CHAPTER XXII.

Criticisms by foreign authors--How Canada is regarded in other countries--Passports--“Only a Colonist”--Virchow’s unwelcome inference--Canadians are too modest--Imperfect guide-books--A reciprocity treaty wanted.

In my readings from time to time I come across many remarks by foreign and other authors, that I feel are belittling to our country. If we only took to the self-laudation practised by our Yankee neighbors, such arguments, or, rather, want of arguments--but rather noises--would at least make us better known. I feel that we as a people are far too modest. Remaining at home, or at least within our own boundaries, one does not so keenly feel how little our country amounts to or is known abroad. On travelling on the continent of Europe, now and then in company with some Americans, and once getting away from the seaport towns, I could not make the people understand that I was anything but a Yankee. Since I came from America _du nord_, I must, of course, be a Yankee, and no amount of explanation in the best French I could command would make them understand that I was a British subject. One day particularly, in Florence, Italy, I recollect buying a postage stamp, to send a letter home, on which was the plain address, Canada. Being somewhat in doubt if I had placed sufficient postage on the letter, I asked “if that was enough for Canada.” “‘Tis all the same. All America, all United States.” “But this is not for the United States.” “Oh, yes, it’s all United States, all America, _du nord_.” And so my country counted for nothing. The great Republic completely swamps us away from home, disguise the fact as we may, and we may as well acknowledge it.

Even in Liverpool, I recollect when walking down the landing-stage, valise in hand, about to board the steamer to sail for home two summers ago, a little newsboy ran up before me and said, “Sir, don’t you want to buy the New York _Herald_?” Of course I bought the paper for the little urchin’s shrewdness in picking me out as being from America. I only mention this simple anecdote to show that across the Atlantic it’s all America and all the United States, almost without a discrimination. In the matter of passports, now happily not nearly so necessary in Europe as formerly, I have found at different times it is always better to be provided with one for emergencies which may at any time arise. Going down into Italy by the Monte Cenis route, the officials dumped us all out at Modaire, through which town and depot the line between France and Italy passed. I had to enter a door and pass a drawn-up guard of soldiers and through a passage for the examination of passports. Ahead of us were a number of Americans, who simply showed the eagle on the seal of their passports, and who were allowed to pass unchallenged. My turn came, and I showed the lion on my Canadian passport, and then my trouble came. It was not British, the examiner said, but from America, and did not bear an eagle like the Americans’ passports. I felt humiliated and disgusted, that my own country with its five millions, and the third naval (commercial) power of the world, was literally unknown. Fortunately for me the examination was not very strict, and I passed by parting with a small coin or two.

I would surely obtain a British passport if I were again travelling in regions where passports are needed in order to get along easily and without detentions.

Americans when abroad on the Continent very frequently call upon their consul, and would return to the hotel, telling us of the delightful hour spent in genial talk with their consul, and the information obtained from him, and letters of admission to galleries, museums, etc. Consistently I cannot pass myself off as a Yankee and go with them, but determine to visit the British consul, who ought perforce to be my own; and I call on him, and he looks at my passport, which he deliberately folds, and hands back to me. He is too well bred to treat me positively rudely, but the general air of his demeanor instantly makes me feel that he considers me “only a colonist” and a person of no account in particular, and not really worth very much of his consideration. One experience of this kind suffices usually, and hereafter I let the consuls alone. To be “only a colonist” at home does not seem to weigh one down very much, but abroad to be told that a few times makes it beyond human nature to not feel a spirit of resentment. As to being a colonist it is quite right, and I am proud of the fact and do not wish to change my position. If they would leave off the small word “only” before “a colonist” it would take away all the sting, and make the Canadian traveller feel that he is just as good as our British brothers at home, our forefathers and relatives. When this “only a colonist” was said to me, I generally felt it like the greeting accorded a son of some obscure man; the son being exceedingly worthy, and having risen by his talents, but “he’s only old Jones’s son,” and of course he can’t be anybody. Canada is usually spoken of by foreign writers as a part of the “frozen north.” This is really too bad when Ontario, which contains very nearly one-half of the entire population of the Dominion, possesses a climate far milder than the New England States, and quite as mild as that of the great State of New York, just south of us. In an article on “Acclimatization,” in the _Popular Science Monthly_, by so eminent an author as Professor Virchow, is this sentence, “No one has, for example, seen a people of the white race become black under the tropics, or negroes transplanted to the polar regions, or to Canada, metamorphosed into whites.” This coupling of us by implication with the frozen north, coming from so eminent a man as Virchow, cuts. It is true that Canada runs far to the north, but at the same time it would be just as fair to speak of the United States as in the polar regions, since it has Alaska, which is veritably in the Arctic zone, but at the same time, and just the same as with us, but a very small part of their population is there. Writers never speak of the United States as in the polar regions.

When we are not spoken of as inhabitants of the polar regions we are described as French. Now, the inhabitants of Quebec have always contended that they are the Canadians, and what the rest of us, the great majority, are I can scarcely make out.

Once I was in an office in Broadway, New York, and happened to state that I was a Canadian. The Yankee manager of that office remarked “that he as yet hardly knew how to classify Canadians--whether as Englishmen or Americans--and, in fact, that the world had not yet made up its mind what we were.” If we were all French (and I am not for a moment speaking disparagingly of our _habitants_), we could then be easily classified. But to be called “only a colonist” in Europe, and in New York neither an Englishman nor an American, makes one’s position as a genuine Canadian a little foggy. The effort to distinguish by the spelling “Canadians” for the English-speaking, and “_Canadiens_” for the French-speaking, is all very well, and will no doubt work well enough at home. But abroad the average Englishman, if you spell Canadian with an “e,” will simply put you down as an ignorant fellow and a poor speller. And now can you wonder what the people of continental Europe will think of us, if they think of us at all, as apart from the United States? The plain truth of the case is that we are far too modest, as I said at the beginning of this chapter, and do not “blow” enough about our own country to cause it to be better known abroad. The great west of the United States was surely made and settled by the Yankee “blowing.” Their papers are ever full of “spread eagle,” and always telling about their boundless country, always praising their own institutions, and pulling down those of the “oppressed monarchy of Great Britain,” and always representing their country as the earthly paradise.

Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the course of a visit to Ontario, frankly admitted--privately, of course--that our free school system, and likewise its management, were superior to those of the American States. Then let us wake up, and since it seems to be absolutely necessary to “blow” about ourselves, let us copy the apt example of the Yankees and do it--and do it so strongly as to make up for past deficiencies.

Guide books of travel, published both in America and Europe, for travel in Canada, send the tourist invariably from New York City up the Hudson by steamer to Albany; then by the New York Central Railway to Niagara Falls. They do admit that the Falls are worth seeing. Then they send the tourist by steamer to Toronto, and tell him to take the Richelieu steamers, down the St. Lawrence from there, and run the rapids to Montreal. From Montreal he is to take the night boat for Quebec and come back again to Montreal by the day boat, and then go south to Lake George, and this is all the tourist is to see of Canada. Thousands of American and British tourists form their opinions of us from what they see on this water tour through Canada. Of course, going down Lake Ontario they see next to nothing of us or our country, because the lake is too big to see much on the shore. Entering the St. Lawrence, they view shores studded with rocks, and have not the faintest idea of our fertile lands and rich farms, which give to Ontario its wealth. The wealth of Ontario is certainly in her comfortable homesteads and fertile fields. Of this the tourist knows nothing, and he goes down to Quebec city to see, as best he may in America to-day, the best example of a city in the eighteenth century style; and he passes out of our borders, having come almost wholly in contact with our French population, and goes away considering our land a land of stones peopled by Frenchmen.

The tourist travels too quickly to get proper impressions of a country, I think I hear many readers say. Granted, but still many impressions are got of countries by tourists by such rapid travelling, and we cannot help the fact. The only way we can help the matter appears to me to be for our railways to join and offer a general tourist ticket, taking the tourist all over our country at a reasonable rate, and allowing him to stop off when and where he will. Such tickets ought to be advertised in Great Britain and the United States, and be on sale there. If once bought they would be used. While using such tickets the tourist could scarcely fail to get considerable knowledge of us and of our country. Tourists, as a rule, are persons of means and of influence at home. Many of them might thus be induced to bring capital to our country and make it their home, to our and their advantage.

Ontario would make a grand State, the Americans tell us, when they look with coveting eyes over this way. Yes, indeed, she would, and any other one of the States would not keep pace with us; but they are not going to get us. Give our people a reciprocity treaty, so that we can trade with our American cousins, and leave Ontario to manage Ontario’s affairs, and she will remain content. If a vote of Ontario farm-owners were taken to-day on the reciprocity question, nine out of every ten would vote for it, and we should have it. Our people are loyal and attached to the Mother Country, and have no thought of severing the tie, but Britain is 3,000 miles away, and the United States is beside us. It is obvious that we can more easily trade with the United States than Britain; hence, to us, a treaty is to-day the greatest element in our politics. Even with all the restrictions now imposed by the United States and ourselves, our trade with the United States is enormous.

Politicians may wrangle and fritter away our money at Ottawa, and cause us to many times feel well-nigh disgusted at them; still, so long as they do not resort to direct taxation at Ottawa our country people will stand an almost untold amount of fraud without much complaint. If the Mother Country desires us to be joined into the talked-of universal confederation, we would first like to know how we are to be benefited thereby. For, as we now feel, we think that Ontario bears nearly all the burdens of our Dominion, and we do not want to have tacked on to us any more burdens or some other poor relatives of colonies. If the Mother Country would put on a tariff against all the world except her own colonies, and allow us free trade with her, we could see some use to us for such a gigantic union. Just now, as it is, we do not want to join any such scheme for an idea, although we reverently love and honor our common Mother Country.