Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 795
The Inspector dismounts, leaving his horse to an orderly. “Gather round, you people!” he calls. “I have an order to read.”
He draws out a document heavily sealed, opens it and begins to read out loud in a high voice for all to hear.
But the gathered crowd of men and women, their children clinging to their hands as they listen, do not need, do not follow all the law terms of the proclamation. Only at certain phrases, as when the officer reads— “to be forthwith torn down and burnt” — there is a murmur that swells to a cry of pain, of indignation.
The officer finishes his reading. Then he speaks as a plain man talking to his friends:
“I’m sorry, you folks,” he says. “This is no fault of mine. The order came from Ottawa last night and I have to act on it. You have no choice and neither have I. Who is your head man here?”
The men push John forward in front of them.
“I’m the reeve,” he says.
“Then I’ll deal with you,” says the Inspector. “I don’t want to make this harder than it need be. Get your people to gather up all their things that they can carry. I’m to escort you over the divide and down to the ferry. You’ll all be taken on from there.”
He does not tell them where. There is no need to tell them that they are to go to a concentration camp to serve the three-year sentence imposed by a Cabinet Order.
There is no need to depict the scene of sudden helpless anger, the outbreak of protest, the sobbing of the women and the silent fright of the children, clinging to their mother’s skirts and fearing they know not what. Fierce lights kindle in the eyes of some of the men and curses gather on their lips. Given half a chance they would stand and fight it out — blindly with no hope of ultimate escape. But there is not even half a chance.
The police troop sit their horses waiting. One or two even talk with the older children who have ventured near to look at the horses.
The officer is still speaking with the older people, advising them, making it all as simple as he can — himself humiliated, full of pity.
Then suddenly!
A horseman appears approaching from over the furthest brow of the hill across which the Police have come, riding at full speed, and evidently, as the sun flashes here and there on his accoutrement, himself a Mounted Policeman. As he draws nearer they see him waving a paper, a document, in his free hand.
In a moment he is in their midst. He dismounts, salutes, and hands the document to the Inspector. “From Ottawa, sir,” he says.
The Inspector breaks the seal, reads and stands for a moment, motionless with astonishment. With a sudden word of command he calls the squadron to attention. Then in a loud voice to the silent, expectant people:
“I have an order here from Ottawa,” he reads. “Stop all proceedings. Cabinet order cancelled. Settlers to remain undisturbed,” and in a voice that is all his own he adds, “I don’t know what it means, but I’m damned glad of it.”
There is a great shout of relief, a sudden outbreak of emotions, of talk, of movement.
The officer turns to the messenger. “Do you know what it’s all about?” he asks, while John and Joanna crowd close to listen.
“Yes, indeed, sir!” the man answers. “It was all coming in over the radio. The government’s out, sir! Clean gone! Their own party rose against them in parliament when they heard of the Cabinet Order. . . . They forced them to resign. A new Tory-Grit Government was sworn in this morning . . . They say there are bonfires and illuminations in all the towns. They’re ringing the bells and blowing the factory whistles. . . . The whole country is wild about it! All Ottawa’s gone crazy, with processions in the streets and burning of effigies and carrying round old portraits of old prime ministers.”
“Oh John!” said Joanna. “Isn’t it wonderful; And we can stay on here, and make it our own free country and build it up in our way. How terrible it seemed and it has all gone like a dream!”
Only a dream! What happy hallowed words are those, in life or in literature. Only a dream! Fears all idle! Terrors all imaginary! Only a dream!
And what an inspiration! If in such a dream we get a picture of our country, torn, distracted, ruined — and then really saved from it, how wonderful to think that there is yet time, that opportunity has not gone, that the future is still all ours. Only a dream! Vanished with the phantoms of the night.
Do you remember Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol? the old skinflint Scrooge the miser, who had ground the faces of the poor all his life and then in the vision of a Christmas Eve dream is warned of the fate that must befall him, the miserable end, the lonely unwept death, and he wakes. Let me quote it.
SCROOGE AWAKES
Running to the window he opened it and put out his head. No fog, no mist, clear bright jovial stirring cold, golden sunlight: heavenly sky: sweet fresh air: merry bells. Oh! Glorious! Glorious!
“What’s today?” said Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
“Eh?” returned the boy with all his might of wonder.
“What’s today? my fine fellow,” said Scrooge.
“Today?” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.”
“It’s Christmas Day,” said Scrooge. “I haven’t missed it. Hulloo, my fine fellow!”
“Halloo,” returned the boy.
“Do you know the poulterer’s in the next street but one at the corner?”
“I should hope I did,” replied the boy.
“An intelligent boy,” said Scrooge, “a remarkable boy. Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize turkey, the big one?”
“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.
“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it. Come back with it in less than five minutes and I’ll give you a crown.”
The boy was off like a shot. He must have been a steady hand with a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
And that’s the way you and I can imagine a happy awakening out of some terrible dream of social catastrophe for Canada, waking to find that nothing has happened, that it’s all right, that the country is still here with all its assets, its unbound future, all ready for us to work on.
Come! Let’s put our heads out of the window, yours and mine, as Scrooge did. See! It’s just as bright a morning as his was, and as every morning is with us. And look down below — there’s a boy there, not a Tory boy nor a Grit boy nor a Socialist boy, not a political boy at all, just a real boy, a Canadian boy.
“Hullo there,” we call. “What country is this?”
“This country?” returns the boy. “Why it’s Canada.”
“Canada!” we repeat. “And it’s still here! It hasn’t disappeared in the night, and halloo, my fine fellow!”
“Halloo!” returns the boy.
“Do you know whether the Natural Resources that were hanging up all ready to develop are still there?”
“You mean the vast National Resources of Canada?” says the boy— “I should hope I did.”
“An intelligent boy, a remarkable boy, in fact a real, Canadian boy!”
“Do you think you could go and develop them? Come back with some of them in five years and we’ll give you five billion dollars for them . . .”
The boy was off like a shot — and as he went he seemed to multiply into a million boys.
CHAPTER VI TO DEVELOP CANADA
SO! THERE WE are, then, mercifully delivered, and the evil vision only a dream.
Let us look about us at this great opportunity. How do we gather together in a great forward movement of progress and welfare all our vast assets, this empty half continent, these hundreds of thousands of men available for the work of peace on their return from war, a million others available when the war plants close, and with them the millions over the horizon waiting to join us and the great influx of capital goods ready to come from abroad for investment in cooperation with our people and our assets.
Canada has an area of 3,694,863 square miles and a population of 11,506,655 inhabitants. In this area let us leave out of consideration all the resources of the vast space of the Northwest Territories situated outside of the provinces and beyond the parallel of 60 degrees. This is probably a monstrous omission. But we leave it out not as worthless but as still largely unknown. We are asking then, how does the remaining area (2,178,105 square miles) stand toward maintaining our 12,000,000 people and having room for more?
Take food. We raise in Canada 615 million bushels of wheat, about one-fifth of what the whole world eats. But to raise it we only use 22 million acres of a usable 352 million acres of arable land. We could increase any of our field crops three times over. Every increase of population would allow of more intensive cultivation. The physical yield of the ground under intensive small crops (market garden cultivation) could be made, in dead weight or in nutrition, twenty to one of what it is now. The soil of Canada, I imagine, could (physically) feed all western civilization.
The livestock and poultry that feed from our pastures could similarly be increased. It can be calculated that even if we increase our food crop for men and animals three to one, we could still have land to raise six billion hens (one acre feeds thirty).
Of our coastal fisheries there is no limit. On the Atlantic seaboard there are 15,000 square miles of inshore fishing waters controlled solely by the Dominion. The sheltered coast fisheries of the Pacific in Canada extend over 7,180 miles off shore. Our “productive” forests cover 770,000 square miles with standing timber (see Canada Year Book) that represents (estimate of 1938) 273,000 million cubic feet. The amount of this that is classed as sawmill material in accessible localities would cut into 245,000 million board feet. This would build 25 million frame houses. To warm them we have 1,500 billion cords of wood; or we can use it as pulpwood and fall back on our coal.
Our geological survey estimates that Alberta alone has 16,588 square miles of coal beds containing 1,035,629,000,000 tons. With the other provinces that makes a national total of 1,200,000,000,000 tons. With our present population and present rate of use it will last 80,000 years. After that we must use water power which is eternal. The sun brings it back after we use it. It is still impossible to estimate the potential horse power of the unknown north. But of the available potential water power Canada has 33 million horsepower. This is about one tenth greater than all the water power developed in all Europe up to the war. So far Canada has not developed one quarter of it, and beyond it is a vast unknown reserve.
The mineral resources of the Dominion can only be described as colossal. All but a small proportion of the present production of metals comes from the Canadian Shield, the rim of rock encircling the Hudson Bay, and the Canadian Cordillera (the Rocky Mountains). The formations of the Shield include copper, gold, iron, nickel, platinum, cobalt, zinc, radium, chromium and rarer metals. Canada’s production of nickel is over 85% of the world’s output; for gold Canada is second only to South Africa, with an indefinite prospect of advance. “But,” says the official Dominion statistician, “only relatively small portions” (of the mineral areas) “have as yet been intensely prospected and much has still to be geologically mapped.”
Can we doubt that this country, duly developed, can support 100,000,000 people? The support for them is here now, under our feet, in the soil ready for seed, the forest . . . the axe, in the hidden caverns of minerals and in the waters murmuring in our midst. Nations in the large sense live on the physical assets of their country. It is possible for a nation to live as Great Britain does in large part on the use made of material brought in and manufactured and sent out and on the coming and going of ships; so too with Belgium and other such centres. But mainly nations live on their soil and our assets and our available country is as good as various areas which support 100,000,000. Upper British Columbia (census districts No. 9 and No. 10) has an area of 170,000 square miles and a (pre-war) population of 25,000. It has a similar climate, an average lower latitude (55° to 60°) and resources comparable if not superior to those of Sweden, which has exactly the same area and maintains a population of six and a half million.
The trouble is that we are misled by certain false appearances and certain preconceived ideas. One such false appearance arises from the fact that under modern conditions of machine industry and transport all new settlements huddle and concentrate in the centre. A country seems full because, young as it is, it has a crowded metropolitan sea-port of, say, half a million people and plenty of them out of work.
Who could land at the port and city of Montreal today, fight hand to hand for a taxi, charge against blocked doorways, stand in line hoping for a room to sleep in, thirst in vain for a drink, jam into trains, suffocate in cars, block in the streets and jostle off the sidewalks, and still believe that there is room for a single extra soul in the Dominion of Canada. And now they are saying that Yellowknife, on the Great Slave Lake, our newest gold city, is crowded full. They are sleeping two in a bed. But all that means nothing. In most of the Northwest they are sleeping only two to the square mile. The whole scene is sheer illusion — Canada is as empty as ever — almost; still abundant room, abundant opportunity, life and all that makes it sweet, waiting here for uncounted millions of people, serene sky and empty plain, and rivers murmuring in the forest — nature’s temple, where we crowd and wrangle round the entrances.
And here we need to clear still further the ground of all the shale and debris of misconception that encumbers it. Our national view is clouded by certain ideas on national prosperity taken over from the past and warping our present vision. One of them is the notion of foreign markets, of sales to the foreigner, the idea that our industrial progress at home depends on our finding markets abroad.
This idea of “selling things” has run riot in our current thought. Especially has the selling idea been distorted all out of its place in its application to foreign trade. Here it joins forces with certain other and older errors (about the advantage of “taking in money”) to exalt the export trade and its profits to be the touchstone of prosperity, the measure of industrial advance. All wrong. There was something in it in earlier, more restricted days; to sell something abroad for cash was like the sale of a few eggs by a bush farmer to a tourist, turning the scale of the family budget.
I am not denying the merit and advantage of foreign trade within its sphere. Wilful exclusion of outside trade means national suicide, or at least malnutrition. We must obtain by foreign trade the things that we can neither produce in Canada nor conveniently do without. Such, for instance, are oranges and lemons, tea and coffee, nux vomica and coca-cola, and some others that I can’t think of.
But, for all other things, we can get them by foreign trade if convenient and, better still, by home production if possible. Our industrial life will adapt itself accordingly. Give us enough people at home, eating, drinking and being merry, and the foreigner can stay outside. He’s only half a bargain anyway; one side of a walnut, and his side may be rotten. Build the country up regardless of him. If we can’t sell our wheat and our fish, we’ll eat them; if we can’t sell fuel to the foreigners we’ll keep warm ourselves; if they won’t buy our cars we’ll ride in them ourselves. All we need is enough of us, busy enough.
Throw away with that idea the smaller one that grew out of it, the idea of “tourism,” the entertainment of “tourists” as a part of our method of advance. It is queer the grip it has on our community. We no sooner announce the initiation of some magnificent project such as the Alaskan Highway than we add apologetically that tourists will flock to see it. Will they? Let them wait till we’re done with it.
Tourism is another empty economic nut, the sale of scenery and services — by a nation of guides and waiters — to outside people taking a vacation from the world’s real work. Leave that to the Swiss who by their misfortune have little else to live on than tourism in peace and neutrality in war. Let them yodel-doodel on their mountains and wear rooster’s feathers to look like William Tell. The Swiss are a fine people, a brave people, with a great history. But it is not for us to take on as choice the lot that has fallen to them of necessity.
On these terms let us see how we are to develop Canada. Now I take as the starting point of my thought that we must have migration, a great migration, into Canada in the period after the war. We must have a migration far beyond anything we ever had before. Our maximum figure of 400,000 in a single year (1913) must be multiplied many times over. It is not merely because we have room for the people but because we need them. I am convinced that unless we can have a great many people to support in Canada we cannot support the people that we have. Our immigration policy is, therefore, not one of philanthropic relief to others but of self interest to ourselves.
The point is that we have built up and expanded a vast industrial structure that is too big for our present population to keep in operation. The driving power of war moves it; without that, or a new mechanism, it will stop dead. The new mechanism is found in immigration, in the import of capital goods, in development of resources, in getting enough people into the country to open it up for still more people. It is not an endless chain but we won’t live to see the end of it.
Without such expansion what meaning has the British Columbia-Yukon (Alaska) Highway? What use are the wells and pipes of Fort Norman, with no one to use the gas? Why turn back Ogoki power and the cascades of the North if it is but a turning water from tub to tub, both empty. The vast power plants, Shipshaw, the northern airfields facing Russia, the St. Lawrence seaway to the heart of America — what use or meaning has all that without people, more people and still more.
Now for ever so many of us in Canada our tie with Great Britain seems vital, mutually vital, to us, to them; we are one people. To many of us, I say, any breach of unity on this question would disrupt Confederation. But to stay British we must see to it that our newcomers are British, or something so akin to it as to blend and fuse with the British Commonwealth as a natural part of it.
