Читать книгу The Fair Dominion: A Record of Canadian Impressions онлайн

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'We owe nothing to Great Britain. England did not take Canada for love, or to plant the Cross of religion as the French did, but in order to plant their trading posts and make money.'

Gratitude is not a virtue nations take pride in possessing; they are indeed seldom nations until they have forgotten to be grateful. I suppose French Canadians are on their way to forgetting to be grateful to England for what she did in times past, but it is not because they have any real quarrel with England, or desire to injure her. Merely because they feel that from England exudes that Imperialism which appeals in no way from the past, and menaces, they think, their future.

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Almost directly one lands in Canada, one feels the desire to move west. It is not that the east fails to attract and interest, or that a man might not spend many years in Quebec province alone, and still have seen little of its vast, wild, northern parts. Again there is the Evangeline country, little known for all that it is 'storied.' But the tide is west just at present. Everybody asks everybody else—Have you been West, or Are you going West? And every one who has been West or is going feels himself to be in the movement. Some day no doubt the tide will set back again, or flow both ways equally. To-day it flows westward.