o Canada an
aphorism of Carlyle, "The present is the living sum-total of the whole
past"; the sum-total not simply of the hundred and thirty years that
have elapsed since the commencement of British dominion, but primarily
of the century and a half that began with the coming of Champlain to the
heights of Quebec and ended with the death of Wolfe on the Plains of
Abraham. The soldiers and sailors, the missionaries and pioneers of
France, speak to us in eloquent tones, whether we linger in summer time
on the shores of the noble gulf which washes the eastern portals of
Canada; whether we ascend the St. Lawrence River and follow the route
taken by the explorers, who discovered the great lakes, and gave to the
world a knowledge of the West and the Mississippi, whether we walk on
the grassy mounds that recall the ruins of the formidable fortress of
Louisbourg, which once defended the eastern entrance to the St.
Lawrence; whether we linger on the rocks of the ancient city of Quebec
with its many memorials of the French regime; whether we travel over the
rich prairies with their sluggish, tortuous rivers, and memories of the
French Canadians who first found their way to that illimitable region.
In fact, Canada has a rich heritage of associations that connect us with
some of the most momentous epochs of the world's history. The victories
of Louisbourg and Quebec belong to the same series of brilliant events
that recall the famous names of Chatham, Clive, and Wolfe, and that gave
to England a mighty empire in Asia and America. Wolfe's signal victory
on the heights of the ancient capital was the prelude to the great drama
of the American revolution. Freed from the fear of France, the people of
the Thirteen Colonies, so long hemmed in between the Atlantic Ocean and
the Appalachian range, found full expression for their love of local
self-government when England asserted her imperial supremacy. After a
struggle of a few years they succeeded in laying the foundation of the
remarkable federal republic, which now embraces forty-five states with a
population of already seventy-five millions of souls, which owes its
national stability and prosperity to the energy and enterprise of the
Anglo-Norman race and the dominant influence of the common law, and the
parliamentary institutions of England. At the same time, the American
Revolution had an immediate and powerful effect upon the future of the
communities that still remained in the possess