ll not betray confidence by telling where the cow and chickens
slept. Those immigrants were not desirable neighbors. Other people
moved hastily away from the region. Such a condition would not be
tolerated now, when there are spacious immigration halls and sanitary
inspectors to see that cows and people do not house under the same
roof. What with work and peddling milk, by spring the people were able
to move out on the free prairie farms. To-day those Icelanders own
farms clear of debt, own stock that would be considered the possession
of a capitalist in Iceland, and have money in the savings banks. Their
sons and daughters have had university educations and have entered
every avenue of life, farming, trading, practicing medicine, actually
teaching English in English schools. Some are members of Parliament.
It was a hard beginning, but it was a rebirth to a new life. They are
now among the nation builders of the West.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that Canada's nation builders
consisted entirely of poor people. The race movement has not been a
leaderless mob. Princes, nobles, adventurers, soldiers of fortune,
were the pathfinders who blazed the trail to Canada. Glory, pure and
simple, was the aim that lured the first comers across the trackless
seas. Adventurous young aristocrats, members of the Old Order, led the
first nation builders to America, and, all unconscious of destiny, laid
the foundations of the New Order. The story of their adventures and
work is the history of Canada.
It is a new experience in the world's history, this race movement that
has built up the United States and is now building up Canada. Other
great race movements have been a tearing down of high places, the
upward scramble of one class on the {xiv} backs of the deposed class.
Instead of leveling down, Canada's nation building is leveling up.
This, then, is the empire--the size of all the nations in Europe,
bigger than Napoleon's wildest dreams of conquest--to which Canada has
awakened.[1]
[1]COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF AREAS OF CANADA AND EUROPE
Canada . . 3,750,000 square miles Europe . . 3,797,410 square miles
Maritime Provinces Square Miles Square Miles
Nova Scotia . . . . . 20,600 England . . . . . 50,867
Prince Edward Island 2,000 Germany . . . . . 208,830
New Brunswick . . . . 28,200 France . . . . . 204,000
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