Canada: the Empire of the North

Agnes C. Laut
Canada: the Empire of the North,
by Agnes C.

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Title: Canada: the Empire of the North Being the Romantic Story of the
New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom
Author: Agnes C. Laut

Release Date: December 14, 2006 [eBook #20110]
Language: English
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CANADA
THE EMPIRE OF THE NORTH
Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony
to Kingdom
by
AGNES C. LAUT
Author of "The Conquest of the Great North-West" "Lords of the
North," Etc.

[Frontispiece: Map of Western Canada]

Boston and London Ginn and Company, Publishers 1909 Copyright,
1909, by Agnes C. Laut Entered at Stationers' Hall All Rights Reserved

PREFACE

To re-create the shadowy figures of the heroic past, to clothe the dead
once more in flesh and blood, to set the puppets of the play in life's
great dramas again upon the stage of action,--frankly, this may not be
formal history, but it is what makes the past most real to the present
day. Pictures of men and women, of moving throngs and heroic
episodes, stick faster in the mind than lists of governors and arguments
on treaties. Such pictures may not be history, but they breathe life into
the skeletons of the past.
Canada's past is more dramatic than any romance ever penned. The
story of that past has been told many times and in many volumes, with
far digressions on Louisiana and New England and the kingcraft of
Europe. The trouble is, the story has not been told in one volume. Too
much has been attempted. To include the story of New England wars
and Louisiana's pioneer days, the story of Canada itself has been either
cramped or crowded. To the eastern writer, Canada's history has been
the record of French and English conflict. To him there has been
practically no Canada west of the Great Lakes; and in order to tell the
intrigue of European tricksters, very often the writer has been
compelled to exclude the story of the Canadian people,--meaning by
people the breadwinners, the toilers, rather than the governing classes.
Similarly, to the western writer, Canada meant the Hudson's Bay
Company. As for the Pacific coast, it has been almost ignored in any
story of Canada.
Needless to say, a complete history of a country as vast as Canada,
whose past in every section fairly teems with action, could not be
crowded into one volume. To give even the story {iv} of Canada's most
prominent episodes and actors is a matter of rigidly excluding the
extraneous.
All that has been attempted here is such a story--story, not history--of
the romance and adventure in Canada's nation building as will give the
casual reader knowledge of the country's past, and how that past led
along a trail of great heroism to the destiny of a Northern Empire. This
volume is in no sense formal history. There will be found in it no such
lists of governors with dates appended, of treaties with articles running

to the fours and eights and tens, of battles grouped with dates, as have
made Canadian history a nightmare to children.
It is only such a story as boys and girls may read, or the hurried
business man on the train, who wants to know "what was doing" in the
past; and it is mainly a story of men and women and things doing.
I have not given at the end of each chapter the list of authorities
customary in formal history. At the same time it is hardly necessary to
say I have dug most rigorously down to original sources for facts; and
of secondary authorities, from Pierre Boucher, his Book, to modern
reprints of Champlain and L'Escarbot, there are not any I have not
consulted more or less. Especially am I indebted to the Documentary
History of New York, sixteen volumes, bearing on early border wars; to
Documents Relatifs à la Nouvelle France, Quebec;
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