Читать книгу Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 - John George Bourinot - Страница 11

The outbreak of the Seven Years' War was a serious blow to a people who had at last surmounted the greatest difficulties of pioneer life, and attained a moderate degree of comfort. The demands upon the people capable of bearing arms were necessarily fatal to steady farming occupations; indeed, in the towns of Quebec and Montreal there was more than once an insufficiency of food for the garrisons, and horse-flesh had to be served out, to the great disgust of the soldiers who at first refused to take it. Had it not been for the opportune arrival of a ship laden with provisions in the spring of 1759, the government would have been unable to feed the army or the inhabitants of Quebec. The gravity of the situation was aggravated for years by the jobbery and corruption of the men who had the fate of the country largely in their hands. A few French merchants, and monopolists in league with corrupt officials, controlled the markets and robbed a long-suffering and too patient people. The names of Bigot, Péan, and other officials of the last years of French administration, are justly execrated by French Canadians as robbers of the state and people in the days when the country was on the verge of war, and Montcalm, a brave, incorruptible man, was fighting against tremendous odds to save this unfortunate country to which he gave up his own life in vain.

So long as France governed Canada, education was entirely in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. The Jesuits, Franciscans, and other religious orders, male and female, at an early date, commenced the establishment of those colleges and seminaries which have always had so important a share in the education of Lower Canada. The Jesuits founded a college at Quebec in 1635, or three years before the establishment of Harvard, and the Ursulines opened their convent in the same city four years later. Sister Bourgeoys of Troyes founded at Montreal in 1659 the Congrégation de Notre-Dame for the education of girls of humble rank; the commencement of an institution which has now its buildings in many parts of Canada. In the latter part of the seventeenth century Bishop Laval carried out a project for providing education for Canadian priests drawn from the people of the country. Consequently, in addition to the great seminary at Quebec, there was the lesser seminary where boys were taught in the hope that they would take orders. In the inception of education the French endeavoured in more than one of their institutions to combine industrial pursuits with the ordinary branches of an elementary education. But all accounts of the days of the French régime go to show that, despite the zealous efforts of the religious bodies to improve the education of the colonists, secular instruction was at a very low ebb and hardly reached the seigniories. One writer tells us that "even the children of officers and gentlemen scarcely knew how to read and write; they were ignorant of the first elements of geography and history." Still, dull and devoid of intellectual life as was the life of the Canadian, he had his place of worship where he received a moral training which elevated him immeasurably above the peasantry of England as well as of his old home. The clergy of Lower Canada confessedly did their best to relieve the ignorance of the people, but they were naturally unable to accomplish, by themselves, a task which properly devolved on the governing class. Under the French régime in Canada the civil authorities were as little anxious to enlighten the people by the establishment of public or common schools as they were to give them a voice in the government of the country.

Evidence of some culture and intellectual aspirations in social circles of the ancient capital attracted the surprise of travellers who visited the country before the close of the French dominion. "Science and the fine arts," wrote Charlevoix, in 1744, "have their turn and conversation does not fail. The Canadians breathe from their birth an air of liberty, which makes them very pleasant in the intercourse of life, and our language is nowhere more purely spoken." La Gallissonière, a highly cultured governor, spared no effort to encourage a sympathetic study of scientific pursuits. Dr. Michel Sarrasin, who was a practising physician in Quebec for nearly half a century, devoted himself most assiduously to the natural history of the colony, and made some valuable contributions to the French Academy. The Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, was impressed with the liking for scientific study which he observed in the French colony. But such intellectual culture, as Kalm and Charlevoix mentioned, never showed itself beyond the walls of Quebec or Montreal. The province, as a whole, was in a state of mental sluggishness at the time of the conquest by England, under whose benign influence the French Canadian people were now to enter on a new career of political and intellectual development.

Pitt and Wolfe must take a high place among the makers of the Dominion of Canada. It was they who gave relief to French Canada from the absolutism of old France, and started her in a career of self-government and political liberty. When the great procession passed before the Queen of England on the day of the "Diamond Jubilee"—when delegates from all parts of a mighty, world-embracing empire gave her their loyal and heartfelt homage—Canada was represented by a Prime Minister who belonged to that race which has steadily gained in intellectual strength, political freedom, and material prosperity, since the memorable events of 1759 and 1760. In that imperial procession nearly half the American Continent was represented—Acadia and Canada first settled by France, the north-west prairies first traversed by French Canadian adventurers, the Pacific coast first seen by Cook and Vancouver. There, too, marched men from Bengal, Madras, Bombay, Jeypore, Haidarabad, Kashmir, Punjaub, from all sections of that great empire of India which was won for England by Clive and the men who, like Wolfe, became famous for their achievements in the days of Pitt. Perhaps there were in that imperial pageant some Canadians whose thoughts wandered from the Present to the Past, and recalled the memory of that illustrious statesman and of all he did for Canada and England, when they stood in Westminster Abbey, and looked on his expressive effigy, which, in the eloquent language of a great English historian, "seems still, with eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer and to hurl defiance at her foes."