Oriental immigration had been an issue in Canada ever since Chinese navvies had been imported in the early eighties to work on the government sections of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Mine owners, fruit farmers, and contractors were anxious that the supply should continue unchecked; but, as in the United States, the economic objections of the labor unions and the political objections of the advocates of a "White Canada" carried the day.
Chinese immigration had been restricted in 1885 by a head tax of $50 on all immigrants save officials, merchants, or scholars; in 1901 this tax was doubled; and in 1904 it was raised to $500. In each case the tax proved a barrier only for a year or two, when wages would rise sufficiently to warrant Orientals paying the higher toll to enter the Promised Land. j.a.panese immigrants did not come in large numbers until 1906, when the activities of employment companies brought seven thousand j.a.panese by way of Hawaii. Agitators from the Pacific States fanned the flames of opposition in British Columbia, and anti-Chinese and anti-j.a.panese riots broke out in Vancouver in 1907. The Dominion Government then grappled with the question. j.a.pan"s national sensitiveness and her position as an ally of Great Britain called for diplomatic handling. A member of the Dominion Cabinet, Rodolphe Lemieux, succeeded in 1907 in negotiating at Tokio an agreement by which j.a.pan herself undertook to restrict the number of pa.s.sports issued annually to emigrants to Canada.
The Hindu migration, which began in 1907, gave rise to a still more delicate situation. What did the British Empire mean, many a Hindu asked, if British subjects were to be barred from British lands? The only reply was that the British Government which still ruled India no longer ruled the Dominions, and that it was on the Dominions that the responsibility for the exclusion policy must rest. In 1909 Canada suggested that the Indian Government itself should limit emigration, but this policy did not meet with approval at the time. Failing in this measure, the Laurier Government fell back on a general clause in the Immigration Act prohibiting the entrance of immigrants except by direct pa.s.sage from the country of origin and on a continuous ticket, a rule which effectually barred the Hindu because of the lack of any direct steamship line between India and Canada. An Order-in-Council further required that immigrants from all Asiatic countries must possess at least $200 on entering Canada. The Borden Government supplemented these restrictions by a special Order-in-Council in 1913 prohibiting the landing of artisans or unskilled laborers of any race at ports in British Columbia, ostensibly because of depression in the labor market. The leaders of the Hindu movement, with apparently some German a.s.sistance, determined to test these restrictions. In May, 1914, there arrived at Vancouver from Shanghai a j.a.panese ship carrying four hundred Sikhs from India. A few were admitted, as having been previously domiciled in Canada; the others, after careful inquiry, were refused admittance and ordered to be deported. Local police were driven away from the ship when attempting to enforce the order, and the Government ordered H.M.C.S. Rainbow to intervene. By a curious irony of history, the first occasion on which this first Canadian warship was called on to display force was in expelling from Canada the subjects of another part of the British Empire. Further trouble followed when the Sikhs reached Calcutta in September, 1914, for riots took place involving serious loss of life and later an abortive attempt at rebellion. Fortunately there were good prospects that the Indian Government would in future accept the proposal made by Canada in 1909. At the Imperial Conference of 1917, where representatives of India were present for the first time, it was agreed to recommend the principle of reciprocity in the treatment of immigrants, India thus being free to save her pride by imposing on men from the Dominions the same restrictions the Dominions imposed on immigrants from India.
But all these dealings with lands across the sea paled into insignificance beside the task imposed on Canada by the Great War. In the sudden crisis the Dominion attained a place among the nations which the slower changes of peace time could scarcely have made possible in decades.
When the war party in Germany and Austria-Hungary plunged Europe into the struggle the world had long been fearing, there was not a moment"s hesitation on the part of the people of Canada. It was not merely the circ.u.mstance that technically Canada was at war when Britain was at war that led Canadians to instant action. The degree of partic.i.p.ation, if not the fact of war, was wholly a matter for the separate Dominions. It was the deep and abiding sympathy with the mother country whose very existence was to be at stake. Later, with the unfolding of Germany"s full designs of world dominance and the repeated display of her callous and ruthless policies, Canada comprehended the magnitude of the danger threatening all the world and grimly set herself to help end the menace of militarism once for all.
On August 1, 1914, two days before Belgium was invaded, and three days before war between Britain and Germany had been declared, the Dominion Government cabled to London their firm a.s.surance that the people of Canada would make every sacrifice necessary to secure the integrity and honor of the Empire and asked for suggestions as to the form aid should take. The financial and administrative measures the emergency demanded were carried out by Orders-in-Council in accordance with the scheme of defense which only a few months before had been drawn up in a "War Book". Two weeks later, Parliament met in a special four day session and without a dissenting voice voted the war credits the Government asked and conferred upon it special war powers of the widest scope. The country then set about providing men, money, and munitions of war.
The day after war was declared, recruiting was begun for an expeditionary force of 21,000 men. Half as many more poured into the camp at Valcartier near Quebec; and by the middle of October this first Canadian contingent, over 30,000 strong, the largest body of troops which had ever crossed the Atlantic, was already in England, where its training was to be completed. As the war went on and all previous forecasts of its duration and its scale were far outrun, these numbers were multiplied many times. By the summer of 1917 over 400,000 men had been enrolled for service, and over 340,000 had already gone overseas, aside from over 25,000 Allied reservists.
Naturally enough it was the young men of British birth who first responded in large numbers to the recruiting officer"s appeal. A military background, vivid home memories, the enlistment of kinsmen or friends overseas, the frequent slightness of local ties, sent them forth in splendid and steady array. Then the call came home to the native-born, and particularly to Canadians of English speech. Few of them had dreamed of war, few had been trained even in militia musters; but in tens of thousands they volunteered. From French-speaking Canada the response was slower, in spite of the endeavors of the leaders of the Opposition as well as of the Government to encourage enlistment. In some measure this was only to be expected. Quebec was dominantly rural; its men married young, and the country parishes had little touch with the outside world. Its people had no racial sympathy with Britain and their connection with France had long been cut by the cessation of immigration from that country. Yet this is not the complete explanation of that aloofness which marked a great part of Quebec. Account must be taken also of the resentment caused by exaggerated versions of the treatment accorded the French-Canadian minority in the schools of Ontario and the West, and especially of the teaching of the Nationalists, led by Henri Boura.s.sa, who opposed active Canadian partic.i.p.ation in the war. Lack of tact on the part of the Government and reckless taunts from extremists in Ontario made the breach steadily wider. Yet there were many encouraging considerations. Another grandson of the leader of "37, Talbot Papineau, fell fighting bravely, and it was a French-Canadian battalion, Les Vingt Deuxiemes, which won the honors at Courcelette.
When the war first broke out, no one thought of any but voluntary methods of enlistment. As the magnitude of the task came home to men and the example of Great Britain had its influence, voices began to be raised in favor of compulsion. Sir Robert Borden, the Premier, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier alike opposed the suggestion. Early in 1917 the adoption of conscription in the United States, and the need of reenforcements for the Canadian forces at the front led the Prime Minister, immediately after his return from the Imperial Conference in London, to bring down a measure for compulsory service. He urged in behalf of this course that the need for men was urgent beyond all question; that the voluntary system, wasteful and unfair at best, had ceased to bring more than six or seven thousand men a month, chiefly for other than infantry ranks; and that only by compulsion could Quebec be brought to shoulder her fair share and the slackers in all the provinces be made to rise to the need. It was contended, on the other hand, that great as was the need for men, the need for food, which Canada could best of all countries supply, was greater still; that voluntary recruiting had yielded over four hundred thousand men, proportionately equivalent to six million from the United States, and was slackening only because the reservoir was nearly drained dry; and that Quebec could be brought into line more effectively by conciliation than by compulsion.
The issue of conscription brought to an end the political truce which had been declared in August, 1914. The keener partisans on both sides had not long been able to abide on the heights of non-political patriotism which they had occupied in the first generous weeks of the war. But the public was weary of party cries and called for unity. Suggestions of a coalition were made at different times, but the party in power, new to the sweets of office, confident of its capacity, and backed by a strong majority, gave little heed to the demand. Now, however, the strong popular opposition offered to the announcement of conscription led the Prime Minister to propose to Sir Wilfrid Laurier a coalition Government on a conscription basis. Sir Wilfrid, while continuing to express his desire to cooperate in any way that would advance the common cause, declined to enter a coalition to carry out a programme decided upon without consultation and likely, in his view, to wreck national unity without securing any compensating increase in numbers beyond what a vigorous and sympathetic voluntary campaign could yet obtain.
For months negotiations continued within Parliament and without. The Military Service Act was pa.s.sed in August, 1917, with the support of the majority of the English-speaking members of the Opposition. Then the Government, which had already secured the pa.s.sage of an Act providing for taking the votes of the soldiers overseas, forced through under closure a measure depriving of the franchise all aliens of enemy birth or speech who had been admitted to citizenship since 1902, and giving a vote to every adult woman relative of a soldier on active service. Victory for the Government now appeared certain. Leading English-peaking Liberals, particularly from the West, convinced that conscription was necessary to keep Canada"s forces up to the need, or that the War Times Election Act made opposition hopeless, decided to accept Sir Robert Borden"s offer of seats in a coalition Cabinet.
In the election of December, 1917, in which pa.s.sion and prejudice were stirred as never before in the history of Canada, the Unionist forces won by a sweeping majority. Ontario and the West were almost solidly behind the Government in the number of members elected, Quebec as solidly against it, and the Maritime Provinces nearly evenly divided. The soldiers" vote, contrary to Australian experience, was overwhelmingly for conscription. The Laurier Liberals polled more civilian votes in Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia, and in the Dominion as a whole, than the united Liberal party had received in the Reciprocity election of 1911. The increase in the Unionist popular vote was still greater, however, and gave the Government fifty-eight per cent of the popular vote and sixty-five per cent of the seats in the House. Confidence in the administrative capacity of the new Government, the belief that it would be more vigorous in carrying on the war, the desire to make Quebec do its share, the influence of the leaders of the Western Liberals and of the Grain Growers" a.s.sociations, wholesale promises of exemption to farmers, and the working of the new franchise law all had their part in the result. Eight months after the Military Service Act was pa.s.sed, it had added only twenty thousand men to the nearly five hundred thousand volunteers; but steps were then taken to cancel exemptions and to simplify the machinery of administration. Some eighty thousand men were raised under conscription, but the war, so far as Canada was concerned, was fought and won by volunteers.
"The self-governing British colonies," wrote Bernhardi before the war, "have at their disposal a militia, which is sometimes only in process of formation. They can be completely ignored so far as concerns any European theater of war." This contemptuous forecast might have been justified had German expectations of a short war been fulfilled. Though large and increasing sums had in recent years been spent on the Canadian militia and on a small permanent force, the work of building up an army on the scale the war demanded had virtually to be begun from the foundation. It was pushed ahead with vigor, under the direction, for the first three years, of the Minister of Militia, General Sir Sam Hughes. Many mistakes were made. Complaints of waste in supply departments and of slackness of discipline among the troops were rife in the early months. But the work went on; and when the testing time came, Canada"s civilian soldiers held their own with any veterans on either side the long line of trenches.
It was in April, 1915, at the second battle of Ypres-or, as it is more often termed in Canada, St. Julien or Langemarck-that the quality of the men of the first contingent was blazoned forth. The Germans had launched a determined attack on the junction of the French and Canadian forces, seeking to drive through to Calais. The use, for the first time, of asphyxiating gases drove back in confusion the French colonial troops on the left of the Canadians. Attacked and outflanked by a German army of 150,000 men, four Canadian brigades, immensely inferior in heavy artillery and tortured by the poisonous fumes, filled the gap, hanging on doggedly day and night until reenforcements came and Calais was saved. In sober retrospection it was almost incredible that the thin khaki line had held against the overwhelming odds which faced it. A few weeks later, at Givenchy and Festubert, in the same b.l.o.o.d.y salient of Ypres, the Canadian division displayed equal courage with hardly equal success. In the spring of 1916, when the Canadian forces grew first to three and then to four divisions, heavy toll was taken at St. Eloi and Sanctuary Wood.
When they were shifted from the Ypres sector to the Somme, the dashing success at Courcelette showed them as efficient in offense as in defense. In 1917 a Canadian general, Sir Arthur Currie, three years before only a business man of Vancouver, took command of the Canadian troops. The capture of Vimy Ridge, key to the whole Arras position, after months of careful preparation, the hard-fought struggle for Lens, and toward the close of the year the winning of the Pa.s.schendaele Ridge, at heavy cost, were instances of the increasing scale and importance of the operations entrusted to Currie"s men.
In the closing year of the war the Canadian corps played a still more distinctive and essential part. During the early months of 1918, when the Germans were making their desperate thrusts for Paris and the Channel, the Canadians held little of the line that was attacked. Their divisions had been withdrawn in turn for special training in open warfare movements, in close cooperation with tanks and air forces. When the time came to launch the Allied offensive, they were ready. It was Canadian troops who broke the hitherto unbreakable Wotan line, or Drocourt-Queant switch; it was Canadians who served as the spearhead in the decisive thrust against Cambrai; and it was Canadians who captured Mons, the last German stronghold taken before the armistice was signed, and thus ended the war at the very spot where the British "Old Contemptibles" had begun their dogged fight four years before.
Through all the years of war the Canadian forces never lost a gun nor retired from a position they had consolidated. Canadians were the first to practice trench raiding; and Canadian cadets thronged that branch of the service, the Royal Flying Corps, where steady nerves and individual initiative were at a premium. In countless actions they proved their fitness to stand shoulder to shoulder with the best that Britain and France and the United States could send: they asked no more than that. The casualty list of 220,000 men, of whom 60,000 sleep forever in the fields of France and Flanders and in the plains of England, witnesses the price this people of eight millions paid as its share in the task of freeing the world from tyranny.
The realization that in a world war not merely the men in the trenches but the whole nation could and must be counted as part of the fighting force was slow in coming in Canada as in other democratic and unwarlike lands. Slowly the industry of the country was adjusted to a war basis. When the conflict broke out, the country was pulling itself together after the sudden collapse of the speculative boom of the preceding decade. For a time men were content to hold their organization together and to avert the slackening of trade and the spread of unemployment which they feared. Then, as the industrial needs and opportunities of the war became clear, they rallied. Field and factory vied in expansion, and the Canadian contribution of food and munitions provided a very substantial share of the Allies" needs. Exports increased threefold, and the total trade was more than doubled as compared with the largest year before the war.
The financing of the war and of the industrial expansion which accompanied it was a heavy task. For years Canada had looked to Great Britain for a large share alike of public and of private borrowings. Now it became necessary not merely to find at home all the capital required for ordinary development but to meet the burden of war expenditure, and later to advance to Great Britain the funds she required for her purchase of supplies in Canada. The task was made easier by the effective working of a banking system which had many times proved its soundness and its flexibility. When the money market of Britain was no longer open to overseas borrowers, the Dominion first turned to the United States, where several federal and provincial loans were floated, and later to her own resources. Domestic loans were issued on an increasing scale and with increasing success, and the Victory Loan of 1918 enrolled one out of every eight Canadians among its subscribers. Taxation reached an adequate basis more slowly. Inertia and the influence of business interests led the Government to cling for the first two years to customs and excise duties as its main reliance. Then excess profits and income taxes of steadily increasing weight were imposed, and the burdens were distributed more fairly. The Dominion was able not only to meet the whole expenditure of its armed forces but to reverse the relations which existed before the war and to become, as far as current liabilities went, a creditor rather than a debtor of the United Kingdom.
It was not merely the financial relations of Canada with the United Kingdom which required readjustment. The service and the sacrifices which the Dominions had made in the common cause rendered it imperative that the political relations between the different parts of the Empire should be put on a more definite and equal basis. The feeling was widespread that the last remnants of the old colonial subordination must be removed and that the control exercised by the Dominions should be extended over the whole field of foreign affairs.
The Imperial Conference met in London in the spring of 1917. At special War Cabinet meetings the representatives of the Dominions discussed war plans and peace terms with the leaders of Britain. It was decided to hold a Conference immediately after the end of the war to discuss the future const.i.tutional organization of the Empire. Premier Borden and General s.m.u.ts both came out strongly against the projects of imperial parliamentary federation which aggressive organizations in Britain and in some of the Dominions had been urging. The Conference of 1917 recorded its view that any coming readjustment must be based on a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an imperial commonwealth; that it should recognize the right of the Dominions and of India to an adequate voice in foreign policy; and that it should provide effective arrangements for continuous consultation in all important matters of common concern and for such concerted action as the several Governments should determine. The policy of alliance, of cooperation between the Governments of the equal and independent states of the Empire, searchingly tested and amply justified by the war, had compelled a.s.sent.
The coming of peace gave occasion for a wider and more formal recognition of the new international status of the Dominions. It had first been proposed that the British Empire should appear as a unit, with the representatives of the Dominions present merely in an advisory capacity or partic.i.p.ating in turn as members of the British delegation. The Dominion statesmen a.s.sembled in London and Paris declined to a.s.sent to this proposal, and insisted upon representation in the Peace Conference and in the League of Nations in their own right. The British Government, after some debate, acceded, and, with more difficulty, the consent of the leading Allies was won. The representatives of the Dominions signed the treaty with Germany on behalf of their respective countries, and each Dominion, with India, was made a member of the League. At the same time only the British Empire, and not any of the Dominions, was given a place in the real organ of power, the Executive Council of the League, and in many respects the exact relationship between the United Kingdom and the other parts of the Empire in international affairs was left ambiguous, for later events and counsel to determine. Many French and American observers who had not kept in close touch with the growth of national consciousness within the British Empire were apprehensive lest this plan should prove a deep-laid scheme for multiplying British influence in the Conference and the League. Some misunderstanding was natural in view not only of the unprecedented character of the Empire"s development and polity, but of the incomplete and ambiguous nature of the compromise affected at Paris between the nationalist and the imperialist tendencies within the Empire. Yet the reluctance of the British imperialists of the straiter sect to accede to the new arrangement, and the independence of action of the Dominion representatives at the Conference, as in the stand of Premier Hughes of Australia on the j.a.panese demand for recognition of racial equality and in the statement of protest by General s.m.u.ts of South Africa on signing the treaty, made it clear that the Dominions would not be merely echoes. Borden and Botha and s.m.u.ts, though new to the ways of diplomacy, proved that in clear understanding of the broader issues and in moderation of policy and temper they could bear comparison with any of the leaders of the older nations.
The war also brought changes in the relations between Canada and her great neighbor. For a time there was danger that it would erect a barrier of differing ideals and contrary experience. When month after month went by with the United States still clinging to its policy of neutrality, while long lists of wounded and dead and missing were filling Canadian newspapers, a quiet but deep resentment, not without a touch of conscious superiority, developed in many quarters in the Dominion. Yet there were others who realized how difficult and how necessary it was for the United States to attain complete unity of purpose before entering the war, and how different its position was from that of Canada, where the political tie with Britain had brought immediate action more instinctive than reasoned. It was remembered, too, that in the first 360,000 Canadians who went overseas, there were 12,000 men of American birth, including both residents in Canada and men who had crossed the border to enlist. When the patience of the United States was at last exhausted and it took its place in the ranks of the nations fighting for freedom, the joy of Canadians was unbounded. The entrance of the United States into the war a.s.sured not only the triumph of democracy in Europe but the continuance and extension of frank and friendly relations between the democracies of North America. As the war went on and Canada and the United States were led more and more to pool their united resources, to cooperate in finance and in the supply of coal, iron, steel, wheat, and other war essentials, countless new strands were woven into the bond that held the two countries together. Nor was it material unity alone that was attained; in the utterances of the head of the Republic the highest aspirations of Canadians for the future ordering of the world found incomparable expression.
Canada had done what she could to a.s.sure the triumph of right in the war. Not less did she believe that she had a contribution to make toward that new ordering of the world after the war which alone could compensate her for the blood and treasure she had spent. It would be her mission to bind together in friendship and common aspirations the two larger English-speaking states, with one of which she was linked by history and with the other by geography. To the world in general Canada had to offer that achievement of difference in unity, that reconciliation of liberty with peace and order, which the British Empire was struggling to attain along paths in which the Dominion had been the chief pioneer. "In the British Commonwealth of Nations," declared General s.m.u.ts, "this transition from the old legalistic idea of political sovereignty based on force to the new social idea of const.i.tutional freedom based on consent, has been gradually evolving for more than a century. And the elements of the future world government, which will no longer rest on the imperial ideas adopted from the Roman law, are already in operation in our Commonwealth of Nations and will rapidly develop in the near future." This may seem an idealistic aim; yet, as Canada"s Prime Minister asked a New York audience in 1916, "What great and enduring achievement has the world ever accomplished that was not based on idealism?"
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
For the whole period since 1760 the most comprehensive and thorough work is "Canada and its Provinces", edited by A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty, 23 vols. (1914). W. Kingsford"s "History of Canada", 10 vols. (1887-1898), is badly written but is an ample storehouse of material. The "Chronicles of Canada" series (1914-1916) covers the whole field in a number of popular volumes, of which several are listed below. F. X. Garneau"s "Histoire du Canada" (1845-1848; new edition, edited by Hector Garneau, 1913-), the cla.s.sical French-Canadian record of the development of Canada down to 1840, is able and moderate in tone, though considered by some critics not sufficiently appreciative of the Church.
Of brief surveys of Canada"s history the best are W. L. Grant"s "History of Canada" (1914) and H. E. Egerton"s "Canada" (1908).
The primary sources are abundant. The Dominion Archives have made a remarkable collection of original official and private papers and of transcripts of doc.u.ments from London and Paris. See D. W. Parker, "A Guide to the Doc.u.ments in the Ma.n.u.script Room at the Public Archives of Canada" (1914). Many of these doc.u.ments are calendared in the "Report on Canadian Archives" (1882 to date), and complete reprints, systematically arranged and competently annotated, are being issued by the Archives Branch, of which A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty, "Doc.u.ments Relating to the Const.i.tutional History of Canada", 1759-1791, and Doughty and McArthur, "Doc.u.ments Relating to the Const.i.tutional History of Canada", 1791-1818, have already appeared. A useful collection of speeches and dispatches is found in H. E. Egerton and W. L. Grant, "Canadian Const.i.tutional Development" (1907), and W. P. M. Kennedy has edited a somewhat larger collection, "Doc.u.ments of the Canadian Const.i.tution", 1759-1915 (1918). The later Sessional Papers and Hansards or Parliamentary Debates are easily accessible. Files of the older newspapers, such as the Halifax "Chronicle" (1820 to date, with changes of t.i.tle), Montreal "Gazette" (1778 to date), Toronto "Globe" (1844 to date), "Manitoba Free Press" (1879 to date), Victoria "Colonist" (1858 to date), are invaluable. "The Dominion Annual Register and Review", ed. by H. J. Morgan, 8 vols. (1879-1887) and "The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs", by John Castell Hopkins (1901 to date), are useful for the periods covered.
For the first chapter, Sir Charles P. Lucas, "A History of Canada", 1765-1812 (1909) and A. G. Bradley, "The Making of Canada" (1908) are the best single volumes. William Wood, "The Father of British Canada" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916), records Carleton"s defense of Canada in the Revolutionary War; and Justin H. Smith"s "Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony" (1907) is a scholarly and detailed account of the same period from an American standpoint. Victor Con"s "The Province of Quebec and the Early American Revolution" (1896), with a review of the same by Adam Shortt in the "Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada", vol. 1 (University of Toronto, 1897), and C. W. Alvord"s "The Mississippi Valley in British Politics", 2 vols. (1917) should be consulted for an interpretation of the Quebec Act. For the general reader, W. S. Wallace"s "The United Empire Loyalists" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1914) supersedes the earlier Canadian compilations; C. H. Van Tyne"s "The Loyalists in the American Revolution" (1902) and A. C. Flick"s "Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution" (1901) embody careful researches by two American scholars. The War of 1812 is most competently treated by William Wood in "The War with the United States" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915); the naval aspects are sketched in Theodore Roosevelt"s "The Naval War of 1812" (1882) and a.n.a.lyzed scientifically in A. T. Mahan"s "Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812" (1905).
For the period, 1815-1841, W. S. Wallace"s "The Family Compact" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915) and A. D. De Celles"s "The Patriotes of "37" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916) are the most concise summaries. J. C. Dent"s "The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion" (1885) is biased but careful and readable. "William Lyon Mackenzie", by Charles Lindsey, revised by G. G. S. Lindsey (1908), is a sober defense of Mackenzie by his son-in-law and grandson. Robert Christie"s "A History of the Late Province of Lower Canada", 6 vols. (1848-1866) preserves much contemporary material. There are few secondary books taking the anti-popular side: T. C. Haliburton"s "The Bubbles of Canada" (1839) records Sam Slick"s opposition to reform; C. W. Robinson"s "Life of Sir John Beverley Robinson" (1904) is a lifeless record of the greatest Compact leader. Lord Durham"s "Report on the Affairs of British North America" (1839; available in Methuen reprint, 1902, or with introduction and notes by Sir Charles Lucas, 3 vols., 1912) is indispensable. For the Union period there are several political biographies available. G. M. Wrong"s "The Earl of Elgin" (1905), John Lewis"s "George Brown" (1906), W. L. Grant"s "The Tribune of Nova Scotia" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915), J. Pope"s "Memoirs of the Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald", 2 vols. (1894), J. Boyd"s "Sir George Etienne Cartier" (1914), and O. D. Skelton"s "Life and Times of Sir A. T. Galt" (1919), cover the political developments from various angles. A. H. U. Colquhoun"s "The Fathers of Confederation" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916) is a clear and impartial account of the achievement of Confederation; while M. O. Hammond"s "Canadian Confederation and its Leaders" (1917) records the service of each of its chief architects.
For the years since Confederation biographies again give the most accessible record. Sir John S. Willison"s "Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party" (1903) is the best political biography yet written in Canada. Sir Richard Cartwright"s Reminiscences (1912) reflects that statesman"s individual and pungent views of affairs, while Sir Charles Tupper"s "Recollections of Sixty Years" (1914) and John Castell Hopkins"s "Life and Work of Sir John Thompson" (1895) give a Conservative version of the period. Sir Joseph Pope"s "The Day of Sir John Macdonald" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1915), and O. D. Skelton"s "The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier" ("Chronicles of Canada", 1916) between them cover the whole period briefly. L. J. Burpee"s "Sandford Fleming" (1915) is one of the few biographies dealing with industrial as distinct from political leaders. Imperial relations may be studied in G. R. Parkin"s "Imperial Federation, the Problem of National Unity" (1892) and in L. Curtis"s "The Problem of the Commonwealth" (1916), which advocate imperial federation, and in R. Jebb"s "The Britannic Question; a Survey of Alternatives" (1913), J. S. Ewart"s "The Kingdom Papers" (1912-), and A. B. Keith"s "Imperial Unity and the Dominions" (1916), which criticize that solution from different standpoints. The "Reports" of the Imperial Conferences of 1887, 1894, 1897, 1902, 1907, 1911, 1917, are of much value. Relations with the United States are discussed judiciously in W. A. Dunning"s "The British Empire and the United States" (1914). Phases of Canada"s recent development other than political are covered best in the volumes of "Canada and its Provinces", a History of the Canadian people and their inst.i.tutions, edited by A. Shortt and A. G. Doughty.
A useful guide to recent books dealing with Canadian history will be found in the annual "Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada", published by the University of Toronto (1896 to date).