money to build a fence," the big man could stand it no longer. He
ripped his collar loose and sprang to his feet. "Man," he thundered,
"pull off your coat and build your own fence and don't trouble the Lord
about such trifles. I'm rich on thirty dollars a year. When I need
more, I sell a steer. Don't let us bother God-Almighty with such
unmanly puling and whining," and much more, he said--which I have told
elsewhere--which brought that audience to life with the shocks of a
galvanic battery. One of the most successful Indian missionaries in
Canada is a full blood Cree. It does not detract from his services in
the least that if in the middle of his prayers he hears the wild geese
coming in spring, he bangs the Holy Book shut and shouts for the
congregation to grab their guns and get a shot.

The virile note in religious life is one of the chief reasons for its
support in Canada; and I have been amused to watch English and American
friends who have gone to Canada first indifferent to the church-going
habit, then touched and finally caught in the current. Does the habit
react on public life? Undoubtedly and most strongly! Catholic Quebec
and Protestant Ontario for years literally dictated provincial and
federal policies; but, with the shift of the balance of power from East
to West, that shuffling of Catholic against Protestant and vice versa
has ceased in Canadian politics; and those newspapers that gained their
support playing on religious prejudice have had to sell and begin with
a new sheet. At the same time no policy could be put forward in
Canada, no man could stay in public life against the voice of the
different churches. If it were not invidious, examples could be given
of public men relegated to private life because they violated the
principles for which the church stands. The church in Canada is not a
dead issue. It is not the city of refuge for the failures and the
misfits. It voices the ideals of Canadian men and women busy
nation-building. It has been cynically said that the church in
England, as far as public men are concerned, lays all its emphasis on
the Eighth Commandment, and none at all on the Seventh; and that the
church in the United States lays all its emphasis on the Seventh
Commandment and none at all on the Eighth. I do not think a politician
could be a special acrobat with either of these Commandments and stay
in public life in Canada. The clergy would "peel off" those coats and