the whole, progress, especially in the last twenty years, has
been unquestioned and rarely paralleled.

Political has kept pace with economic change. The far-flung Dominion
is at last being welded into one, and a Canadian nationality is arising
of a distinct character and with conscious unity. The average man
thinks of himself no longer as first a citizen of Nova Scotia, Ontario,
or Manitoba, an Englishman, a Scotsman, or an Irishman, but as first a
Canadian. Provincial and racial jealousy, though not passed away, are
less intense and less critical than in the days of old. There is less
bitterness in party {323} conflicts, less personal abuse, and more of
the broader patriotism. Of jobbery and corruption and low political
ideals there are unfortunately no less, but there is more conscious
endeavour to grapple with and overthrow these foes. The Dominion has
found its place in the family of nations, and has taken its full share
in the transforming and upbuilding of the British Empire. Fifty years
ago, merely colonies of Britain, looked upon by most men in the mother
country as being about to break from the Empire to which they were now
profitless, and to the rest of Europe scarcely a name! To-day, sending
hundreds of thousands of men across the seas to fight shoulder to
shoulder with Britain to maintain the unity of the Empire, the freedom
of Europe and the world! History has few more striking transformations
than this to show.

Even more striking, but less within the scope of this brief survey,
were the changes in the life and thought, in the manners and the social
texture of the nation. The growth of luxury and of restless change;
the quickening pace of business and the accompanying shortening of the
work-day and the work-week; the transformation effected by railway
{324} and steamship, by telephone and typewriter, by electric light and
skyscraper; the coming of the motor-car, of bridge, and of society
columns; the passing of cricket, the rise and fall of lacrosse, the
triumph of baseball and hockey and golf and bowling, the
professionalizing of nearly all sport; the increasing share of women in
industry and education; the constant shift of fashion, the waxing and
waning of hats and skirts; the readjustment of theological creeds and
the trend towards church unity; the progress of medical science, the
widening of university interests, the development of advertising and
the transformation of the newspaper;--all