The Struggle for Imperial Unity: Recollections & Experiences

In 1906 I went to England again, and once more the Toronto Board of Trade appointed me as one of their delegates to the Sixth Congress of Chambers of Commerce of the Empire to b...

I left for England on the 10th April, 1902, and arrived in London on 21st April. The following members of the League and of the Executive Committee, staunch friends and supporte...

Professor Goldwin Smith was the foremost, and most active, dangerous, and persistent advocate and leader of the movement for annexation to the United States that we have ever ha...

As I have said, we felt that the result of the Conference had been a very serious set-back and discouragement to all our wishes. I therefore watched public opinion very carefull...

I left for England on the 27th June 1894, arrived in London on the 9th July, and at once called upon Sir John Lubbock, M.P., now Lord Avebury. I breakfasted with him on the 13th...

At the first public meeting of the Imperial Federation League in Toronto I made the charge that the Commercial Union movement was a treasonable conspiracy on the part of a few m...

I left for England via Montreal on the 31st May, 1897, and expected to arrive in Liverpool a day or two before Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who was to sail some days later from New York...

That whilst the Council approve of the objects of the Imperial Federation League as set forth in their circular of November the 13th last, they are of opinion that the primary e...

During the spring of 1870 there had been an agitation in favour of sending an expedition of troops to the Red River Settlement, to restore the Queen's authority, to protect the...

During this year, 1869, when the negotiations in England had been agreed upon, the Canadian Government had sent out a surveying expedition under Lieut.-Colonel Dennis. This offi...

The fifth Annual Meeting of the British Empire League in Canada was held at Ottawa on the 14th March, 1900. It was a very successful gathering, no less than six Cabinet Minister...

I arrived home on the 15th June, and found that in my absence I had been vehemently abused both in a section of the Press and in the City Council, partly because I was not prese...

During the summer of 1899 the relations between the British and the Boers in the Transvaal became very strained. As early as the 26th April, 1899, Mr. George Evans, Secretary of...

After the inauguration of the Imperial Federation branch in Toronto on the 24th March, 1888, the members were much encouraged by the result of the debate in the Dominion House o...

The progress the Commercial Union movement was making, and the great danger arising from it, led my brother and me to discuss it with a number of loyal men, and on all sides the...

On the 30th January, 1891, Sir Leonard Tilley, of New Brunswick, was appointed President of the League in Canada in place of D'Alton McCarthy, mainly through the instrumentality...

The Fourth Annual Meeting of the League in Canada was held in Ottawa on the 6th April, 1899. In moving the adoption of the Annual Report, I made an address which clearly outline...

In the early part of 1887 the Irish party in Ireland had been endeavouring to secure sympathy and assistance in the United States and Canada, in favour of their demand for Home...

Sir John A. Macdonald was very ill during this crisis, and was unable to take any part in public affairs, but the action of Sir George Cartier injured the Government, and in the...

This was the most active and important year of our work for the Empire, and we began to see the result of the efforts we had made. The Commercial Union movement was as active an...

The National Club soon ceased to be a political club and the National Association gradually disappeared from public view. I joined it about a year after its foundation, and was...

It was at the period when these conditions existed that business took me to Ottawa from the 15th April until the 20th May, 1868. Wm. A. Foster of Toronto, a barrister, afterward...

Shortly after these events some of our committee were anxious to make a forward movement, to organise a political party to carry out our views, and to start openly a propaganda...

The idea of a great United British Empire seems to have originated on the North American Continent. When Canada was conquered and the power of France disappeared from North Amer...

In the autumn of 1897 the report of a Royal Commission on the condition of affairs in the West Indian Islands was published. Field-Marshal Sir Henry Norman disagreed with the ot...

I reported to the Executive Committee the details of my work in England, and in the Annual Report for 1901 the Executive Committee strongly supported the suggestion, which I had...

The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed at the end of 1885, and it began to prove a competitor with the railways in the United States for the through traffic across the conti...

In 1884 a movement was begun in England, and the Imperial Federation League was formed, for the purpose of securing the Federation of the whole Empire, on somewhat the same line...

The extraordinary change that has taken place in Canada, in every way, in the last fifty years cannot be appreciated except by those who are old enough to remember the condition...