she answered, "is not democracy; it is revolution." She was thinking of those Old World hard-and-fast divisions of society into royalty, aristocracy, commons, peasantry.
"It is not revolution," I explained. "It is rebirth! When you send your émigré out to us, he is a made-over man."
But it is not given to all émigré's to become great capitalists or great leaders. Some who have the opportunity have not the ability, and the majority would not, for all the rewards that greatness offers, choose careers that entail long years of nerve-wracking, unflagging labor. But on a minor scale the same process of making over takes place. One case will illustrate.
Some years before immigration to Canada had become general, two or three hundred Icelanders were landed in Winnipeg destitute. From some reason, which I have forgotten—probably the quarantine of an immigrant—the Icelanders could not be housed in the government immigration hall. They were absolutely without money, household goods, property of any sort except clothing, and that was scant, the men having but one suit of the poorest clothes, the women thin homespun dresses so worn one could see many of them had no underwear. The people represented the very dregs of poverty. Withdrawing to the vacant lots in the west end of Winnipeg—at that time a mere town—the newcomers slept for the first nights, herded in the rooms of an Icelander opulent enough to have rented a house. Those who could not gain admittance to this house slept under the high board sidewalks, then a feature of the new town. I remember as a child watching them sit on the high sidewalk till it was dark, then roll under. Fortunately it was summer, but it was useless for people in this condition to go bare to the prairie farm. To make land yield, you must have house and barns and stock and implements, and I doubt if these people had as much as a jackknife. I remember how two or three of the older women used to sit crying each night in despair till they disappeared in the crowded house, fourteen or twenty of them to a room. Within a week, the men were all at work sawing wood from door to door at a dollar and a half a cord the women out by the day washing at a dollar a day. Within a month they had earned enough to buy lumber and tar paper. Tar-papered shanties went up like mushrooms on the vacant lots. Before winter each family had bought a cow and chickens. I shall 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 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
------ Italy … … 110,000
50,800 Spain … … 197,000
Quebec … . … . 347,350 Austria and Hungary 241,000
Ontario … . … . 222,000 Russia in Europe 2,000,000
Manitoba
Saskatchewan 204,000
Alberta … . … . 350,000
British Columbia … 383,000
Unorganized Territory of
Keewatin … … 756,000
Yukon … . … . 200,000
MacKenzie River and
Ungava … … 1,000,000
COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF POPULATION IN CANADA
AND THE UNITED STATES
| United States | Canada | |||
| In 1800 | 5,000,000 | In 1881 | 4,300,000 | |
| " 1810 | 7,000,000 | " 1891 | 5,000,000 | |
| " 1820 | 9,600,000 | " 1901 | 5,500,000 | |
| " 1830 | 12,800,000 | " 1906 | 6,500,000 | |
It will be noticed that for twenty years Canada's population becomes almost stagnant. The reason for this will be found as the story of Canada is related. If she keeps up the increase at the pace she has now set, or at the rate the United States' population went ahead during the same period of industrial development, the results can be forecast from the following table:
| United States in 1840 | 17,000,000 |
| " " " 1850 |
|
