concentration, a
stability, a steadiness of purpose, unknown to mad chasers after
wealth. Obstinate, dogged, perhaps tinged with the self-superior
spirit of "I am holier than thou"--they may be; but men who forsake all
for an ideal and pursue it consistently for a century and a half
develop a stamina that enters into the very blood of their race. It is
a common saying even to this day that Quebec is more Catholic than the
Pope, and Ontario more ultra-English than England; and when the
Canadian is twitted with being "colonial" and "crude," his prompt and
almost proud answer is that he "goes in more for athletics than
esthetics." "One makes men. The other may make sissies."

With this germ spirit as the very beginning of national consciousness
in Canada, one begins to understand the grim, rough, dogged
determination that became part of the race. Canada was never
intoxicated with that madness for Bigness that seemed to sweep over the
modern world. What cared she whether her population stood still or
not, whether she developed fast or slow, provided she kept the Faith
and preserved her national integrity? Flimsy culture had no place in
her schools or her social life. A solid basis of the three R's--then
educational frills if you like; but the solid basis first. Worship of
wealth and envy of material success have almost no part in Canadian
life; for the simple reason that wealth and success are not the ideals
of the nation. Laurier, who is a poor man, and Borden, who is only a
moderately well-off man, command more social prestige in Canada than
any millionaire from Vancouver to Halifax. If demos be the spirit of
the mob, then Canada has no faintest tinge of democracy in her; but
inasmuch as the French colonists came in pursuit of a religious ideal
and the English colonists of a political ideal, if democracy stand for
freedom for the individual to pursue his own ideal--then Canada is
supersaturated with that democracy. Freedom for the individual to
pursue his own ideal was the very atmosphere in which Canada's national
consciousness was born.

In the West a something more entered into the national spirit. French
fur-traders, wood-runners, voyageurs had drifted North and West, men of
infinite resources, as much at home with a frying-pan over a camp-fire
as over a domestic hearth, who could wrest a living from life anywhere.
English adventurers of similar caliber had drifted in from Hudson Bay.
These little lord