Читать книгу Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier онлайн
2 страница из 44
The writer is deeply indebted to friends of Sir Wilfrid and of his own who have read these pages in proof. They are given to the public with the hope that they may provide his countrymen with the material for a fuller understanding of one who was not only a moving orator, a skilled parliamentarian, a courageous party leader, and a faithful servant of his country, but who was the finest and simplest gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man, it has ever been my good fortune to know.
O. D. Skelton.
Kingston, Canada, October, 1921.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF SIR
WILFRID LAURIER
ssss1
CHAPTER I
ssss1
the making of a canadian
The Peopling of New France—An Outpost of the Faith—A Soldier of France—The Laurier Stock—The Habitant—New France and British Policy—Charles Laurier, Inventor—Carolus and Marcelle Laurier—Birth of Wilfrid Laurier—Boyhood in St. Lin—An English Schooling—L'Assomption College—Student at Law—Early Partnerships—The Eastern Townships—A Happy Marriage.
WILFRID LAURIER was born at St. Lin, a little village on the Laurentian plain north of Montreal, on November 20, 1841. Exactly two hundred years earlier his first Canadian ancestor had fared forth from Normandy, a member of the little band of pioneers who had undertaken to plant an outpost of France and the Faith on the Iroquois-harried island of Montreal. For eight generations his forefathers took their part in the unending task of subduing the Laurentian wilderness. Striking deep roots in Canadian soil, shaping and shaped by the new ways and new interests of the colony, they worked, like thousands of their compatriots, for the most part in obscurity and silence. Then at last the sound and sturdy stock found expression. We cannot understand Wilfrid Laurier, his character, temperament, viewpoint, his problems, limitations, achievements, unless we bear in mind those two centuries of life and work in the Canada which had become his kinsmen's only home.