Canada: the Empire of the North | Page 3

not climb. The struggling Dominion was thrown solely
on herself, and set about the giant task of linking the provinces together,
building railroads from Atlantic to Pacific, canals from tide water to the
Great Lakes. In actual cash this cost Canada four hundred million
dollars, not counting land grants and private subscriptions for stock,
which would bring up the cost of binding the provinces together to a
billion. This was a staggering burden for a country with smaller
population than Greater New York--a burden as big as Japan and
Russia assumed for their war; but, like war, the expenditure was a fight
for national existence. Without the railroads and canals, the provinces
could not have been bound together into a nation.
These were Canada's pioneer days, when she was spending more than
she was earning, when she bound herself down to grinding poverty and

big risks and hard tasks. It was a long pull, and a hard pull; but it was a
pull altogether. That was Canada's seed time; this is her harvest. That
was her night work, when she toiled, while other nations slept; now is
the awakening, when the world sees what she was doing. Railroad man,
farmer, miner, manufacturer, all had the same struggle, the big outlay
of labor and money at first, the big risk and no profit, the long period of
waiting.
Canada was laying her foundations of yesterday for the superstructure
of prosperity to-day and to-morrow--the New Empire.
When one surveys the country as a whole, the facts are so big they are
bewildering.
{viii} In the first place, the area of the Dominion is within a few
thousand miles of as large as all Europe. To be more specific, you
could spread the surface of Italy and Spain and Turkey and Greece and
Austria over eastern Canada, and you would still have an area
uncovered in the east alone bigger than the German Empire. England
spread flat on the surface of Eastern Canada would just serve to cover
the Maritime Provinces nicely, leaving uncovered Quebec, which is a
third bigger than Germany; Ontario, which is bigger than France; and
Labrador (Ungava), which is about the size of Austria.
In the west you could spread the British Isles out flat, and you would
not cover Manitoba--with her new boundaries extending to Hudson
Bay. It would take a country the size of France to cover the province of
Saskatchewan, a country larger than Germany to cover Alberta, two
countries the size of Germany to cover British Columbia and the
Yukon, and there would still be left uncovered the northern half of the
West--an area the size of European Russia.
No Old World monarch from William the Conqueror to Napoleon
could boast of such a realm. People are fond of tracing ancestry back to
feudal barons of the Middle Ages. What feudal baron of the Middle
Ages, or Lord of the Outer Marches, was heir to such heritage as
Canada may claim? Think of it! Combine all the feudatory domains of
the Rhine and the Danube, you have not so vast an estate as a single

western province. Or gather up all the estates of England's midland
counties and eastern shires and borderlands, you have not enough land
to fill one of Canada's inland seas,--Lake Superior.
If there were a population in eastern Canada equal to France,--and
Quebec alone would support a population equal to France,--and in
Manitoba equal to the British Isles, and in Saskatchewan equal to
France, and in Alberta equal to Germany, and in British Columbia
equal to Germany,--ignoring Yukon, Mackenzie River, Keewatin, and
Labrador, taking only those parts of Canada where climate has been
tested and lands surveyed,--Canada would support two hundred million
people.
{ix} The figures are staggering, but they are not half so improbable as
the actual facts of what has taken place in the United States. America's
population was acquired against hard odds. There were no railroads
when the movement to America began. The only ocean goers were
sailboats of slow progress and great discomfort. In Europe was
profound ignorance regarding America; to-day all is changed. Canada
begins where the United States left off. The whole world is gridironed
with railroads. Fast Atlantic liners offer greater comfort to the emigrant
than he has known at home. Ignorance of America has given place to
almost romantic glamour. Just when the free lands of the United States
are exhausted and the government is putting up bars to keep out the
immigrant, Canada is in a position to open her doors wide. Less than a
fortieth of the entire West is inhabited. Of the Great Clay Belt of North
Ontario only a patch on the southern edge is populated. The same may
be said of the Great Forest Belt of Quebec. These facts are