January 1966 — VOL. 47, No. 1 —
The Centenary
of Confederation
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Only once in a hundred years is one invited
to the celebration of a centenary. A year is not too far ahead
to start learning about what is expected of us as participants.
The occasion of our centenary is not only a time to refurbish
old monuments, create new amenities, and bolster existing
cultural activities. It gives us an opportunity to pay attention
to what is significant in the social and political and intellectual
development of our country and in its present environment.
We wish to know by what road our ancestors travelled to
make it possible for Canada to celebrate a hundred years as
a nation. The object is not to gossip about people along the
way who committed errors in driving or who behaved extravagantly
in office, but to learn by what path Canada emerged from the
wilderness on to the relatively bright uplands she enjoys
today.
Our past was not drab. It was exciting in its happening
and diversified enough to suit the most exacting storyteller.
It was full of sharp contrasts, both in motive of exploration
and method of settlement. Study of that past concerns us as
children of our fathers; what we do at the time of our centenary
concerns us as fathers of our children.
Our ancestors
We must not be seduced by our bravery of tall office buildings
and our abundance of suburban villas into forgetting the old
decaying log cabins from which our forefathers sallied forth
to build our society and our economy.
It is true that we cannot drive into the future looking
in a rear-vision mirror, but, as the revolutionary writer
Edmund Burke said: "People will not look forward to posterity
who never look back to their ancestors."
Who are our ancestors? Not only the people on our individual
family trees, but all who have preceded us in building this
nation, whether they came with Champlain's first settlers
or among this century's immigrants; whether they spoke English,
French, Italian, German, Ukrainian or some other language;
whether they were Jewish, Catholic or Protestant; whether
they were black, brown, yellow or white in colour of their
skin; whether they were free-traders or protectionists; whether
they were grand seigniors lording it over hundreds of acres
or hard-working crofters wresting their precarious living
from a patch of stony hillside; whether they were skilful
craftsmen felling trees or splitting them and working the
wood into chairs and pulpits and farm wagons, or proprietors
of water-mills which were the first touch of industrialization
brought to the wilderness. All these are our ancestors.
It was no disgrace in their day to have work-hardened hands,
and it was not reckoned a disgrace to have enjoyed undisturbed
slumber on a bed of straw and to have heaped the hay as a
pillow under one's head.
The men and women we recall on this centenary paid the price
of what we are. Amid the flags and martial music and speeches
we should bear in memory the dust-gray wagons with screeching
axles, and the gees and haws of their drivers, and the graves
along the way westward; the bateaux carrying the explorers
and fur traders along thousands of miles through unknown land;
the men and women of daring and enterprise and energy and
vision.
This is not to say that we must indulge in nostalgia to
the point where it becomes romanticizing. Some European countries
began a half century ago to do over their history into fairy-tales
and heroic poetry, thus contributing to the evils of romantic
nationalism. But we, who have reached a future which the cleverest
of their era did not imagine, should give credit to the men
and women of the tufted furniture and gas-mantle age for their
advanced thinking, their tolerance, and their skill in statesmanship.
Causes of confederation
When we look back upon our history we see things fixed and
frozen as they happened, but everything that happened was
the product of fluid circumstances.
The events, both internal and world-wide, which preceded
confederation, are important to our thinking because they
help us to understand why Canada embarked upon this unique
effort to weld two nationalities into one nation.
The Canada preceding 1867 would be a strange world to us.
It had none of the features we take for granted, such as great
factories, large cities, highways, automobiles, airplanes,
television sets, electricity. There were only a few miles
of railway along the St. Lawrence.
The people numbered about 3½ million, eighty per cent of
whom lived in the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada,
now Ontario and Quebec. Four-fifths of the population was
rural; Montreal had about 100,000 people, and it was by far
the largest city.
Cultivation of the soil and the extraction of raw products
from the forest and from the sea supported a small group of
manufacturing, handicraft and service industries scattered
through the settled areas. These industries were sheltered
from foreign competition as much by isolation, the advantage
of cheap local raw material and the lack of transportation
as they were by the incidental protection of a tariff primarily
intended for revenue.
The time was marked, too, by the self-sufficiency of separate
families, a needful part of the frontier nature of the economy.
Material income was largely limited to the basic requirements:
food, clothing and shelter. The worker could retreat at will
to the farm, where he became self-reliant. This, naturally,
gave the economy great capacity for adjustment to fluctuations,
and tended toward insularity in people's ideas.
However, pressures of population and the desire for a more
abundant life gradually made themselves felt.
Western expansion had been disappointing to the two Canadas.
As to other parts of the country, the historical summary of
the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations in 1940
remarked: "The Maritimes, tied to a dying industry, [building
wooden ships] were in even greater, if less conscious need.
The tiny Red River Settlement was beginning to find its feet,
but was toddling into the arms of the United States in the
process. The Pacific Coast gold rush had fostered some basically
sound development, but its recession had left a small population
stranded with a large debt."
Between 1848 and 1854 Canadian affairs sank to such a low
level that the continued existence of Canada became a matter
of considerable doubt. The adoption of free-trade by Britain,
with consequent abolition of Canada's preference in British
markets, gave strength to advocates of union with the United
States. Internally, Canada was fretting over dozens of irritating
questions which seemed incapable of solution within the governmental
set-up of the time.
By 1864 the country was ripe for federation. The American
War of Secession, which started in 1861, had created difficulties
with the northern states. American filibusters were harassing
the Canadian border.
The fear of invasion was not a figment of the imagination.
James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald made this
crystal clear in January 1861, when it forecast that the southern
cotton states would "in Mexico and the tropical countries
bordering the Gulf find the area which they deem necessary
to provide for the rapid increase of their slave population.
The Northern confederacy will seek a counterpoise to these
acquisitions by absorbing Canada". Eight months later the
Herald was threatening Canada with four hundred thousand
disciplined troops "who will ask no better occupation than
to destroy the last vestiges of British rule on the American
continent and annex Canada to the United States".
As late as 1866, just a year before confederation, the Chicago
Tribune threatened that when the opportunity came Britain's
"American colonies will be snatched up by this Republic as
quickly as a hawk would gobble a quail". Then, it forecast,
the United States would have a satisfactory northern boundary,
along the Arctic Ocean.
While the fulminations of these newspapers cannot. be regarded
as representing the opinions of the mass of thinking people
in the United States, they do have to be considered as a constant
irritant to Canadians of the time, breeding distrust and apprehension.
Confederation meant the rejection of political and economic
annexation by the United States. Standing alone, even though
part of an empire, each province was too small to be an effective
unit either in maintaining a position of economic stability
or of withstanding armed pressure from the powerful nation
to the south.
What was there to do but try to work out some arrangement
whereby not a group of sparsely populated isolated provinces
but a consolidated organization faced this threat? Writing
about these years in his History of the English-Speaking
Peoples (Dodd, Mead & Co. Inc. and Bantam Books, Volume
IV) Churchill said: "How indeed could Canada remain separate
from America and yet stay alive?"
The answer was confederation. This was designed to establish
a new nation to meet the changed conditions of British policy;
to unite the scattered provinces against possible aggression;
to build an east-west national economy instead of a north-south
continental one; to broaden the source of livelihood so as
to avert the financial and living upsets caused by reliance
upon a narrow base; to preserve cultural and local loyalties
and to reconcile them with political strength and solidarity.
Impossible though it seemed to draw these diverse and sometimes
conflicting interests together, events conspired to bring
it about. Each of the separate colonies arrived at a crisis
in its affairs at the same time, and confederation held out
hope of relieving many worries.
Launching Confederation
Canada was launched in burning hope by people who believed
that they had accomplished something great. As Frank H. Underhill
said in one of the Massey Lectures in 1963: "In 1867, our
Fathers created something new, 'a new nationality'."
The men who took part in the conferences preceding confederation
were constrained to work together in a manner in which few
of them had to work before. They were compelled to admit the
necessity of compromise, of tolerance, and of simply agreeing
to disagree in a pleasant fashion.
Ever since the Act of Union in 1841, Upper and Lower Canada
had been living in uneasy political association, constantly
bickering over unequal incidence of taxation and a host of
other issues. The Maritimes wanted union, but only among themselves.
Representatives from Canada were sent to the Maritime conference
at Charlottetown in 1864 to invite the delegates to discuss
a larger union. In October the conference reconvened in Quebec,
under the chairmanship of the French Premier of Upper and
Lower Canada. Its 72 resolutions embodied the main lines on
which confederation was finally accomplished.
There was, of course, much work to be done. The financial
relations between the provinces, the equitable distribution
of public funds, the commercial policy, the constitution of
the two houses of parliament: these and scores of other weighty
matters had to be settled.
It was 1866 before all was in readiness for presentation
to the British Government, which received the proposal for
confederation with enthusiasm. A conference, sitting in London,
hammered out 69 resolutions based on those of the Quebec conference;
the terms of union were approved by the British Parliament,
and the formal act of union, known as the British North America
Act, was passed in 1867.
An outstanding feature of the united Canada was that it
combined the advantages of central government with those of
local autonomy. An apparatus of governmental machinery was
created with headquarters in Ottawa, but at the same time
the individual provinces retained their identity and their
control of local affairs. The province of Quebec, for example,
was enabled to preserve its institutions, its language, its
religion, its customs, its civil laws, and its schools, while
it received the backing of the other provinces in matters
of general concern such as military and naval defence, the
building of railways, postal facilities, and so forth. Confederation
gave Canada unity, but it was a unity of diversity.
The new nation
The new nation was hailed in most of Upper and Lower Canada,
lukewarmly accepted in New Brunswick, and reluctantly acceded
to in Nova Scotia. Prince Edward Island preferred to remain
on the outside, but came in six years later, while Newfoundland
did not join the union until 1949. In 1869 Canada acquired
the vast extent of the Hudson's Bay Company's territories,
out of which have been carved the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan
and Alberta; in 1871 British Columbia came into confederation.
The first transcontinental railway opened in 1885, tying Canada
together from East to West.
There were conflicting views in the United States. The New
York Times predicted that the new confederation would
become a "populous, rich and powerful independent nation"
that would be one of the "most reliable and useful allies
of the United States." The New York Tribune still
yearned to seize Canada: "When the experiment of the 'dominion'
shall have failed, as fail it must, a process of peaceful
absorption will give Canada her proper place in the great
North American Republic."
In Ottawa, July first 1867 was greeted by the firing of
a 101-gun salute, while all the church bells pealed; High
Mass was sung in the cathedral at Trois Rivières; in
Saint John, 21 guns were fired as a salute "in honour of this
greatest of all modern marriages." There were some hold-outs
who draped their houses in black crepe or flew their flags
at half mast, but most Canadians walked that day under banners
inscribed "Success to the Confederacy" or "Bienvenue à
la nouvelle puissance".
The British North America Act welcomed that day has not
yet been beatified as has the Constitution of the United States.
It is still in progress, a lively thing, not worshipped but
found useful.
That an agreement worked out a hundred years ago does not
necessarily meet all the needs of the space age is not surprising,
and we are severe judges if we reproach the Fathers for not
foreseeing all that we were going to do in and to the country.
If we criticize the BNA Act for establishing conditions
which in recent years have come to seem worthy of change,
we must also credit it with a hundred years of progress as
a united nation made up of two cultures, each with its hallowed
attitudes and way of life. The outcome is a more stable and
sensible and enduring philosophy of life for the joint inheritors
of this great land than that pictured in one of his plays
by a Greek writer, in which
"... two brothers
With internecine conflict at a blow
Wrought out by fratricide their mutual doom."
Canada's attractiveness
To all the millions of people who have come to Canada from
other lands in the years since 1867, this has been a new land,
new in liberty, in opportunity and in promise.
Exiles crossing the Atlantic seeking sanctuary from social,
political or economic distress found here not merely a refuge
but a home.
At heart, most Canadians share the same values. This is
one country where many temples may be raised to the same God.
Canada tries to be what Rebecca West described as an ideal
nation: A shelter where all talents are generously recognized,
all forgivable oddities forgiven, all viciousness quietly
frustrated, and those who lack talent honoured for equivalent
contributions of graciousness.
Canadian life, enfolding not only people of the founding
cultures but people of many other cultures, is the art of
the possible. It demands flexibility. Our world is changing
every year in the grip of expanding science, expanding population,
expanding expectations. To cope with change we need education,
not only for our children but for adults. If adults were to
keep closer to the vanguard of advancing society there would
be little occasion for the protest marches of young people
dismayed by the uncertainty of their future.
The freedom of which we boast is not lost in shattered Dunkirks
and blazing Pearl Harbours... such events call forth the utmost
resistance. Freedom is lost little by little in noiseless
theft, a fragment of concession to expediency here, a morsel
of "what does it matter?" there. Then, shockingly, we find
that freedom has disappeared in the regimentation of not only
our daily doings but our eternal ambitions.
Into the future
The ancient philosophers recognized, and modern history
has proved, that a nation survives according to its unity
and power, according to the ability of its members to co-operate
for common ends. This co-operation requires that we relinquish,
to some extent, things and acts which might be in our individual
interest. Otherwise the great forward movement will be complicated
by petty wishes and blurred by sectional ambitions.
We must, in fact, act as if we were a little better than
ourselves. Our ideal, facing the uncertainty of the years
following 1967 as our ancestors did those of 1867, might be
to build a Canadianism that has full meaning.
Confederation saw the coming together of three or four racial
and political groups, some of whom had been bitter enemies
of the others. They reached the conclusion that they had to
live together, and that they needed a frame into which they
would fit. They realized that we are all part of the whole,
that no man, no municipality, no county, no province, can
contribute effectively to Canada's well-being by working compulsively
as an individual at parochial problems.
That was the grandeur of the past: what of the future?
We can see more light than darkness in Canada's future,
but intelligent effort is needed now in order to make sure
of its brightness. When an administrator in Africa rode out
to inspect land that had been devastated by a storm he came
to a place where giant cedars had been uprooted and destroyed.
He said to his official in charge of forestry: "You will have
to plant some cedars here." The official replied: "It takes
two thousand years to grow cedars of the size these were.
They don't even bear cones until they are fifty years old."
"Then," said the administrator, "we must plant them at
once."
Not, indeed, that we can expect to write a script in 1967
to which no postscripts need be added. Changing our ways has
been a process going on in human affairs ever since the beginning
of history. The object now is to move beyond old errors, not
to perpetuate the memory of them; to build a good present
and prepare for a better future.
Plutarch tells us in his Lives about the argument
as to whether the ship in which Theseus and the youths of
Athens sailed home from Crete was the same ship as that in
which they set out, "for they took away the old planks as
they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their
place".
Replacing old planks with new is a job for every Canadian,
because everyone has an interest in seeing Canada endure.
We shall gather in centennial year not merely to extol our
ancestors but to take up their work and continue it as valiant
men, writing our individual biographies into the history of
Canada.
A good time to live
We cannot look back, on our hundredth national birthday,
on the past as nothing more than a pageant which calls for
applause and gratification. As the procession of the years
passes in review, each year decked with its crown of laurel
leaves for achievement and its chaplet of rosemary for memories,
we must not forget that 1967 will take its place in the cavalcade.
History is not going to begin a new chapter: it never does:
history runs on. The old principles will remain, and by acceptance
of what is best. in our democracy, and by education in public
affairs and by co-operation, we can continue to evolve a system
of government that will provide Canadians with the best kind
of life and happiness.
Next year is a new year with no mistakes in it yet. Like
the birth of every new day, it is a reprieve granted by the
governor of time to his subjects who may have squandered a
legacy of early moments.
If we face it with assurance, resolved to bear turns of
fortune with manful spirit and to add what good we can to
the great goodness we inherited, future generations may remember
us and say: "These people saw a vision in dark and troubled
days, and though tyranny raged in many parts of the earth
they built a shining nation out of the dust."
Some people will meet this challenge by saying "We're not
doing too badly," but that is a cry-baby excuse for poor success.
What we should do is try to add orchids to the bouquets wrought
from wild flowers by our ancestors. Engaged in that task,
we may say with the Roman poet: "Let ancient times delight
other folk; I rejoice that I was not born till now."
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