exhausting, never ceasing toil, of
premature decay of strength. They fought and overcame and succeeding
generations enjoy the fruits of their labors--fruits they barely lived
to taste. These were the men and women who made Canada, the founders of
its prosperity, the true Makers of the nation to which it has grown. It
is common for politicians and their newspapers to steal for their
party-idols credit to which they have no claim, by styling them the
Makers of Canada, but no suppression of facts, no titles the crown is
misled to confer, no Windsor uniforms, no strutting in swords and cocked
hats, no declarations and resolutions of parliament, no blare of party
conventions, no lies graven on marble, nor statues of bronze, can change
the truth, that the True Makers of Canada were those who, in obscurity
and poverty, made it with ax and spade, with plow and scythe, with sweat
of face and strength of arm.

I would not imply that being first is necessarily a merit in itself.
There must be a beginning to everything and to magnify the man who
felled the first tree or reared the first shanty is no honor if
unaccompanied by moral worth. I have seen many townships come into
existence and have known the men who first went into them, and my sorrow
is, that so few of them are worthy of remembrance. Recognizing this, I
pay no honor to a man who boasts he was the first to do this or that,
and who, though first, threw away his opportunity to benefit himself and
those who followed. I am tired of men who posture as pioneers and
founders and who have nothing else to claim. Unless they also had moral
worth, strove to give the right tone to the settlement of which, by
accident, they started, they are not deserving of more than passing
notice. Scores of times I have been struck by the differences in
settlements, how one is thrifty, and its neighbor shiftless; one sending
into the world young men and women of intelligence and high aspiration;
the other coarse people who gravitate downward. If a first settler is of
sterling character he moulds the community that gathers around him and
he deserves honor, but the first settler of gross habits it is well to
forget. The government that tries to make a selection among those who
seek its land acts wisely in the interest of coming generations. To give
land to all who ask it, regardless of what they are, will indeed till
the country, but will be of no benefit in the long run. I know of
townships where