ousand miles from their homes for the
maintenance of the Empire is to envisage the most startling of
historical paradoxes. That old, bad time seems as unsubstantial as a
dream; this seems the only reality; and yet the two periods are
separated only by the span of a not very long human life. {163} The
truth is that in those days there were no Canadians. There were French
on the banks of the St Lawrence, but their political horizon was
bounded by the parish limits. Their most renowned leader had no vision
but of an independent French republic, or of one more state in the
Union. The people of the western province consisted of diverse
elements. The solid kernel was of United Empire Loyalist stock, which
gave the province its distinctive character. The Scottish, Irish,
English immigration could not be reckoned among the genuine sons of the
soil. They built their log-huts in the wildwood clearings, but their
hearts were in the sheiling, the cabin, the cottage they had left
beyond the sea. Their allegiance was divided, a fact of which the
perpetuation of the various national societies is indubitable evidence.
They were the pioneers; they made the wilderness a garden; and their
children entered into a large inheritance. More inharmonious still was
the immigration from south of the border, of persons brought up on the
Declaration of Independence and Fourth of July oratory. Colonel
Cruikshanks's researches have proved how numerous they were and how
disaffected. Mrs Moodie found {164} them and the Americanized natives
just as disagreeable in Ontario as Mrs Trollope did in Cincinnati, and
for the same reasons. Except the Loyalists, all these elements were
divided in their political affections and ideals. Their leaders saw
only two possibilities. British connection was the sheet-anchor of the
old colonial Tories; but their vision of the country's future was an
aristocracy, a landed gentry, a decorous union of church and state--in
short, a colonial replica of old Tory England. On the other hand, the
Radical leaders, French and English alike, saw before them only an
independent republic, or fusion with the United States. How limited
was the vision of both time has made blindingly clear. The instinct of
the nascent nation decided for the golden mean, and chose the middle
path. Canada has stood firm by the Empire--how firm let the
blood-soaked trenches of Flanders attest--and yet she had stood just as
firmly by the cre