of America. The remaining colonies might be roughly divided into two groups, the northern and the West Indian. The northern group in 1783 included Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, the old province of Quebec, and Newfoundland. There was also the Hudson's Bay Territory, officially a "plantation" but actually the trading and hunting grounds of the Hudson's Bay Company and of its Canadian rivals who were in that year beginning to form the North West Company. Four of the eastern British North American provinces in 1867 united to form the Dominion * A paper read as the presidential addressat the meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the AmericanHistorical Associationat OccidentalCollege in December, 1950. C111J

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of Canada. The act which united them was passed by the Parliament in London and was entitled the British North America Act. Canada, in a word, developed from a group of colonies to a nation without severing the ties which bound her to the mother country. There never was a Canadian counterpart to the American Revolution. In this respect Canada has been unique among the nations of the Western Hemisphere. It is because Canadian development was, on the whole, so peaceful that Canada has been taken for granted in the United States. In New England Canadians are often expected either to be French-speaking or to talk English with a "charming French accent," but in other portions of the United States Canadians are "just folks" from north of the border, not different from "ordinary Americans." This is most flattering, but it is not altogether true. However close the economic and social ties which bind Canada and the United States together may be-and they are extremely close-the vital fact remains that politically they are two separate countries. Some Russian observers, Ilya Ehrenburg in particular, have paid fleeting visits to Canada and concluded that Canada was merely a satellite of the United States and, as such, could be disregarded. This conclusion, no doubt, agrees well with Marxian dialectic as understood in the Kremlin. It has, however, one fatal defect. It is not true in the Moscow sense of the term satellite. Canada is, and is determined to remain a separate entity. Maclean's Magazine, Canada'sleading English-language popular periodical, recently put the case thus in a headline: "A Tail to the U. S. Kite? Not Canada."In the article so headlined, Blair Fraser,Maclean's Ottawa editor, quotes with approval the phrase of an unidentified member of Canada's Department of External Affairs, "We can't jump from an imperial frying pan into an American fire."' This pointed phrase possessesgreat validity. Canada is a North Amercan nation. The process by which Canada has become a nation has been slow, exceedingly and painfully slow, but at long last realization that it exists has come even to Canadians. The "overhang of colonialism," which was evident even during the first half century of the existence of the United States of America, has long been apparent in Canadian history. As has been stated above, Canada has never had a revolution which cut her off politically from the mother country. Long after 1867 Canada was still a British colony. She attained nationhood without leaving the 1Maclean's

Magazine, August 15, 1950 (LXIII, No. 16), 54.

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British Empire-Commonwealth. She is still, and is proud to be, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. King George VI is king of Canada. In 1939 His Majesty presided at a formal session of his Canadian Parliament. When Prime Minister W. L. MacKenzie King met the royal party at Quebec in that year he greeted King George VI with a most carefully worded phrase, "Welcome, your Majesty, to your realm of Canada." English-speaking Canadians knew that the royal visit was already a success when they read that Union Jacks were flying from the haystacks between Quebec City and Montreal. The Union Jack is usually flown from public buildings in the Province of Quebec, but Jean Baptistethe popular name for the habitant-cares little for it. Until Premier Duplessis adopted a provincial flag for Quebec the habitants were accustomed to fly the French tricolor which was to them the flag of their St. Jean Baptiste Society. Nonetheless, Canada is independent, a fully self-governing North American nation.2 To be sure, Canada has not yet proclaimed that independence. It is doubtful if she will do so. British Columbians, for example, do not approve of the name given to their province in Frenchspeaking Quebec, La Colombie Canadienne. Amendments to the British North America Act, Canada's constitution, are still passed by the British Parliament in London. This, however, is only a formal act, which will be discontinued just as soon as Canadians can formulate a method whereby the federal and provincial governments can agree to a way of amending the constitution. There have been proposals for a Canadian constituent assembly which will decide on a new constitution. It will, however, be hard to obtain a solution to this vexed problem. At present Canada has only a provisional national flag, the red ensign with the arms of Canada in the fly. We have been unable, through our racial division, to agree on any other. Nevertheless, the flag issue has not been, as it was in South Africa, a really disruptive force in Canada. Canadians care little for these outward manifestations of national independence. The governor general, appointed by His Majesty on the advice of his Canadian ministers, can be a Canadian, but so far no Canadian has been selected. Field Marshall Alexander is a popular governor general. He represents His Majesty, but not the British gov2Appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London were abolished in criminal casesafter the passingof the Statuteof Westminsterin 1931,and in civil casesmuch more recently. Cf. R. MacG.Dawson, The Governmentof Canada(Toronto, 1948),464. The last vestige of inferior constitutionalstatus has thus been eliminated.

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emnment.The official representative of the United Kingdom in Canada is Sir Alexander Clutterbuck, the British high commissioner. In a word, Canada is a land of compromise. We have been affected not only by the British connection, but even more by the so-called "race question." Canada has two official languages, English and French. In the Parliament of Canada at Ottawa the Speaker will recognize a member speaking in either language. As a matter of fact most of the debates are in English, but the Quebec members often speak French on the floor of the House. The present prime minister, Louis St. Laurent, is bilingual. The story is told that he once remarked that he was ten years old before he realized that most boys did not, as he did, normally address their fathers in French and their mothers in English. MacKenzie King, on the other hand, was not bilingual, but he alwayshad several of his cabinet ministers who were able to address the House of Commons in French. It has been recently suggested that English-speaking Canadians should adopt the custom of referring to their French-speaking brethren as Canadiens. That is of course the term employed in French. To the Canadiens we English-speaking Canadians are les Anglais. To us they are French Canadians or sometimes merely the French. Of the ten provinces nine, to be sure, are English-speaking although both Ontario and New Brunswick have many French-speaking Canadians. There is a French-speaking minority in most of the other provinces. In Quebec there is an important English-speaking minority centered chiefly in the Montreal area. The so-called Eastern Townships (les Cantons de l'Est) centering around Lennoxville, Province of Quebec, once an Englishspeaking stronghold, are now almost entirely French. By the terms of the surrender of Montreal in 1760, by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, and above all by the Quebec Act of 1774, the Canadiens

were guaranteed use of their language and the right to practice their religion freely. In English-speaking Canada it is quite common to hear the oft-repeated question: "Why can't the French Canadians learn to speak English?" The answer is that they do speak English much more than the English-speaking Canadians speak French. The Canadian Historical Association is officially bilingual and papers may be presented in either language. In actual practice the proceedings are in English except for an occasional paper in French. Practically all the history professors in the French-speaking universities are bilingual, but comparatively few of their English-speaking "opposite numbers" speak French fluently. French Canada treasures and maintains her so-called "unique insti-

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tutions." These are four in number, the French language, French civil law,' the Roman Catholic Church, and a dual educational system including both Catholic and Protestant schools. It is only in the Province of Quebec that these institutions flourish fully. There the Canadian compromise may be seen in its entirety. The educational rights of the English-speaking Protestant minority are most carefully guarded. Jewish children in Montreal and elsewhere attend the Protestant schools. Both languages are used in the law courts and the publications of the provincial government appear in both French and English. Many portions of rural Quebec are almost entirely French-speaking and off the beaten track English is not understood. The Quebecois have been most careful to uphold their side of the Canadian compromise. Nonetheless they have grievances. In the Englishspeaking provinces the French-speaking minorities have not received similar treatment. There is one subject, however, upon which there is friction in Quebec. Jehovah's Witnesses have come under the operation of Premier Duplessis' "padlock law" and recently Baptist preachers have been prevented from holding street corner meetings in one rather remote Quebec village. But even in that case common sense has now prevailed and the Baptists have been given permission to hold meetings in the baseball park in summer and in a community hall in winter. Several of the English-speaking provinces have "separate schools" for Roman Catholics and in Ontario, especially, some of these schools are Frenchspeaking. Alberta and Saskatchewanhave "separateschools" but British Columbia does not. The situation in Manitoba is very complex. There the "separateschool" problem was closely bound up with the use of the French language, and the solution, which was arrived at after much controversy, allowed instruction in any language other than English, if there was sufficient demand, and also religious instruction by a priest or Protestant minister if so desired. The cry of race and religion is an old one especially in what is sometimes termed "Old Canada," i.e., Ontario and Quebec, once known as Upper and Lower Canada. In the Maritime Provinces the issue has never been so prominent probably because the French-speaking minority was small and was in the main composed of Acadiens rather than Canadiens. In the four western provinces the cry had never been heard to any large extent. St. Boniface, a suburb of Winnipeg, is a French-speaking city and there are well-known French-Canadian settlements in Saskatchewan 3

English criminal law prevails in Quebec as in all other Canadian provinces.

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and Alberta. British Columbia has the smallest number of Frenchspeaking Canadians to be found in any of the provinces except possibly Newfoundland. Numerically the French-speaking Canadians are roughly 30 per cent of the population of Canada. Just under 50 per cent of Canadians trace their lineage back to the British Isles. The other 2o per cent are made up of various European peoples, Orientals, Indians, and Eskimos. Unlike South Africa where the Dutch are widely distributed throughout the entire Union, the French-speakingCanadians are mostly to be found in one province, Quebec. As we have seen they are tenacious of their rights, and politically they are of the utmost importance. Since 1867 no party has come into power in Ottawa which has failed to carry Quebec. Quebec is the "solid South" of Canadian politics. It should not be thought that the Canadiens are in any way closely bound to their former mother country, France. To them Canada is la patrie. The French Revolution has never really penetrated to Quebec. The classical colleges and junior seminaries of that province which form the Faculties of Arts of Laval University and the University of Montreal are traditional in their curricula. The catalogue or calendar of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Montreal until very recently contained more pages in Latin than in French. French Canada is separated from Old France, not only by the French Revolution but also by the republic, the separation of state and church, and by the abolition of the religious orders in France. How does this Canadian compromise work? On the whole it is satisfactory. As we shall see a little later, Canada tends to be divided into certain geographical zones, separatedfrom each other by natural barriers. Quebec and Ontario are in the same geographical zone, but culturally they are divided. Ontario is English-speaking and Protestant. Quebec is French-speaking and Roman Catholic. But neither province can exist economically, politically, socially, culturally, or strategically without the other. Down the years, both French and English have learned that they must live together. Bonne Entente is a phrase which is well understood in both provinces. The other provinces tend on the whole to support Bonne Entente. There is a growing feeling of Canadian nationality in which both English and French share. The present prime minister, Louis St. Laurent, is extremely popular in the English-speaking provinces. So, too, during most of his long administration was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Sir John A. Macdonald and William Lyon MacKenzie King, English-

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speaking Protestants, were popular in Quebec. Recently St. Laurent unveiled a monument in Belleville, Ontario, erected by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada to Sir MacKenzie Bowell, a former prime minister who was in his day the Grand Master of the Orange Order.' The word Canada is of Huron-Iroquois origin. When Jacques Cartier came up the St. Lawrence in 1535 he found there territorial divisions which he termed "kingdoms." They were from east to west, or more accurately from northeast to southwest, the Saguenay, Canada, and Hochelaga (Montreal). The "capital" of Canada was Stadacona, situated at the Narrows (Kebec). Champlain in 1608 founded a French settlement at Quebec, and New France, as distinct from Acadia, came to birth. Three Rivers (Trois Rivieres) was founded in 1634 and Montreal (Ville Marie) in 1642. Canada was the term usually applied to the St. Lawrence portion of New France. After the British conquest, or "cession" as it is often termed in French Canada, the Province of Quebec was established with varying boundaries. In 1791 the Old Province of Quebec was divided into two portions, Upper and Lower Canada. These were reunited by the Act of Union in 1841 and termed the Province of Canada. In 1867, at confederation, Quebec and Ontario were again separated and given provincial status as integral portions of the Dominion of Canada. But the nation we now call Canada did not begin only in the St. Lawrence Valley and the lower Great Lakes region. Down by the sea the Maritime Provinces came into existence. Time does not allow any discussion of their origin and growth. Suffice it to say that after nearly a century of conflict, by the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Newfoundland, Acadia "within its ancient limits," and the Hudson's Bay Territory were ceded by France to Great Britain. The mainland of Nova Scotia became a British province. In 1763 Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island (Ile St. Jean) were added to British North America. In 1784 New Brunswick and Cape Breton were separatedfrom Nova Scotia. Cape Breton was reunited to Nova Scotia in 182o, but New Brunswick, the United Empire Loyalist province par excellence, remained separate. The OrangeOrderis by tradition militantly Protestant.It was founded in Ulster to preserve the memoryof the GloriousRevolution of 1688and the stand of the Ulster Protestants against King James II. King William III, William of Orange,is still its hero, and the order duly celebratesthe Battle of the Boyne every July 12. It is doubtful whether a half century ago a French-speakingRoman Catholic prime minister would have been invited to unveil a monument to the Grand Masterof the Orange Order,even though he had been the prime ministerof Canada.The incident is typicalof the Bonne Entente which now exists in Canada.

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In the 186o's the three provinces down by the sea began to discuss a project of Maritime Union, but Canadian delegates also attended the Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Conference of 1864 and "Maritime Union" was abandoned for Confederation. As early as 1612 Captain Button raised the Union Jack on the shores of Hudson Bay. King Charles II on May 2, 1670, granted a charter of incorporation to the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay. French and English strove for possession of the bay until 1713. The first great naval victory in Canadian history was in 1697 when Iberville, brother of Bienville, the founder of New Orleans, defeated the British ships in Hudson Bay. The La Verendryes explored the Canadian west and erected several French trading posts. In 1763 came the end of the old French fur trade, but the Scottish and American traders from Montreal, the so-called "pedlars," cut seriously into the fur preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1811 Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk, began to carry out his schemes for the formation of the Red River settlement. This settlement lay athwart the great trading route of the Northwest Company from Montreal to the west. Bloodshed occurred in 1816 and five years later the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company united. Lord Selkirk and Sir Alexander MacKenzie had both died in 1820, but the "man of destiny," George Simpson, had been sent that year to the far-off Athabaska country to oppose the Nor'westers. From 1821 to 1870 the Hudson's Bay Company controlled a great fur trading empire which stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the 4gth parallel to the Arctic. Of its hold in Old Oregon something will be said later. Until his death in 1861 Sir George Simpson was the strong man of the Hudson's Bay Company. By 1863 the company was beginning to lose its hold. In 1858 it had relinquished its rights to the mainland of British Columbia. In spite of great misfortune and vicissitudes the Red River settlement struggled on and became the first British stronghold on the great plains. From the early 1850's Canada began to look westward and to agitate to take over the Hudson's Bay territories. The great investigation of 1857 had "let in light" on the policies and methods of the company. Hon. W. H. Draper, chief justice of United Canada, was sent by the Canadian government to testify before the Select Committee of the House of Commons which was probing into the affairs of the Hudson's Bay Company. George Brown in the Toronto Globe and William Mc-

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Dougall in the North American were advocating the westward expansion of Canada. At length in 1869-1870 the three-cornered arrangement was made whereby the Hudson's Bay Company surrendered its proprietory rights to the British crown, the crown transferred the Hudson's Bay territory to the Dominion of Canada, and Canada paid compensation to the company. The men of Red River were not consulted. Trouble ensued and Louis Riel headed a provisional government. In 1870 the Province of Manitoba was established and the North West Territories were created. Reference has been made earlier to the geographic barriers which separate Canada into sections. The Maritimes are cut off from Quebec by the northern end of the Appalachian Mountains. Over 60 per cent of the land area of Canada is the Canadian Shield, that huge U-shaped mass of Precambrian rock which surrounds Hudson Bay and extends to the St. Lawrence River, and even into the United States. Between the prairies and the Pacific Coast tower the peaks of the Canadian Rockies. If Canada was to become a united nation some method of communication-preferably by railroad-must be found. The North West Company had had a water route from Lachine, near Montreal, to the Pacific and the Arctic. The necessity for railway connection between the Maritimes and Quebec was recognized and the Intercolonial Railway, now part of the Canadian National Railways, was completed in 1876.' Five years before, when British Columbia entered federation, she was promised a railroad which would connect with the railways of eastern Canada. British Columbia is the Pacific province of Canada, "the west beyond the west." Her history differs from that of all the remainder of Canada. There is no need to retell here the well-known story of the "Swirl of the Nations," of how Spain, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States strove for possession of the Northwest coast and its valuable sea-otter trade. Sufficeit to say that in 1818 the convention between Great Britain and the United States placed Old Oregon from the northern boundary of California to the southern boundary of Alaska under a dual control, saving the rights of other nations. In 1819, by the Florida Treaty, the United States inherited the Spanish claims and in 1824 and 1825 treaties with Russia settled the southern limits of Alaska at 5440o' N. British and Americans enjoyed equal rights of trade in Old Oregon. 5 The

route of the IntercolonialRailway was chosen for strategicreasons.It followed the

New Brunswick coastline as closely as possible so that, if necessary, the guns of the Royal Navy could protect the railroad line from attacks from Maine.

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It was the Northwest Company which blazed the overland trail for the British fur trade, but it was under the Hudson's Bay Company after 1821 that that trade flourished and expanded. The maritime fur trade was in the hands of the Americans until the 183o's. Various proposals for a boundary settlement were made, but it was not until after the celebrated Oregon Trek of the early 1840's that Great Britain and the United States came to terms. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 settled the boundary. The Hudson's Bay Company in 1843 established Fort Victoria at the southeast corner of Vancouver Island in order to hold the whole of the island. In 1849 the British government conveyed the island to the company. In 1858 the gold rush to Fraser River led to the establishment of the mainland colony of British Columbia. The Hudson's Bay Company lost its exclusive trading rights. In 1866 the two colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia were united, and in 1871 British Columbia joined Canada. Although Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland had considered federation with the other provinces in 1864, they did not do so. In 1873 Prince Edward Island entered federation, but it was not until 1949 that Newfoundland became the tenth Canadian province. In 1905 Saskatchewan and Alberta had been carved out of the old North West Territories.

Such in brief are the basic facts of the building of the Canadian nation. In 1867 Canada was still a British colony, by 1914 she was beginning to realize her nationality. In 1919 Canadians signed the peace treaty at Versailles and also the Covenant of the League of Nations.6 In 1939 Canada waited a week before declaring war on Germany. It was felt necessary to assemble Parliament before a declaration of war could be made, but in 1941 Canada by Order-in-Council declared war on Japan even before the Congress of the United States had an opportunity to do so. Canada was one of the original members of the United Nations and in 1945 played her part at the San Francisco Conference. Canadians have served on many important committees of the United Nations and have been prominent in U.N.E.S.C.O., F.A.O., I.L.O., and other United 6 By taking her place among the signatories of the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations Canada obtained recognition of her international status. Her position as a nation of the British Commonwealth was made more definite by the Balfour Report of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster, 1931. In spite of all this Canadians only gradually began to realize that Canada was a nation. Canadian national feeling has grown steadily since 1919 and especially during and since World War II.

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Nations organizations. Canada has also been an elected member of the Security Council. On occasion Canadians at Lake Success have freely expressed disagreement with policies advocated by the United Kingdom and the United States. When the Korean war started, Canada was one of the first to press for the creation of a United Nations force. Her delay in deciding to send troops to Korea was indicative of the Canadian government's determination to preserve and protect her national sovereignty.

The neighbor to the north is friendly. She has no territorial ambitions. Canadians are becoming more and more conscious of their own individuality. No longer is it true that Canadians look to London and Washington and ignore Ottawa. Conscious of her larger loyalty overseas to the Commonwealth of Nations, determined to fulfill her obligations under the Atlantic Pact and in the United Nations, Canada desires above all to cooperate on equal terms with her great and friendly neighbor to the south.