, slow of speech, almost devoid of gesticulation, he was as
unamiably dispassionate as a bank manager. There was no militant
passion of the minority in this man; no heroic tilting against
windmills; no expression of ideals; no suggestion of a delightful
outlaw. He was amazingly practical, with no inclination to discuss
freely the native peculiarities of either race. He understood
Ontario--as a politician only; England as a democracy and a form of
government. He had no absorbing idiosyncracies and made no attempt to
pose or even to be interesting. After the bounce of the young
Nationalist he was as tame as a grandfather's clock.

I felt that Sir Lomer was asking himself--what did the stranger want?
He would have been infinitely more at ease discussing with a bishop how
to prevent a strike in a cotton mill; or with a political outposter
what to do to keep some seat for the Administration. If I had made to
him such a statement as once I had made with such volcanic results to
Bourassa, that nine-tenths of the population in a village like Nicolet
could speak no Anglais, he would have been eloquent. Had I observed
that 70 per cent of the operatives in a great Quebec industry cannot
read and write French, that Ontario has a policy of good roads
comparable to that of Quebec, that Orangemen do not dominate Toronto,
that the Ontario farmer is a better producer than the habitant, or that
Protestant clerics do not interfere in politics, he would have bristled
with information to set me profoundly right. But he created no
atmosphere of free discussion with a stranger. He was coldly aloof,
yet earnestly endeavouring to say something worth while.

What I really wanted to tell Gouin was that he was personally very much
like the late great Tory, Sir James Whitney. But he did not warm up to
personal comment. The bilingual question was too complicated. The
atmosphere of the Bonne Entente was lacking. Gouin and myself were in
different envelopes. He was the Premier.

From what is said of him I am sure most of the fault was my own. I did
not understand him. He was too much the Premier; the master executive.
The Nationalist was almost right; Gouin suggested the dividend and the
census. He was the chief executive of a Province larger than almost
any country in Europe but Russia, and with a population about half that
of Roumania, of whom about one-sixth are the Anglo-Saxon minority. He
seemed to know Quebec from Montreal to