Читать книгу The Canadian Commonwealth - Agnes Christina Laut - Страница 10

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When one comes to consider Quebec under its new boundaries, one is contemplating an empire three times larger than Germany, supporting a population not so large as Berlin.^[9] It is the seat of the old French Empire, the land of the idealists who came to propagate the Faith and succeeded in exploring three-quarters of the continent, with canoes pointed ever up-stream in quest of beaver. All the characteristics of the Old Empire are in Quebec to-day. Quebec is French to the core, not in loyalty to republican France, but in loyalty to the religious ideals which the founders brought to the banks of the St. Lawrence three centuries ago. Church spire, convent walls, religious foundations occupy the most prominent site in every city and town and hamlet of Quebec. From Tadousac to Montreal, from Labrador to Maine or New Hampshire, you can follow the thread of every river in Quebec by the glitter of the church spires round which nestle the hamlets. No matter how poor the hamlet, no matter how remote the hills which slope wooded down to some blue lake, there stand the village church with its cross on the spire, the whitewashed house of the curé, the whitewashed square dormer-windowed school.

Outside Quebec City and Montreal, Quebec is the most reposeful region in all America. What matter wars and rumors of wars to these habitants living under guidance of the curé, as their ancestors lived two hundred years ago? They pay their tithes. They attend mass. At birth, marriage and death—the curé is their guide and friend. He teaches them in their schools. He advises them in their family affairs. He counsels them in their business. At times he even dictates their politics; but when you remember that French is the language spoken, that primary education is of the slimmest, though all doors are open for a promising pupil to advance, you wonder whether constant tutelage of a benevolent church may not be a good thing in a chaotic, confused and restless age. The habitant lives on his little long narrow strip of a farm running back from the river front. He fishes a little. He works on the river and in the lumber camps of the Back Country. He raises a little tobacco, hay, a pig, a cow, a little horse and a family of from ten to twenty. When the daughters marry—as they are encouraged to do at the earliest possible age—the farm is subdivided among the sons; and when it will subdivide no longer, there is a migration to the Back Country, or to a French settlement in the Northwest, where another curé will shepherd the flock; and the habitant, blessed at his birth and blessed at his marriage, is usually blessed at his death at the ripe age of ninety or a hundred. It is a simple and on the whole a very happy, if not progressive, life. Some years ago, when hard times prevailed in Canada and the manufacturing cities of New England offered what seemed big wages to habitants, who considered themselves rich on one hundred dollars a year—a great migration took place across the border; but it was not a happy move for these simple children of the soil. They missed the shepherding of their beloved curé, and the movement has almost stopped. Also you find Jean Ba’tiste in the redwoods of California as lumber-jack, or plying a canoe on MacKenzie River. The best fur-traders of the North to-day are half-breeds with a strain of French Canadian blood.

If you take a look at the map of Quebec under its new boundaries up into Labrador—it seems absurd to call a region three times the area of Germany “a province”—you will see that only the fringe of the river fronts has been peopled. This is owing to the old system of parceling out the land in mile strips back from the river—a system that antedated the railroads, when every man’s train was a paddle and the waterfront. Beyond, back up from the rivers, lies literally a no-man’s-land of furs plentiful as of old, of timber of which only the edge has been slashed, of water power unestimated and of mineral resources only guessed. It seems incredible at this late date that you can count on one hand the number of men who have ascended the rivers of Quebec and descended the rivers of Labrador to Hudson Bay. The forest area is estimated at one hundred and twenty million acres; but that is only a guess. The area of pulp wood is boundless.

Along the St. Lawrence, south of the St. Lawrence and around the great cities come touches of the modern—elaborate stock farms, great factories, magnificent orchards, huge sawmills. The progress of Montreal and the City of Quebec is so intimately involved with the navigation of the St. Lawrence route and the development of railroads that it must be dealt with separately; but it may be said here that nearly all the old seigneurial tenures—Crown grants of estates to the nobility of New France—have passed to alien hands. The system itself, the last relic of feudal tenure in Canada, was abolished by Canadian law. What, then, is the aim of Quebec as a factor in Canada’s destiny? It may be said perfectly frankly that with the exception of such enlightened men as Laurier, Quebec does not concern herself with Canada’s destiny. In a war with France, yes, she would give of her sons and her blood; in a war against France, not so sure. “Why are you loyal?” I asked a splendid scholarly churchman of the old régime—a man whose works have been quoted by Parkman. “Because,” he answered slowly, “because—you—English—leave us—alone to work out our hopes.” “What are those hopes?” I asked. He waved his hand toward the window—church spires and yet more spires far as we could see down the St. Lawrence—another New France conserving the religious ideals that had been crushed by the republicanism of the old land. Let it be stated without a shadow of doubt—Quebec never has had and never will have the faintest idea of secession. Her religious freedom is too well guaranteed under the present régime for her to risk change under an untried order of independence or annexation. The church wants Quebec exactly as she is—to work out her destiny of a new and regenerate France on the banks of the St. Lawrence.

A certain section of the French oppose Canada embroiling herself in European wars. They do this conscientiously and not as a political trick to attract the votes of the ultramontane French. One of the most brilliant supporters Sir Wilfred Laurier ever had flung his chances of a Cabinet place to the winds in opposing Canada’s participation in the Boer War. He not only flung his chances to the winds, but he ruined himself financially and was read out of the party. The motive behind this opposition to Canada’s participations in the Imperial wars is, perhaps, three-fold. French Canada has never forgotten that she was conquered. True, she is better off, enjoys greater religious liberty, greater material prosperity, greater political freedom than under the old régime; but she remembers that French prestige fell before English prestige on the Plains of Abraham. The second motive is an unconscious feeling of detachment from British Imperial affairs. Why should French Canada embroil herself and give of her blood and means for a race alien to herself in speech and religion? The Monroe Doctrine forever defends Canada from seizure by European power. Why not rest under that defense and build up a purely Canadian power? The third motive is almost subconscious. What if a European war should involve French-Catholic Canada on the side of Protestant England against French-Catholic France, or even Catholic Italy? Quebec feels herself a part of Canada but not of the British Empire; and it is a great question how much Laurier’s support of the British in the Boer War had to do with that partial defection of Quebec which ultimately defeated him on Reciprocity; for if there is one thing the devout son of the church fears more than embroilment in European war, it is coming under the republicanizing influence of the United States. Under Canadian law the favored status of the church is guaranteed. Under American law the church would be on the same footing as all other denominations.