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47 - Canada- The Empire of the North by Agnes C. Laut · Canada- The Empire of the North

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Speaker 1: Section forty six of Canada The Empire of the North.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Lynda Maree Nielsen, Vancouver, BC, Canada,
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Speaker 1: The Empire of the North by Agnes cy Lot from
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Speaker 1: eighteen twenty to eighteen sixty seven, Part three. Affairs had
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Speaker 1: gone faster in Quebec. There the rebellion almost became war.
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Speaker 1: Papineau was leader of the agitators. Papineau fiery, impetuous, eloquent,
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Speaker 1: followed by the bold boys in the bonnets blue marching
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Speaker 1: the streets of Montreal, singing revolutionary songs and planting liberty trees.
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Speaker 1: In Lower Canada, two things have come to the pass
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Speaker 1: where the agitators advocate armed resistance. From the first in Quebec,
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Speaker 1: the struggle has waged round two questions, the exclusion of
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Speaker 1: the French from the Council and the right of the
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Speaker 1: colony to spend its own revenues. But boil down the
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Speaker 1: ninety two resolutions of eighteen thirty four and the demands
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Speaker 1: of the agitators in Lower Canada are the same as
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Speaker 1: in Upper Canada. For complete self government. A dozen clashes
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Speaker 1: of authority lead up to the final outbreak. For instance,
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Speaker 1: the House elects Papineaut the Agitator speaker, the Governor General
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Speaker 1: refuses to recognize him, and Parliament is dissolved. Failing to
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Speaker 1: obtain redress by constitutional methods, the agitators now advocate the
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Speaker 1: right of a colony to abolish government unsuited to it.
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Speaker 1: The Constitutional Party takes alarm and organizes volunteers. Papineau's party,
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Speaker 1: early in eighteen thirty seven, began violently advocating that all
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Speaker 1: French magistrates resign their commissions from the English government. On
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Speaker 1: Rochaul River and up in two mountains north of Montreal
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Speaker 1: are the strongholds of the agitators, where men have been
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Speaker 1: drilling and the boys in the blonnets blew rioting through
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Speaker 1: the villages to the great scandal of parish priests. There
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Speaker 1: are riots in Montreal early in November of eighteen thirty seven,
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Speaker 1: and the sons of Liberty are chased through the town. Then,
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Speaker 1: in the third week of November, a troop of Montreal
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Speaker 1: cavalry is sent to Saint John's to arrest three agitators
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Speaker 1: who have been threatening a magistrate for refusing to resign
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Speaker 1: his commission. The agitators are arrested and handcuffed, and at
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Speaker 1: three in the morning, the troops are moving along across
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Speaker 1: country towards Long Yell with the prisoners in a wagon,
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Speaker 1: when suddenly three hundred armed men rise on either side
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Speaker 1: of the road to the fore. Shots are exchanged. In
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Speaker 1: the confusion, the prisoners jump from the wagon. This is
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Speaker 1: not resistance to authority, it is open rebellion. Papineau in
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Speaker 1: trusts the management of affairs in Saint Eustache, north of Montreal,
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Speaker 1: to Girod, a Swiss, and to doctor Chenner, a local patriot.
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Speaker 1: Papineau himself and doctor Nelson and O'Callaghan are down on
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Speaker 1: the Richelieu at Saint Denis. Take the Richelieu region first.
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Speaker 1: Colonel Gore is to strike up the river southward to
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Speaker 1: Saint Denis. Colonel Wetheril is to cross country from Treol
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Speaker 1: and strike down the river north to Saint Charles, thus
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Speaker 1: hemming in the insurgents between Gore on the north and
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Speaker 1: himself on the south. There are eight hundred rebels at
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Speaker 1: Saint Denis, one hundred and fifty armed and twelve hundred
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Speaker 1: at Saint Charles, Papinot and O'Callaghan, for safety's sake, slip
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Speaker 1: across the line to Swanton in Vermont. One could wish that,
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Speaker 1: having led their faithful followers up to the sticking point
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Speaker 1: of stark madness, the agitators had remained shoulder to shoulder
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Speaker 1: with the brave fellows on the field. Colonel Gore came
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Speaker 1: from Montreal by boat to the mouth of the Richelieu.
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Speaker 1: At seven thirty on the night of November twenty second,
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Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty troopers landed to march up the
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Speaker 1: Richelieu Road to Saint Denis. Rain turning to sleet was
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Speaker 1: falling in a deluge. The roads were swimming knee deep
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Speaker 1: in slush, Bridges had been cut, and in the darkness
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Speaker 1: the loyalists had to diverge to fording places, which lengthened
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Speaker 1: out the march twenty four miles. As Saint Denis was
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Speaker 1: Doctor Nelson with the agitators in a three story stone house,
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Speaker 1: windows bristling with muskets. By dawn, Papineaut and O'Callaghan had fled,
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Speaker 1: and at nine o'clock came Colonel Gore's Loyalist troops exhausted
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Speaker 1: from the march, soaked to the skin, their water say
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Speaker 1: clothes freezing in the cold wind. The Loyalists went into
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Speaker 1: the fight unfed and with a whoop, but it is
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Speaker 1: not surprising that the peppering of bullets from the windows
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Speaker 1: drove the trooper's back and Gore's bugles sounded retreat. Unaware
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Speaker 1: of Gore's defeat, one Lieutenant Weir has been sent a
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Speaker 1: cross country with dispatches. He is captured and bound, and
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Speaker 1: in a futile attempt to escape, shot and stab to death.
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Speaker 1: Wetherall comes down the river from Chamblay with three hundred men.
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Speaker 1: He finds Saint Charles Village protected by outworks of fell trees,
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Speaker 1: and the houses are literally loopholed with muskets. But Weatherall
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Speaker 1: has brought cannon along, and the cannon begin to sing.
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Speaker 1: On November twenty fifth, then Weatherell's men charged through the
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Speaker 1: little village with leveled payonets. The poor inhabitants scatter like
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Speaker 1: frightened sheep. They surrender one hundred parish. It is estimated
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Speaker 1: that on both sides three hundred are wounded, though some
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Speaker 1: English writers give the list of wounded. As low as
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Speaker 1: forty messengers gallop with news of the Patriot's defeat at
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Speaker 1: Saint Charles to doctor Nelson at Saint Denis. The inhabitants
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Speaker 1: fled to their homes. Nelson was left without a follower.
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Speaker 1: He escaped to the woods and for two weeks wandered
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Speaker 1: in the force of the boundary, exposed to cold and hunger,
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Speaker 1: not daring to kindle a fire that would betray him,
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Speaker 1: afraid to let himself sleep for fear of freezing to death.
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Speaker 1: He was captured near the Vermont line and carried prisoner
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Speaker 1: to Montreal, and still worse fared the fortunes of war
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Speaker 1: with the Patriots north of Montreal, their defense and defeat
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Speaker 1: were almost pitiable in childish ignorance of what war might mean.
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Speaker 1: Boys marbles had been gathered together for bullets, sighs were
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Speaker 1: carried as swords, and old flintlocks that had not seen
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Speaker 1: service for twenty years were taken down from the chimney places,
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Speaker 1: with their bonnets blue hanging down their backs, rusty fire
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Speaker 1: arms over their shoulders, and the village fiddler leading the march.
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Speaker 1: One thousand Sons of Liberty had paraded the streets of
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Speaker 1: Saint Eustace, singing rawlkling, speechifying, unconscious of children playing war,
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Speaker 1: that they were dancing to ruin above a volcano. Sheenye,
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Speaker 1: the beloved country doctor, is their leader. Girod the Swiss
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Speaker 1: has come up to show them how to drill. They
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Speaker 1: take possession of a newly built convent. Then on Sunday,
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Speaker 1: the third of December comes word of the defeat down
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Speaker 1: on the Rischlieu. The moderate men plead with Sheenye to
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Speaker 1: stop now before it is too late, But Sheenye will
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Speaker 1: not listen. He knows the cause is right, and with
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Speaker 1: the credulity or faith of a simple child, hope some
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Speaker 1: mad miracle will win the day. Still he is much moved,
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Speaker 1: tears streamed down his face. Then, on December fourteenth, the
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Speaker 1: church bells ring a crazy alarm. The troops are coming,
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Speaker 1: two thousand of them from Montreal under Sir John Colburn,
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Speaker 1: the governor. The insurgent army melts like frost before the sun.
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Speaker 1: Less than one hundred men stand by poor Chenye. At
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Speaker 1: eleven thirty, the troops sweep in at both ends of
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Speaker 1: the village at once. Jerrod, the Swiss commander, suicides in
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Speaker 1: panic flight. Cooped up in the church steeple, with the
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Speaker 1: flames mounting closer round them, and the troopers whooping jubilantly outside,
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Speaker 1: Chenye and his eighty followers call out, we are done,
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Speaker 1: we are sold Let us jump. Chenier jumps from the steeple,
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Speaker 1: is hit by the flying bullets and perishes as he falls.
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Speaker 1: His men cower back in the flaming steeple till it
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Speaker 1: falls with a crash into the burning ruins amid the
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Speaker 1: ash heap are afterwards found the corpses of seventy two patriots.
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Speaker 1: The troopers take one hundred prisoners in the region, then
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Speaker 1: set fire to all houses where Loyalless flags are not
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Speaker 1: waved from the windows. Matters have now come to such
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Speaker 1: an outrageous pass that the British Government can no longer
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Speaker 1: ignore the fact that colony has been goaded to desperation
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Speaker 1: by the misgovernment of the ruling Clique. Lord Durham is
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Speaker 1: appointed Special Commissioner with extraordinary powers to proceed to Canada
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Speaker 1: and investigate the whole subject of colonial government. One may
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Speaker 1: guess that the ruling clik were prepared to take possession
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Speaker 1: of the new Commissioner and prime him with facts favorable
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Speaker 1: to their side, But Durham was not a man to
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Speaker 1: be monopolized by any faction. When he arrived in May
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Speaker 1: of eighteen thirty eight, he quickly gave proof that he
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Speaker 1: would follow his own counsels and choose his own counselors.
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Speaker 1: His first official declaration was practically an act of amnesty
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Speaker 1: to the rebels, eight only of the leading prisoners, among
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Speaker 1: them doctor Nelson, being punished for banishment to Bermuda, the
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Speaker 1: rest being simply expelled from Canada. This act was tantamount
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Speaker 1: to a declaration that the rebels possessed some rights and
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Speaker 1: had suffered real grievances, and the government rings in both
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Speaker 1: Toronto and Quebec took furious offense. Complaints against Durham poured
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Speaker 1: into the English Colonial Office, complaints, oddly enough, that he
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Speaker 1: had violated the spirit of the English Constitution by sentencing
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Speaker 1: subjects of the Crown without trial. Though everyone knew that
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Speaker 1: in Canada's turbulent condition, trial by jury was impossible, Durham's
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Speaker 1: political foes in England took up the cry. In addition
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Speaker 1: to political complaints were grudges against Durham for personal slight
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Speaker 1: and it must be confessed that the haughty Earl had
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Speaker 1: ridden roughshod over all the petty prejudice and little dignities
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Speaker 1: of the colonial magnates. The upshot was Durham resigned in
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Speaker 1: High Dungeon and sailed for England in November of eighteen
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Speaker 1: thirty eight. On his way home, he dictated to his secretary,
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Speaker 1: Charles Buller, the famous report, which is to Canada what
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Speaker 1: the Magna Charta is to England, or the Declaration of
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Speaker 1: Independence to the United States. Without going into detail, it
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Speaker 1: may be said that it recommended complete self government for
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Speaker 1: the colonies. As disorders had again broken up in Canada,
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Speaker 1: the English government hastened to embody the main recommendations of
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Speaker 1: Durham's report in the Union Act of eighteen forty, which
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Speaker 1: came into force a year later. By it, Upper and
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Speaker 1: Lower Canada were united on a basis of equal representation each,
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Speaker 1: though Quebec's population was six hundred thousand to Ontario's five
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Speaker 1: hundred thousand. The colonies were to have the entire management
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Speaker 1: of their revenues and civil lists. The government was to
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Speaker 1: consist of an upper Chamber appointed by the Crown for life,
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Speaker 1: a representative Assembly, and the governor with a Cabinet of
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Speaker 1: Advisers responsible to the Assembly. In all, more than seven
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Speaker 1: hundred arrests had been made in Quebec Province. Of these
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Speaker 1: all were released, but some one hundred and thirty and
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Speaker 1: the state trials resulted in sentence of banishment against fifty
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Speaker 1: death to twelve. In modern days, it is almost impossible
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Speaker 1: to realize the degree of fanatical hatred generated by this
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Speaker 1: half century of misgovernment. Declared one of the governing clique's
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Speaker 1: official newspapers in Montreal, peace must be maintained, even if
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Speaker 1: we make the country a solitude. French Canadians must be
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Speaker 1: swept from the face of the earth. The Empire must
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Speaker 1: be respected, even at the cost of the entire French
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Speaker 1: Canadian people. With such sentiments openly uttered, one may surely
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Speaker 1: say that the Constitutional Act of seventeen ninety one turned
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Speaker 1: back the pendulum of Canada's progress fifty years, and it
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Speaker 1: certainly took fifty more years to eradicate the bitterness generated
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Speaker 1: by the era of misgovern government. With the Upper and
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Speaker 1: Lower Canadas united in a federation of two provinces, it
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Speaker 1: was a foregone conclusion that all parts of British North
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Speaker 1: America must sooner or later come into the fold. It
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Speaker 1: would be hard to say from whom the idea of
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Speaker 1: a confederation of all the provinces first sprang purely a theory.
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Speaker 1: The idea may be traced back as early as seventeen
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Speaker 1: ninety one. The truth is destiny, providence, or whatever we
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Speaker 1: like to call that great stream of concurrent events which
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Speaker 1: carries men and nations out to the ocean highway of
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Speaker 1: a larger life force British North America into the Confederation
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Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty seven. In the first place, while the
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Speaker 1: union worked well in theory, it was exceedingly difficult in practice.
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Speaker 1: Ontario and in Quebec had equal representation. One was Protestant,
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Speaker 1: the other Catholic, one French, the other English. Deadlocks, or
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Speaker 1: to use the slang of the street, even tugs of
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Speaker 1: war were inevitable and continual. All Ontario had to do
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Speaker 1: to thwart Quebec, or Quebec had to do to thwart
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Speaker 1: Ontario was stand together and keep the vote. Solid coalition
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Speaker 1: ministries proved a failure. In the second place, Ontario was
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Speaker 1: practically dependent on the customs duties collected at Quebec ports
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Speaker 1: of entry for a provincial revenue. The goods might be
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Speaker 1: billed for Ontario. Quebec collected the tax. Ontario was also
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Speaker 1: dependent on Quebec for access to the sea, which province
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Speaker 1: was to pay for the system of canals being developed
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Speaker 1: and the deepening of the Saint Lawrence. Then the Oregon
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Speaker 1: Treaty of eighteen forty six had actually brought a cloud
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Speaker 1: of war on the horizon. In case of war, there
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Speaker 1: was the question of defense. Then railways had become a
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Speaker 1: very live question. Quebec wanted connection with New Brunswick and
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Speaker 1: Nova Scotia. How was the cost of a railroad to
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Speaker 1: be apportioned? Red River was agitating for freedom from fur
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Speaker 1: trade monopoly. How were railways to be built to Red River?
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Speaker 1: Ontario's population in twenty years jumped past the million mark.
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Speaker 1: Was it fair that her million people should have only
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Speaker 1: the same number of representatives as Quebec with her half million.
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Speaker 1: Reformers of Ontario, voiced by George Brown of The Globe,
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Speaker 1: called for rep by pop representation by population. Civil war
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Speaker 1: was raging in the United States, threatening to tear the
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Speaker 1: Union to tatters. Why because the bounce of power had
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Speaker 1: been left with the state's governments, and not enough authority
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Speaker 1: centralized in the federal government. The lesson was not lost
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Speaker 1: on struggling Canada. England's declaration of free trade brought the
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Speaker 1: colonies face to face with the need of some united
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Speaker 1: action to raise revenue by tariff. Then, the Hudson's Bay
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Speaker 1: Company's license of monopoly over the fur trade of the
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Speaker 1: West was nearing expiration. Should the license be renewed for
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Speaker 1: another twenty years or should Canada take over Red River
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Speaker 1: as a new province, which was the wish of the
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Speaker 1: people both East and West. And if Canada did buy
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Speaker 1: out the Hudson's Bay Company's vested rights, who was to
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Speaker 1: pay down the cost. Lastly was John A. Mac donald,
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Speaker 1: the young lawyer who had pleaded the defense of the
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Speaker 1: Patriot trials at Kingston in eighteen thirty eight, now a
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Speaker 1: leading politician of the United Canadas, weary of the hopeless
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Speaker 1: deadlocks between Ontario and Quebec. With almost a sixth sense
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Speaker 1: of divination. In reading the signs of the times in
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Speaker 1: the trend of events, John A. Mac donald saw that
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Speaker 1: Canada's one hope of becoming a national power lay in
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Speaker 1: union confederation. The same thing was seen by other leaders
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Speaker 1: of the day, by all that Grand Old Guard known
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Speaker 1: as the fathers of Confederation sent from the different provinces
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Speaker 1: to the conference at Quebec in October of eighteen sixty four.
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Speaker 1: There the outline of what is known as the British
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Speaker 1: North America Act was drafted in the main but the
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Speaker 1: amplification of Durham's scheme made broad enough to receive all
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Speaker 1: the provinces whenever they might decide to come into confederation.
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Speaker 1: The delegates then go back to be endorsed by their provinces.
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Speaker 1: By some provinces, the scheme is rejected. Newfoundland is not
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Speaker 1: yet part of Canada, but by eighteen sixty seven confederation
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Speaker 1: is an accomplished fact. By eighteen seventy one, the new
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Speaker 1: dominion has bought out the rights of the Hanson's Bay
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Speaker 1: Company in the West, and Manitoba joins the eastern provinces.
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Speaker 1: By eighteen eighty five, a railway links British Columbia with
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Speaker 1: Nova Scotia. By nineteen o five, the great hunting field
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Speaker 1: of the Saskatchewan Prairies has been divided into two new provinces,
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Speaker 1: Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger than France. Such is barest
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Speaker 1: outline of Canada's past. What of the future for this
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Speaker 1: empire of the North. That future is now in the making.
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Speaker 1: It lies in the hands of the men and women
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Speaker 1: who are living to day. In the past, Canada's makers
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Speaker 1: dreamed greatly, and they dared greatly, and they took no
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Speaker 1: heed of impossibles, and they spent without stint of blood
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Speaker 1: and happiness for high aim. When Canada lost ground in
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Speaker 1: the progress of the nations, as in the corrupt days
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Speaker 1: of Bigaut's rule during the French regime, or the equally
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Speaker 1: corrupt days of the Family Compact after the conquest, it
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Speaker 1: was because the altar fires of her ideals were allowed
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Speaker 1: to burn low. It has been said that the past
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Speaker 1: is but a rear light marking the back trail of
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Speaker 1: the ship's passage. Say rather, it is the search light
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Speaker 1: on the ship's prow, pointing the way over the waters.
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Speaker 1: To day, Canada is the very vanguard of the nations.
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Speaker 1: Her wheat fields filled the granaries of the world, and
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Speaker 1: to her ample borders come the peoples of earth ends,
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Speaker 1: bringing tribute not of incense, unfrankncance as of old, but
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Speaker 1: of manhood and strength, of push and lift, of fire,
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Speaker 1: and hope and enthusiasm, and the daring that conquers all
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Speaker 1: the difficulties of life, bringing to all the outworn vices
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Speaker 1: of an old world, all the vicious instincts of the
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Speaker 1: powers that prey in the underworld. Kenna's prosperity is literally
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Speaker 1: overflowing from a cornucopia of superabundant plenty. Will her constitution,
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Speaker 1: wrested from political and civil strife? Will her moral stenema
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Speaker 1: bread from the heroism and a heroic past, stand the strain,
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Speaker 1: the tremendous strain of the new conditions. Will she assimilate
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Speaker 1: the strange new peoples, strange in thought and life and
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Speaker 1: morals coming to her borders. Will she eradicate their vices
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Speaker 1: like the strong body of a healthy constitution, throwing off disease,
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Speaker 1: or will she be poisoned by the toxins of vicious
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Speaker 1: traits inherited from centuries of vicious living. Will she remake
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Speaker 1: the men, regenerate the aliens coming to her hearth fire,
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Speaker 1: or will they drag her down to their degeneracy? Above all,
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Speaker 1: will she stand the strain, the tremendous strain of prosperity
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Speaker 1: and the corruption that is attendant on prosperity? Queen sab
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Speaker 1: let her answer, who can and the question is best
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Speaker 1: answered by watching the criminal calendar. Is the percentage of
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Speaker 1: convictions as certain as relentless as under the old regime?
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Speaker 1: What manner crimes is growing up in the land? And
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Speaker 1: the question may be answered two by watching whether the
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Speaker 1: press and platform and pulpit stand as everlasting and relentless,
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Speaker 1: for sharp demarcation between right and wrong, for the sharp
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Speaker 1: demarcation between truth, plain truth, and intentional mediacity, as under
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Speaker 1: the regime of the old hard days. When political life
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Speaker 1: grows corrupt, it is now cleansed or condoned. Let each
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Speaker 1: Canadian answer for himself. If the altar fires of Canada's
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Speaker 1: ideals again burn low again, she all lag in the
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Speaker 1: progress of the world's great builders. End of section forty
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Speaker 1: six recording by Linda me Nielsen, Vancouver, b C. End
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Speaker 1: of Canada, The Empire of the North by Agnes Sea
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Speaker 1: Lawn