Quebec-Old and New.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13655, 25 July 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

Quebec-Old and New.

Sir Gilbert Parker on Canada's Tercentenary. What is implied in the forthcoming celebrations at Quebec, to winch the Prince of Wales is going? Ihe found-., ing of the city by Champlain three hundred years ago, and so the founding of Canada! Of couise; bub behind! that what do they mean, what are their soul and message for Canada and for us? Of whom should we ask this but Sir Gilbert Parker, the Member for Canada, for the Colonies—as well as for Gravesend ; a writer who has lifted Canada into a place in English literature which she never held before—one who is proud of his native Dominion as it is of him? Sir Gilbert spoke out of his full knowledge of Canada and her two peoples, and what he had to say is worth hearing. :"It is not," lie said, "the celebration of. the conquest' of France by England in America that holds any place in the minds of : the Canadian people. The Tercentenary is to be focussed at the battle of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham, but that means, no more to the present generation of Canadians, I'reuch and English, than a splendid piece of history, in which, after the lapse of a hundred and fifty years, they each have an. equal share of glory. A GREAT HERITAGE. " The French-Canadian has long ceased —;his grandfathers had ceased—-to think ot French Canada hi any relation, to France. He is secure—as hiVgrand'father and great, great, grandfathers were—in. his language, his civil law and h'.s religion. Vastly outnumbering the Britisher in his province, controlling it from ■ a FrenchCanadian point of view, and having an Administration markedly' different-from the rest of the Dominion .of Canada, he is conscious of no loss except that another flag than the fluer-de-lys, or the tri-colour, flies above the Citadel of Quebec. He never had sympathy with the Government at Versailles, which tyrannised, robbed arid misgoverned Jiim, and if the English had not captured Quebec ho would probably have rebelled, as the British-American Colonist rebelled, against the Sovereign Power. Patriot as he is- in the sense of loving the soil of Canada as deeply as the descendants of the Norman Conquest could love the. soil of England, there is only a question in /the mind.of the French Canadian of the place that he holds in the national life of the Dominion—there is no question of any envy, hatred, malice or any uncbaritableness.

"Indeed, in regard to this Tercentenary it is all his. It was he who first can;*,;' it is he who still presides politically-and socially over a territory where he squatted ill the time of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.; all the glory of the wonderful days of Champlaiu, Cartier, Le Salle and Marquette is his; the pride of history and antiquity—for to a new land three hundred years is antiquity—ts with him. He is iu a* sense Elizabethan, because he began with the beginning of an expanding England, as English history dated anew from 'the Elizabethan period. A FUEXCH-CANADIAN PILOT. "The French-Canadian can enter upon the celebration -with the perfect consciousness that the splendour of the situation is cbiefly his; and it will be a happy reflection for him that a Frenchman is Prime Minister leading the destinies of Canada, conducting i't to greater and better days, while representing less; than a, third of the- whole population raoially. The French-Canadian realises that every Eng-lish-speaking Canadian pays as much homage to Montcalm as to Wolfe, to De Levis as to Murray, and that every English-Canadian schoolboy flushes with. pride at the thought of the victory of l)e Salaberry at Chateauguay, which saved Canada from the American marauder. N*y> in the mind of the English-Canadian, the romance and the tragedy of Montcalm the Beloved are as dear and as fascinating as the glory of the tragedy of Wolfe. '; "To the French-Canadian belongs the long distinction, the and heroisii".. of the wonderful first.century and a half of Canadian history, extending, in fact, down to the nineteenth century. To the English-Canadian belongs the nineteenth century, its constructive idealism and prescience, and the great industrial,- commercial and agricultural development which is a tribute to the'marvellous mental and business prd.wess of the Anglo-Saxon race. To both races the Quebec celebrations will mean a new vision of nationality; not French, not English, but Canadian; and that nationality,. I firmly believe, linked tip by the. unbreakable metal of an English inheritance, and the debt due to the thousand years of British history and British traditions, which has given Canada the best she has iu her national' life. When one speaks of national life of Canada, one does not mean a sectional or a eeparatist life, but a life as much a part of the Empire as Wales, is part of the United Kingdom—individual, distinctive, in its outlook upon' life and. conduct, yet bound fast to the common interest, the -common : glory--of a , great union. ;'•-'-'•''-

"WHO FEAPS TO SPEAK?•'; -.''We need not be afraid to use the word 'nation 1 in regard.to this young Dominion. It does not imply- a '■. separate :or ; '"a vdissoluble relation. It is'the only word that expresses maturity, growth, the. power' on the part of this imperial, Jeune- premiere io live and'act and earn her national way; .and nothing but good can come from the dignity arid, the- pride of .historic .'progress which will be."the outcome .of; a celebration.-: at' which 'the X Heir

to the Crown of Great Britain and of the Empire will bo the central figure. He will be welcomed, as much by the ErenchCanadian as by the English-Canadian, aud. I fancy that the celebration will, in a sense, do more for the English-Canadian than for the French-Canadian. It will leach him more, iti will, help him afore. The French-Canadian has had to think in two languages for two generations; he has had to think, through the atmosphere of his own hiatory, language, and descent, in terms of British administration and ideals. The English-Canadian, more concrete, practical, and less imaginative, has lived a more selfish, centred life until late yeans. He needs to have his imagination stimulated, his political sense made vivid, by an object-lesson of Uie good that lias goue before, of the light upon a far horizon luring him to greater things. "As for England and her part, in the Tercentenary of the founding of Canada? Interest, sympathy, .encouragement, brotherhood, camaraderie; if you like; but it is not her gan;fc, id is not her day; it is Canada's day. It should not be a celebration, in any sense, of England's might and power, of a French Empire overthrown on the continent of America ; it should be the visit of the fatiher to the grown-up son, with dominions of his own, which he has developed l —a. raw estate grown into a Termed and highly productive organisation. England is always eedate and un-self-conseious in her hours of triumph. fiho might well be plangent over the Quebec Tercentenary, but "she will not, whatever the ancient pact she played, whatever the present gift she makes as she dots make, through her Navv. for the protection of the Canadian land. At this celebration the vital thing will be the plighted troth. Of two peoples once at war, now working together, not without friction, not without difficulty,, but still working together for ;V- national purpose, with a. great history behind them; the peoples labouring to iriake a Great rower which shall have all that is best "111 British life, with something that belongs to the soil, to -the climate, to the liistory and the conditions of the young, abounding land itself." < j.M.