Evening Post SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1939. CANADA AND THE CROWN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 117, 20 May 1939, Page 8

Evening Post SATURDAY, MAY 20, 1939. CANADA AND THE CROWN

Canada, the first, but, it is hoped, not the last, Dominion of the British Empire to be honoured by the visit of the reigning King and Queen, can claim that honour for two very obvious reasons. It is the oldest of the self-governing Dominions, and it is also the nearest to the heart of the* Empire and the natural home of the Sovereign. It might also be added that it is the largest, the richest, and the most populous Dominion. It is also the next-door neighbour of the greatest Englishspeaking State in the world, the Republic of the United States, peopled in the main with descendants of colonists from the British Isles and once itself a part of the British Empire., With Canada the United States has the closest and most friendly relations, and it will be only like paying a neighbourly callj for the King and Queen to step across the undefended boundary line that j separates the two nations and visit the President of the United States in his own country. When, therefore, the King and Queen tour through Canada and pass the border into the United States, they will be all the while on historic ground, associated | for ever in the romantic story of North1 America in which not only the British, but the French also, now Britain's firm allies, have, played a leading part. With them are the descendants of the aboriginal race of Red Indians, which fought to retain its hunting grounds from the encroachment of the white man, and the offspring of a multitude of other European stocks that sought in America freedom and fortune and the wider life away from the turmoil of Europe.

It is with the French that the story of Canada opens, with its great voyageurs from Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain onwards. The founders of the New France were brave souls, and their record in exploration, settlement, and the establishment of their native culture and religion in an inhospitable region is as fine as anything their British rivals in the quest of empire can produce by way of comparison. For over a century the French contested with the British supremacy in the North American continent. From their settlements on the St. Lawrence, in what^js now the Province of Quebec, . the French missionaries among the Indians and voyageurs pushed their way up to the Great Lakes and thence down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, and by right of discovery they claimed the vast hinterland of what are now the prairies of the Middle West and called it Louisiana in the name of Louis XIV. The United States recognised French claims by the purchase of Louisiana in 1804. In the meantime Canada had been conquered by the British under General Wolfe in 1759, since when it has been a part of the British Empire, though not without a fight once in 1776 and again in 1812-1814, when American forces invaded Canada. Most of the original French colonists came from Normandy, and it was a happy thought of M. Raoul Dandurand, Leader of the Government in the Canadian Senate and representative of French Canada, to remind the King and Queen of this at the reception at Quebec this week and of their common descent, for, said he,

it. is fitting that the King should be i welcomed in the capital of a new France and that the respectful homage of the whole population should be offered in the language of Champlain, who founded Quebec in 1608, and the descendants of his heroic companions, who explored as far as the Rockies, since his Majesty claims common, though distant, ancestry. Those pioneers came directly from the Duchy of Normandy, which gave to its leader William 50,000 men for the Battle of Hastings, which established his domination over England.

With equal felicity this descendant of the pioneers indicated the two out-

standing characteristics of the FjrenchCanadian—loyalty and religion—in the concluding passage:

Two words which are deeply impressed in the Norman consciousness appear on the Royal escutcheon —Dieu et mon Droit. It is their unswerving fidelity to these two essential principles of life which has assured their survival. Under the aegis of this device they have been able, in changing their allegiance, to exclaim like the knights of old; "Le Roi est Mort; Vive le Roi." So today without hesitation from loyal hearts they . greet your Majesty with "Vive le Roi!"

Of the strength and fertility of this old Norman stock it is sufficient to say that the French population, estimated at 80,000 in 1763, has increased now to nearly three millions and constitutes almost a third of the total population of Canada. It is the most signal example in the world today of the peopling of a new country by natural increase, for there has been little immigration. French Canada is still the home of large families. Rather more than half the population of Canada is of British origin, but the great immigration of the first decade of this century and up to the War, which introduced more than two and a half million people to the country, introduced also the serious problems of alien stock. Much of the\ prairie Provinces is occupied by settlers of neither British nor French stock, and the assimilation of these has presented difficulties. Inhabited Canada is not a compact country, but a comparatively narrow strip running from the Atlantic to the Pacific and crossing the Rocky Mountains. If the Confederation of Canada in 1867 was a political necessity, it was made an economic possibility by the construction of the first Canadian transcontinental railway, the famous C.P.R. But it must always be a difficulty to hold together such a scattered country with so mixed a population and often with such conflicting interests. Even the United States, with its more compact territory and much denser population, is a problem for the President to establish a sense of unity. The common link of the new British Empire, since the Statute of Westminster, is the Crown, and there is therefore a constitutional side to the visit of the King and Queen as the personal embodiment of this symbol' of unity, the Crown, to the oldest Dominion of the Empire, Canada. It is thus that Canadians, with their diverse and distracting influences and interests, may feel that in their presence before their eyes they have! now the representatives of an ancient institution that binds them all together in a common loyalty to each other and to their sister nations of the British Commonwealth.