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Title: Canadian Footprints

Date of first publication: 1926

Author: Melvin Ormond Hammond (1876-1934)

Date first posted: Oct. 7, 2018

Date last updated: Oct. 7, 2018

Faded Page eBook #20181012

This ebook was produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

CANADA is a young country, as nations go, and its success in the arts of peace tends to overshadow its picturesque past. Older lands which have exerted world influence for centuries snatch the limelight and capture the imagination even of the Canadians themselves.

Back of the peaceful industry evident in every part of Canada is a record of colour and drama worthy of the knowledge and interest of every citizen. “On this stage,” as Charles G. D. Roberts has said, “some of the gravest problems of History have been pressed to a solution.”

Three centuries of development have seen the daring French explorers, traders and missionaries penetrate the Canadian wilds; the struggle between England and France for half a continent; the founding of British America by a great migration of Loyalists; a war with the new American Republic, yet restless from the recent parting; and, finally, a century of expansion in the fertile lands ever opening to the West.

These momentous events have left their marks on the Canada of today, in cherished battlefields, in old buildings, memorials and ruins. Many of these spots are household words through song and story. But where are they, what is their appearance and condition, and just what happened there?

This volume is an attempt to answer those questions. The writer has devoted many vacation journeys, camera in hand, to visiting historic points in Canada. He has sought to preserve in the following pages some impression of each as it exists today, and to set down a brief record of its day in history, and of the players on their momentary stage.

The task has been a long but pleasant one, and it has been made easier by the cooperation of numerous institutions and friends. I would like here specially to acknowledge the assistance of the staff of the Toronto Reference Library; the officials of the National Parks Branch, Ottawa; Dr. A. G. Doughty, Dominion Archivist; Mr. Aegidius Fauteaux, of the Sulpician Library, Montreal; Mr. C. W. Jefferys, R.C.A., Toronto; Colonel William Wood, Quebec; Mr. J. E. B. McCready, Charlottetown; Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, Ottawa; Mr. Timothy O’Brien, St. John, N.B.; Dr. J. D. Logan, Halifax, and Mr. John Nelson, Vancouver.

ANNAPOLIS Royal, in its serene beauty by the waters of Fundy, drowses upon its storied past. Ox-teams contest its streets with bustling motor cars, arching trees give shade to wide, friendly houses, and over all is the pride of seniority, for it is the oldest settlement in British America.

Before the English founded Jamestown in Virginia, before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, before the King James version of the Bible or the Sonnets of Shakespeare had been published, three daring Frenchmen—De Monts, Champlain, and Poutrincourt—had looked upon the land and called it a “region of plenty.” This was in 1604, and after a disastrous winter at St. Croix Island they gladly returned and founded Port Royal, across the Basin from the town of today. Here the jolly Frenchmen spent a happy winter in 1606-7, when under the leadership of Marc Lescarbot, a Paris lawyer, the Order of Good Cheer flourished. Fresh game and fish defeated scurvy, the dread enemy, while spirits were kept high by feasts, fêtes and games, reproducing in this wilderness the gay life of Paris.

The spirit of that joyous winter has been vividly preserved by William McLennan in his poem on the Frenchmen who were “beleaguered in their frail redoubt,” but who ever made merry at their dinner. The entrance of Champlain and his companions is thus described:

Three years the Frenchmen stayed, and then the fickle Henry of Navarre cancelled the monopoly of De Monts, the Huguenot, and all packed back to France. Poutrincourt returned to Port Royal in 1610, but three years later the peaceful colony fell under the torch of Captain Argall, wandering meddlesomely northward from Jamestown.

Already the first Canadian crops had been grown here. The first mill built in North America had its wheels turned by a stream near Port Royal. The first poem written north of the Gulf of Mexico, “The Theatre of Neptune in New France,” was by Lescarbot, and it was played by these stragglers upon a stage of canoes. Sir William Alexander, under charter from James I of England, came with high hopes in 1621, built the Scotch Fort a few miles to the west, and named the region Nova Scotia, but his experiment ended in ten years when Charles I revoked the grant and ordered the colony closed. The French were soon again in possession, and D’Aulnay and La Tour fought for control. On Cromwell’s order, Major Robert Sedgwick came from Boston and took Port Royal in 1654.

Thus the pendulum swung back and forth, reflecting the wars and jealousies of Europe. After six changes the English won in 1710, and held the region throughout the final struggle for Canada and since. During the tragic expulsion of 1755 over 1,600 Acadians were sent from Annapolis. In 1721 the first court in what is now Canada was held at Fort Anne, as the defences were renamed for the Queen, thus establishing in the colony the common law of England. Thomas Chandler Haliburton, author of “Sam Slick,” and pioneer in American humour, came here in 1821 and remained for eight years in a house which still stands.

Remnants of the second and third French forts may yet be seen adjacent to the well-preserved Officers’ Quarters of Fort Anne, a rambling wooden building erected by the Duke of Kent in 1798. Generations of bitter conflict have been followed by nearly two centuries of peace and plenty. The modern plough may uncover a cannon ball, or the tide cast up a French relic, but the visitor finds a happy land of orchard and garden, white cottages and purple hills, where strife and misery are unknown.

TINKLING sheepbells on the hillside, and the crash of surf on the rocks of Gabarus Bay, where Wolfe’s boats were pounded to pieces as they landed guns, are the only sounds a visitor hears as he approaches from Sydney toward the ruins of Fort Louisbourg, the graveyard of French hopes on the North Atlantic. Lobster traps, resembling coops for last week’s batch of chicks, drifted ashore, and shells of sea-urchins and crabs tell of an active marine life where man long ago abandoned his once feverish activities.

A few gaping casemates which had sheltered women from screaming shot and shell, and an odd pile of stones where a street had run or a wall had stood, remain from France’s supreme effort to build here the Dunkirk of the West, after the Dunkirk that commanded the Straits of Dover had been ordered demolished under Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

Twenty-five years (from 1720 to 1745) were taken in the building of Louisbourg, and thirty million livres were spent—much of it wasted in bad materials and thievery, for here the infamous François Bigot and his kind sought quick wealth for a speedy return to France. A city of four thousand transacted a rich trade in silks, cambrics, laces and other luxuries from France, eagerly sought by New England merchants. Rum, molasses and sugar were brought from the West Indies, and thousands worked in the fisheries of Louisbourg and surrounding ports. The very wharves groaned with the commerce of Acadia.

Louisbourg naturally tempted the covetous eyes of national rivals, and it was no surprise when William Pepperell and a New England force of 8,000 came in the summer of 1745. Man-teams of two hundred stalwarts hauled heavy guns over bogs and rocks to hillocks commanding the defences. One by one the French batteries were silenced, and after seven weeks Louisbourg was won.

What French fleets failed to recover was achieved by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Britain, unwilling to risk another war for possession of Louisbourg, handed the fort back to its proud builders.

Ten years later the whirligig of European diplomacy brought Britain into another war with France, and a fresh struggle for Louisbourg was inevitable. Britain’s fortunes were reviving with the resolute William Pitt in power, and the news of dive’s decisive victory in India in 1757. France was moving to disaster with King Louis under the spell of the vicious Madame Pompadour.

Halifax had been founded to offset Louisbourg, and from that port a great force of 24,000 men sailed in 1758, under General Amherst and Admiral Boscawen. The dashing James Wolfe, one of Amherst’s Brigadiers, waded ashore on June 8, armed with a cane, and led his men as they bayoneted the outposts of Louisbourg. The French retired and the English rapidly developed their attack. The Royal and Lighthouse Batteries were taken in a few days, but Governor Drucour was a gallant defender. He sank six ships to block the entrance to the harbour where his fleet was huddled. One night the brave Vauquelin stole forth in the Aréthuse, eluded the English in a fog and escaped to France with despatches.

As the siege advanced the daily incidents were not without chivalry. Governor Drucour offered the services of a distinguished French surgeon to wounded English officers, and Amherst sent his compliments and a gift of pineapples from the West Indies to Madame Drucour. The brave lady, who daily appeared on the ramparts and fired three cannon to encourage the defenders, responded with a basket of wine for General Amherst.

Wolfe seized Gallows Hill and burrowed toward the Dauphin’s Bastion. Three French ships were set on fire by a bomb and burned, the main barracks of the Fort was destroyed, and the troops left without shelter. A French council decided to surrender, but Amherst demanded sterner terms. The two sides haggled, and when finally Drucour sent a defiant message, the non-combatants interfered for their own protection. The Governor was compelled to recall his defiance by a messenger, who ran into Amherst’s camp, crying:

Though the officers had exchanged courtesies, there was terror in the hearts of the townspeople, and on capitulation on July 26 the churches were kept open all night for the protection of residents against ill treatment feared from the victors.

When Louisbourg was surrendered, 5,637 officers, soldiers and sailors were made prisoners and transported to England. Next year Wolfe and Saunders sailed from Louisbourg to take Quebec.

In the summer of 1760, under orders from George II and Pitt, Captain John Byron, R.N., grandfather of Lord Byron the poet, with an army of sailors, sappers and miners, worked for months and levelled proud Louisbourg with the dust.

ST. PAUL’S, the oldest Protestant Church building in Canada, nestles amid the grey walls and chimney pots of Halifax, a little bit of old England, for its original design was an exact copy of Marylebone Chapel in London.

Lord Cornwallis and his two thousand new settlers were not long in the Halifax which they founded in 1749 before the townsite was planned and reservation made for a church. The Imperial Government sent the design, and Boston, in the New England Colonies, supplied the frame and materials for construction. Opening ceremonies were conducted on September 2, 1750, and the church entered on its work for the spiritual needs of the settlers. Additions were made in 1812 and later, and today it seats two thousand people.

Even the busts and tablets which crowd the walls and the face of the gallery give but small hint of the place of this church in the history of Nova Scotia and Canada. Governor Charles Lawrence, after the fretful career which included the Expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, was buried here, and the Legislature ordered a monument to mark his public services. Wolfe and Amherst, who were to command the final attacks which took Canada from the French, worshipped in St. Paul’s while passing through Halifax. Thomas Masterton Hardy, colleague of Lord Nelson, to whom the hero of Trafalgar said in his dying moments, “Kiss me, Hardy,” was married in St. Paul’s in 1807 while on the North Atlantic Station.

Sir John Wentworth, Administrator of Nova Scotia for sixteen years until his death in 1820, is honoured by a memorial; and if the visitor is fortunate enough to have as guide Archdeacon Armitage, the present rector, he will realize the proud place in Canadian history of many others whose names appear on the walls. Two of the rectors, Breynton and Willis, each had charge of St. Paul’s for forty years.

On a June Sunday morning in 1813 the service in St. Paul’s suffered a dramatic interruption. A messenger entered, whispered to a friend in the garrison pew, and left at once. The news, whatever it was, flew from pew to pew, and soon the whole church was empty. Housetops and wharves were crowded, for two ships were coming up the harbour. It was the triumphal return of the “Shannon,” towing as a prize the United States ship “Chesapeake,” which had been captured after a bloody battle off the New England coast.

As a garrison city and naval station, Halifax has a long roll of distinguished visitors and residents, and St. Paul’s has shared the honour. In imagination we may picture the tramp of the hosts of soldiers and sailors and the stately march of gold-laced commanders, typifying the devotion of England’s ruling sons, as they entered St. Paul’s, one generation after another, in the spirit which has made religious duty an essential part of the life of the King’s subjects wherever they may be.

THE red tides of Fundy sweep in and out of the broad basin of the Avon twice daily, now filling it to the brim, now leaving only a trickle in a muddy bottom, its ships high and dry and navigation suspended. This wonder of the Nova Scotia coast alone rewards the visitor to Windsor. But there are other attractions. At the end of an avenue of elms is the cottage built and occupied for years by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, author of the “Sam Slick” stories, and first Canadian humorist of international reputation. King’s College, another centre of interest in Windsor, was chartered in 1788, and here in the eighteen-eighties Charles G. D. Roberts was Professor of English, and received long visits from his cousin, Bliss Carman, in the formative period of both poets.

History touched Windsor lightly and sorrowfully in the fateful days of the middle of the eighteenth century, and the little blockhouse on the modern golf links remains a treasured relic. Pisiquid was a flourishing Acadian village before the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 played fast and loose with Acadian boundaries. The English at Halifax faced Acadian discontent, and Fort Edward, built at Pisiquid in 1750, was one of a chain of defences to protect the southern coast from Indian and French aggression. It lay in the line between Halifax and Annapolis in one direction, and between Halifax and Fort Lawrence in another. It was an earthwork of eighty-five yards frontage, with bastions, ditch and raised counter-scarp. The timbers for the blockhouse were squared in Halifax in the winter of 1749-50, in the first exciting months after the founding of that city.

Five years of restlessness ensued in the once happy home of the Acadians, a restlessness which found fuller expression and tragedy at Beauséjour and Grand Pré. In the spring of 1750 Acadians were refused permission to leave Pisiquid (“Junction of the waters”), but some slipped away to Ile St. Jean (Prince Edward Island). Three years later many voluntary exiles received permission to return. In the summer of 1755 the Acadians of Pisiquid joined their fellows from other points in appeals to Halifax, but without avail, and events hastened to the Expulsion. Captain Murray was in command of Fort Edward, and it was his melancholy duty to assemble the unhappy Acadians of that region. It was slow and trying work, but on October 23 John Winslow reported from Grand Pré:

“Captain Murray has come from Pisiquid with upwards of 1,000 people in four vessels.”

The population of Windsor had by this time been expelled, or melted away in flight. In the ensuing war with France many prisoners were kept at Fort Edward, even after peace was signed, and during the American Revolution there was a new flurry on the hill overlooking the Avon as the fort primed its guns to defend against marauding privateers.

THE wistful bronze figure of Evangeline casting a yearning look to the lost homeland of the Acadians as they are swept toward the waiting transports at the Gaspereau records for all time the Tragedy of Grand Pré. Man in gentler mood has rebuilt the chapel from which they departed, and thousands of visitors annually pay the tribute of a sigh for the unfortunate exiles so feelingly described by Longfellow.

The visitor cannot escape the beauty of the valley, nor the sorrow of its once happy people. In Spring the land is carpeted with eighty miles of apple blossoms, filling the air with unforgettable fragrance. Harvest and grazing cattle give fatness in Summer, and in the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” the scent of ripened apples is wafted from orchard and warehouse. At all times the purple crown of Blomidon looms above the Basin of Minas, and, unhurrying ox teams wind over the diked lands, long since made rich by the Acadians and lost in the misfortunes of war.

The crisis for the mastery of the continent was fast approaching. France had begun to colonize Acadia in 1605, and despite the widening influence of imperial England, still hoped to rule from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. As the sway of the English extended, the French from their fastness of Louisbourg, and through mischievous clerical agitators like Abbé le Loutre, resisted the foe, and the bitterness increased. Governor Charles Lawrence, an unyielding figure from New England, was in no mood to compromise, and he proceeded to close the net about the hapless but stubborn Acadians.

All but a few of them refused the required oath of loyalty to the new English rulers. Lawrence chose to force the issue, and after the fall of Beauséjour in June, 1755, he moved inevitably toward the expulsion of the Acadians who would not swear allegiance. Colonel John Winslow reached Grand Pré in August, and early in September the men of Minas Basin were summoned to the parish church. There, in the building sacred to their happy lives, where baptism and marriage had come to many of them, they received the stunning news that their lands and livestock were forfeited to the Crown, and that they and their families must be exiled from the Province. Under the threat of gleaming bayonets, the younger men were ordered to the waiting transports.

It was a sad and dramatic procession. Eighty soldiers conducted the Acadians, while hundreds of women and children wept and prayed and clung to the victims as they took the road for the mile and a half to the mouth of the Gaspereau. There were weeks of waiting for more ships and supplies, but finally, on October 8, amid scenes of confusion, the embarking of the Acadians proceeded in earnest. Loaded ships set out for Maryland, Virginia and other colonies; other transports left Annapolis Royal, Pisiquid and Fort Cumberland, and by late December over 6,000 Acadians had been exiled. The lands they had diked and brought to richness in meadow and orchard by their industrious and frugal lives lay waste and vacant, and were not repeopled for several years.

but the debate over the rightness of Governor Lawrence’s action has not ceased. Racial prejudice has diminished, and, granting the existence of fault on both sides, an increasing proportion of the conquering race feels the punishment was disproportionate to the crime, or that a more statesmanlike Governor would have averted the tragedy.

After untold miseries in unknown lands, many of the Acadians crept back to the shores of Fundy, and today their descendants live the simple, wholesome lives of Evangeline and her people. “That stilly wanderer, small Gaspereau,” as Bliss Carman called it, winds through the beautiful valley to Horton’s Landing and joins the Basin of Minas where great blue herons wade into red, muddy flats in search of a shellfish dinner. “Glooscap,” whose home was on Blomidon, according to Micmac legend, has ceased his warfare with the “Great Beaver,” leaving the Five Islands as mementoes of the rocks he tossed at his enemy. Dominion Atlantic engines bear the names of characters in “Evangeline,” and it will be many a day before the sad, sweet story of the Acadian exiles fades from memory.

THE little Dutch ship “Hector” brought to the shores of Nova Scotia in 1773 a precious cargo of two hundred Highlanders from Scotland, thus inaugurating the migration of a sturdy, thrifty race which has exercised immeasurable influence on succeeding generations. It was the “Mayflower” of Canada which sailed into Pictou Harbour on September 15, after eleven miserable weeks from Greenock and Loch Broom. Smallpox and dysentery, low provisions and scanty water, had depressed the high hopes with which they had set forth.

They had brought their own teacher, and as they departed a stowaway was observed and threatened by the Captain. The passengers found he was a piper, and on their pleading and promise of rations he was allowed to remain. When the landing at Pictou was opposed by the frightened Indians, the Highlanders donned their kilts, the piper skirled his loudest, and the red men fled to the woods, giving no further trouble.

There was already a tiny settlement, a remnant from the brig “Hope,” which had been sent from Philadelphia in 1767 by the Philadelphia Land Company, to aid in settling its grant of 200,000 acres in Pictou. These settlers and an unscrupulous agent had taken the best lands by the shore, and the Highlanders, their blood up, and their money exhausted, disarmed the Company’s storekeepers and helped themselves to provisions in their critical hour. They faced a dire winter, and all but seventy sought work in Truro, Halifax and elsewhere, only to return and take root in Pictou as conditions improved.

The colony of the “Hector” had been brought by John Ross, a smooth land agent of his day, but the venture prospered, thrift and education transformed the pioneer community, and successive parties followed after the American War, in the stirring years of the close of the eighteenth century.

The foundations were laid surely by these noble men and women who, as recorded on the memorial erected at Pictou in 1923, were the “vanguard of that army of Scottish immigrants whose intellectual ideals, moral worth and material achievement have contributed greatly to the good government and upbuilding of Canada.”

A SCREEN of spruce and birch trees topping a low hill on which cattle pasture in summer marks the site of Port Lajoie, at the entrance to Charlottetown Harbour. There is little hint in its present pastoral beauty that here was once a link in the chain of French forts guarding New World settlements and possessions, a chain which included Louisbourg on the east and Quebec on the west.

Even Jacques Cartier, on discovering Prince Edward Island in 1534, while coasting along the Gulf waters on a summer day, had described it as “the fairest that it may be possible to see.” The Indians, with more imagination, called it “Epayguit,” or “Anchored on the wave.” The French granted concessions for fishing and farming, and the rich lands about Port Lajoie early were famed for agriculture, as they are today.

Log houses and breast-works existed by 1720, with cannon and a small company of soldiers, but settlement was slow, and by 1728 there were only fourteen families. Thereafter there was rapid development, and the golden age of the French colony on the Island ensued. The French established a governor, intendant and other important officials, whose gay ruffles and laces, swords and cocked hats, contrasted with the crude apparel of the Micmacs in their neighbouring wigwams.

All through the Atlantic settlements there was now stir and unrest. The struggle for the mastery of the continent had begun. After the first capture of Louisbourg in 1745, an English force landed at Port Lajoie and wrought some destruction, but suffered heavy losses from reinforcements arriving from Quebec next year. The Island was restored to France in 1748. Governor Bonaventure then erected stronger defences, of logs, except for a stone powder magazine, and Colonel Franquet was sent from Louisbourg to create a real fort. He laid out four bastions, with buildings for 400 men, but the fort was never built. Port Lajoie in those stormy years was merely the base for repeated attacks against the English on the mainland.

The final English occupation was marked by a tragedy resembling the expulsion of the Acadians to the west. After Louisbourg’s surrender in 1758 Lord Rollo came to take possession, armed with strict orders to crush rebellion or resistance. He reported that Autumn that he had sent away 692 inhabitants, and many others had fled to Canada. The “Duke William,” which sailed from Port Lajoie for France, was wrecked off the French coast with the loss of 300 of the unfortunate Acadians from the Island.

Port Lajoie became Fort Amherst after the British took possession; its importance as a seat of defence declined. Charlottetown was established two miles up the Bay, and the Island became the “Garden of the Gulf,” famed as the home of happy farmers, the resort of joyous holiday-makers, and the source of the luscious Malpeque oysters sought by epicures in distant cities.

THESE epic words on the tablet in the Province Building at Charlottetown mark the scene of the cradling of the Dominion of Canada. The Garden Province, the “Million Acre Farm,” had the honour of the first conference leading to the Confederation of 1867. The simple stately building which faces Queen Square and the spires of St. Dunstan’s Cathedral contained the secret and significant meetings in September, 1864, of the delegates from Canada and the Maritime Provinces whose plans ripened into the nation we now call Canada. The quiet, beautiful streets of the surrounding Island capital are in themselves symbolic of the peaceful birth of the Dominion.

Years of unrest and discussion in the Maritime colonies and of deadlock and political chaos in Canada advanced toward a solution after Dr. Charles Tupper, Premier of Nova Scotia, secured the cooperation of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island for a conference at Charlottetown on Maritime union. Canada’s rulers, now at loose ends as to what best to do, grasped the chance and sought and received an invitation to attend. The Steamer “Queen Victoria” carried eight Cabinet Ministers from Quebec, including the ever-bitter rivals, John A. Macdonald and George Brown. It was a high political adventure as the vision of a new nation was seen and the idea of a local union abandoned in favour of the larger Confederation.

In the quiet of the Island capital, while the Northern armies in the American Civil War were marching on Richmond, these delegates turned from debate to entertainment and back again. The golden-voiced D’Arcy McGee, the dominating Brown, the suave, compelling Macdonald, and the analytical Galt, plied the Easterners with their arguments until the case for a larger union was accepted. When the delegates at last emerged from the secret conclave, which had all but passed unnoticed in the Press of the day, it was to startle the country with their message. John A. Macdonald at the Charlottetown banquet looked to a union of the colonies which would make them “at least the fourth nation on the face of the globe.” The delegates carried the message to the other capitals, and crystallized the project in the conference at Quebec a month later; but three years of struggle were to precede the union, while the Island itself held out until 1873.

A FEW lonely square miles of hill and marsh in the narrow borderland of the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick of today were the theatre of important events at the middle of the eighteenth century. Two rival forts, Beauséjour of the French, and Lawrence of the English, faced each other on hilltops three miles apart, and their warfare did not cease until the Isthmus of Chignecto fell to the English, in 1755, in the encircling movement for the possession of a continent.

Halifax had been founded by the English to meet the challenge of a stronger Louisbourg. Acadians in the narrowing territory to the north were restless and threatening as their passions were lashed by the Abbé le Loutre, the priest whose fomenting of hatred of the English led in the end to the unhappy exiling of his own race. Major Charles Lawrence landed at Beaubassin (now Amherst) in April, 1750, but meeting resistance he returned in September with a larger force and prepared to fortify. From this grew the palisaded Fort Lawrence, and on a nearby hill, adjacent to the marshes of Tantramar, with their red tidal rivers, there rose, in the rivalry of the French, Fort Beauséjour, with five bastions, barracks, bomb-proofs and twenty-four cannon.

For four years the opposing forts growled at each other from their hilltops. Skirmishes and raids, attacks and reprisals, went on under the inspiration of the opposing commanders. Le Loutre and Vergor forced their Acadian dependents to labour at dike-building, and the powerful Beauséjour became second only to Louisbourg in the ambitions of the French. The colour and life of the forts by the marshes, which have been preserved in the stories of Charles G. D. Roberts, Marshall Saunders and other Canadians, are among the most dramatic episodes in the country’s military record.

The French were weakened by the official corruption which was fast hastening the nation to disaster, while Paris laughed at the wit of fashionable black-legs. The Intendant Bigot, chief vampire in New France, wrote Vergor, his creature, who was commandant at Beauséjour:

“Make the most of your position, my dear Vergor; shear and pare to your heart’s content, so as to join me in France and buy yourself a mansion near me.”

British preparations against France in the New World were now advancing speedily, and an expedition against Beauséjour was organized by Governor Shirley of Massachusetts. An army of two thousand left Boston on May 22, 1755, and in a few days anchored within five miles of the Fort. Vergor was greatly alarmed, and asked Louisbourg for help, which was refused, for the good reason that the British had Louisbourg under blockade. By threats Vergor strengthened his garrison of 160 regulars by 300 Acadians from the ranks of the farmers who had sought shelter under his guns when official corruption had frustrated their hopes of diked farms and independence.

Colonel Robert Monckton landed his attacking force and camped around Fort Lawrence. On June 4 he crossed the Missaguash and approached Beauséjour. As cannon fire grew intense, Abbé le Loutre, with pipe in his mouth and as energetic as ever, directed the defenders in his shirt-sleeves. At last, after only a few days’ fighting, a shell dropped through a “bomb-proof” of the fort, killing six, within sight of the French leaders. In desperate alarm, the defenders sent up a white flag.

The French marched out on June 16 with the honours of war and were sent to Louisbourg. Le Loutre escaped to Quebec, but was caught and spent eight years in an English prison. Fort Gaspereau, across the isthmus on Bay Verte, a station for supplies from Louisbourg, also surrendered. Beauséjour was occupied by the English and renamed Fort Cumberland, after a son of George II who had won Culloden, crushing the army but not the spirit of the Highlanders.

One joy remained for the old fort. Here on an April morning in 1759 Captain John Knox received the call from Wolfe at Louisbourg to join in the attack on Quebec. The guns saluted and the soldiers cheered as they departed.

ON a bare rocky hill overlooking the “reversing falls” of the St. John River may be seen a small group of old buildings, the relics of Fort Howe, a defence post which kept the port and the river for King George in the troublous years of the American Revolution. It was a period of danger and temptation. Seventy families of disbanded troops from Massachusetts, some of them soldiers of Wolfe at Quebec, had settled up the river in Sheffield Township in 1763. When the Revolution of 1776 came, the early residents naturally sympathized with their kinsmen of New England. A rebels’ “nest” was established at Machias, on the Maine coast, near the New Brunswick border, and from here came privateers and marauders against the British ports. Colonel John Allan, formerly a member of the Nova Scotia Legislature, led these trying enterprises.

In the Autumn of 1777 the British sent Major Gilfred Studholme with 50 men, 4 six-pounders and a framed blockhouse, to establish defences at the mouth of the St. John. Before the year ended, Fort Howe was built, and thereafter was so imposing in the eyes of enemies that it is doubtful if it ever fired a shot in anger. The old Machias pirate, A. Greene Crabtree, who had previously raided the harbour for supplies for hungry revolutionists, beat a hasty retreat when he returned to find a British flag on Fort Howe. Robbery was more to his liking than fighting.

Studholme then settled down to his duty of watchdog. He had a commanding situation, and accommodation for 12 officers and 100 men. Allan in 1778 stirred the river Indians to return the British flag and to send with it a declaration of war to Fort Howe. Michael Francklin, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and James White, his agent at St. John, summoned a delegation of Indians to confer. Under the shadow of Fort Howe the eloquence and the gifts of the King’s men were so effective that the Indians signed a letter in which they said:

“We have this day settled all misunderstanding that thou didst occasion between us and King George’s men.”

There was another season of unrest upriver in 1779 and it was met with another conference and presents, with the same result.

The St. John then became a highway for messengers between the British military authorities at New York and the Governor at Quebec. The river’s safety and loyalty were secured, and when the first fleet of three thousand Loyalists reached St. John in May, 1783, to found the city and the Province of New Brunswick, there was a thunderous welcome from the iron throats of Fort Howe.

UNDER the arching elms which beautify New Brunswick’s unhurrying capital, a shabby old store building tells by its tablet that here first met in Fredericton the Legislature of the Province in July, 1788. Christ Church Cathedral, most perfect Gothic edifice in Canada, and the handsome new Parliament Building, with its curious pepper-pot tower, are neighbours, proud, but not scornful.

St. John had the Assembly for its first two years, in 1786 and 1787, meeting in the Mallard House, an inn well named in a Province of sportsmen. Governor Sir Thomas Carleton, fearing raids from New England under the bitterness following the War of Independence, chose the more isolated and central location up the St. John River. It was then called St. Anne’s Point, a remnant from the fur-trading days of the French, where Villebon had built a fort. Melicites came down the river with canoes piled high with beaver skins to gratify the vanity of Parisian beauties.

Fredericton as a capital was without roads save the river, and with little population nearby. The first meeting of the Legislature was delayed by non-arrival of members, but once at work they plunged into the question of fees for themselves! Ten Acts were passed in that session, but deadlock between Council and Assembly thereafter hindered business, as in other Provinces.

Twelve years the members met in the old building, and then they passed to something better. The city longed to rival St. John in commerce as in politics. The lumber trade came, new railways penetrated the wilderness on all sides, but the lead of the city by the sea has never been overcome.

THROUGH countless ages the Atlantic storms have battered the sea coast of North America. On the Gaspé shore, at the extremity of Quebec, the Alleghanies reached salt water and lost their battle with the ocean. The “drowned mountains” which lie between the mainland and Newfoundland became the home of the cod, and for that rich harvest adventurous men sailed westward from Europe in the great age born of the Renaissance. In that “bright dawn of human reason, the springtime of the soul,” France joined in rivalry with England and Spain, and while art and literature flourished at home, exploration and commerce pushed their little galleons into distant waters and captured empires.

Jacques Cartier carried the flag of Francis I to the new world and discovered Canada. He left St. Malo in 1534, cruised past Newfoundland, glanced at Southern Labrador where, he scornfully observed, he could not find “a cartload of good earth”; touched Prince Edward Island, and presently was driven by heavy winds into Gaspé Bay.

Now began the fur trade which has never ceased to draw European merchants to the centre of North America. Cartier met savages on the shore of Gaspé, and he thus describes this opening incident in the long story of Canadian merchandising:

“We gave them knives, combs, beads of glass, and other trifles of small value, for which they made many signs of gladness.”

The Frenchmen got furs from the wretched Indians, whom Cartier said were “the sorriest folk that could be found in the world,” for the “whole lot of them had not anything above the value of five sous, their canoes and fishing nets excepted.”

Cartier erected a cross on the shore of the inner harbour, the Gaspé Basin of today, proclaimed the name of the French King, lured two sons of the Chief on board his vessel, and departed for France, the anxiety of the bereaved Indians being readily soothed by gifts.

Through the centuries since Cartier’s day the Gaspé shore has warred with the ocean and preserved its simplicity, rugged grandeur and isolation. The Shickshocks and other mountains are visible long before passengers entering the St. Lawrence can see the fishing stations which crowd the narrow beach and give their odours to the restless winds. Percé Rock, with its famous arch, crumbles from the attacks of the sea, but its agate and jasper pebbles still glisten in the sun and water. Overhead the clouds of seafowl scream in their struggle with the wind and with each other in the battle for existence.

Champlain skirted the coast in 1603 and named the headland above the Bay Cap des Rosiers, because of its profusion of wild roses. David Kirke, in 1628, here overtook the heavier French squadron of de Roquemont and overwhelmed it by great daring. Hovenden Walker’s fleet, en route from Boston to attack Quebec in 1711, was smashed on the rocks of Gaspé. Wolfe, sent on a disagreeable mission to harass the French fishing villages after the capture of Louisbourg, rested in Gaspé for a month and then sailed home to prepare for the capture of Quebec.

Finally, in the autumn of 1914, Canada’s first contingent of 33,000 men, for the Great War, assembled in Gaspé Basin, and departed thence for England, convoyed by an imposing fleet of battleships.

AFTER its tumultuous course down the Laurentians, the St. Charles River flows placidly through the City of Quebec and in its level reaches is at the mercy of the deep tides which sweep in from the St. Lawrence. Beside an industrial suburb bearing the musical name of Limoilou there is a little park facing the St. Charles, and within it are a tall wooden cross and a modest shaft of classical lines. They mark the wintering place of Jacques Cartier in 1535-6, during the momentous voyage in which he discovered Canada.

In the great movement for colonial expansion which was gripping Western Europe, Cartier, loyal and enterprising, had served King Francis I by seeking new lands in the west. Francis, the benevolent autocrat, desired his share in the spoils, and with an army and navy was able to implement the genial command with which he concluded all his laws:

Cartier’s faithful company came in three small ships, the largest, the Grand Hermine, being of 120 tons burden. The largest ship entering Quebec today (1926), the “Empress of Scotland,” is 37,700 tons. As Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence he scattered place-names with prodigality and good taste, and declared it a “goodly land.” The valley of the St. Lawrence inspired him as being “as fine a land and as level as ever one beheld.” Grapes on the Island of Orleans led him to call it the Isle of Bacchus, while forest and fruit trees on the mainland reminded him of the fair France itself.

At Quebec the wily Indians, while giving Cartier a welcome, sought to dissuade him from going up the river to Hochelaga (Montreal). For that purpose they dressed three redskins as devils, with long horns and black faces, but Cartier was not so easily scared by theatricals. On the site of the future metropolis he was met by one thousand Indians and conducted to their village near Mount Royal.

A fort was now built by Cartier’s men, and the ships wintered in the St. Charles three miles from the St. Lawrence, near the Charlesbourg Road, which two centuries later led to the Chateau Bigot, made famous by Kirby’s novel, “The Golden Dog.” Frenchmen and Indians mingled, and Cartier learned of the rich products of the soil and the many animals and birds of the valley, and tested the tobacco of the red men, which when smoked burned his mouth like pepper.

Midwinter brought not only distressing weather but an outbreak of malignant scurvy among the uncomfortable Frenchmen. Twenty-five had died and over fifty were seriously ill, when an Indian told Cartier of a drink from a tree bark, and soon all patients were cured.

On May 3, 1536, Cartier raised a cross on the site of the cross of today, bearing the legend:

Cartier had set up his claim to Canada. He returned to France but left no settlement. It remained for Champlain, nearly seventy-five years later, to found Quebec and give permanency to New France.

On a September morning in 1759 the banks of the St. Charles witnessed the fleeing army of Montcalm pursued down the slopes of Cape Diamond by the Fraser Highlanders after the victory of Wolfe. Today the slopes are terraced by streets of homes of happy citizens of both French and English races.

TADOUSSAC, once the bustling centre of the Canadian fur trade, the port of all visiting ships, the site of the first house erected in Canada, stands in solitary neglect at the mouth of the gloomy Saguenay. An age of universal railway building has passed it by. River steamers with tourist crowds call in summer; after that it is a lonely outpost, visited by “impetuous winds, bringing with them intense cold,” as noted by Champlain.

A little white chapel, scarce thirty feet long, faces the harbour, and is Canada’s oldest wooden church, a relic from the French regime. It was commenced in 1747, roofed in by a donation from the notorious Intendant Bigot, and completed in 1750. Through fat years and lean, populous periods and times of isolation, it has served its people, and visitors may still ring in its steeple the tiny bell sent in 1647 for an earlier chapel by, it is said, Louis XIV himself. Since 1885 a larger stone church has cared for the parish, but the old chapel of St. Croix remains carefully guarded.

Jacques Cartier cast eyes on the mouth of the Saguenay in 1535, but Pierre de Chauvin made the first attempt at settlement in Canada when he dropped a handful of French colonists here in 1600. When he returned a year later several had died and the others were in the care of the Indians. Chauvin had built a house, partly a fort, and soon the name of Tadoussac spread in Western Europe. Jamestown in Virginia was not founded until 1607 and Quebec in 1608. Champlain, already famed for his voyage to the West Indies, came with Pontgravé in 1603. His report with maps so impressed Henry IV that the King agreed to back his future ventures.

Indians, of whom many tribes lived north of the St. Lawrence, swarmed to Tadoussac in summer to barter their furs for trinkets. As many as three thousand camped near the St. Lawrence at one time. Trading over, the port relapsed to death-like quiet, and nature assumed its conquering sway. Jesuit fathers, with the same devotion which marked their generations of labour to the westward, tramped and canoed the wilderness to Labrador and over the height of land, Father Albanel reaching Hudson Bay in 1671. Bishop Laval came here in the energetic performance of his pastoral duties, and confirmed hundreds of Indians. Madame de la Peltrie and Marie de l’Incarnation touched Tadoussac as they came for their heroic services for the colonists and Indians.

Tadoussac ultimately lost its importance. Champlain knew that a colony could be made permanent only by agriculture, and against the advice of his associates he moved on and founded Quebec. The fur trade failed as wild animals lessened, and the commercial centres up the river grew while Tadoussac fell away. A revival may yet be seen as ocean vessels ascend the Saguenay for traffic from the great new industries of the Lake St. John district, and the remote home of “Marie Chapdelaine” at Peribonka will be no longer on the wild frontier.

A beautiful legend persists that Father La Brosse foretold one evening in April, 1782, that he would die at midnight; that at that hour the frightened villagers heard the toll of the chapel bell, and on entering found his prostrate body before the altar, and that, as he also foretold, four sailors braved a violent storm and carried his body in safety to Isle au Coudres.

Such a legend may well retain its fragrance and acceptance in Tadoussac, for, as Parkman says, “centuries of civilization have not tamed the wildness of the place.”

THE courtly figure of Samuel de Champlain which graces Dufferin Terrace at Quebec brings back the times of Henry of Navarre, by whom he was despatched to explore the St. Lawrence and found Canada. The stately bronze is the link and symbol between a hurrying twentieth century and the age of religious wars and New World exploration, when eager Europe devoured tales of American adventure as modern boys read of the Black Forest or the South Sea Islands.

Champlain and his men landed July 3, 1608, on the shore between Cape Diamond and the St. Lawrence, and there, by laying their axes to the trunks of the walnut trees, cut a home for themselves in New France. Thus began the long war against the Canadian forest, a war which has developed vast wealth and built millions of homes in succeeding centuries.

Today the cradle of Quebec is the heart of Lower Town. Visitors stand agape at this bit of medieval Europe set down in the New World. Children scramble for safety as caleches dash through narrow streets and “sight-seeing” trolley cars traverse thoroughfares built for horses and carioles. Almost every corner has its association with some personage or incident of Canada’s early days.

Notre Dame des Victoires, one of the oldest churches in Canada, raises its spire almost on the site of the “Habitation” of Champlain, who died but a half century before it was erected in 1688. Wolfe’s guns sadly battered it in 1759, but it was restored, and now preserves some of the quaintness and daintiness of the age from which it comes. The square in front was the market place during the French regime, and around it stood the residences of the principal merchants. Captain Horatio Nelson, later the victor at Trafalgar, was in Canada with the “Albemarle” in 1782, and, according to the romantic pages of “A Diana of Quebec,” by Jean N. McIlwraith, passed through these streets as he enjoyed the company of Mary Simpson, belle of Quebec.

Champlain came in the swirling westward movement of the early seventeenth century, when even Shakespeare based his “Tempest” on tales from the transatlantic world. The chivalrous Frenchman was a soldier and explorer first, a loyal servant of Henry IV in his ambitions for an expanding France. Abandoning the stern and inhospitable Tadoussac, Champlain favoured the upper St. Lawrence because he found it “beautiful and agreeable, and it brings all sorts of grain and seed to maturity.” His lone voyage ended, his twenty-seven men were at once employed in cutting trees, sawing planks, and erecting the buildings and defences of the first permanent settlement in the Canada to be.

To Quebec Champlain brought Louis Hébert, the first Canadian farmer; the fair Hélène, his wife; the blackrobes who were to carry religion to the red men he hoped to save from their own ignorance and vices. With the true spirit of the nation-builder he travelled the rivers and lakes beyond, making maps which reflect his own restless and constructive mind. At the end of twenty years there were but one hundred Europeans in New France, but his labours paved the way for the opening up of the lusty and not forgetful nation of today.

WINDING along the strand of Sillery Cove, close to the waters of the St. Lawrence four miles above Quebec, the traveller comes upon an old house which has had more than its share of association with great events. It is the Jesuit Mission, built in 1637, the oldest house in Canada, and bridging all but two years of the great gulf since the death of Champlain. Only a Spanish house at St. Augustine, Florida, of all buildings now on the continent, was standing when the Jesuits planted at Sillery their mission to train and civilize the Indians.

The story is like that of a modern Crusade. Noel Brulart de Sillery, a rich French nobleman who had been Ambassador to Spain and to Rome for Queen Marie de Medicis, renounced the world, became a priest and resolved to devote his wealth and effort to higher things. He sold his palace in Paris to Cardinal Richelieu and gave the money to the Jesuits to establish a mission in New France which he hoped would attract the Indians from their roving habits and make them Christians. A chapel, missionaries’ residence, fort, hospital and other buildings were erected on this sunny shore, and all were protected by a wooden palisade. Friendly Indians sought its shelter, and war parties came and went in the long struggle between the French and the Iroquois.

A new era was ushered in by the arrival of the Ursulines in 1639. Madame de la Peltrie, a rich young Norman widow, surrendered her money and gave her services to establish a school in New France, bringing the practical Marie de l’Incarnation as Mother Superior. Before they settled in Quebec they visited the Sillery mission and devotedly nursed and fondled the dirty Indian children. Father Enemond Massé, the first missionary to Canada, who had come to Acadia in 1611 and to Quebec in 1625, died here in 1646 and is honoured by a monument in front of the old Mission House.

Now had come the supreme struggle with the Iroquois. The nuns were forced to retire to Quebec from this exposed position, but the courageous Fathers lingered or gave their lives in the service of their militant order. Sir James LeMoine in “Picturesque Quebec” has expressed the feeling of reverence he experienced on first crossing the threshold of the Mission House, “where for years had resounded the orisons of the Jesuit Fathers, the men from whose ranks were largely recruited our heroic band of early martyrs, some of whose dust, unburied, but not unhonoured, has mingled for two centuries with its parent earth on the green banks of Lake Simcoe, on the borders of the Ohio, in the environs of Kingston, Montreal, Three Rivers and Quebec—a fruitful seed of Christianity scattered bountifully through the length and breadth of our land.”

The red allies of the French were friendly but helpless under the onslaughts of the Iroquois. Father Isaac Jogues was captured in the forest near Lake George and tortured to death after he had declared to his tormentors: “I am a man like yourselves, but I do not fear death or torture.” Jean Brébeuf,—

as Alan Sullivan has described him, rested here after his visit to the Neutrals on Lake Erie, before he set out for the Huron Missions where he and Lalement were tortured to a horrible but inspiring death. It was a long story of suffering and martyrdom before the pale-blue ranks of the Carignan-Salières regiment from France overawed the Iroquois and brought peace to the St. Lawrence.

Maisonneuve and his party, arriving late in 1641 to found Montreal, were coldly received at Quebec by Governor Montmagny, who foresaw a rival. They spent the winter with Puiseaux at St. Michel and visited the nuns in the rough stone house at Sillery, then, as now, reached by the Grande Allee from Quebec. Along this road the Governor travelled with the first horse brought to Canada, presented to him in 1647 by his people.

The Mission House is all that remains of that historic group of buildings at Sillery. Walls three feet thick explain its solid, lasting construction, and its steep roof and general design are typical of the French-Canadian country house. Neighbouring cottages with their garden plots of petunias and nasturtiums, the old crib-work from the days of the square timber trade in the cove, the railway embankment which screens the river from view, the distant Quebec Bridge, are modern surroundings, but the Province of Quebec proudly preserves the old Mission House as a priceless link with a glorious past.

CLAUDE DE RAMEZAY was a dashing young French officer who took 800 men from Montreal to Quebec to help Frontenac beat off the English fleet of Sir William Phips in 1690. Scarcely had the enemy disappeared round Isle Orleans before de Ramezay led to the altar Marie-Charlotte Denys, daughter of one of the richest families of New France, and one of the belles of Quebec who had smiled upon and encouraged the city’s defenders.

De Ramezay returned to Montreal and steadily advanced until he became Governor of the town and district in 1703. Two years later he built the Chateau, a low, rambling structure, but so strong that it has endured in constant and varied use to the present. It faces Notre Dame Street, near the Nelson Monument, and is adjacent to Bonsecours Church and market. In early days this was the fashionable centre of Montreal, and down the hill the view was clear to the St. Lawrence. Today the roar of truck and trolley car spells another era, but from the neighbouring market place come shouts in the same tongue heard and used by de Ramezay and the scores of leaders of New France whose portraits look down from the walls of the Chateau museum.

Many of the greatest and best figures of the continent have crossed the threshold of the Chateau. De Ramezay was a lavish entertainer, but his door was as open to the Indian and his squaw as to the Governor-General and the Intendant. Governor de Ramezay died in 1724 and the Chateau was sold in 1745 to the French fur-trading organization, the Compagnie des Indes, who bartering with uncouth Indians and coureurs-des-bois, held it till the cession of Canada to Britain in 1763. A little later it was bought by the British Government and used as a Government House until 1849.

Here came in 1775-76 the leaders of the revolting United States, who sought to make Canada their “fourteenth colony.” General Richard Montgomery, on taking Montreal before his attack on Quebec, made the Chateau his headquarters, and in the following Spring Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll and Samuel Chase, delegates from Congress itself, lived here while they vainly wooed the French-Canadians. From a printing press installed in the basement came alluring appeals, but the clergy turned a deaf ear, and the “Continental” paper money brought to pay their bills about town was rejected, thus probably leading to the phrase, “not worth a Continental.” Governor Carleton defeated the retreating invaders at Three Rivers and the attempted capture of Canada collapsed.

The brilliant Benedict Arnold, who had survived the attack on Quebec, was in possession of the Chateau when a messenger burst upon him with the news that his retreat was being cut off. He loaded his 300 men into bateaux and fled to Laprairie and St. Johns, barely escaping capture.

The Chateau had another “crowded hour of glorious life” in 1849. Lord Elgin signed the Rebellion Losses bill and drove home through a shower of stones, while the mob returned and burned the Parliament House on McGill Street. Elgin a few days later addressed from the Chateau a dispassionate letter to London, defending his course and disapproving the mob, but Montreal was penalized by losing the capital.

THE name of Adam Dollard has been an inspiration to Canadian school children for generations as the supreme example of courage and self-sacrifice. Dollard and his sixteen companions, by their fight to the death in defending Montreal against the Iroquois in the Spring of 1660, earned for the Long Sault the name of the Canadian Thermopylae. The struggling colony, with bare three thousand white men in all New France, had been constantly harassed from the South, and on news of a new invasion the impetuous Dollard and his comrades enrolled and took an oath to “fight even unto death for God and country.”

It was an impressive farewell as Maisonneuve, Charles Le Moyne, Marguerite Bourgeoys, Jeanne Mance and other founders of Montreal gathered in the little clearing under Mount Royal and bade them godspeed on their desperate adventure.

After a tedious and dangerous journey, often in icy and raging waters from the melting Winter snows, they reached the foot of the Long Sault Rapids on the Ottawa River, fifty miles west of Montreal. There they occupied an abandoned palisade and awaited the savage enemy. In two days the advance guard had arrived. Musket firing soon brought the main body, and for five days a desperate battle ensued. Dollard and his men fought with the utmost bravery and abandon, but their defences were weak, and they suffered from thirst when in their fort, and from grave dangers when going to the river at night for water.

The few unstable Hurons who had joined them soon deserted and revealed to the Iroquois the weakness of the French. A last desperate effort failed when a musket, heavily charged with powder, to be thrown among the Indians, struck tree branches and fell back, killing and wounding several defenders. The enemy then stormed from all sides, and the Frenchmen were annihilated.

It seemed a futile and foolhardy exploit, but the resistance of this little band so impressed the Iroquois that they abandoned the attack on Montreal. Eight days later, by one of the curious coincidences of history, Pierre Radisson, one of the most enterprising of early Canadian explorers, and the real father of the Hudson’s Bay Company, returning from a voyage in the Great Lakes, passed this way and found the remains of Dollard and his men.

“It was a terrible spectacle to us,” he said; “there was not a tree but was shot with bullets.”

At the foot of the Long Sault today is a French-Canadian village with the musical name of Carillon, soon to be modernized by power development. By the edge of the river there is a modest granite shaft, with relief portrait of Dollard. In Lafontaine Park, Montreal, an imposing memorial, by Alfred Laliberté, with symbolic bronze group and reliefs, interprets the incident and lifts it to the lofty level it has earned in the story of New France.

TWO massive round towers, with tapering tops, face Sherbrooke Street, out near fashionable Westmount, and carry the mind back to Montreal’s early days. They are a relic of the Sulpician mission to the Indians, and were built in 1694 as part of a stone fort after wooden defences had been burned.

Marguerite Bourgeoys, first teacher in Montreal, and for years preceding her death in 1700 the first woman of the town in influence and attainment, laboured here with her companion nuns to instruct the children of the Indians clustered round about. One tower was then, as now, a chapel, while the other was a school. The walled town lay to the east, the wooded Mount Royal to the north, and large gardens farther west, where the famous Montreal melon is cultivated in its perfection. A tablet in one tower records that there rest the remains of a Huron Indian who had been baptized by Father Brébeuf, one of the Jesuits who suffered martyrdom from the Iroquois near Georgian Bay in 1649.

The Sisters of Notre Dame remained here until 1732, when the Indian mission was transferred to Sault au Récollet, and later to Oka. The Fort became a country house for the Gentlemen of the Seminary, and in 1757 Montcalm, before the crisis of his career, called on the Sulpician Fathers there “and did them the civility to sup in their refectory, at a quarter before six,” as he records.

When Wolfe had taken Quebec, and the British reinforcements in the following Spring had made further resistance useless, it was near these very towers that Montreal was surrendered and Canada ceded to Great Britain on September 8, 1760. General Sir Jeffrey Amherst had closed in from the west, Murray was advancing from Quebec, and the Intendant Bigot proposed capitulation at a council at Governor Vaudreuil’s house. Bargaining began, and the terms under which the French accepted British rule, changing the future of Canada for all time, were proposed and signed.

Behind the Towers and the stone walls there stands today Montreal College, a junior school of the Seminary of St. Sulpice, whose boys, in black frock coats, blue sashes and peaked caps, offer a strange contrast to the primitive dress of the Indians who here first received instruction nearly two and a half centuries ago.

TWENTY-FIVE miles east of Montreal the beautiful village of Verchères nestles by the St. Lawrence in one of the quiet byways of French Canada, backed by a broad plain extending to the Richelieu, where towns bearing queer names recall more stirring days.

Should you visit Verchères today, you would find winding old streets, crowded with houses which jostle each other as if there were not vast spaces in almost every direction; shady elms, a towering church spire, and a wide, placid river bearing ocean traffic—all characteristics that might be found in dozens of other Quebec villages. You may hear also the strains of a phonograph, or perhaps a violin played by a youth who has not been suppressed to the dead level of life in cities, where most people take their music, mechanically or otherwise, from external source.

Down by the river, toward which thrifty habitants may be hauling baled hay for some distant market, Verchères reveals its own colour and individuality. A great figure in bronze stands against the skyline and tells us we are in the home of Madeleine de Verchères, heroine in one of the most inspiring episodes in the early life of Canada.

It was in October, 1692, toward the end of a period marked by many harassing experiences between French and Iroquois, that Madeleine de Verchères, finding herself and the settlement the victims of an Iroquois invasion, rose to the height of heroism in one of those rare emergencies that test the mettle of men and women. Her father, the seigneur, was in Quebec, and her mother in Montreal, leaving the girl of fourteen almost alone, at a time when the region was constantly menaced by fierce red men from the Mohawk Valley. Suddenly alarmed by the cry of the settlers fleeing from the Indians, the girl ran to her father’s fort, which stood at a point between the present statue and the water’s edge. She called to arms the motley garrison of one soldier, two old men and two boys, comforted crying women whose husbands had been carried off, and then day after day led and encouraged the defenders until a party of soldiers came to their relief.

Writing some years later to M. de Beauharnois, then Governor of the colony, who had asked for her story, Madeleine gave in detail the incidents of the week of peril. There was the alarm from the settlers on the Indians’ approach, the flight to the Fort, the arming of the few defenders, the weary and anxious hours of danger, with on two occasions twenty-four hours without rest for the girl leader; the arrival of a herd of cattle which the defenders feared might be an Indian ruse, and the rescue of the Fontaine family, who had paddled to the landing place in search of security. Finally came relief with the arrival of Lieut. de la Monnerie and his forty men.

Madeleine was no ordinary peasant girl, but a bright, clear-headed woman in the making. She resembled Joan of Arc in her natural qualities of leadership, and was not unaware of the place of women in French wars, as noted in a letter to Countess de Maurepas, in which she sought a pension.

Today the visitor to Verchères cannot escape the contagion of pride which that episode and that Canadian Joan of Arc inspire. Philippe Hébert, the sculptor, has created a statue which thrills and uplifts the spectator. Madeleine stands in heroic proportions, a figure fifteen feet high, on a pedestal of rough stones from the neighbourhood, and resembling in form the bastion of a fort. Her face is to the west, chin uplifted and chest thrust forward in intrepid manner toward the foe. A broad-brimmed hat, the front turned up, exposes a refined, girlish face, but the hands bear a heavy musket. Braids of hair down her back give a final touch of immaturity to the figure called by Destiny to guard a settlement from annihilation, and to infuse courage into skulking men who would have surrendered.

Madeleine was married in 1706 to Thomas Tarien de la Naudière, and again in 1722 to de la Perade. Her descendants in the St. Lawrence and Richelieu valleys have been numerous and have been prominent in the arts and professions of French Canada.

NINE miles up the St. Maurice from Three Rivers, a deserted village, with a massive chimney and crumbling walls of various buildings, marks the birthplace of industrial life in Canada. Here stood the first blast furnace in America, the first foundry in Canada, and the foremost industry in New France. An enterprise that employed from four hundred to eight hundred persons rose from the discovery of bog iron ore, and filled this remote valley with sights and sounds characteristic of modern life, while yet the Jesuit missionary and the coureur-de-bois trod their lonely trails in the woods. The Forges have had their day, but far up the valley man has lately extended his domain, and, aided by science, has harnessed the powerful St. Maurice and created one of the great industrial regions of Canada. Below, at Three Rivers, are giant paper mills, to which an unceasing procession of logs are borne past the old Forges by the rapid current.

The iron mines of the valley were reported to Intendant Talon in 1666. Owing to the opposition of trading companies, who bought fur and wished to sell French goods, forges were not established until 1730. The founder, Poulin de Francheville, made there the first Canadian stoves, and St. Maurice heaters were the standard equipment for many Eastern Canadian homes from then almost to the present day. Axes, porridge pots, nails, hammers and spades came from the same source.

The possible making of war material was an influence in the decision of the French King to permit the founding of the Forges, and the peak of this production was reached, by an odd irony of fate, during the few months of American occupation of the St. Lawrence Valley in 1775-76. Guns were then feverishly cast and found their way into the hands of the invading army before Quebec.

Skilled workmen had been employed at the Forges from early days, and able directors such as Nordberg, a Swedish engineer, had been placed in charge by the French. Governor Sir Frederick Haldimand, while living at Three Rivers after the conquest of Canada, furthered the enterprise by money and personal direction.

The ore supply and the market for the products of the Forges kept the plant in operation until 1880. Today there are stove factories in nearly forty Canadian towns and cities.

A diverting legend persists concerning events at the Forges when British officers came after the conquest in 1760 to take possession. The story is that they found in charge a certain fiery Mademoiselle Poulin, who, rather than surrender them, threw the keys into the river. Though Dr. Benjamin Suite was unable to find a basis for the legend, it has taken a place in literature.

At one time the social life at St. Maurice Forges was not unworthy of an industrial centre. Bell and Monro, owners in the early nineteenth century, introduced the first pack of foxhounds to Canada.

THREE fire-blackened walls, the ruins left by angry Americans in 1776 after failure to take Canada, and a wall undermined by the restless Richelieu, are Time’s marks on towering Fort Chambly, erected in 1711, and now one of the most imposing war relics on the continent.

Champlain, on his way in 1609 to the lake he named for himself, rounded the rapids through the thick, nut-bearing forests, and paused to write:

The sportive shots of the Frenchmen at the bow-and-arrow-armed Iroquois later encountered brought generations of revenge, against which the French had to build strong defences along the river. Jacques Chambly, a man of cattle and substance, built a wooden fort, and the Hotspurs of the Carignan Regiment subdued the red men and left their own pretty names scattered over the level valley, in Sorel, Verchères, Varennes, St. Ours and Contrecoeur.

The old wooden fort at Chambly was abandoned in 1709, but Montreal became so anxious that France was asked to rebuild it. Without waiting, however, the colonists began and completed the great stone defence, which largely remains today. A French engineer in 1752 declared it to be impregnable, and its stout walls lent confidence to the defenders in resisting the English as Montcalm passed this way to Ticonderoga. The surrender of Chambly to Montgomery during the American invasion of 1775 was disgraceful weakness by Major Stopford, made worse by his failure to destroy stores and ammunitions. In June following, the invaders, on their way home after defeat, vented their spleen by applying the torch to the old fort.

War again touched the ruin in 1812, when 6,000 soldiers were camped at Chambly, and from there advanced against Plattsburgh, but without success. In 1837 the region seethed with disaffection, and some of the Papineau followers were interned in the Fort. By 1851 it was abandoned by the military, and in 1862 part of the east wall fell.

For over a generation the Fort has now been in sympathetic guardian hands, its three walls and bastions remain strong and forbidding, and the visitor may in imagination hear above the song of the rapids the tramp of past legions, the struggles and ambitions of commanders through centuries of stirring history.

CARLYLE referred to Wolfe’s assault on Quebec as “an enterprise of almost sublime nature; very great if it can succeed.” The world knows it did succeed, and made the Plains of Abraham the most precious and significant landmark in Canada. By this decisive battle New France was lost, the efforts of a century and a half to colonize the St. Lawrence Valley and to explore the New World came to an end; the lilies of France gave place to “the meteor flag of England.” Both leaders fell on the field, tempering the rejoicing in England and deepening the grief in France. Both had come to their final struggle crowned with laurels, Wolfe as the captor of Louisbourg from the French, and Montcalm as the victor over the English at Ticonderoga.

From Louisbourg Wolfe had returned to England, received his orders from the immortal Pitt, picked his officers, including the brilliant Carleton, joined with General Amherst and sailed for Canada in the Spring. He brought 9,000 soldiers, and Amherst 14,000 sailors and marines, conveyed in 49 warships and 200 other vessels, making the mightiest fleet that had ever crossed the seas. Captain James Cook, afterward the intrepid navigator of the Pacific, charted the river for the armada, and by June 26 the expedition was in sight of Quebec to begin the eleven weeks’ siege.

Montcalm and his lieutenants had 17,000 men, the bulk of them militia. The French leaders had realized the grievous condition of the colony, and months before had sent envoys to France for stronger support. Small reinforcements arrived in the St. Lawrence just ahead of Wolfe and Amherst. Misgovernment, the corruption of Bigot, so picturesquely described in William Kirby’s novel, “The Golden Dog,” had led Montcalm to exclaim:

“What a country! Here all the knaves grow rich and the honest men are ruined.” But he resolved to do his best: “We will save this unhappy colony or perish.”

Montcalm entrenched with 10,000 men from the St. Charles to the Montmorency, six miles, facing the St. Lawrence. Bougainville, who had won promotion by the influence of the notorious Madame Pompadour, favourite of Louis XV, was upriver beyond Cap Rouge, with 2,000 men. The Heights of Abraham were held by a small force commanded by Vergor, who had disgraced himself by the surrender of Beauséjour in Acadia. The French force on the heights of Lévis, opposite Quebec, was early withdrawn on order of Governor Vaudreuil. Wolfe made camp beyond the mouth of the Montmorency, and occupied the point of Isle Orleans and Lévis Heights, while Amherst’s warships lay nearby, ever connecting and cooperating, while Admiral Holmes harassed the French fleet and Bougainville.

Wolfe knew that Autumn must end his operations owing to ice conditions in the river. His own health was wretched, and on September 2 he wrote Pitt that he had asked the doctors to “patch him up” for a few days longer. The long siege was marked by a sharp attack on the Beauport defences on July 31, which failed. Wolfe’s brigadiers then urged a landing above Cap Rouge. On September 10 Wolfe and several officers were on the south shore above Lévis reconnoitring when one, said to have been Major Robert Stobo, the original of Robert Moray in Gilbert Parker’s “Seats of the Mighty,” pointed to the Anse au Foulon, two miles above Quebec. Wolfe saw the road to the Heights, realized the weakness of the French there, and decided on landing and attacking at that point.

The whole plan of attack was speedily developed. On the afternoon of the 12th Wolfe examined the shore from a boat near Sillery, and then folding his telescope, recited several stanzas from Gray’s Elegy, adding emotionally to his companions:

“Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than beat the French tomorrow.”

The Beauport trenches, the Bougainville forces and the French fleet were now increasingly harassed, and at night an intense bombardment of the city took place from Lévis.

By an hour after midnight every man in the British force was in his place, ready for the attack. The first boats drifted up the river noiselessly with the tide and grounded at four o’clock at the Cove. Wolfe was first ashore. Captain McDonald led the “forlorn hope” of twenty-four men to the top, quickly clearing the obstructions from the path. Vergor’s camp was asleep, his small force was soon overpowered, and Vergor himself captured in his nightshirt. A cheer of victory speedily brought the British force up the hill. French fugitives carried the news to the Beauport camp, and when Montcalm arrived he found the invaders lined up on the Plains.

Even now, Vaudreuil’s stupidity delayed action, but by 9.30 the two forces, each 5,000 strong, faced each other, a quarter-mile apart. Montcalm, in resplendent uniform, rode a black charger through the length of his lines, which were six deep. Wolfe also went along his line of battle, and received two wounds which he concealed from his loyal followers. At Montcalm’s signal, his men advanced 100 yards, and began firing.

Wolfe’s line, two deep, stood firm and silent save for the fall here and there of a man from the enemy fire. The French advanced still further, still firing, but not until the defenders were within 40 yards did Wolfe give signal. Then a devastating volley poured into the French, repeated again and again. The French reeled and seemed to melt under the leaden hail. In five minutes their right was shaken and the survivors fled toward St. Charles, the centre followed, and after a little hesitation the left swept over the crest in confusion.

Montcalm was wounded, but rode his horse down Grande Allee and through St. Louis Gate, making light of his condition to anxious women. Wolfe fell soon after giving his famous signal, and passed away on the field, declaring, “I die happy,” after learning of the flight of the enemy.

A stone column, lavishly surrounded in summer by flowers, bears the simple but inspiring words: “Here died Wolfe Victorious.” Montcalm died the next morning and was buried in the city; Wolfe’s body was taken to England. Their death on the same field is remembered and their names linked and honoured in the lofty words of the memorial erected in 1828 by Dufferin Terrace:

AT Ste. Foy, on the edge of the Plains of Abraham, France almost recaptured her lost Quebec. Here in the Spring of 1760 a desperate battle was fought, in which the French, under Chevalier de Lévis, were victors over the British under the impetuous General Murray. Each side lost over one thousand men, and when the British retired behind the city walls it was within the lap of Destiny which nation would eventually hold Quebec.

Only the arrival of British warships two weeks later saved the fortress from assault which might have changed the ownership of half a continent. Had France held Quebec, would there ever have been a British Canada? Would the struggle have been renewed from the vantage-ground of the colonies which afterward revolted?

An imposing fluted iron column inscribed “To the Brave” marks the battleground of Ste. Foy. It stands on an eminence looking over the beautiful St. Charles Valley and surveying the blue Laurentians far down the St. Lawrence. This was the site of Dumont’s mill, around which the battle waged fiercely on April 28, 1760. The mill was taken and retaken several times in that day of bloody fighting. When the conflict ceased, the ground about the mill was covered with bodies.

Lévis, who later was made a marshal in the French army, was Montcalm’s chief lieutenant and trusted adviser. He had aided in the victory over the British at Ticonderoga, and he had beaten off Wolfe’s attack at Montmorency a few weeks before the final attack on Quebec. When that attack came, Lévis was in Montreal, and his absence doubtless contributed to the confusion of the French after Montcalm fell. On hearing of the battle, Lévis hurried toward Quebec, restored courage and discipline in the army and was nearing the city when the unexpected news of capitulation was received.

Murray made friends with the Canadians, and soon the starving refugees emerged from their hiding places in the forests. Lévis now waited for Spring and prepared for his attack. In mid-April the ice went out, and Lévis at once advanced from Montreal. Ships carried supplies, and as his army went forward it rolled up many reinforcements from the Canadians, until he had a total force of about ten thousand. Outside Quebec a terrific storm was met, and at one time the Frenchmen moved forward through mud and slush by the illumination of lightning.

General Murray learned of the enemy’s advance only through a sentinel’s rescue of a half-dead French artilleryman from a floating cake of ice after his companions had been drowned. He at once led a small force to Ste. Foy and poured cannon fire into the French outposts seen in the forest. He then returned to the city and prepared for the morrow.

Early on the 28th Lévis rode his horse over the Plains, seeking a favourable location, and presently saw Murray and his full force of three thousand advancing. Murray selected the position held by Wolfe when he awaited Montcalm. The battle was soon waging desperately. The fight went on for hours, with advantage to neither side. At length a British battalion was caught in the flank, and Murray’s last reserve failing to save the situation, he retired. Exhausted by the struggle, the French were unable to follow up their advantage.

On May 9 the sight of the tops of a man-of-war down the river raised the hopes of both armies, but the ship proved to be British. Lévis redoubled the efforts of his siege, but on the 15th three more British warships arrived. Now outnumbered, Lévis gave up and retired to Montreal, to await the final outcome of the struggle in September.

Driveways and flower beds decorate the battlefields outside Quebec in modern times, but as long ago as 1860 the memorial to the brave men at Ste. Foy was erected, topped by a figure of Bellona, the goddess of war, the gift of Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.

TWENTY miles up the Richelieu from Fort Chambly, Isle aux Noix lies midstream. The massive earthworks and concealed buildings of its Fort Lennox, undertaken on the advice of the Duke of Wellington, reflect the construction of the nineteenth century, but even now are obsolete. It is the most complete and perfect abandoned defence in the Dominion, its buildings a survival from the panicky years immediately following the War of 1812.

A summer visitor of today will find only oppressive silence, broken, it may be, by the flight of startled black ducks from their feeding ground in the moat, whose waters are stagnant and almost choked with lilies and other marine plants. From the ramparts old cannon look out on the quiet river and recall grimmer days.

Though the Nut Island named by Champlain as he passed up the river in 1609 was the battleground of contending nations for the possession of Canada in the eighteenth century, its newer Fort Lennox belongs to the century of peace with the only neighbour against whom it might be used. Its majestic elms, green sward, beautifully arched buildings, sally-port, and its remains of dry-dock and churchyard, are the attraction of tourists and the wonder of the student.

From the first French defence against the Iroquois, Isle aux Noix played its part, but its main incidents centre round the conquest of New France by the British, and in the invasion of Canada by the Americans sixteen years later. When Amherst drove back the French outposts on Lake Champlain in the Summer of 1759, Bourlamaque fell back to Isle aux Noix, where he wrote: “I wait his coming with impatience.” He still held and waited while Wolfe thundered at the gates of Quebec and captured the city.

Next Spring the Island was diligently fortified against the inevitable end. Bougainville, a Frenchman, afterward distinguished by voyages and discoveries, was in command of the Island, and the taking of Canada was not finally possible until Colonel Haviland’s overpowering attack destroyed the French ships and cut their communications. Bougainville escaped through the forest and the way was open to Montreal.

The garrison then established was no match for Montgomery in his march on Quebec in the Fall of 1775, and the Island was held by the Americans for almost a year. After the disasters to the invaders at Quebec and Three Rivers, and an outbreak of fever in the force at Isle aux Noix, the Americans were glad enough to escape over the border. It was then that defence works in earnest were begun by Governor Haldimand, and the moat, the rectangular ramparts, with bastions, as we see them today, date from the labours of the hired German soldiers employed in 1778. The attack did not come, but after the close of the Revolution fleeing Loyalists were assembled here for distribution and settlement under the British flag.

During the next conflict, the War of 1812, the Island was a base for the attack on the Plattsburgh arsenal, and was the scene of the capture of two American sloops. The massive officers’ quarters, barracks and other buildings, were constructed from time to time until 1826, and when peace at last descended, there came quiet, neglect and final withdrawal of the Imperial troops in 1869.

After more than half a century of abandonment, in this remote corner of the Eastern Townships’ borderland, the Fort was turned over to the Canadian National Parks in 1921, to become a prized resort and picnic ground, with a museum of important trophies from the Great War.

AN ancient cannon or two on crumbling earthworks adjacent to a modern barracks, a yacht club and a city park, are contrasting river-front scenes in St. Johns. They remind us that here was the key to the defence of Canada against the American invasion of 1775. It is but one of many centres of interest on the Richelieu, a river of history for two centuries, the river whose place-names recalled to Thoreau the France of the Troubadours. The waters almost lap the earthworks erected for a brief and stirring era, this fort being one of the last posts abandoned by the French as the British moved on Montreal to complete the occupation of Canada in 1760.

The “shot heard round the world” had been fired but a few days at Lexington in April, 1775, when Benedict Arnold led a small force down the Richelieu and took an armed sloop at St. Johns, together with the dozen men guarding the old fort. Sir Guy Carleton was alarmed, but the relieving force from Montreal found the fort already deserted. At once there was lively preparation, and Carleton made St. Johns his main point of defence. Two redoubts were built, 600 feet apart, each 100 feet square, with palisade, stockade and ditch. The French-Canadian peasantry were largely neutral, but Carleton, who was one of “Pitt’s young men,” massed 700 men at St. Johns under Major Preston and awaited attack.

Richard Montgomery, who had been with the British at Louisbourg, and in the operations on Montreal in 1760, besieged St. Johns on September 18, 1775. A long, inconclusive artillery duel took place, but the 4,000 invaders moved closer. Chambly fell, and Major Preston and his gallant force of 688 surrendered St. Johns on November 2.

When the Americans retired in the spring of 1776, and when the habitants had begun to fall away from the enemy, St. Johns saw Montgomery and the last of the discouraged, ragged invaders put off in their boats for home.

Lafayette, the younger French leader, who is now among the Immortals for those who applaud “liberty,” almost came to St. Johns. He had started up the Hudson for Canada in the Spring, but changed his mind and halted at Albany. By July 1 the Americans were back at Crown Point, and three days later the Declaration of Independence was signed, claiming a separate existence for the Thirteen Colonies in future.

Carleton then launched his counter-stroke, which was carried on by his successor, General Burgoyne. A great force of 10,000 moved off from St. Johns for Lake Champlain, but Burgoyne, though brave and honourable, and an engaging personality, was unequal to frontier fighting and surrendered at Saratoga the next year.

A traveller in 1796 found the St. Johns fortifications already out of order in a town of “fifty miserable houses.” Today industry thrives in many forms, and processions of barges lock through the canal to Chambly in a heavy international trade between the St. Lawrence and the Hudson.

‟HERE stood the Undaunted Fifty,” and “Montgomery Fell,” are the messages of two tablets on the face of Cape Diamond beneath the Citadel of Quebec, mutely recording a fateful battle when defeat met American invaders who sought to make Canada the “fourteenth colony.” Richard Montgomery had taken his victorious way from Northern New York down the Richelieu, and had occupied Montreal. Governor Sir Guy Carleton had eluded him by donning habitant’s clothing and rowing in a small boat through the darkness, first with muffled oars, then with bare hands, past the American ships at Sorel. At Quebec he quickly vitalized the defence forces.

Montgomery followed down the St. Lawrence and joined with the army of Benedict Arnold, who had made an adventurous march through the Maine wilderness and down the Chaudiere to a point near Quebec.

As the invaders beset the grey old city, the British were left in possession of only about one square mile of all the territory taken from the French fifteen years earlier.

General Winter now threw his forces of cold and storm to the side of the defenders. Through December the invaders’ supplies grew less, until even George Washington, watching from his Southern headquarters, yearned for the arms and clothing in the Quebec magazine. Many enlistments were to expire at the end of the year, and desertions and smallpox further reduced the attacking force.

When siege and blockade had failed, Montgomery determined on assault on the first dark night. Early in the morning of December 31, in the midst of a raging snowstorm from down the river, Montgomery moved off. Alarm bells soon rang through the city, from the great bell of the Cathedral to the tiny prayer bell of the Ursulines. In a twinkling the defenders were out. Carleton, calm, alert and fearless, passed down to the rendezvous at Place d’Armes. Montgomery descended the heights at Wolfe’s Cove and marched along the narrow lower road to Cape Diamond, Arnold and his force approached from St. Roch toward the east end of Lower Town, both having in view the prize of the warehouses and shipping. Livingston made a demonstration against the city walls.

Half-blinded by the storm, Montgomery led his men bravely toward the barricade at Pres-de-Ville, a structure reaching fifty feet from the cliff to the river. All was dark and silent. Then came the rush, with the rallying cry of the leader, sword in the air:

There was a roar of musket and cannon fire from the darkness beyond the barricade, where Carleton had posted his “undaunted fifty,” and Montgomery and his twelve leading men fell. Another volley, and the remaining invaders fled in confusion. Hours later a frozen hand projecting from the snow led to the recovery of Montgomery’s body and its reverent burial in the city wall.

Arnold fared better. His force passed the first barricade and took some prisoners, but Arnold was wounded in the leg. Daniel Morgan of Virginia led on, and soon was in a desperate battle in the little houses of the Sault au Matelot, beneath the Laval University of today. Arnold failed to realize his advantage and the invaders were signally defeated when Carleton sent a party of 500 to attack the American rear.

The remnant of the Americans remained in the vicinity of Quebec until Spring. In March Carleton rejected a demand to surrender. His soldiers, with more humour, erected a wooden horse with some hay on the city wall, with this sign:

On May 6 the guns of a British fleet were heard, and an advance of the defenders through the city gates caused the Americans to retire. The effort to secure the “fourteenth colony” had collapsed.

ONE of the prime heroes of French Canada is Charles de Salaberry, victor of the Battle of Chateauguay in 1813, a small but important engagement which saved Montreal from almost certain capture by the Americans. De Salaberry had been born at Beauport, near Quebec, of an old noble family from Navarre, had served eleven years in the British army in the West Indies, and had returned to his native land to organize the Voltigeurs, a celebrated corps of Canadian regulars. Now at thirty-five he was faced with the supreme adventure of his life.

General Wade Hampton, a Southern soldier, set out from Lake Champlain with 7,000 men for Montreal. De Salaberry hastily threw his little force into the narrow valley of the Chateauguay River to oppose the invader. At Bryson’s, a hamlet forty-three miles southwest of Montreal, now passed by heavy traffic between Montreal and the Adirondacks, lies the battlefield. It is a rich farming community, racially half French, half English, with no reminder of the conflict save a towering obelisk of granite in a little park by the roadside.

In the autumn of 1813 there was but a narrow clearing between the river and the forest on both sides. On the left bank de Salaberry prepared for battle. Four ravines of small creeks emptying into the Chateauguay were made into defences, and a mile to the south the clearing was completely obstructed by trees felled by thirty axemen. “Red George” Macdonell had hastened from Kingston with his crack regiment of Glengarry Fencibles, who held a ford and a reserve position in the rear.

Hampton sent Colonel Purdy with a force of 1,500 across an upper ford on the winding river. During the night they lost their way and made slow progress. They were opposed by two companies of the Beauharnois militia as they pressed on through the clearing, and presently came within range of de Salaberry’s men on the left bank. The Canadian commander had only 300 in his advanced force, while 160 were across the river fighting Purdy. De Salaberry now wheeled his men to the left, while he mounted a stump to give orders for a hot flanking fire across the river, which is here about 250 feet wide.

Purdy’s men were discouraged at failing to take the lower ford, and then astonished at the discovery of Macdonell’s reserves; but the final impulse to panic came when the Canadian bugles sounded the “advance” from all directions at once, convincing the invaders there was a force of many thousands in reserve. Purdy’s soldiers, who had lost touch with Hampton, broke and fled into the woods. Hampton had not overcome the obstacle of the fallen trees, his ten cannon were silent, his cavalry useless, and he, too, retired to the south in complete defeat.

By the light of a wood fire that night (October 26), Colonel de Salaberry wrote his despatch, saying modestly that “the enemy has been obliged to abandon his plan.” He was less modest when he thought General Prevost sought to rob him of honours due, and a controversy raged for years. He entered Parliament in 1818 and died in 1835 at Chambly, where his figure in bronze by Phillippe Hébert expresses the calm confidence of a heroic Canadian.

CANADA’S first railway, a little stub of sixteen miles connecting the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers, was opened in 1836. There still remains at Laprairie, the St. Lawrence terminus, a half mile of the embankment which carried it to the river, and a submerged remnant of the quay which bore the freight to the ships loading for Montreal far out in deep water. The embankment is now a highway—Dyke Street—and protects the town in Spring from the angry floods of the river. The quay is marked by a mass of marine plants, rising above the river’s surface from the sunken cribs.

Montreal, now so imposing in its curtain of factory smoke, was already a city of promise when news of successful railway operation in England in the late ’twenties stirred the ambitions of Canadian promoters. The Champlain & St. Lawrence Railway was chartered in 1832 to construct a line from Laprairie to St. Johns, above the Richelieu rapids. Capital of £50,000 was provided, construction begun, and the road was opened, with convivial ceremony, on July 23, 1836.

The start was primitive enough, with wooden rails topped with iron straps, and some of the cars were drawn by horses. The rails curled under the hot sun, and earned the title “snake rails.” Next year an engine, called the “Kitten,” and an engineer, were imported from England. The first trip was delayed by insufficient wood and water, but on a moonlight night, to avoid the jeers of the populace should it fail, the “Kitten” was started and frisked away, thus opening the greatest chapter in Canada’s economic development.

At first the railway was operated only in summer, when traffic was heaviest. Two ships, the “Iron Duke” and the “Eagle,” carried the freight to Montreal, and Laprairie was a busy, prosperous transfer point. This happy era lasted until 1852, when the railway was extended to St. Lambert, more directly opposite Montreal. In 1859 the Victoria Bridge was completed, and the traffic which boomed Laprairie moved on to an easier and more profitable route.

AN alert, armed, threatening figure of an old habitant, cut in imperishable white marble, decorates the town square in St. Denis, a memorial to the stirring days of 1837. To the south stands the old church from whose belfry rang the alarm on that November morning, summoning the five hundred French-Canadian farmers who fought the British forces then approaching from Montreal. Louis Joseph Papineau, who had lighted fires of insurrection which he could no longer control, was there, but he was “wanted” by the Government, and before noon he had abandoned the field and fled toward the United States.

The defence leadership fell upon Dr. Wolfred Nelson, a St. Denis physician with large local interests, who had seen service in the War of 1812, and who had presided a month earlier at the rebels’ great “meeting of six Counties” at St. Charles. Nelson was then in his physical prime at forty-four, a man of six feet four inches, vigorous of body and determined of mind. He rode out toward Sorel to meet Colonel Gore’s force of 250, ordered bridges destroyed, and speedily organized the defence of St. Denis.

Gore’s little army, weary from an all-night march, through mud and slush, following the feeble gleam of a lantern at the top of a pole, was not a formidable enemy. The attack was in three columns, but mainly against the St. Germain house, which was Nelson’s strongest defence. When pressed too warmly, Nelson’s men descended from the upper to the lower story, where the walls were heavier, and picked off the soldiers behind fences and piles of cordwood.

The decisive hour came when substantial reinforcements for the rebels arrived from St. Antoine, across the Richelieu. Their coming was hastened by George E. Cartier, a son of that village, then twenty-three, a follower of Papineau, and later Premier of United Canada and a Father of Confederation. Colonel Gore’s ammunition was now nearly spent, he had suffered serious losses, and he ordered a retreat to Sorel. As the troops floundered back through the mud they lost their one twelve-pounder but maintained their discipline.

There was jubilation in St. Denis, but it was of short duration. Colonel Wetherall had been sent across country to St. Charles, six miles farther up the Richelieu, another centre of unrest. Couriers from Sir John Colborne ordering him to retreat were captured by the rebel pickets. Wetherall, unaware, pressed on, and after a severe battle defeated the Papineau forces.

This ended the rebellion in the Richelieu country. Dr. Nelson fled toward the United States boundary, and wandered in the woods for weeks, cold and almost famished. Early in December he was captured and taken to Montreal. He was banished to Bermuda by Lord Durham, and on release practised medicine in Plattsburgh, N.Y., until 1842, and afterward served his country honourably in Parliament and the Civil Service.

DENTS in the stone front of the big twin-spired church at St. Eustache are the scars carried ever since the spirited and dramatic battle of December 14, 1837, when the Papineau forces on the north shore of the St. Lawrence were crushed and the rebellion in Lower Canada ended. News of the defeat of the rebels in the Richelieu Valley had only partly damped the ardour of the insurgents on the north shore, who were spurred on by the mysterious Swiss adventurer, Amury Girod, and the young village leader, Dr. J. O. Chenier.

Swaggering rebels paraded the village streets, smoking short black pipes, and wearing long blue tuques, eating, drinking and quarrelling as they waited the day of battle. South and east lay the Islands of Jesus and Montreal; to the west the Indian mission of Oka with the Laurentian fastness of the Trappists in their Castle of Silence; to the north the Village of St. Lin which four years later was to give the world Wilfrid Laurier, future French-Canadian Premier of a happy Dominion.

Sir John Colborne took his time in his plans for suppression. The Commander-in-Chief of the Government forces had fought with Wellington in Spain and at Waterloo, and his services in smashing Napoleon’s Old Guard at the decisive battle were so important that he divided honours with the Iron Duke.

St. Charles had been won and Montreal made safe when Colborne started with 2,000 men across the snows on December 13 for St. Eustache. He camped that night at St. Martin’s, twelve miles out, and next morning completed the remaining six miles. Colonel Wetherall, the victor at St. Charles, encircled the village through deep snow, while Globensky’s Volunteers approached from the south. Soon the troops were in the village, to find the church, the presbytery and other stone buildings occupied and barricaded.

There was silence which was only broken when an advance was made down the main street toward the church. Firing became hot against the church front, but without result. Ned Wetherall, a son of the Colonel, now employed bold strategy. He slipped behind a row of houses and, entering a large building, upset the burning stove and started a fire. Soon a mass of smoke poured out, obscuring the church front. Under this screen the troops advanced to the church on the double. They entered a rear door, only to find its defenders perched in the gallery. The soldiers, unable to dislodge them, now set fire to the interior.

The rebels fled for their lives, and their cause was lost. Many were shot in the flight, including Dr. Chenier, whose strident figure in bronze adorns Viger Square in Montreal. Feeling was high, and the slaughter of the Canadian rebels was ruthless. Sixty houses were burned, and the torch was applied next day in the neighbouring village of St. Benoit, despite the display of the white flag. The incidents earned for Colborne, rightly or wrongly, the name of “The Old Firebrand.”

The day of reckoning came later. In 1849 the Rebellion Losses Bill, to compensate those who suffered loss of property during the rebellion, was passed by the Assembly at Montreal, causing riots and the burning of the Parliament Buildings.

THE valley of the Nicolet, which meanders between the hills and beneath the graceful elms of the Eastern Townships, is one of the most alluring regions of French Canada. It is a countryside to calm a troubled spirit or revive a weary body.

Here came Wilfrid Laurier in the Autumn of 1866, a struggling young lawyer in poor health, whom friends advised to leave Montreal if he wanted to stay in this world. He was sad, grave and indifferent, according to Senator L. O. David, his life-long friend, and seemed to say to those about him: “Brothers, we must die.”

Arthabaska, the town in which young Laurier eventually settled in the following year, at the age of twenty-six, soon wrought wonders. Instead of the clang and strain of Montreal, there was peace and thoughtful leisure. His health revived, and in a year he sought and won Miss Zöe Lafontaine, friend of his student days in Montreal. She came to share his professional struggles in Arthabaska, and lived to enjoy his political triumphs for almost half a century.

This son of a Laurentian land surveyor moved from one scene to another as though his scheme of life were ordained by an Unseen hand. As a boy in St. Lin, he was slender, delicate, but ever well dressed. Women standing at their windows to peep at the schoolboy used to say: “There goes the little gentleman.” In New Glasgow, a neighbouring village, he learned the English his father knew would be needed, and fought the Scottish boys in friendly rivalry. In L’Assomption he dominated an important college of differing views by sheer intellect and character. In Montreal he took law in both languages, and tasted the pleasures of city social life.

On the shelves of the Laurier library were many books on Abraham Lincoln, and these were devoured by the young lawyer in Arthabaska, who in his silver speech, lanky form, and high devotion to public duty resembled the President recently martyred. The streets of this Quebec town swarm with the signs of avocats, for it is the seat of the Court House, and French-Canadians love litigation. By day Laurier argued in the big red-brick Court House, or persuaded litigants to make peaceful settlement of their disputes over wills, line fences, or damage actions against the railway.

When the office door closed, he wandered in the woods or sought his home, there to browse among the choice works of two languages, to enrich his mind and broaden his vocabulary, habits which persisted through his long life. Nor was it a dull community. A town which included as citizens, Phillippe Hébert, the sculptor; Edouard Richard, historian of the Acadians, and more recently, A. Suzor-Coté, the painter, had claims as an intellectual centre.

It was a happy life, but it was not a complete life. Possibly Laurier would fain have remained in the comfort and quiet of Arthabaska; but probably not. He answered the call to public life by entering the Quebec Legislature in 1871. Three years later he was in the House of Commons. In 1887 the Liberal party, in its hour of need, chose him as a national leader in succession to the tired and discouraged Edward Blake. A few more years and he was Prime Minister, playing for fifteen years his supreme role in developing the land whose foundations Macdonald had laid and in spurring its national spirit and widening its world outlook.

In the summer of 1914 Sir Wilfrid Laurier returned to his home in Arthabaska on his last extended visit to the comfortable brick house which faces his little old white wooden law office. Though now not in power, he was weary from a trying session, and the peace of his early home was again a beneficent reviver. He met old friends, read old books, and engaged in gentle banter with the neighbouring children. Suddenly as a bolt from the skies, the world war crashed. Sir Wilfrid abandoned his rest and gracious hospitality, speeded to Ottawa, and announced a truce to party warfare.

Anxious years, not without internal bitterness, passed before victory came. His body, once so delicate, but which had carried the eager spirit almost to fourscore years, now gave way. The knight of the White Plume, a fanciful name derived from his long white hair, answered his call in 1919, and was buried at Ottawa, the scene of his long public labours.

‟CHAMPLAIN passed this way” might well be written in imperishable letters at a hundred points in Canada. One of the few as yet so marked is on the shore-line of Georgian Bay, near the entrance to the harbour of Penetanguishene. On the wooded border of Tiny Township stands a cross, signifying that from here passed inland in August, 1615, Father Le Caron, first white man to set eyes on Georgian Bay, followed in a few days by Samuel de Champlain, to visit the prosperous Huron villages.

Champlain had taken the route of the period, ascending the Ottawa River from Montreal, crossing Lake Nipissing, and descending French River to Georgian Bay shores, thence “among islets countless as the sea-sands.” From the Huron villages he afterward passed to Lake Simcoe, where he wintered, despatching Étienne Brulé down the Humber to Lake Ontario, the first explorer to visit the site of Toronto. Brulé then passed south of Lake Erie to seek allies against the Iroquois.

After the Hurons had been scattered or exterminated by the Iroquois in 1650, the solitude of neglect lay long on Georgian Bay, save for the passage of forces to and from Michilimackinac. In 1793 Governor Simcoe came and was favourably impressed, and near the close of the War of 1812 a naval establishment was placed there. It existed intermittently until 1832, after which it was reduced and the property converted into a reformatory.

The Penetanguishene Bay of modern times is one of the gateways to island-studded Georgian Bay and other playgrounds of the North, penetrated in Summer by vacationists recovering their vigor from the land described by Wilfred Campbell as:

ON a commanding hill overlooking Georgian Bay, to the west, and almost in sight of Christian Island to the north, there stand an impressive cross and altar, marking the site on which was celebrated on August 12, 1615, the first religious service in Ontario. To the Hurons it was the Village of Caraghouha; to the prosperous farmers of Simcoe County today it is Lafontaine, five miles from Penetanguishene.

The Récollets had that year despatched three priests and a lay brother from France to carry religion to the infant colony and the Indians. On their arrival at Quebec at the end of May an altar was raised, and while all New France kneeled, the first mass ever said in Canada was celebrated by Father Dolbeau.

Father Joseph Le Caron was assigned to the Hurons. At Montreal he and Champlain met the red men, who had come down for their yearly trading, and heard their clamour for aid against the relentless Iroquois. Champlain was persuaded and returned to Quebec to prepare; Le Caron, impatient, set off ahead, ascending the Ottawa with the Hurons.

It was a cruel journey for this refined Frenchman, fresh from the kindly contacts and environments of Europe. His rude garment of coarse grey, with the peaked hood, knotted cord and wooden sandals, was no match for the wilderness, and his feet were cut and bleeding from the sharp rocks of the innumerable portages. His body almost gave way under the stern labour of the paddle, fortified only by a thin porridge of water and maize.

The Indians descended the French River until Le Caron, first of all white men, beheld “Mer Douce,” the fresh water sea of the Hurons. They threaded the maze of Islands of Georgian Bay and when near the Huron villages entered the trail inland. Champlain, following a few days later, noted the “very good fish” in the Bay, “not only those that we have, but also some that we do not have, and chiefly in trout, which are monstrously large.” Thus we have the first fish story from Lake Huron.

Champlain’s coming was joyously welcomed and he was feasted and honoured by his red allies. At Caraghouha, the chief Huron village, with triple palisades 35 feet high, he joined Le Caron and preparations were made for mass. A bark lodge was built in the forest for the service. The Hurons assembled with hope and some reverence. Father Le Caron, with the precious decorations he had saved from disaster on his perilous journey, elevated the Host while the company of a dozen Frenchmen kneeled, rough voices were raised in a Te Deum Laudamus, and the message of the Gospel had its first expression in the great fertile belt that is now Ontario.

A statue of Le Caron at the door of the Roman Catholic church in Penetanguishene pictures the devoted ascetic figure of this pathfinder in Canadian religion. In that figure we read a new meaning for the words of Mr. J. W. Gauvreau, of Ottawa, in his oration at the dedication of the Lafontaine shrine in August, 1922:

“May the halo of your zeal throw its glow into the hearts and minds of our Canadian people, making for a greater appreciation of that citizenship handed down to us by you.”

HURONIA mourns its lost people but is resolved to honour its heroes. After nearly three centuries, the Jesuit martyrs have been beatified at Rome, and a shrine has been erected at Fort Ste. Marie to mark the death of brave missionaries and the extinction of a progressive Indian nation.

Sixteen thousand Hurons once farmed and lived their aboriginal village life on the rich lands between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. Champlain and the French clergy, appalled at the superstition of these red men, established a mission which for thirty-five years called forth the best that was in the Récollets and Jesuits, until the relentless Iroquois destroyed the Hurons by death and dispersion.

Western Europe was aflame with the light of the Renaissance, the new awakening in literature, painting, music, science and exploration, and with a religious zeal that counted no sacrifice too great. Around the world the Society of Jesus was ministering to crude native races, and in 1614 alone one hundred thousand converts were reported in Paraguay.

The noble Jean de Brébeuf carried the lamp of the Jesuit faith to the villages of Huronia and protected its flickering light until a gust of Indian warfare extinguished the flame, brought the cruellest of deaths to the missionaries, and scattered the homeless and discouraged remnant of Hurons. Year after year the Jesuit fathers laboured among the Indians. Their life of sacrifice may be judged from the following description of a Huron cabin, written in 1639 by Jérôme Lalemant:

“You will find there a miniature picture of Hell, seeing nothing ordinarily but fire and smoke, and on every side naked bodies, black and half-roasted, mingling pell-mell with the dogs which are held as dear as the children of the house, and share the beds, plates and food of their masters. Everything is in a cloud of dust and, if you must go in, you will not reach the end of the cabin before you are completely befouled with soot, filth and dirt.”

For their own comfort and relief the Jesuits built Fort Ste. Marie in 1639, as a home and retreat, with chapel and hospital. Here they kept open house, serving thousands of meals to Hurons who visited them. France was keenly interested, and even the powerful Cardinal Richelieu contributed to the cost. Corn, beans, pumpkins and wheat were grown on the surrounding lands, composing the rich Simcoe County of today. Even the Hurons stored grain for winter, to supplement the results of hunting and fishing.

All seemed to be going well. In 1648 Ragueneau wrote: “The Indians have surpassed our hopes; the greatest number, even the fiercest, have become so docile that it would appear the angels are working here more than we are.”

Jesuits came and went, until twenty-nine had served in Huronia. Black robes stepped from their canoes on the little River Wye to the gate of Fort Ste. Marie, bringing the news of France or some distant land where they had been serving their zealous Order.

Suddenly the dread enemy descended. In the summer of 1648 a party of Iroquois attacked St. Joseph, a frontier village to the east. Father Anthony Daniel went to the gate and in the short, sharp struggle met the martyrdom he craved. There followed a Winter of intense anxiety. Then at dawn on March 16 a war party of 1,200 Iroquois, who had wintered on the Upper Ottawa, swooped upon St. Ignace, seven miles east of Ste. Marie. They quickly breached the walls and slew the inhabitants. Three Hurons escaped to St. Louis and warned Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant, but the devoted priests refused to desert their people.

The Hurons were annihilated after a terrific struggle, and the Jesuits were captured and carried away for torture. Boiling water was poured on them, red-hot axes applied to their bodies, and pitch and resin put on them and set on fire. All was borne with sublime courage and fortitude until the flickering spark of life departed hours later.

Fort Ste. Marie was not attacked, but the surviving Jesuits and Hurons lost all heart. They burned the remaining villages, set fire to the loved Ste. Marie, their home and haven for ten years, loaded their effects on rafts and paddled to Christian Island, twenty miles away. There they built another refuge, Fort Ste. Marie II, but after a perilous Winter set forth in 1650 for Quebec. After years of further wanderings they finally settled at Lorette, where their descendants still live.

Disorderly heaps of stones mark the remnants of walls and bastions of Fort Ste. Marie, three miles south of Midland, and not far from Georgian Bay. A new forest has grown over the precious ground. A few hundred feet to the north, on a hill where once camped the solicitous Hurons, has been erected an imposing shrine where pilgrims attend and seek to recapture the spirit of humility and sacrifice of the Jesuit martyrs. Cardinal O’Connell of Boston, in opening the shrine in June, 1926, exalted the martyrs in these inspiring words:

“The world is looking for heroes. Here they are. The world, in its vanity, praises those who win battles and wars. These martyred men won the greatest battle in which man can be victor, the victory which comes from serving God on earth, of bringing God to the hearts of the simple savages. The whole thought is so thrilling that we want to kneel down in silence and say nothing, but to feel these holy men.”

KINGSTON has been the home and nursery of explorers, statesmen and leaders of thought for over two centuries. Only Quebec in the Dominion compares with its long record of military importance, extending from the creation of the first French outpost against the Iroquois to its noble part in recent wars.

Though Champlain passed through in 1615, it remained for Governor Frontenac, with the dashing La Salle, to establish Fort Frontenac in 1673 and found a settlement which has survived and prospered, with only a brief interval of quiet between the British conquest in 1759 and the coming of the Loyalists in 1784.

Remnants of the walls of Fort Frontenac were visible until 1922, when the resurfacing of the court of Tête-de-Pont barracks covered the stones laid many years before. Here on the edge of the harbour, near the road crossing the Rideau River and leading to Montreal, stood Fort Frontenac on a site still echoing to the tread of artillery and overlooking Fort Frederick and the Royal Military College.

The French early saw the importance of the site for defence, and Frontenac came with 400 men and much pomp, to awe the Iroquois, who had been summoned by La Salle and Abbé d’Urfé to a council. Even while the crafty Governor talked to them as “My children,” and told of his mission of “peace and tenderness,” his engineers staked out the fort and felled trees for the palisade. In four days the fort was completed, the feasting and tobacco had lulled the Iroquois’ suspicions, and Frontenac returned to Quebec happy in the success of his strategy.

La Salle’s relation to Fort Frontenac soon attained foremost place. In 1675 Louis XIV gave him the fort and adjacent lands on condition he would found a settlement and rebuild the defences in stone. He prospered in his solitary splendour, but he yearned to explore the rich regions beyond the lakes. Louis the Magnificent consented, and then ensued a glorious chapter in American exploration, with Fort Frontenac as the base and La Salle as the hero. He raised money in France, and even mortgaged Fort Frontenac itself. The explorer’s path was full of difficulty. Merchants and officials were jealous, disaster overtook his expeditions, and twice he journeyed, chiefly on foot, from the Illinois River to Fort Frontenac. Finally he triumphantly descended the Mississippi to its mouth, and met death from a mutinous follower in 1687, at the early age of 43, “a man whom fate alone was able to subdue.”

Strife with the Iroquois was now at its worst. Frontenac had been recalled and La Barre and Denonville inflamed the red men by treachery until the Iroquois took vengeance in the dreadful massacre at Lachine in 1689. Denonville, yielding to an impudent demand by the enemy, ordered Fort Frontenac destroyed, and it was gutted by fire. Frontenac was sent back to Canada and he at once restored the fort to an imposing stone structure which almost filled what is now the Tête-de-Pont barrack yard.

Here came the aged Frontenac in 1696, with his great expedition of 2,200, and passed on to the Iroquois country. He was now enfeebled, and was carried into battle in an arm chair, but his fighting spirit remained. After the victory he returned to Quebec, dying two years later.

The new fort remained a strong French post. Montcalm passed through in 1756 to the capture of Oswego, returning laden with spoils. French rule was now nearing its end in Canada. Colonel John Bradstreet, smarting under the British defeat at Ticonderoga, came in bateaux and whale-boats with a British force of 3,000 in 1758. The garrison of 120 Frenchmen, though its commander, De Noyan, was “brave as a lion,” could only surrender. The walls were battered before the new flag was raised, but not a life of the attacking force was lost.

Fort Frontenac, the scene of so much life and adventure for nearly a century, lapsed into ruin and desolation; a new generation of another race entered and built a new city and new defences, and Tête-de-Pont barracks, on the site of Fort Frontenac, has been a busy centre of military life for over a century.

ON summer days pleasure-seekers crowd Wabasso Park, on the mainland shore, a few miles from the bustle and smoke of the City of Hamilton. Half-way up the hill from the steamer-landing to the pine picnic grove, visitors pause to gaze upon a high boulder on which is set a bronze plate. It records that in September 1669 Sieur de la Salle, French explorer, landed here, the first white man, it is believed, to set foot on these shores.

It was the first of many memorable journeys of the dashing young explorer from Rouen. La Salle was but 26, and had been in Canada three years. He had taken land from the Sulpicians at Lachine, near Montreal, but as his eyes ranged the Upper St. Lawrence, and he heard tales of a wonder world beyond, his restless spirit could be controlled no longer. He sold his lands to raise funds and prepared for his first journey of exploration. The Sulpicians also decided to explore, and assigned two priests, Galinée and Dollier, to lead their party.

La Salle and the two priests decided to join forces, but it was an ill-assorted union, as events proved. La Salle was an impetuous, imperious personality, unfitted to divide authority with anyone. They left Lachine on July 6, with seven canoes and fourteen men. As they skirted the south shore of Lake Ontario they met Seneca Indians and were taken to inland villages for entertainment. Here they heard of the Ohio and another great river which ran to the sea, and pressed on to the head of Lake Ontario. On September 24 they landed on the north shore, where Wabasso Park now preserves a stretch of native forest, with an impressive view for tired city folk.

The Frenchmen here learned the astonishing news that two men were approaching the lake from the west, and pursuing their course through the wilderness of the Beverley Swamp to the site of the modern village of Westover, La Salle and the Sulpicians met Louis Joliet, whose name, like that of La Salle, was later written large in the history of American exploration. Joliet was returning from the west, and was the first of Europeans to descend the Great Lakes.

La Salle, with new plans in view, now deserted his companions and returned to Montreal with Joliet, while the priests descended the Grand River and wintered near Lake Erie.

Wabasso Park stands apart from busy communities on the Bay shore, as peaceful as the rabbit whose name it borrows from Longfellow’s “Hiawatha.” A little to the west is Burlington Heights, a base of supplies and centre of operations during the War of 1812. Inland stretches the soothing wildness of Coote’s Paradise, and beyond are the remains of the Desjardins Canal and the water route which made Dundas a lake port before Hamilton came into being.

THE rotund, jolly monks of medieval Europe, familiar through many paintings, might have envied their two brothers, the first white men to winter in the Lake Erie region of Ontario. They were Dollier de Casson and Galinée, two Sulpician priests, who, filled with religious zeal, had set out from Montreal with La Salle in the Summer of 1669 to carry the Gospel to the natives of the Southwest.

Dollier was a former cavalry captain in the French army, noted for his physical strength; Galinée a studious surveyor and mapmaker. La Salle, young, energetic and strong-headed, was bent on exploration of the wide south and west, which work he lived to execute with great distinction. They departed from the future metropolis of the St. Lawrence with high heart, under the inspiration of Colbert, the far-sighted French Colonial Minister, and with the blessing of Bishop Laval. They were a link in Imperial France’s scheme to envelop Britain and Spain and leave them isolated on the coasts of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. It was France’s proud day under Louis XIV, and it was the heroic age of French occupation in Canada.

The double leadership failed when the party met Louis Joliet on the Indian trail near the Grand River, returning from Lake Superior after portaging from Port Stanley, and La Salle returned with him to Montreal. Dollier and Galinée now determined to seek a Godless tribe of Indians west of Lake Michigan whom Joliet had described. They descended the Grand River to Lake Erie, and moving westward were overtaken in November by approaching Winter. The lake’s threats in an Autumn storm made them the more ready to stop over, and at the mouth of the River Lynn, where Port Dover now stands, they made camp. The beautiful location and the abundance of game aided their decision to remain.

They built a cabin a mile up the river, in a sheltered cove by a rivulet, where a cairn was unveiled in 1924. Nine deer were killed and the meat smoked and put away. Fifty bushels of walnuts and chestnuts, to say nothing of wild apples, plums, hackberries and red grapes as fine as those of France itself, were added to the stores of this lodge in the vast wilderness which had not a white occupant save this party of nine Frenchmen. “Bears fatter and of better flavour than the most savoury pigs of France,” according to Galinée, added to the pleasures of the Winter. An altar was erected for daily mass in the cabin, which was at once fort, chapel and residence.

When the Spring came the happy voyageurs descended the river to the lake shore, and on the high bank where now crowd the Summer residents from distant cities a cross was erected claiming the region for King Louis. Then the priests set out on their spiritual mission to the Indians of the Northwest, but their enterprise brought little result. Their journey lives better for its discovery and announcement through Galinée’s Narrative of the wealth and promise of the lands which time has turned into one of the richest and most progressive corners of Canada.

The United Empire Loyalists and some of the land-hungry citizens of the newly formed United States followed a century and a quarter later. They were well rooted when Brock assembled at Port Dover his forces in the Summer of 1812 and set sail for the relief of Amherstburg and the capture of Detroit.

ONTARIO’S Plymouth Rock, the cradle of its most significant pioneer settlement, the scene of the founding of municipal government in Canada, lies at Adolphustown, on a remote arm of the Bay of Quinte. Today there is a little group of drab old buildings, a store or two; a garage to give a twentieth century air, but little else to recall the momentous days of the planting of a Province. A plain marble shaft by the Bay shore tells that the United Empire Loyalists landed here on July 16, 1784. Clusters of tombstones in the surrounding plot mark the graves of early settlers where the wooden slabs, long ago decayed and disappeared, have been more permanently replaced.

The Loyalists found the new United States too hostile in the first zealous years after the Revolution. Many took ship to England. Forty-five thousand sought the shelter of the British flag and the opportunity of virgin land, in what is now Canada. Some went to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, a few to Lower Canada, and the remainder came to the Upper St. Lawrence and along Lake Ontario to Niagara. They have left their imprint as founders of Ontario, in their devotion to British institutions, expressed fervently through successive generations.

Peter Vanalstine, the leader of the Adolphustown colony, was a blacksmith near Albany, N.Y. He was of Dutch extraction and spoke English with an accent. The party was mustered from the Counties along the Hudson and set sail from New York on September 8, 1783, in seven ships, escorted by the brig “Hope,”—a name well suited for such an expedition! A month of unpleasant travel brought them to Quebec, which still showed the ruin wrought by the Siege of 1759. They passed on to Sorel, to spend a Winter of discomfort in tents and huts, and with short rations. The cold months were devoted to building bateaux, large, flat-bottomed boats, in which men, women and children set off for the promised land on May 21. There were four families to a bateau, and at the rapids the men of all the boats joined forces to haul the craft through the swirling waters.

Finally Fort Frontenac was passed and the beautiful wooded shores of the Bay of Quinte sighted. Hopes were high as on June 16 the pilgrims stepped, with a cheer, upon the land soon to be their own. Samuel Holland and his assistant surveyors had worked Autumn and Winter, and soon the Loyalists each secured 200 acres of land by drawing lots from a hat.

Clearings were commenced, log cabins erected and the stern fight begun. There were lean and trying years, and much government help was required before they were independent. Peter Vanalstine gave advice and settled disputes for a time, but town meetings, an inheritance from their New England home, were started in 1792. In the next year the Legislature made them legal over the Province, thus setting up municipal government. Court was held here alternately with Kingston, and during the last decade of the eighteenth century Adolphustown was the intellectual centre of the midland section of the Province. Then and later it gave to public life and commerce an imposing list of prominent men, including John A. Macdonald, who lived for a few years on the Hay Bay shore as a boy in the eighteen-twenties.

Adolphustown’s days of glory were numbered. Rivals in better locations drew modern industries. The railway gave the death blow when it passed fifteen miles to the north. Population has now dwindled to a few families, but the entire Province shares the pride its residents feel for the important events which here took place when Montreal was yet a small town and before there was a Toronto.

A LOW wooden building on Queen Street, Kingston, a little apart from the commercial highways, and so small and obscure as to be passed over unless guided to it, was the birthplace of the Government of Ontario. It was here that John Graves Simcoe and his Executive Council laboured in July, 1792, and laid the foundation of government in the new Province of Upper Canada. Governor Simcoe and his coterie of ready-made office-holders had come from England to a hamlet of fifty wooden houses, then the most populous centre in Canada west of Montreal. Across the Bay two gunboats were being constructed, and a lively half century lay ahead of Kingston in war and peace. Highly painted Indians danced before the Governor, and braves sauntered the streets with the “nonchalance and indifference of London beaux in Bond Street,” as Mrs. Simcoe recorded.

Simcoe, who had fought in the American Revolutionary War, was warmly greeted by the handful of Loyalist residents newly come to the region under the leadership of Michael Grass, and the Council soon settled to business. There was an air of solemnity as the Governor took the oaths of office on Sunday, July 8, in the little wooden church then standing on the present site of The Whig office, and from which later grew the beautiful St. George’s Cathedral.

There followed a heavy week’s deliberations in the “Council Chamber,” the house on Queen Street, by Simcoe and his Executive. Judges and other officers were confirmed in their positions, duties were allotted to members of the Council, and necessary regulations made by the only governing body then in existence. Provision was made for land settlement, militia returns were received, minerals reserved to the Crown, and nominations made to the Legislative Council.

Last and most important, the Province was divided into nineteen Counties preparatory for the election of sixteen members to the first Assembly. The names of the Counties remain to this day in most cases, from Glengarry to Kent, but the boundaries have been extensively revised. Kent, as the most western County, extended to Hudson Bay on the north, and to the extreme boundary of Canada on the west.

As Kingston was too flat for defence and not sufficiently central in location, Governor Simcoe left his Loyalists, his little wooden “Council Chamber,” and his busy shipyards, and moved on to Newark (Niagara), where his first Parliament met in September.

ONE little old stone magazine in a wilderness of weeds remains to connect the twentieth century with the departed grandeur of Fort George. Earthworks surrounding the broad defences, erected by Governor Simcoe in 1796, slope down to the Niagara River, but signify little to the passing travellers of two nations unless the floating red ensign gives hint of the precious soil here guarded. No plot west of French Canada is so rich in story, so intimately associated with the early organizing and defending of the new nation.

The “seven ages of man” have a parallel in the record of the lands at the mouth of the Niagara River. Before the white man thrust his destructive armies into the Lake region, the smoke of Neutral tepees rose from Onghiara, where Niagara now stands. Corn from the clearing which has been the Common, or drill ground, for the armies of more than a century supplied bread, while fish from the virgin waters of Lake Ontario brought further sustenance for the happy redskins. Then came the Iroquois with weapons still dripping from the slaughter of the Hurons of Georgian Bay, and exterminated the peaceful Neutrals in 1650. Thereafter came an era of peace.

The enterprising La Salle, laying the foundation of a French inland empire, founded Fort Niagara on the east bank of the river in 1678, and there for almost a century stood his country’s frontier fur mart, and through its gates passed thousands of traders, soldiers, missionaries and voyageurs. The post fell to British arms in the Summer of 1759 with the final campaign for the capture of Canada. Soon the new owners had their own backs to the wall in the American Revolution, and while expeditions moved out against the rebels the Loyalist refugees, whose cause was lost, flowed backward and passed across the river to found the colony that is now Ontario.

Now began the golden age of Niagara. Simcoe established the capital here in 1792 and five sessions of the new Parliament transacted far-reaching business in tents or in log buildings before removal to York four years later. Niagara became a political, judicial and social centre, and when Fort Niagara was abandoned to the United States by treaty in 1796 the Union Jack and its defenders crossed the river and Fort George arose as a protector. It was made a strong defence, with six bastions, a palisade twelve feet high, four blockhouses and other necessary buildings. The town grew apace and the loss of the capital had little immediate effect. The fertile lands of the Niagara peninsula, then rapidly settling, had here their commercial and judicial capital, and social and educational dignitaries made its life an oasis in the uncultured wilderness, as pictured in John M. Elson’s novel, “The Scarlet Sash.”

Europe was seething with the excitement of the Napoleonic wars, and there were rumblings of further trouble between Great Britain and the United States. Early in the century came a young upstanding British officer who was destined to leave an enduring mark on Canada. This was Colonel Isaac Brock, a great soldier and gentleman, who took command at Fort George in 1802. During his life there he made fast friends with the officers and townspeople, and while studying his profession entertained freely in his bachelor quarters. One of his visitors was Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, in 1804, on his way from New York to Montreal, where he wrote the “Canadian Boat Song.”

Officers from Fort Niagara came and went, and on the last Sunday of peace Dr. West, surgeon of the American fort, with his two little girls and other officers, attended church on the Canadian side. Brock saw them to their boat and remarked sadly:

“When we meet again we shall be enemies.” He took the children in his arms and said: “I must bid good-bye to you, my little rosy-cheeked Yankees.”

It was from Fort George that Brock set forth for the capture of Detroit in the first weeks of the war, and here he returned in triumph. An attack from Fort Niagara was imminent, and eager preparations were visible on both sides. Brock sat late with his Council on the night of October 12, perfecting his defence plans, and he was not asleep when the boom of cannon roused him for his last and solitary ride from Fort George to Queenston. Though the main battle was upriver, for hours the rival forts bombarded each other until Fort Niagara was silenced. In the afternoon General Sheaffe led reinforcements from Fort George to Queenston and snatched victory from defeat. Three days later thousands followed in sorrow the bodies of Brock and Macdonell to their burial in a bastion at the Fort, and the flag of the enemy across the river was half-masted in tribute to a valorous foe.

The great day of trial for Fort George came in the following May. After the fall of York the American fleet with 6,000 men crossed Lake Ontario and stood off the mouth of the Niagara River, concealed in the mists of dawn. General Vincent marshalled his 1,400 defenders on the northern Common, but three landing parties pressed forward, and after stubborn fighting the defenders retired to Burlington.

The recoil of the Summer, with victories at Stoney Creek and Beaver Dams, brought the British back to the gates of Fort George. The War Secretary at Washington foresaw defeat and sent orders to destroy the town. The unhappy inhabitants were turned out in the snow to save their lives as the incendiaries applied the torch on every side. The soldiers rushed to the rescue and attack, only to find the foe had crossed the river to safety. A few days later the British had their revenge when, in one of the boldest exploits of the war, the enemy fort was stormed and captured.

Niagara settled down to a peaceful life. Fort George, ravaged by conflict, was soon dismantled, though the new Fort Mississauga, nearer Lake Ontario, was occupied for forty years. The Welland Canal diverted traffic to St. Catharines, and old Niagara was left to her peach orchards and her memories.

ON a late August day in 1793 guns spoke across the waters to greet the founding of the future capital of Ontario. It was a royal salute for the naming of York in honour of the Royal Duke who had just saved Holland from invasion by the French. Governor John Graves Simcoe had recently come to establish a naval station for Lake Ontario in place of Niagara. Britain and France were once more at war, and Niagara was too close to the new Republic, just created by aid of a French alliance.

There was already a little clearing at the mouth of a creek, and here Simcoe, his talented wife, and his Queen’s Rangers, lived through the winter, the Governor in a tent bought in London from the effects of Captain James Cook, world-famous explorer. In his “canvas house”, boarded against the northern winds, the energetic Simcoe planned further for the development of the Loyalist Province.

All about was woods save the clearing for camps and defences, and where trees had been felled to provide timber for huts and fortifications. By March Simcoe had sent Lord Dorchester his plan for a large blockhouse with loopholed sides, and the visitor of today, among the cluster of curious buildings of the Old Fort at the foot of Bathurst Street, will find a blockhouse Simcoe and his men then erected. In the same month, the vigorous little company, amusing themselves on the frontier through the Winter as best they could, were one day put into official mourning and had a dance postponed by news of the death of the Queen of France, for Marie Antoinette had been guillotined in the previous October.

Simcoe developed his post to a point of usefulness, but by 1795 he had abandoned his idea of making London the capital, moved from Niagara and established the government in York, the hamlet which was to have been merely a naval station. In the following year he returned to England, having laid Ontario’s foundations with vision and solidity.

York drowsed along with small ripples in its life until the Summer of 1812, when the new war with the United States threw it into a ferment. General Brock, coming and going through the Province, had improved its defences against the day of testing. The enemy was foiled on land in the first campaign but was preparing for aggressive warfare on Lake Ontario.

By Spring of 1813 a powerful expedition was ready to move against York, Fort George and then Kingston. On April 25 a fleet of more than a score of vessels left Sacket Harbour with upward of 2,000 soldiers. Late the following day watchers at Scarboro’ Heights sighted the armada far out on the water. They flew to the town, and instantly there was great alarm. All classes rushed to arms, and defence plans were organized for the little garrison of 700 men. A dinner and dance at the Powell’s was abandoned because the family fled for safety and none of the guests came.

Dawn saw the enemy fleet standing off the western shore. Plans to land at the site of the old French trading post, Fort Rouille, a mile to the west of the Fort, were altered by heavy winds which drove the soldiers’ boats to a point near the Sunnyside of today. The invaders were warmly greeted by a volley from Colonel Givens and his men in the woods by Humber Bay, while Captain McNeal engaged them farther east until he himself was killed and his men fell back. The resistance, though stubborn, was borne down by overwhelming numbers as the attackers moved along the shore towards the Fort.

General Sheaffe decided to evacuate, but his little company lost forty men by the accidental explosion of a travelling battery. As the Americans approached the Fort, believing it abandoned, a terrific explosion occurred in a battery by the lake shore. General Zebulon M. Pike, commanding the attackers, was mortally injured and over two hundred of his men were killed or wounded. The General, who had discovered Pike’s Peak in Colorado in 1806, now realized his heroic wish. The day before embarking he wrote to his father:

“If we are destined to fall, may my fall be like Wolfe’s—to sleep in the arms of victory.”

He died that day on one of the ships, where his head was pillowed on a Union Jack at his own request.

The death of Pike and the heavy loss of their men incensed the Americans, who scented treachery, though the cause of the explosion was never fully established. In revenge they burned the Parliament Buildings and records near the Don River, and looted many private residences before the fighting cleric, Dr. John Strachan, compelled the hastening of capitulation terms. When the enemy withdrew on May 2, York was a sorry-looking town, but Sheaffe and his 180 regulars had escaped to Kingston and were saved to fight another day.

After the war the Old Fort was rebuilt on a more ambitious scale, and again after the Rebellion of 1837 it was repaired and extended. In 1903 one of the bastions was removed to make way for a factory. Today the precious relic is surrounded by industrial plants, railway tracks and new land separating it from the lake, on which is an imposing baseball stadium, but the two surviving blockhouses and the various barracks have a record and flavour of early days not equalled elsewhere in Ontario.

UNDER a breezy maple grove, fronting the Detroit River, Amherstburg preserves the site and remaining earthworks of Fort Malden, which played a vital part in defending Canada during the first half of the nineteenth century. When the British gave up Detroit in 1796, after defeat in the Revolutionary war, new defences on the Canadian side of the boundary became necessary. Before the Summer was over work had begun on Fort Amherstburg to control the mouth of the river and operations on Lake Erie. General Brock, in those anxious years preceding the War of 1812, realized its importance and its weakness, and measurably strengthened it with soldiers and cannon from eastern forts. Ships were built in its dockyards, Tecumseh and his braves gathered there as allies, and six hundred soldiers awaited the expected conflict.

Amherstburg was not to witness a battle of its own, but it was on the fringe of important happenings. After the United States had declared war in June, 1812, General Hull crossed from Detroit to Sandwich and issued an “insidious proclamation,” as Brock called it, inviting Canadians to share the liberty and prosperity recently won by the Republic. Hull sent small forces toward Amherstburg, but they were repulsed three times at River Canard, five miles to the north, where the first blood in the war was shed. Hull wrote to the Washington Government:

“If Malden were in our possession I could march the army to Niagara or York in a very short time.”

They were anxious days for Brock, for his militia melted under Hull’s appeals, but he collected an expedition and sailed from Long Point for the relief of Amherstburg. It was a dangerous journey in small boats on the treacherous Lake Erie, but the fort was reached late on August 13. When Brock and Tecumseh met they loved each other at once. The tense, lithe Indian chief said: “This is a man,” and his red companions grunted their approval. Brock was all action, and next day moved off to Sandwich and made the bloodless capture of Detroit, which brought fame to himself and relief to his worried Government.

Amherstburg was now turned over to Colonel Procter and enjoyed a season of comparative quiet. It was convenient to the United States lines of communication, as Procter had shown a little earlier when he swooped over and by cutting off supplies to Detroit forced Hull to retreat from Sandwich. In the Spring of 1813 General Harrison planned an expedition against Malden by soldiers wearing moccasins, but the ice broke up early and open water saved the fort from attack. During the next few months Procter invaded the south shore of Lake Erie, but met disaster at Fort Meigs and Fort Stephenson. His situation at Amherstburg grew worse as supplies went short and his hungry Indian dependents increased, while the enemy cut off his ships on Lake Erie.

Finally it was fight or starve. Captain Barclay, in command of the little fleet of six ships, had appealed in vain for more help. In desperation, he set out on the morning of September 9, 1813, to meet the American fleet. The Battle of Lake Erie was fought the next day in Put-In Bay on the south shore, witnessed by a vast crowd of spectators on the banks of the lake. Barclay fought heroically, but was beaten, and Commodore Perry sent the message which has become a classic in the United States:

The position of Fort Malden, as it was now called, became critical. Procter decided that he could not hold it, but Tecumseh, standing on a stone which is still a cherished possession in Amherstburg, harangued the British General for the cowardice of his proposed retreat.

“Father, listen to your children,” he cried, and closed with this bitter comment: “We must compare our father’s conduct to a fat dog that carries its tail on its back, but when affrighted drops it between its legs and runs away.”

Procter was resolved to abandon the Fort, and gathering a great quantity of stores, sent them ahead by land and water; women and children were put on wagons, squaws trudged along with papooses on their backs, and the melancholy procession headed for the Thames Valley. Before the soldiers departed they fired the government storehouses and razed the fortifications, until the once proud Amherstburg was a scene of desolation.

General Harrison landed three days later, entering to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” by his bands, and pursued the unhappy Procter to Moraviantown, where another defeat was suffered by the British. Tecumseh had said: “I feel assured we shall never return,” and it proved a premonition of his own death in the battle.

The invaders occupied Amherstburg until July 1, 1815, after the close of the war, and partly restored its defences. Malden remained a point of importance, and its forces shared four times in the repulse of raiders from across the boundary during the Rebellion of 1837-38. One expedition provoked a sharp fight among the ice-cakes in the river, resulting in a victory for the defenders and capture of the insurgent leader Sutherland.

Fort Malden was garrisoned until 1851, but in later years passed to private ownership, neglect and alterations, though never to the pitiful state of the forgotten. The moat, dry and weed-grown, may be traced on three sides, and bastions and mounds still suggest the extent and importance of this great outpost.

HEMMED in by roaring power and paper plants which have made Sault Ste. Marie a factory city of wealth and importance, the visitor may discover a small canal lock bearing the significant date of 1797. It is a reminder of the busy days of the fur trade, when the North West Company built a canal here to expedite its heavy traffic between Montreal and the head of Lake Superior. This pioneer waterway, three thousand feet in length, threaded its course among the islands beside the rapids of the St. Mary’s River, and ended in a lock thirty-eight feet long, with a lift of nine feet.

Ever since the masterful Étienne Brulé, rival explorer in the days of Champlain, first set white man’s eyes on this strategic river, it has been an important link in the transportation of the continent. Canoes carried through it the furs of the north and west, schooners brought lumber, and now great steel ships, six hundred feet in length, traverse its modern canals, bearing coal from Pennsylvania to the West, and returning with grain and iron ore for the East. So intense is the traffic that in Summer a curtain of smoke is always suspended above the channel.

Modern ships and machinery mark the Sault of today, but the old canal lock recalls a primitive age. In the heyday of the Nor’Westers their brigades were assembled each Spring at Lachine, near Montreal, and moved off in nearly one hundred canoes and bateaux, with eight men in each. Merchandise made two-thirds and provisions the remainder of the cargoes, in craft that held as much as four tons each.

The voyageurs embarked cheerily, often to the chorus of “En Roulant ma Boule,” the favourite paddling song in French Canada for three centuries. Portages seemed countless as the brigade pressed up the Ottawa River, under the urge of the lordly Nor’-West partners, riding luxuriously in their lace and ruffles. For the men the burden was eased by the friendly tobacco, with which they reckoned each portage as so many “pipes” long.

The Sault was a place of rest and peace before embarking on the boisterous waters of Lake Superior, which were so feared by the halfbreeds that they dropped an arrow on the shore to keep the devil from harming them on the journey. Father Jogues, afterward a Jesuit martyr, was greeted by two thousand savages on visiting the Sault in 1641, and so impressed were the French clerics that Father Marquette established a permanent mission in 1669.

The canal which the Nor’Westers dug with such enterprise was destroyed with the trading post by an American force in 1814. Thereafter it was forgotten until traced by local antiquarians and the lock rebuilt in 1896 by Mr. Francis H. Clergue, founder of the Sault industries.

The silence of the ages no longer reposes in Algoma. A railway pierces the lonely canyons to the north and awakes the echoes unheard since the startling adventures of Hiawatha, the Ojibway hero made famous by Longfellow’s lilting poem of that name, whose home was at Pawating, by the rapids, adjacent to Big Sea Water, the Lake Superior of modern times.

OLD “Fort St. Joe” was Britain’s answer when by Jay’s Treaty the United States was awarded Michilimackinac in the boundary settlement of 1796. It was a somewhat pretentious defence, with four bastions, stockade, barracks and other buildings, on the southern point of St. Joseph’s Island, thirty miles east of Sault Ste. Marie.

Ever since the white man, early in the seventeenth century, first plied his bateaux westward on the Great Lakes, St. Joseph’s Island had been a point of importance. Sturdy explorers paused to rest as they pushed their slender craft toward the unknown West, and the fur brigades, laden with the spoils of the wilderness for the benefit of European dandies, tarried here before crossing Georgian Bay on the last dangerous lap of their journey. Today an unbroken procession of lake commerce passes the Island, but the ruins by the shore of St. Joseph find few travellers so interested as to do them honour.

The far-seeing Sir Isaac Brock gave St. Joseph its final day in history. Years before the outbreak of war in 1812 he read the signs and foresaw trouble. He urged his superior officer, Prevost, to defend the frontier posts, and especially St. Joseph. Only at the last minute was he permitted to send forty hardy soldiers of the Glengarry Fencibles under Captain Charles Roberts. Robert Dickson, a fur trader and member of a noted family in Upper Canada, then operating in the upper valleys of the Mississippi and the Missouri, enlisted the aid of Indians whom he could influence, and they assembled at St. Joseph in the Summer of 1812.

When Roberts was notified of the war declaration, he quickly marshalled his little force. His 40 Fencibles and 300 Indians caught the spirit of adventure as they departed with 180 French-Canadian voyageurs for Fort Michilimackinac, on its “Turtle Island” in the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan. They set forth in the forenoon of July 16 in a numerous fleet of small craft, and by almost unparalleled exertions of the oarsmen the lights of the enemy post were in view at midnight, and the fifty miles were completed three hours later.

Roberts was too wise to risk his poor equipment against the sixty defenders in a surprise attack. He landed quietly and hauled a six-pounder up the steep cliff, where he later displayed his force, like Wolfe at Quebec, in front of the surprised enemy. A war whoop from the Indians sent terror into the Americans, and a summons to surrender was soon obeyed without the firing of a shot. The first blood shed was that of some bullocks Roberts bought for his hungry fighters.

Michilimackinac was a remote post, and seemingly of little importance in itself, but its capture was the first event in the War of 1812. The news sped everywhere by all the channels of land and water. The uneasy forces with Brock in the East took heart, and the capture of Detroit soon followed.

St. Joe lingered as a military post until the end of the war, when its usefulness was ended. Under their tangle of shrubbery and deserted flower gardens, there were recently traced the foundations of defences established for that day of frowning frontiers on the Great Lakes.

RAILWAY yards, coal docks and grain elevators crowding the bank of Lake Superior and the Kaministiquia River at Fort William have all but effaced the marks of the fur-trading era which made the head of Lake Superior the commercial headquarters of Mid-Western Canada during the Napoleonic wars. An inquisitive visitor may discover at the corner of McTavish and McIntyre Streets a small granite column erected in 1916, telling in proud but dignified language of the happenings here between the arrival in 1678 of Du Lhut, Royal Guardsman of France who became “king of the coureurs-des-bois,” and the final capture of the region by modern commerce.

Some idea of the spacious days of the fur barons is given in the Scottish names of these streets, for here was the General Rendezvous of the North West Company, formed in 1783 by Scottish merchants in Montreal to contest the supremacy of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the empire of fur traders.

The rivalry spread swiftly in the building of neighbouring and competing forts and fur stations through the West. It was a commercial war which soon became real enmity, crystallizing in the Battle of Seven Oaks, on the site of the present city of Winnipeg, in 1816, when Governor Semple of the older company was killed. Lord Selkirk, then in control of the Hudson’s Bay Company, hastened from Montreal, with a detachment of soldiers privately hired, and at Fort William arrested the North West partners and sent them to York (later Toronto) for trial. The warlike competition continued for five years, when better counsels prevailed and a stormy ten-days’ conference at Fort William brought terms for amalgamation.

For a generation the career of the North West Company at Fort William was enterprising and spectacular. The principal partners lived in Montreal and Quebec in lordly surroundings, and indeed their wealth did much to lay the foundation of the later commercial growth of those cities. Each Summer they made stately visit to Fort William, to meet the wintering partners and discuss plans and achievements. A grand procession carried them up the lakes in palatial canoes laden with luxuries and rich food, trained cooks and a retinue of servants.

At Fort William the council chamber resembled a meeting of Parliament, with junior partners honouring the visitors, and halfbreeds and voyageurs paying servile tribute to the local nabobs. Serious business was varied by nights of banqueting, when fish from the lakes, game from the forests, buffaloes’ tongues from the prairies and liquors from the eastern cities made a scene of bacchanalian revelry, followed by dancing to the music of bagpipe, violin and flute. While the traders caroused, their dark-skinned servants were no less boisterous from their rations of food and fiery liquids. Great birch canoes which brought goods to the Rendezvous returned with bales of furs, and the commerce of half a nation centred round the little fort.

After the amalgamation the Hudson’s Bay Company made its western headquarters elsewhere and Fort William faded in importance as a fur capital. The Company’s surrender of its territorial empire in 1869 was quickly followed by new interests, and today’s elevators and ships give vitality and activity never imagined by the enterprising partners of the North West Company.

TOWERING nearly two hundred feet above the Queenston escarpment, the mighty shaft in memory of General Sir Isaac Brock forms the most impressive memorial in all the Dominion. It honours the hero of Upper Canada and bears witness to the sturdy character of the defenders of the infant colony in its greatest hour of danger. It is visible for many miles in all directions, and those who have breath to ascend the inside stairs may survey a beautiful land of orchard and vineyard, field and river, lake and distant cities, comprising Southern Ontario and Western New York at their best.

In Summer the delightful park at the foot of the shaft is daily crowded with picnic parties arriving by steamer. On Sunday come streams of motorists, attracted by the scenery and the memories of a stirring past. Canadians feel pride in the victory of 1812; Americans hold no resentment for the valiant opposition suffered by their ancestors on that distant day.

General Brock had returned to Newark after his speedy capture of Detroit. Signs were plentiful that an attack on the Niagara front was pending, and on the night of the 12th of October he conferred late with his advisory council at Fort George. When the others had retired he sat writing until past midnight. The sound of the cannon stirred him. Where was the attack—Niagara or Queenston?

While he pondered, a dragoon arrived with news that the enemy was landing in force at Queenston. Brock called for his horse, the good “Alfred,” and soon was galloping toward the scene of battle, seven miles upriver. He took time to rein up at the door of John Powell, on the edge of Newark, to receive a stirrup cup of coffee at the hand of his betrothed, Miss Sophia Shaw, and, waving good-bye, he dashed up the road, a striking lone figure as he leaned forward, eager and alert in the grey drizzle of daybreak. Other messengers met him and received orders as he hurried past.

At Queenston the Americans were landing troops. Brock hastened to the redan, half up the heights, and from here he could see the ranks of the enemy on the shore beyond the narrow river. Presently a rattle of bullets revealed an enemy force within a few yards of the redan at the top of the hill. Captain Wool, a daring young officer, had led 350 Americans by a remote fisherman’s path to the summit, and Brock was compelled to retreat to the village. He soon returned to attack and was leading his men bravely forward when killed by a sharpshooter. Lieut.-Col. John Macdonell, his aide, now took command, and in a fresh attempt on the redan he too was shot down.

A force of less mettle might have lost heart at such misfortunes, but Brock had already sent for the reserves. General Roger Sheaffe hastened from Fort George with 800 men after the guns of Fort Niagara, across the river, had been silenced. Sheaffe made a detour to St. David’s and reached the Heights a mile to the west of the enemy. He formed for attack and his men were eager for revenge.

The Americans were now weakened in numbers and spirit, with momentary desertions by militiamen under the dispiriting example of General Smyth. Sheaffe swept on to attack, the Indians spreading terror by their war whoop. The Americans made a feeble resistance in their new formation and then gave way, flying pell-mell down the Heights, some falling into the river and being drowned. General Winfield Scott, who had taken command after the wounding of Van Rensselaer, saw no hope and raised his handkerchief in surrender with nearly 1,000 men. His army had lost 300 in killed and wounded, while the defenders lost 150.

Brock, as the monument inscription says simply, was “revered and lamented by the people whom he governed.” His body was buried at Fort George. In 1824 a shaft was erected on Queenston Heights and his body removed to the scene of victory. This was blown up by a rebel in 1840 and replaced by the present column, designed by William Thomas, a Toronto architect, which was begun in 1853 and completed with a great ceremony in 1859.

Modern roads leading to Queenston bear stones with inscriptions in token of admiration for Brock. In the village of St. David’s General Sheaffe’s important service is remembered in this simple and eloquent legend by the highway:

‟HERE the tide of invasion was met and turned,” says the modest inscription on the commanding stone tower on the battlefield of Stoney Creek. The blossoms and fruits of an opulent land to the south-east of Hamilton proclaim the victories of a century of peace, but the stern Norman tower, visible from “Mountain” and lake, is a reminder of a serious crisis and its heroic solution.

After the loss of Fort George in May, 1813, General Vincent retired with the British force to Burlington Heights. The Americans were slow in following and encamped at Stoney Creek only on June 5. They were 3,500 strong, and it needed a David to attack the mighty Goliath. Colonel John Harvey, who was to win further fame at Chrysler’s Farm and again on the field of Waterloo itself, and to end his long service as Governor of Nova Scotia, was the David of Stoney Creek. This quiet soldier, of refinement and determination, received Vincent’s permission for a night attack, which succeeded by its daring. He left camp a half-hour before midnight and marched, “704 fire-locks” strong, ten miles to Stoney Creek.

Harvey immediately attacked. The enemy sentries were “bayoneted in the quietest manner possible,” as he later reported, and the camp stormed. The Americans were thrown into a confusion from which they did not recover. Two Generals, Chandler and Winder, ran forward to see what was happening, and were captured. The British charged up the face of a low hill and increased the confusion of the invaders. Enemy ranks farther up the slope poured a heavy musket fire into the British, now revealed by the flames of the discharging cannon, and the opposing lines swayed to and fro.

An hour’s fighting ended in the capture of three American field pieces and 100 prisoners. By daybreak the enemy was in flight, and the British, unwilling to reveal their slender strength, returned to camp. The Americans retreated to Forty Mile Creek, where on the morning of the 8th, Sir James Yeo bombarded them from his ships. They then retired to Fort George and gave up Fort Erie. Vincent received 1,000 reinforcements, among them the 104th Regiment, who had marched from Fredericton to Quebec on snowshoes to defend Upper Canada, and was once more master of the situation.

A public park of seventeen acres surrounds the tower of Stoney Creek, which was unveiled in 1913 by Queen Mary from Buckingham Palace, and in the beautiful grounds stands the surviving Gage house, now a museum as well as a relic of stirring pioneer days.

THE crumbling stone wall of Fort Erie lies a mile to the west of the point where Lake Erie’s waters pour swiftly into the Niagara River. Few visitors brave the sandy road to this impressive survival of the War of 1812, though here ended that war so far as the Niagara frontier was concerned. Its story is not a proud record for either side, for the British failed to provide a sufficient garrison, and the Americans, after strengthening and holding it through trying months, blew it up and retired to their own soil.

After the American Revolution Fort Erie was one of the defences raised on the Canadian side, and a traveller in 1796 found a small stockaded fort and “about half a dozen miserable little dwellings.” Part of the force which General Brock took up Lake Erie in August, 1812, for the capture of Detroit lodged at Fort Erie, whose wall was not yet finished. There were skirmishes later that year, and an attempted capture was foiled by the firmness of the brilliant British officer, Colonel Cecil Bishopp.

It was during the later months of 1814 that the waters about Fort Erie were reddened by sanguinary battles. Upper Canada was in distress, and General Drummond threw a thin line of defence from Burlington to Fort George and thence up the river shore to Fort Erie. Early in July the Americans crossed, and their overwhelming force led to a quick surrender of the Fort. They advanced down the river, driving the British before them at Street’s Creek and Chippawa, until halted by the bloody engagement at Lundy’s Lane and forced to retire to Fort Erie.

General Drummond, having rested his men and gained reinforcements, now moved off to attack the stronghold by Lake Erie. A heavy cannonade was followed by a furious attack by 1,500 British in the early hours of August 15. The British left their camp to the west and threw themselves on the defences. Their attacks had failed when a footing was gained in the northeast bastion, with heavy losses to the Americans. The British had been in possession a brief time, unable to advance or retreat, when an ammunition chest under the platform took fire and exploded, blowing up all the troops in the bastion and causing panic to the other British who heard it. Bodies were thrown high in the air, and only retreat could follow such heavy adversity. The British loss in the engagement was nearly 1,000, including Lieut.-Colonel William Drummond, brother of the commanding officer.

The siege dragged on for nearly a month. A sortie by the Americans on September 17 resulted in further heavy losses and the British retired to Chippawa. On November 5 the Americans blew up Fort Erie—a Guy Fawkes celebration in earnest—and retired to Winter quarters across the river, not to return.

Fort Erie was left in ruins, and thus it has remained through succeeding generations—save for the erection of a stone pillar memorial—a vivid reminder of the earnestness of the fighters of an early, unhappy day.

THE tablelands of the Thames Valley, fifty miles west of London, teem with the riches of Western Ontario, rendering the tragic events of 1813 all but forgotten. A little stone, rising by the Provincial highway near Thamesville, proclaims that here was fought the Battle of the Thames, and here Tecumseh fell.

It was a disastrous sequel to the defeat of Captain Barclay and the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie. General Procter, though reviled by Tecumseh for cowardice, could not hope to hold Amherstburg with his small force, and began a retreat to the valley of the Thames.

The retreat was badly managed. Naval stores and excess baggage delayed and hampered the soldiers; indecision and disobedience hastened disaster. Procter, dogged by the American army at his heels, failed to reach his expected strong position before he was overtaken, and stores and boats were destroyed in haste.

As an old man, living far into the second half of the nineteenth century, David Sherman recalled the fateful day of October 5, 1813. He was a boy of eleven when the fighting forces of two nations crowded to his father’s farm by the Thames.

“You had better get your cows out of the way, as some bad men are coming,” said Tecumseh, the Indian Chief, to him on the morning of the battle. The Sherman barn, in which British soldiers slept on the night of the 4th, and Americans the next night, is still a relic at the edge of the Town of Thamesville.

The British passed on toward Moraviantown. General William Henry Harrison was rapidly catching up. He had been a hero for his country in the battle in 1811 against the Indians at Tippecanoe, Indiana. The same Harrison, in 1840, at the age of 68, was elected President of the United States, being sung to victory with such ditties as “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.”

The Thames shrinks to a small stream in the Moraviantown region, and its steep banks are fringed with light woods. In 1813 a swamp lay a half mile to the north, and here Procter made his stand, with 450 regulars and a few hundred Indians, extending in two lines between the swamp and the river. The Americans charged with cavalry, and at first were met with such a withering fire that their horses reared and plunged. Then they came again, and the first British line broke and fled. The Indians to the north of the swamp held the American left, but a bullet from Colonel Johnson’s revolver found a shining mark in Tecumseh, and the day was lost. In shame and sorrow the red men bore away the body of their beloved leader, and the secret of his grave has never been revealed to white men’s eyes.

Procter and his staff had placed themselves down the road behind the battle, and when the troops broke the leaders retreated toward the Grand River and Burlington. Only a remnant of 200 soldiers were able to follow, and for a time the Province west of the Grand River was in the hands of the invaders.

FACING the waters of the St. Lawrence where they begin to eddy and swirl before plunging through the Long Sault Rapids, stands a tall shaft, marking the scene of the final failure of the United States troops, in 1813, to capture Montreal. Morrisburg lies five miles to the west, and Cornwall twenty miles east. In the region hereabouts Sir James Whitney was born and raised, and after a conspicuous political career laid to rest with his fathers.

Passengers on the Canadian National Railway trains, a half mile to the north, or on the river steamers, may survey the battlefield of Chrysler’s Farm, celebrated in Canadian song and story. Here 800 defenders defeated 1,800 men who had been detached from the invading army of 6,000, to shake off the British who were harassing their advance. The action was a peculiar one, as the American force was moving down the river and was forced to turn about and fight a rear-guard action with its tormentors.

General Wade Hampton had been defeated at Chateauguay in late October, but Wilkinson, who was to move on Montreal from Sacket Harbour, let the days slip until November 5, when he set out with a force of 6,000 in a flotilla of 300 boats of all sorts. The sleepless guardians at Kingston were soon on the move, with Colonel J. W. Morrison leading the band of defenders. At Prescott, Wilkinson landed Boyd with 1,800 men, while he prepared to run the rapids and join Hampton at St. Regis. Morrison clung to the American flank until Boyd, on the order of Wilkinson, who did not bother waiting, turned and gave battle.

It was a short, sharp engagement on the afternoon of the 11th of November. The defending force included British and Canadian regulars, militia, boatmen and fur traders of both English and French races, a few Indians, and in the gunboats watching on the river were 200 men, drawn from the Royal Navy and the Provincial marines. A clearing 700 yards wide between the woods and the river formed the battle ground.

Boyd sought to drive a wedge between the British and the river, but he was out-manoeuvred at every turn. After two hours’ stiff fighting the American force gave way, and, covering their retreat as best they could, retired down the river. The British soldiers slept on the ground they had won. Wilkinson and his force reached St. Regis, but further attack on Montreal was abandoned.

Wilkinson, whose reputation in his own country was anything but enviable, lost his command after another failure. This was in the Spring of 1814 when, with 4,000 men, he failed to take Lacolle Mill, south of Montreal, when it was defended by only 200 British. His character and conduct are in marked contrast with Colonel Morrison, a seasoned British officer, a veteran of West Indian and European campaigns, a man of talent, prudence and strong religious principles.

THE modern industrial city of Niagara Falls has all but swallowed the battlefield of Lundy’s Lane. An old cemetery, with a war monument and many graves and slabs from pioneer days, has been carefully preserved at the centre of the scene of carnage, while industry, commerce and home-building surged over this rich and populous countryside.

From a mile to the east the roar of Niagara Falls may be borne by a favourable wind, and an occasional tourist from the same direction may cross the boundary in free will and friendship where once armies watched, and find his way to the graves of the heroes of two nations. A little to the west the Chippawa power canal cuts through the rich farm lands, and bears to Queenston the waters which by their tumbling force give light and power to half a Province.

It is a peaceful and happy contrast to that dark night of struggle and hatred in the Summer of 1814 as the war moved to its inconclusive ending. General Jacob Brown was in exultant mood after the victory at Chippawa on July 4, and planned a bold stroke diagonally across the peninsula against the British base at Burlington Heights. Before he could act, General Riall was reaching out with his scouting parties from Twelve Mile Creek, and General Sir Gordon Drummond was hastening from Kingston with strong reinforcements. Brown withdrew his forces to Chippawa, while Riall, under Drummond’s orders, moved up to Lundy’s Lane. Drummond, who was a bold and successful commander, with experience in Europe, Egypt and the West Indies, came up and joined Riall. The Americans arrived to find the British centre on the low hill where now stands the cemetery.

Both sides were eager for battle and the struggle, begun at six o’clock in the evening, soon raged furiously. The British had seven guns on the hill, and around these the fight continued through the hot Summer night. Once the British left gave way, but it was reformed, though Riall was taken prisoner. Colonel Miller, who was later to be the “General M.” in Hawthorne’s novel, “The Scarlet Letter,” was asked by Brown to take the guns.

Miller led his men behind a creeper-grown fence to within a few yards of the guns, and then their sudden volley killed or wounded all the gunners. The Americans were then met by British bayonets as they reached the hilltop, and the opposing armies, thirsty and perspiring and fighting in the darkness to the point of desperation, swayed back and forth on the hillside.

At nine o’clock, after heavy losses, there was a brief lull, during which both sides were reinforced, until the American strength reached 4,000 men and the British 3,000. The battle was resumed with fresh vigour, the hilltop and the guns being the focus of all effort. Generals Brown and Winfield Scott of the invaders were wounded, and Drummond was shot in the neck, though he remained on his horse until it was killed under him.

At last, about midnight, when both sides were worn out, the Americans slowly gave up the fight and retired to Chippawa, leaving their dead and severely wounded, as well as the seven uncaptured guns. The British slept on the ground they had so dearly defended. The invaders lost about 1,000 men and the British 900 in this the hottest battle of the war.

A stone obelisk, flanked by cannon, is the Canadian Government’s memorial on the battlefield. A few yards down the slope is the grave of Laura Secord, with bronze bust of the heroic woman who, in the Summer of 1813, walked twenty miles through a tangled wilderness to warn the British at Beaver Dams of an impending attack by the Americans, which was accordingly repulsed.

FORT HENRY, massive and forbidding in its day, fast falls to ruin on its hilltop overlooking the Thousand Islands. It was built during and after the War of 1812 to make Kingston the Gibraltar of the Great Lakes, as urged by the Duke of Wellington. Its walls are visible from the city, and the city and lake may be scanned for miles from its 100-foot level, but save for its noonday gun it sleeps in the piping times of peace. At its feet to the west is Navy Bay, the scene of dockyards and busy shipbuilding by hundreds of workmen during the War of 1812. Nearby is the graveyard of the British navy of that day, which was abandoned and destroyed under the bonds of friendship which followed the war.

Kingston had become the most active point in Canada for military plans and shipbuilding. In 1813 the hill of Point Henry was cleared of trees, and a small barracks and two stone towers erected as part of the city’s defence. Under its shadow the “Wolfe”, “Royal George”, the great “St. Lawrence” and other warships were constructed and despatched for naval operations on Lake Ontario. After the war, stores, magazines and other works arose, and by 1820 an extensive stone barracks was erected.

The spreading fort of today was built between 1832 and 1842. Limestone from the neighbourhood supplied material, and only in recent years has the neglect of the crumbling walls and the disorder of the earthworks weakened the appearance of solidity and power which it possessed from the first. The fort is 800 feet long and 500 feet wide, there is a moat 20 feet deep and 24 feet wide, with drawbridges, and sally-ports extending to the water to aid in attacking an enemy. Great stone walls protect the inside quarters for officers and men, and within all is a large parade ground. A few cannon of the period of 1812 are still to be seen in the enclosure.

Ontario’s Gibraltar was never under fire, but it has experienced a few odd days of heightened life. During the threatening times of 1837-38 an attack was expected, and 1,600 soldiers were assembled to meet the enemy which never came. John Montgomery, owner of the tavern bearing his name, near Toronto, where William Lyon Mackenzie was defeated in December 1837, was sent here with others to await banishment to Van Dieman’s Land after death sentence for treason had been commuted. A plot to escape was carried out and Montgomery got away to the United States after a fall which broke his leg and led to starvation for five days.

Von Schultz, the Polish gentleman adventurer who had led the ill-fated expedition against Prescott in 1838, as an aftermath of the rebellion, was brought to Fort Henry and hanged with ten others, but not before defence by a budding young lawyer afterward known to fame as Sir John Macdonald. As Fort Henry neared completion its builders were increased, and one of these was a young Scottish stonemason, recently arrived in Canada, who thirty years later was known to the world as Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, Premier of Canada.

By 1860 the fort had lost its military importance. During the recent European war it was a camp for enemy aliens, and wireless outfits on the neighbouring hill once more suggested a defence with modern equipment.

A TALL stone lighthouse by the St. Lawrence, near Prescott—“a pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day,” as Longfellow would say—connects the present day with one of the final clashes of the Rebellion of 1837. Here was fought during four days of November, 1838, the Battle of the Windmill. For the present stout aid to navigation had been built in 1822 for grinding grain, and only the accidents of warfare made its strong walls a temporary fortress later on.

Political troubles aroused by William Lyon Mackenzie had been fomented by sympathizers and adventurers in the United States, aided by radicals from Upper Canada, and a raid from New York State towns was planned and carried out. One Sunday morning the steamer “United States,” sailing on its regular route down river from Oswego, carried 150 passengers who bore, concealed in boxes and kegs, arms and munitions for their desperate adventure. During the day they picked up two schooners, with additional men and arms, and the three ships proceeded eastward lashed together. Toward midnight they separated, and in the morning the schooner “Charlotte of Toronto” drew into Prescott. Before the raiders could land, defence preparations on shore, combined with the grounding of the other schooner, led to a change of plan, and the “Charlotte” dropped down the river a mile and a half, opposite the Windmill.

A landing was made on the high ground where the main highway to Montreal now swings, and entrenchments begun. The rebel leader was Von Schultz, a Polish exile of ability and character, who wanted to free Canada from the tyranny which he believed existed there as in his native land. More raiders arrived from steamers and smaller vessels, and a force of several hundred faced the militia and regulars quickly mustered to defend Canadian soil.

United States Marshal Garrow now reached Ogdensburg and seized the schooners, thus stopping the rebel reinforcements. A great crowd gathered on the American bank of the river and cheered for the rebels as the battle warmed, but were unable to give more practical aid. As the defenders increased, the rebels took refuge in the mill and other stone buildings nearby, and the Canadian force had to await artillery.

The guns arrived from Kingston on Friday, the 16th, and just before dark went into action at a range of 400 yards. The mill was quickly battered and made so hot for the rebels that a white flag went up, with unconditional surrender.

Von Schultz and about 160 prisoners were taken, and the leader and ten others were tried by court-martial and hanged at Kingston. A loss of sixteen killed and sixty wounded suffered by the British forces made it one of the major engagements of the Rebellion in Upper Canada.

QUEENSTON, now a drowsy village, at the foot of the Niagara River gorge, is remembered chiefly as the scene of a great battle in 1812. Here also was launched the agitation which resulted in the Rebellion of 1837, and the subsequent establishment of responsible government in Canada.

Half-way up Queenston Heights from the village, the trolley car creaks past the stone walls of a considerable old building, long since burned and abandoned. In this building was first published The Colonial Advocate, in which William Lyon Mackenzie commenced his assaults on the Family Compact, and drew such support in Upper Canada that an armed uprising was the outcome.

Mackenzie had come to Canada from Scotland in 1820, a young man of twenty-five, of short figure, massive head and peppery temper. Though cradled in such poverty that his widowed mother had at times to sell cherished home possessions to procure food, he showed real business ability as he grew up. As chemist and bookseller, first in York, then in Dundas, and later as keeper of a general store at Queenston, he was on his way to fortune.

Suddenly he abandoned storekeeping and established The Colonial Advocate on May 18, 1824. His whole career was changed; all that followed was the natural consequence of this act.

Mackenzie commenced his editorial career mildly enough. His first issues were as smooth as the waters of the Upper Niagara before they seethe and plunge over the cataract. He gently chided the Executive, the Judges and the Legislative Council for their indifference to public rights. The stream of his indignation, like the Niagara, gained force as it progressed. Soon the ruling powers grew nervous and angry, while the farmers of the scattered backwoods settlements responded to the words of this thrilling agitator. For the first time they had a newspaper with opinions, something more than a colourless semi-official gazette.

Mackenzie’s attacks grew more personal and bitter, and the resentful Ministers and officials of the Family Compact planned his undoing, as they had that of Robert Gourlay, whom they had banished a few years earlier for his outspoken views. The Advocate reminded its readers of the maxim of Charles James Fox: “That government alone is strong that has the hearts of the people.” At times Mackenzie faltered, and after a few months of irregular publication he seriously considered book printing as his main business, with the occasional issue of a political sheet.

The approach of the opening of Parliament early in 1825 now promised greater opportunity, and he abandoned Queenston in November, removing to York, then the capital, so that he could report the debates by his own hand. It is also a fact, though it may not have influenced Mackenzie, that the golden age of Queenston as the northern port of the Great Lakes traffic by the Niagara River was now about to end, owing to the construction of the Welland Canal.

The remainder of Mackenzie’s turbulent career belongs outside Queenston. In the Tory stronghold of York his quarrel with the Compact became more intense. In June, 1825, a genteel mob of “young bloods” broke into his printing office, smashed his equipment, and threw some of his type into the Bay. He collected damages of £625 and soon resumed publication. He was elected to Parliament and continued the bitter fight, culminating in armed conflict at Montgomery’s Tavern, his defeat and flight, followed by years of exile in the United States with poverty and distress.

When Mackenzie returned in 1849 he was a weakened and broken man, his face seamed by Time, but his inner fire undimmed. His later years in Toronto, the city of which he was first Mayor on its translation from York in 1834, were marked by destitution, and in his street appearances he resembled “The Last Leaf,” as pictured by Oliver Wendell Holmes. He died in 1861, his main reforms achieved and recognized, and six years later came the Confederation which he had been foresighted enough to advocate at Queenston in 1824.

TWICE in a half century the government of Upper Canada pitched its tents at Kingston, laboured importantly, and then passed to other scenes, leaving disappointment and depression. John Graves Simcoe paused at Kingston for a few days in 1792, was sworn in as Governor, and then sailed to Newark (Niagara), where the first Legislature met a few weeks later. In 1841 the capital of the United Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada was moved to Kingston and in 1844 was transferred to Montreal.

The marks of the capital days still embellish the city in the ambitious public buildings then set on foot. Lord Sydenham, the Governor-General who had come to finish the work begun by Lord Durham after the rebellion, drafted and secured the passage in the British Parliament of the bill uniting the Provinces. The location of the capital being left to him, he chose Kingston because of the protection implied by its Loyalist population and because Upper Canada demanded the honour within its boundaries.

The choice was sudden, and it found the town of five thousand unprepared. There was excitement and a boom, rents were doubled, and accommodation was at a premium. The central portion of the present General Hospital had just been completed, and it was taken for a Parliament Building. A creditable home for the Governor was found in Alwington House, two miles westward on the lake shore, where successive Governors dispensed a lavish hospitality as became English gentlemen.

Hither came, in the Summer of 1841, the raw but earnest representatives of the new and evolving commonwealh. There was skirmishing for boarding houses, but the public men of a new and rapidly growing country, with spirits soaring from the mounting immigration, made light of such little inconveniences. Lord Sydenham presented an ambitious programme, and the imposing limestone Parliament Building was soon the scene of important happenings.

The common school system of Ontario had its birth in this first session at Kingston; municipal government, so necessary in a free country, was extended, and the credit of the distracted colony, still smarting from rebellion, placed on a firm footing. Over one hundred bills were passed. Sydenham, however, declined to grant responsible government as sought by the Upper Canadian Reformers, a concession finally secured a few years later from Lord Elgin.

Lord Sydenham’s weary and weakened body made him an easy victim when his horse threw him while riding one day, and he died a fortnight later, on September 19. Sir Charles Bagot, his successor, another fine old English gentleman, continued the Sydenham policies, but he was already suffering from a fatal malady and died in the Spring of 1843. Parliament had now voted to move the capital to Montreal, where the next Governor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, continued the battle with the Reformers.

Kingston’s short career as a capital has to its credit a legacy of useful legislation, and it also aided on their way to greatness an influential group of men, including Robert Baldwin, L. H. Lafontaine, A. N. Morin, Francis Hincks, John Sandfield Macdonald and William Hamilton Merritt.

Today the Parliament House of the ’forties is a busy hospital, with white-garbed nurses and anxious visitors coming and going, but the simplicity and spaciousness of its classic lines are altogether worthy of its more notable days.

‟THE life of Sir John A. Macdonald from the day he entered Parliament is the history of Canada,” said Wilfrid Laurier, Liberal leader, in his address to Parliament on the passing of the Conservative chieftain.

The life of Sir John was intimately connected with the city of Kingston from his childhood until his death. He came there from Scotland in 1820 at the age of five; he secured his limited education and his training for the law in Kingston; he established there a law practice which soon became profitable; he became a city alderman in 1843 and a member of Parliament a year later. Thereafter his life was broadened and intensified, but for the greater part of his half century in Parliament he sat for Kingston.

He conducted bitter party fights, sometimes meeting defeat, but mainly he secured there his election to the Parliaments which promoted railways in the ’fifties, achieved Confederation in the ’sixties, inaugurated protection in the ’seventies, and built the Canadian Pacific in the ’eighties.

It was a proud and expanding Kingston to which young Macdonald first came. The War of 1812 had left no scars, but the activities of the conflict had doubled its population, brought refinement and culture from the Old World, and stimulated hopes for future greatness. The Rideau Canal was built to Ottawa in the eighteen-twenties. The capital of United Canada was located in Kingston in the early ’forties, resulting in impressive public buildings which still make the city distinctive. Kingston was founded by United Empire Loyalists, ardent in their devotion to Great Britain, and this atmosphere had lasting influence on the political views of the future Premier.

The boyhood home of Sir John Macdonald may still be seen in Kingston. It is a small, sturdy stone house at 102 Rideau Street, fronting toward the Rideau River in what is now an old part of the city. Two windows in the gable end give light to the room where the future Premier pored over his school books and his law course before he was called to the Bar in 1836. His father, Hugh Macdonald, was a Scotsman, ill suited to the life of an immigrant. After various ventures in business in Kingston, and in Hay Bay and Stone Mills on the Bay of Quinte, he passed away in 1841. Thereafter, the slim, curly-haired, proud but somewhat unkempt young “John A.,” now rapidly prospering in his profession, became more and more the mainstay and confidant of the mother who remained to keep the family together.

John A. Macdonald was marked for success in law as his political genius marked him for distinction in statecraft. Early in his practice he attracted important clients. Even more significant was his attraction for two young men who were afterward celebrated in public life. During Macdonald’s first year as a lawyer there came to his office one day a chubby-faced lad, with prominent eyes and bright smile, who sought to study law. He was accepted, and later became Sir Oliver Mowat, a Father of Confederation and for twenty-four years Premier of Ontario. Subsequently another boy obtained the same privilege, and in due course became Sir Alexander Campbell. Thus from one small office in Kingston went forth a Prime Minister of Canada, and a Lieutenant-Governor and a Premier of the leading Province of the Dominion.

After fifty years of public life, during which he saw the infant Canada develop into a vigorous manhood, respected at home and abroad, Sir John Macdonald passed away in 1891. A great funeral train bore his body from Ottawa, the scene of his political triumphs, and he was laid in Cataraqui, in the environs of Kingston. There he rests on a sandy hillside beneath a simple granite cross, and not far away sleeps Sir Richard Cartwright, an unrelenting political opponent for many a day.

SIXTY years have passed since the soil of Ontario suffered the foot of an invader. The Summer of 1866 witnessed an unhappy event when a company of 800 Fenians crossed the Niagara River below Fort Erie, threw a peaceful and prosperous farming community into panic, and after an engagement at Ridgeway with hastily mustered Canadian forces, recrossed to Buffalo and dispersed.

Hatred of Great Britain had recently grown among Irish-Americans, and the Fenian organization had flourished during the Civil War. After the war it further expanded, culminating in a movement toward the Canadian boundary. General John O’Neil led the adventurers, who landed from four canal boats, on Canadian soil before dawn on Friday, June 1. The Irish flag was at once hoisted amid cheers, after which the invaders marched to Fort Erie and secured food from the frightened municipal council. Then they camped at Frenchmen’s Creek, and threw outposts in all directions.

The unprepared Canadian authorities did the best they could. Only at the last moment had they taken the Fenian scare seriously. On Friday morning 400 Queen’s Own men crossed from Toronto to Port Dalhousie and entrained for Port Colborne, to protect the Welland Canal. Other forces moved from Hamilton to Dunnville, and from St. Catharines to Chippawa, whence Colonel George Peacock directed the entire defence.

All forces converged toward Ridgeway, a village seven miles west of Fort Erie. Old residents recall the panic of the momentous June 2. Sam Johnson, an adventurous smuggler, mounted a horse and dashed down the Ridge Road, crying the alarm, “The Fenians are coming!” Peace-loving farmers, frightened by the mere name of the Irish politicians, threw furniture from upstairs windows in their preparations for flight. But “Auntie” Sloan and two other women, in their farmhouse near Lake Erie, were not stampeded. They remained at home all day and baked bread for the soldiers, whom they knew would be hungry before night.

Colonel Peacock planned a junction at Stevensville of his forces and those at Port Colborne. A courier from Fort Erie brought news to the latter late Friday night that the Fenians were encamped at Frenchmen’s Creek, and that their numbers were reduced by dissipation and desertion.

Lieut.-Col. Booker resolved on an early attack, and wired Peacock. The troops set out by train at five in the morning, and shortly thereafter came Peacock’s order for an hour’s delay. Stovin, the station master, followed post haste on a hand car to deliver the message, but on nearing the battlefield his crew deserted and the messenger had to drive and then walk to find Booker.

The train’s whistle warned O’Neil of the coming defenders, and the skirmishers were soon in conflict. For half an hour they fought round the cross-roads where John Anger’s house stood, and still stands, bearing the bullet marks of that day of danger. Barricades of fence rails protected first the Fenians and then the soldiers as the former, fearing a flank movement, fell back to the north.

Then the Fenians charged the soldiers. A few of their mounted officers appeared and gave rise to a cry, “Prepare for cavalry!” and a square was formed to meet them. In trying to re-form the ranks there was much confusion, and the untried defenders fell away and were pursued through Ridgeway and beyond, with a total loss of nine killed and thirty-one wounded.

O’Neil held the field, but lost his nerve when he heard of reinforcements from Port Colborne and Chippawa. He retired to Fort Erie and Buffalo, and the fruitless and impudent invasion was over.

ON the bleak shores of Hudson Bay, at the mouth of the Churchill River, Fort Prince of Wales has lain a great melancholy ruin for nearly a century and a half. The birds fly over it in their yearly migration, an occasional fur trader casts eyes upon its massive walls and hurries upriver to Fort Churchill, but its brief part in Empire-building was long since played and is all but forgotten. It lies on the edge of the Barren Lands, those great rocky spaces where herds of caribou, feeding on the scant mosses and grasses, are almost the only sign of life.

Henry Hudson, cast adrift in a small boat and left to perish by his mutinous crew in 1611, gave an early note of sadness to the great Bay named for him, and nature in these inhospitable regions has since exacted heavy toll of enterprising traders. But the Gentlemen Adventurers of the Hudson’s Bay Company were of stout heart, and their rewards were rich.

While Sir William Phips was taking Port Royal and hammering unsuccessfully at the gates of Quebec in 1690, D’Iberville, the valiant French-Canadian, was sweeping the English from the harbours of Hudson Bay. When the English recovered, and after the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 had restored lost possessions to both nations, the great Bay was the scene of ambitious defences. Fort Prince of Wales was begun in 1733, but so vast was the design of the English engineers, who had served with Marlborough in Flanders, and so slow the construction, that it was not completed until 1771. Then visitors were thrilled by a massive fort with sides more than three hundred feet long, walls forty feet thick, and places for forty cannon on the parapet. Old pictures show the proud Union Jack at the masthead, and the dainty figures of soldiers in short breeches and cocked hat, happy and comfortable in this remote outpost.

Samuel Hearne set out from here on his memorable expeditions, in the last of which, in 1771, he reached the Coppermine River and followed it to the shores of the Arctic. For reward, he was made Governor at Fort Prince of Wales, and the remains of his stone house inside the walls may yet be seen. His service as Governor had a lamentable ending in 1782 when the gallant French Admiral, La Pérouse, arrived with three ships and four hundred men. Hearne was completely surprised and, backed by a garrison of only thirty-nine, he hoisted a tablecloth on the parapet.

Before La Pérouse left for France with Hearne as prisoner he spent two days spiking the guns, tumbling top rows of stones from the walls and burning the wooden buildings. After peace Hearne was sent back, but he located five miles up the river, and the stone fort was never again occupied. It stands as La Pérouse left it, cannon scattered over the ramparts, spiked and helpless, but the ruins still eloquent of heroic days when France and England battled over half the world.

AN ivy-covered stone gateway near the heart of Winnipeg, so small and unpretentious as almost to escape notice in the press of buildings, is all that remains of Fort Garry. Parks, pavements and palaces of commerce have erased the frontier fur-trading station which for generations dominated the empire between the Great Lakes and the Pacific, and between the Missouri and the Arctic.

Through this gateway of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s massive depot passed all the potent figures of the formative stages of the Canadian West. Fur traders brought their skins from the interior and secured supplies and trinkets. Explorers outfitted with Red River carts and pemmican for the long trails. Casual travellers stopped at civilization’s last considerable outpost on the road to the Pacific. Stern rulers of “the Company”, such as Sir George Simpson, held a miniature court in this wilderness capital, demanding and receiving, homage from servant, trader and redskin.

Vérendrye, first white man to set eyes on the prairie, passed this way in 1733 and established Fort Rouge. The North West Company erected Fort Gibraltar during its short and troubled domination. After the fur traders’ battle at Seven Oaks in 1816, and the amalgamation of the two rival companies, Nicholas Garry came from London in 1822 and erected the first Fort Garry. The surviving gateway belonged to the structure built in 1835 and extended in 1850 to the spacious form which existed until 1882, when the Company had surrendered its domain, the railway was coming, and the fort made way for the city’s expansion.

The story of the rise and fall of Fort Garry is thus the story of the changing West. We may picture the awe-struck Indians of early days loitering in the store beside the white man’s gewgaws spread for their enticement. Selkirk settlers wandered in from their narrow farms by the river, longing for comforts which their poverty and their thrift alike forbade. Colonies of the land-hungry drifted into the valley from back East, conscious of the rich empire which the Hudson’s Bay Company wished to preserve for fur-trading.

Sir George Simpson departed from Fort Garry in 1842 on a journey round the world, vanishing over the skyline to the salute of the Fort’s artillery. On a June afternoon in 1862 one hundred and fifty gold-seekers from Eastern Canada set out from Fort Garry for the Cariboo country in British Columbia. They formed Canada’s counterpart of the “Covered Wagon” era farther south, as ninety-six Red River carts started toward the setting sun, manned by men whose brave spirits were sorely tried by the hardships of a four months’ journey. One cart was drawn by a cow, which was needed to supply milk for the babies of Moses Schubert.

Fort Garry’s supreme trial came in the Winter of 1869-70, when Louis Riél, leader of the halfbreed insurrection which preceded the entrance of Manitoba to Confederation, seized the Fort, harassed the settlers and shot Thomas Scott, who had defied the bravado of the “President of the Provisional Government.” All through that winter the settlers lived in danger, but the murder of Scott roused the East, and Colonel Garnet Wolseley led an expedition to Red River, before which Riél slunk away to the United States, and lived to lead another rebellion.

The reign of the Hudson’s Bay Company had now ended, and thereafter it was a commercial, not a ruling concern. Lord Dufferin, as Governor-General, visiting Fort Garry in 1877, sensed the developing West of the future, and in his rhetorical manner spoke of the older Provinces as “but the vestibules and ante-chambers to that, till then, undreamt-of dominion whose illimitable dimensions alike confound the arithmetic of the surveyor and the verification of the explorer.”

As the walls and bastions of Fort Garry were levelled for the ambitious, fast-growing Winnipeg, then enjoying its first “boom,” the future city laid foundations for a prairie supremacy which has never been challenged, but that supremacy is based on the wheat of millions of fertile acres, in place of the fur trade from thousands of God’s wild creatures destroyed for the fashions of Europe.

LOWER FORT GARRY, twenty miles down the Red River from Winnipeg, where it supplemented the Fort Garry of a slightly earlier construction, is a treasure-house of memories and contrasts. Today it is a country club for holiday-makers whose motor cars, wealth and fashion are pre-eminently of the luxurious twentieth century. Yesterday the Fort was the fur mart of an inland empire.

This afternoon its cultured patrons drink tea by the beautiful Red River as they talk of today’s happenings, garnered by wire from the ends of the earth. A half century ago the fur brigades assembled here from the broad wilderness between the Arctic, Hudson Bay and the Pacific, and carried back the letters and periodicals with belated news of a far-distant outside world.

The Stone Fort, as it is sometimes called, was begun in 1831 by Governor Sir George Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company and completed in 1839, when its stone walls and four bastions enclosed five acres in which the commerce of the fur domain was transacted. The Governor’s house was the first stone building between the Great Lakes and the Rockies, and though its outer walls are loopholed and forbidding, it has ever been a scene of peace.

Donald A. Smith, afterward Lord Strathcona, Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was for years a frequent visitor, his calm, determined personality making for quiet and progress. Smith here received in 1870 an unexpected and menacing visitor when, late one night, Louis Riél gained admittance to his apartments unannounced. Smith had been sent from Ottawa to mediate in the rebellion, and Riél had come down from Fort Garry to force the mediator’s hand. The news he heard of the coming Wolseley expedition caused a hurried and crestfallen departure.

During the Summer of 1871 the first treaty was here negotiated and signed for the surrender by the Indians of lands in the West, and embraced an area twice the size of Manitoba. The red men, uneasy at the approach of the settlers, asked for a treaty, and one thousand answered the call of Lieut.-Governor Adams Archibald to meet at the Fort and talk it over.

The past of the Stone Fort will never be repeated, but the imaginative reader may recapture something of its vigour and colour from this description by Commissioner C. C. Chipman of the Hudson’s Bay Company, written in 1908:

“Strange gatherings there were in the Stone Fort, when Sir George Simpson was Governor. When a council was called, what unique personalities would be gathered from a governed territory larger than the continent of Europe! From the ice floes of the mouth of the Mackenzie, from the sunny valleys of the Pacific slope, from the northern shores of Hudson Bay, from the fastnesses of the Rockies, the keen-eyed, strong-lipped, bearded factors of the great fur company would come, and in the little room, hardly twenty feet square, in the Governor’s residence, there would be determined things that affected the happiness of and prosperity of a dozen great tribes, the markets and fashions of London and Paris, and the commerce of half a continent. . . .

“Not alone as a great executive, administrative and social centre has the Stone Fort a unique place in the annals of Canada. It was the meeting place, the clearing house, the junction of the great northern, southern and western trade. There the great annual brigades of boats, one from the north, and the other from the south, would meet, exchange commodities, supplies, furs, tools, guns, articles of trade, letters, etc. Great were those occasions with princely hospitality, genial meeting and festive merriment—the officers of the brigade housed in the quarters, the voyageurs camped on the lawn within the walled enclosure, while down by the shore lay the brigade of York boats and canoes, on whose return, with supplies, letters, and periodicals to lonely forts, depended the comfort and contentment of the natives and other residents in the distant interior.”

The talk at the tea table in the Stone Fort today may be of the stock market, wheat or immigration, but beyond yonder poplars that fringe the bank of the River are farmhouses where dwell the descendants of old servants of “the Company,” and their thoughts are more apt to cluster round the brave days of old.

KILDONAN is a treasured name among Scottish-Canadians. It recalls a dreary valley in Sutherlandshire which over a century ago was degraded from farming to sheep pasture. Many of the homeless tenants joined Lord Selkirk in founding the Red River Settlement, with a new Kildonan, in the Canadian West.

A minister of their own Presbyterian faith had been promised, but only an elder came with the brave colonists on their weary journey through Hudson Bay to Rupert’s Land in 1811. The elder did his best, but the hostility of the North West Company led to his early departure. There remained the Psalms and family worship, and the unshaken devotion of the Highlanders to religion and education. On their ribband farms, eight chains wide and two miles long, fronting the Red River, near the modern Winnipeg, they laboured and neighboured, and preserved their hereditary customs and beliefs.

Missionaries came from the Church of England and by their kindly brotherhood drew many of the Highlanders to their devotions. They even adapted their service to the Scottish taste. All the while, the Highlanders never ceased to petition for a clergyman of their own faith. Their entreaties were unanswered by Scotland, and though they suffered oppression and discouragement, they were sustained by their steadfast character and natural thrift through long years of trial.

At last in 1851 the Presbyterian Church in Canada heard the call and sent to Red River the Rev. John Black, a young man destined to give comfort and leadership in the developing West for over thirty years. Black was born in Scotland in 1818, and on the opening of Knox College, Toronto, in 1844 became its first student. He laboured in French Canada for a time, and when he reached Red River there was some disappointment because he did not know “the Gaelic.” His journey to Manitoba through the American West was long and hard, and the last stage was by canoe down the Red River from Pembina to St. Boniface, opposite Fort Garry. This journey, it is said, was the basis for Whittier’s plaintive poem, “The Red River Voyageur,” which contains this striking dash of local colour:

A true Highland welcome awaited the new missionary at Kildonan. The settlers flew to his side, and in one day three hundred abandoned their Anglican connection for the faith of their fathers. They loved Black’s rich accent, his powerful voice, and his passionate condemnation of sin. At once a building for a church was commenced and generously aided by labour and money. Stone for its walls was hauled fifteen miles by toilsome ox teams, and gradually the building that expressed so firmly and so permanently the faith of the people reared its walls and steeple on the prairie. Well might the proud Scottish mason say at its completion:

“There! Keep pouther and ill hands aff her, and she’ll stand for a hunner years and mair.”

There she stands today, three-quarters of a century old, undiminished in strength, the pride of the Presbyterians of the West, the inspiration of great service for Church and State alike.

SASKATCHEWAN, with its long, sonorous Indian name, is counted a world granary. Carpets of wild flowers in Spring, of surging green wheat in Summer, of golden harvest in Autumn, mark its successive seasons with the glories of the new Canada.

Only fifty years ago it was the tramping ground of the nomadic red man, who, with his tepee, travois and fleet pony, moved ever in the wake of his main food supply, the buffalo. Then the white man realized the promise of wealth of the Fertile Belt, and the days of freedom for the Indian were numbered. First the white man made war on the buffalo, and then he coveted the rich lands for his own future operations. “Those great breadths of unoccupied land are calling, ‘Come, plough, sow, and reap us,’ ” wrote George Monro Grant in traversing the plains in 1872, with the railway exploratory commission of Sandford Fleming.

What was to become of the Indian? Western settlement in the United States had been marked by wars and bloodshed. The Canadian Government and the Canadian Indians sought a better way. In 1869 the land rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company had been bought out, and it was now necessary to make settlement with the various tribes. Treaties of surrender, in exchange for reserves, with money and other advances, were the solution. Between 1871 and 1877 agreements were reached and seven treaties signed, covering the bulk of the prairie country.

In the little village of Fort Qu’Appelle, by the beautiful Qu’Appelle Lakes, fifteen miles north of Indian Head, a small monument was erected in 1915 to mark the signing there in 1874 of Treaty Number Four, one of the most important documents in the whole series. It was negotiated with considerable difficulty by Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Morris, assisted by Hon. David Laird, Minister of the Interior, and W. J. Christie, a former prominent Hudson’s Bay factor. By this arrangement with the Crees and Saulteaux, a territory of 75,000 square miles in the choice wheat lands of Southeastern Saskatchewan was surrendered by the Indians.

Diplomacy of a high order was shown by Lieut.-Governor Morris. He chose to exalt Queen Victoria as the Great Mother of the Indians as well as of the whites, and, in his appeal for a treaty, said:

“The Queen knows that you are poor; the Queen knows that it is hard to find food for yourselves and children; she knows that the winters are cold, and your children are often hungry; she has always cared for her red children as much as for her white. Out of her generous heart and liberal hand she wants to do something for you, so that when the buffaloes get scarcer—and they are scarce enough now—you may be able to do something for yourselves.”

Immediate gifts were offered of clothing and money, with annual payments of $25 to each Chief, $15 to each head man, and $5 each to the remainder of the band, together with seed and implements. There was an element of rebellion among the hundreds of Indians assembled, and the bringing of a military escort from Fort Garry proved a wise precaution. Delays and excuses occupied a week, during which the jealousy of the Indians over payment of £300,000 to the Hudson’s Bay Company was disclosed. One Indian, known as The Gambler, openly charged that the Company had stolen from them “the earth, trees, grass, stones, all that which I see with my eyes.”

Patience and firmness at length won a treaty, to endure “as long as the sun shines and the water flows.” The Indians were hived in reservations, schools were established, and many of them learned farming and became prosperous. The change came none too soon, for ere long the whistle of the locomotive was heard on the prairie, and the telegraph, or “speaking wire,” as the Indians called it, was pushing westward.

A remnant of the nomads still prefer to hunt and fish for a living, and occasionally emerge from the wilderness to gaze in stolid astonishment at the queer world about them.

THE last stand of the red men and halfbreeds in the Canadian West against the onrushing locomotive and immigrant was made in the spectacular rebellion of the Spring of 1885. The Canadian Pacific Railway was nearing completion, settlers were pouring westward; the fertile plains were at last to come into their own. But few gave a thought to the first settlers of all.

Louis Riél had organized a rebellion in Manitoba in 1869 and thereby secured justice in land for the halfbreeds of that new Province. The Métis had moved west along the Saskatchewan, only to be followed and harassed by the aggressive whites. Indians had been settled on reserves, but the halfbreeds were totally neglected.

In the Summer of 1884, in desperation, they sent a delegation to Montana, where Riél had quieted his troubled life by teaching school, and asked him to come back and help. He cheerfully responded, and during the Autumn he held meetings in the Saskatchewan settlements. By Winter his excitable nature was once more fully roused. A chance indiscretion by a public man, who said the answer from Ottawa to the halfbreeds’ appeals would be bullets, inflamed Riél’s followers, and a provisional Government was at once organized, with headquarters at Batoche.

Along the North Saskatchewan were several posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company for fur trading, and stationed nearby were Mounted Police depots, while Indian reserves were adjacent. There was all the raw material for a rebellion, given a match for the tinder. The Police secured reinforcements from Regina, and the first clash came at Duck Lake on March 26. A party of Police encountered insurgents under Gabriel Dumont, and after the failure of a parley Major Crozier cried, “Fire away, boys!” and the rebellion had started. The Canadians erected a barricade with their sleighs, but the rebels had superior cover, and after a half hour’s fighting, with a loss of twelve killed and twenty-five wounded, the loyalist force retired.

Ottawa was now thoroughly awake. Sir John A. Macdonald at once despatched General Fred. Middleton by way of Chicago. At Winnipeg he picked up a force of militiamen and left that night for Qu’Appelle and Batoche. A considerable army was organized in Ontario and Quebec, and with quotas from the West the expedition comprised 5,000 men. The units from the East braved serious hardships in the journey over the uncompleted Canadian Pacific north of Lake Superior, covering long gaps on flat cars and sleighs in severe weather.

Middleton was pressing north toward Riél’s headquarters when on the morning of April 24 his advance party of Boulton’s Scouts suddenly came on the remains of rebel camp fires, not yet cold. They soon found a mounted group of the enemy at the edge of a coulee through which ran a small stream known as Fish Creek.

“Left wheel! Gallop!” said Boulton, and his force pursued the halfbreeds until the latter took cover in the ravine. Then ensued a battle which lasted until late afternoon.

The main body of Middleton’s army was brought up, but was confronted by a small but stubborn and well-protected force of rebels in rifle pits on successive ledges of the hillside. The rebels could be dislodged only at grave risk.

A column of Middleton’s force on the left bank of the Saskatchewan heard the firing and crossed to assist only after oars for a large scow had been made on the spot. They were conducted over by Lord Melgund, Chief of Staff, who twenty years later as Lord Minto was Governor-General of Canada. Both sides suffered seriously, and at four o’clock firing ceased, the rebels withdrawing on foot to Batoche.

Today a small shaft marks the scene of the battle near the top of the coulee. All round is open country, with wooded banks in the valleys. The soil is rich, and agriculture has advanced under the thrift and enterprise mainly of the Ruthenians, whose mud houses with thatched roofs give promise of better Canadians in the days to come.

CUT KNIFE HILL has none of the sharpness of the instrument it suggests. Its title comes from the rich Western store of Indian names, and belonged to a Sarcee Chief whom Poundmaker defeated at that point many years ago. It is a round, treeless expanse about forty miles west of Battleford, and was the scene, on May 2, 1885, of the second major attempt to crush the Riél Rebellion of that year.

Poundmaker, a sagacious Indian leader, a man of almost royal bearing in his dignity and poise, had at last been driven to the war-path by his restless young braves. Lieut.-Colonel (afterward General Sir William) Otter had marched from Swift Current to the relief of Battleford and turned west to attack the Cree Chief. His 325 men were borne across the prairie in wagons toward Poundmaker’s reserve.

All afternoon they jolted over the trails, and at night rested and waited for moonlight, then resumed. Just as the first streaks of dawn lighted the plains they came to a creek flowing between steep banks. As the leaders of the column made the ford they spied an old Indian on the hill riding his horse in a circle. Old Jacob-with-Long-Hair, the early riser of the enemy force, had heard the rumble of wagons and was rousing Poundmaker’s camp. In a minute the Scouts dashed back with the cry:

Bullets were soon flying and there was a race for the top of the hill. The Mounted Police and volunteers won, but it was a doubtful advantage. The Indians merely melted away into the surrounding ravines. The infantry swarmed to the attack, while horses and wagons were assembled on the hilltop. The troops threw themselves on the bare ground to find safety from the sniping Indians concealed in the wooded gullies.

Thus the struggle went on. A rush was made for the Indian camp, but just when success was probable the soldiers were recalled. The red men now almost surrounded the hungry, thirsty, weary soldiers. Some of the volunteers, in their exhaustion, slept as they lay on the exposed hilltop.

After seven hours the attempt to dislodge the Indians was given up. A retreat was ordered. Horses were hitched, and as the column withdrew, the astonished enemy emerged from cover and gazed at the departing troops. The withdrawal could then have been turned to a terrible disaster, but a well-planted shell from beyond the creek lent discouragement, while Poundmaker threatened to flog any of the hotheads who attempted to follow.

Otter had lost eight killed and fourteen wounded. The men were courageous under trying conditions, but it was a humiliating experience. A few weeks later, his cause lost, Poundmaker rode into the presence of General Middleton and surrendered.

BATOCHE is a remote hamlet by the South Saskatchewan, a mere fragment of its former self, but its name is a vivid memory for all who lived in Canada in the eighteen-eighties. An old wooden church, with a tall spire, was the spiritual home of the Métis who rose in rebellion in 1885, and today it is an imposing survival of those four May days when siege and battle raged about it.

Lord Minto, on revisiting the West as Governor-General in 1904, called at the church at Batoche and noted in his journal that when he had last seen it the building was filled with Canadian wounded. Only one old building in the neighbouring village has survived the forty years since the rebellion. Descendants of the revolting Métis live in the settlement, some as farmers, others as fishermen, operating in the shallow waters of the Saskatchewan.

The climax of the rebellion occurred at Batoche. General Middleton moved on ten miles to this point after the Fish Creek engagement, and on May 9 began his siege of Riél’s stronghold. It was a tedious task, his own force, largely of inexperienced volunteers, meeting a seasoned fighting foe, accustomed to the wooded ravines in which they took protection.

Four days were necessary to win victory. Each morning the troops pressed forward, gained a little, then fell back. Middleton’s caution overestimated the number of the enemy, and underestimated the grit of his own men.

On May 12 Middleton judged the time had come for a decisive assault. He led an attack across a level tract toward the village, while other troops moved forward on the left. The men, who had been disheartened by delays and retreats, caught the fever and responded to the cry of Colonel Williams:

Middleton emerged from his tent, where he was getting food, to find the whole line in a wood facing the village. The assault went on savagely, the enemy stubbornly fighting under cover of the houses. Gradually the pressure increased, and eventually the troops attacked the village in a rush, whereupon the rebels fled from the other side. The closing incidents lasted but a few minutes, and the back of the rebellion was broken.

Middleton’s force suffered nine killed and forty-five wounded in the four days. Riél lost eleven killed. The rebel leader wandered at large for some days, and then, seeing the hopelessness of his cause, gave himself up. He was sent to Regina for trial, and after much political agitation in the East, especially in Quebec, where he had many sympathizers, he was convicted of treason and hanged on November 16.

The fate of Riél has not yet ceased to provoke discussion and arouse sympathy from those of his race or others who naturally favour the rights of minorities. He was a man of college education, but a born agitator, and his mental unbalance led to confinement in a Montreal asylum for a time in the ’seventies.

CROWFOOT sleeps in the land of his imperious ancestors, on a plateau overlooking the winding Bow River, seventy miles east of Calgary. All round are the pasturing horses and tilled lands of the Blackfoot Reserve, and beyond them the herds and crops of the palefaces, whom Crowfoot admired and welcomed. From the little Roman Catholic cemetery where Crowfoot lies may be seen the swift waters descending from the Rockies toward the Saskatchewan River and Hudson Bay.

Across the Bow are the plains where Crowfoot led his tribe in 1877 to sign the Blackfoot treaty, by which 50,000 square miles, comprising the southwestern corner of the prairies, was surrendered for the use of the conquering whites for all time. Blackfoot Crossing, a little to the eastward, was the capital of the Blackfoot Confederacy, and here came Hon. David Laird, Lieutenant-Governor, and Lieut.-Col. McLeod, of the Northwest Mounted Police, to invite the Indians to declare themselves.

The Blackfeet were an intelligent, haughty race, tall and well built, men who, ignoring the claims of the Scots, believed themselves the finest people in the world. They were enterprising in peace, successful in war, until the white man brought all but ruin in his train. When the American West was being opened, a swarm of whiskey traders crossed the boundary and demoralized the Blackfeet. Further wreckage was caused by a disastrous outbreak of smallpox. The once proud tribes were decimated in numbers, impoverished in wealth and broken in spirit. Their very existence was threatened until the arrival of the Mounted Police in 1874 stopped the whiskey traffic. The Indians now openly sought a treaty.

Governor Laird and his retinue of red-coated Police, with their ceremonious field guns, found eager Blackfeet awaiting them when they swept into the camp at the Crossing and established a Council House. The Chiefs drew near, with ostentatious hand-shaking, while their four thousand more timid followers assembled in a semicircle at a respectful distance. The diplomatic Laird distributed provisions, but Crowfoot declined gifts until he had heard the terms of the proposed treaty.

“I have to tell you how much pleased the Queen is that you have taken the Police by the hands and helped them, and obeyed her laws since the arrival of the Police,” said the Governor. He told them the buffaloes were being killed very fast, the white men were coming in, and the Queen wanted to assist the Indians to raise cattle and grain, and to give them money which they could spend as they liked.

The Indians displayed their pleasure at the services of the Mounted Police. Button Chief said he could not sleep before the Police came, but now he slept soundly and was not afraid. If there had been any doubt as to a treaty, it was dispelled by Crowfoot.

“The advice given me and my people has proved to be very good,” he said. “If the Police had not come to the country, where would we be all now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so fast that very few indeed of us would have been left today. The Police have protected us as the feathers of a bird protect it from the frosts of Winter. I wish them all good, and trust that all our hearts will increase in goodness from this time forward. I am satisfied. I will sign the treaty.”

The other Chiefs followed Crowfoot’s example, and then the Indians fought a sham battle on horseback, the bullets flying about uncomfortably.

Crowfoot guided his people in settling down to their new life. His admiration for the whites never ceased, and when the Canadian Pacific Railway was built he was a loyal protector of its property. When the West once more seethed with rebellion in 1885 he threw his great influence for peace, and the refusal of the Blackfeet to join Riél shortened the conflict. At a critical hour in April he telegraphed Sir John A. Macdonald:

Soon the body of the old warrior gave signs of weakening. As his end approached he counselled his tribes to respect the white man, to imitate his virtues and shun his vices. On April 24, 1890, the end came peacefully, and Father Lacombe, the faithful “black robed voyageur,” conducted the burial of the monarch of the plains.

THE modern traveller, eagerly speeding from Calgary toward the Rockies, whose snow-caps he has already sighted, traverses territory intimately connected with the peace and well-being of the Canadian West. A neglected old house near the railway track, at Morley, is the remnant of the mission established here in 1873 by Rev. George McDougall and his son, John. The father, a native of Kingston, Ont., had been in the West since 1860, living the faithful, zealous life of service which made him half-cleric, half-statesman. He carried his message far and near over the trackless plains, swam and forded rivers, lived with the savages, soothed their discontent and paved the way for white occupation.

Early in 1872 George McDougall visited the Mountain Stoneys in the Bow Valley and heard their plea for a mission. The whiskey traders were then doing their worst for the Indians from their lawless strongholds, whose very names, such as “Fort Stand-Off” and “Fort Whoop-Up,” signified the bravado of the gang.

The missionary hurried to Winnipeg with his son, to the first Methodist Conference held in the West, and received permission to establish a post in the foothills of the Rockies. Dr. William Morley Punshon, a forceful, silver-tongued English preacher then located at Toronto, lent his presence to the conference and his enthusiasm to the new enterprise. John McDougall was selected as the first missionary to the Stoneys, and the post was named Morleyville, after the celebrated English preacher.

John McDougall, who was born at Owen Sound in 1842 and had learned Ojibway as a child, was a worthy son of his father, and when, late in 1873, he and his family arrived at the new mission a work was begun which lasted the greater part of his life. Buildings were erected in the form of a fort, to protect against enemies, and soon seven hundred Indians had settled there, to accept the education and gospel teaching of an earnest man. The wild nomads of the mountains quickly felt the spell of the missionary, became peaceful and useful citizens, and prepared the way for the ranching and farming of the white man’s day.

At sixty-four John McDougall was superannuated, and thereafter spent some time as special commissioner for the Government among Indians and Doukhobors. His father had perished miserably in January, 1876, when lost on the prairie during a hunting trip, and was buried at Morley. John McDougall lived an honoured old age in Calgary, where he died in 1917. At his funeral, Chief Jonas Bigston expressed the tribute and the lament of the tribes in the foothills when he said:

“Day and night, storm and shine, we always found our friend here to do his duty, and all our lives we will strive to follow him.”

The Morley mission site is but a tiny spot in the foothills today, in the heart of the ranching country, not far from the Canadian home of Edward, Prince of Wales. A dozen years after John McDougall opened house at Morley steel rails of the Canadian Pacific Railway were laid, binding ocean to ocean. Within a few years more a tide of travel was hurrying westward to mountain resorts and Pacific ports, while the locomotives and cars hauled back the spices and silks of the Orient for Eastern markets.

THE magnet of gold has drawn its tramping thousands across the Western plains to the Pacific, but the original pathfinder, first of all white men to brave the perils of the mountains, was inspired by the desire of the people of Europe for the furry coats of wild animals, which at that time furnished the only commercial interest west of the St. Lawrence. This was Alexander Mackenzie, partner in the North West Company of Montreal, an organization of daring Scottish and English merchants, in whose veins coursed the blood of the clans of Culloden and of the frontiersmen of the revolting Atlantic colonies.

Mackenzie had come to Montreal in 1779, a youth brimming with ambition and well equipped by his personality for distinction in the wilds. He spent five years in the counting-house of the fur traders, another year at Detroit, and then departed for Athabasca, where his resourcefulness was needed for the adjustment of a local difficulty. The Nor’Westers had already begun their flank movement against the Hudson’s Bay Company, and aimed to separate the Northern Indians from their old market with the pioneer traders. Competing forts, sometimes adjacent and threatening, marked the commercial battle which had begun on the Saskatchewan in 1772.

Mackenzie had established himself in the trading post of Fort Chipewyan on Lake Athabasca, but this life was ill suited for his restless spirit. In the Summer of 1789 he accomplished a dangerous and toilsome journey down the Mackenzie River to the delta at the Arctic, but was compelled to return quickly by the imminence of Winter.

His thirst for exploration was now thoroughly whetted. He returned to England to study astronomy and secure better instruments for observation. The Homeland throbbed with the spirit of adventure through news of the travels of Vancouver, Cook and others, and Mackenzie hurried back in 1782 to start his greatest undertaking, namely, to reach the Pacific. He wintered at a new fort on the Peace River, maturing his plans and constructing his twenty-five-foot canoe.

Nature was in a display of “exuberant verdure” in this fertile Northern plain when Mackenzie and his nine picked companions embarked on their high adventure on May 9, mid the fears and tears of their devoted Winter interpreter. They ascended the Peace River, which soon became impetuous and dangerous. The banks grew higher, the stream narrower and wilder. In a few days they were hemmed in and forced to cut steps in the soft stone wall of the steep bank. They hacked their way through a forest for nine miles to pass a rapid, carrying the canoe and supplies, sometimes making but one mile a day.

The men grew dispirited and alarmed, and required all the courage and inspiration their devoted leader could give. On the advice of Indians they ascended another branch of the Peace to a height of land which after a short divide led to a small lake whose waters flowed into the Fraser. In their extremity they took supplies from an Indians’ cache, leaving trinkets in exchange, and pressed feverishly westward.

The turbulent waters broke their canoe, and precious days were lost in mending it. On June 19 they were again afloat, but compelled, on Indians’ counsel, to retrace their route and ascend a different tributary. They crossed another divide, and on July 18 entered the waters of the Bella Coola River. Down this stream they drifted and paddled, meeting natives whose insolence and greed gave evidence of recent contact with white explorers, such as Vancouver and Cook.

At last, his courage rewarded, his leadership vindicated, Mackenzie reached the waters of the Pacific. Troublesome Indians hovered about, and for safety he made camp on a rocky eminence near Elcho Harbour in the delta of the Bella Coola, where his company could, if necessary, defend themselves. The red men at length melted away, and the exulting explorer, before departing, mixed some grease and vermilion, and in words deserving of a much larger audience, painted on the face of the rock his celebrated memorial:

The intrepid Scot and his weary companions then braved the rivers and mountains back to the Peace and Fort Chipewyan, sometimes pulling their canoe upstream by grasping the branches on the bank. Mackenzie returned to Montreal the following year, and remained in Canada until 1808, being for a time a member of the Legislature. His “Voyages” was published in London in 1801 and stimulated Lord Selkirk to embark on his famous colonization scheme in Canada. Mackenzie was knighted, and died in Scotland in 1820.

The location of Mackenzie’s rock was not established until 130 years after his memorable visit, which had led to intensive exploration in the West by Thompson and Fraser, and confirmed the ownership of the coast in British hands. In the Summer of 1923 Captain R. P. Bishop, a British Columbia surveyor, traversing the coast between Vancouver and Prince Rupert, explored the Bella Coola delta in detail and sifted the evidence so convincingly that his conclusions were accepted by the British Columbia and Ottawa authorities.

DAVID THOMPSON has been described by an eminent successor, Mr. J. B. Tyrrell, as “the greatest land geographer who ever lived.” He explored and mapped 1,200,000 square miles of the plains and mountains of Canada, and 500,000 square miles of the United States, marking the main routes with an accuracy which required little revision with the perfected instruments of a century later. He died in poverty near Montreal in 1857 and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Delayed recognition came in 1922 in the erection by the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Hudson’s Bay Company of a new Kootenay House, for a museum, almost on the exact site, by Lake Windermere, of the fort built by Thompson in 1807. It was from this fort that Thompson carried on his trading and exploration for five years, opening up Southern British Columbia, tracing the Columbia River its entire length, and running a race with the Astorians for first settlement at the mouth of that great River of the West.

Thompson, who was born in London, England, and educated at a charity school, was thirty-seven when he built Kootenay House. He was a keen master of men, shrewd and powerful despite his John Bunyan-like face. He reached the site of his new fort only after a long and perilous journey. Rivers were swollen with the melting snows, and the voyageurs were hurried through the forested canyons they knew not whither.

“May God in His mercy give me to see where the waters of this river flow to the Western ocean,” he wrote sincerely in his journal in his hour of perplexity. He followed the Columbia to its headwaters, and there, near the shore of Lake Windermere, Kootenay House was built. Here the Piegans found the white men, and threatened their safety. Groups of them hung about the stockaded fort for weeks while Thompson and his party remained inside, stalked as a lion might be stalked by a hunter. One morning two Piegans presented themselves, and Thompson showed them the strength of the stockades and bastions, the walls with loopholes for muskets.

“I know,” he told them, “that you are come as spies and intend to destroy us, but many of you will die before you succeed. Go back to your countrymen and tell them this.” The spies carried back generous gifts of tobacco from the wily Thompson. Soon the chiefs were smoking real pipes of peace and the enemy’s force faded away.

Fur trading went on vigorously at Kootenay House, the packs being carried east to the Rendezvous of the North West Company at the head of Lake Superior. The explorer travelled north and south on the rivers, and extended his knowledge of the American West as well. He also took astronomical observations, and though 6,000 miles from Greenwich he calculated by the stars the location of Kootenay House within four miles.

Thompson’s last dash down the Columbia to its mouth was preceded by the Astorians by two months, and on his departure from the valley of the Columbia in 1812 he bade farewell to the West. During twenty-eight years of exploration from Hudson Bay to the Pacific, this handsome explorer, with deep-set, studious eyes, had never been within one thousand miles of any civilized community of five hundred souls. His was a life of isolation equalled by few white men anywhere.

AFTER its wild dash through the mountain gorges, the Fraser River quietly meanders through a rich, flat land toward the sea, and here the Province of British Columbia was cradled. Fort Langley, now survived by one lone building of its early defences, was the first trading post on the Pacific coast of Canada, the scene of the first agricultural and fishery development of British Columbia, and the site of the first capital of that colony. Its career as a capital was a matter of days only, in the Autumn of 1858, ending when for defence reasons it gave place to New Westminster, fifteen miles lower down the Fraser and on the opposite side.

The founding of Fort Langley in 1827 was the fruit of an era of expansion by the Hudson’s Bay Company west of the Rockies, under the aggressive leadership of Sir George Simpson. When the schooner Cadboro, the first sea-going vessel to ruffle the waters of the Fraser, had unloaded supplies and departed mid the firing of guns, the Indians watched stolidly the rising of the log walls and palisades which were further to crimp their freedom. The lone fort had at first no neighbours within 300 miles, but soon the coast and interior were dotted with fur-trading posts.

Langley’s importance grew after the boundary settlement of 1846, and goods were transhipped here for the Upper Fraser and beyond, instead of ascending the Columbia. Flat-bottomed bateaux with sails, poles and oars, in the hands of powerful voyageurs, struggled against the swift waters to Fort Hope, where they met the “brigade” with furs from the interior. Trading then flourished for days, while tongues were unceasing in gossip, and weary workers regaled themselves in the rough amusements of a frontier post.

As the years passed, the Langley prairie gave farming a foothold, the salmon of the Fraser were here first cured and exported, and here came thousands of miners seeking the golden sands of the Upper Fraser from 1858 onward. It was a new Eldorado, a Canaan whose fame was heard round the world, and the ’forty-niners deserted California for the new stampede. Langley, Yale and other towns felt the spur of the onrush and the delirium of the free-spending carousers as they returned to the coast for the Winter.

The miners would gladly have governed themselves in their free-and-easy way, but Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Colonial Secretary, novelist, poet and playwright, ordered from London the formation of the new colony of British Columbia. Sir James Douglas, the tall, austere head of the Hudson’s Bay Company, was made Governor and sole ruler, a figure well equipped to keep peace among the 30,000 roistering miners of the interior.

An imposing inaugural ceremony took place in a large room at Fort Langley on November 19, 1858. Already there was a boom in town lots, with prices up to $750, but in a few weeks the capital was moved, and landowners were given New Westminster property in exchange. Langley languished in its disappointment and remained a mere trading post until abandoned in 1896.

LONELY, romantic Nootka, once “the Liverpool of the Pacific,” once also the cause of threat of war between Great Britain and Spain, emerged momentarily from its obscurity in the Summer of 1924, and then relapsed to its normal state of isolation. A ship-load of public men, historians and others journeyed from Victoria to the northwest coast of Vancouver Island, and in Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, facing the restless Pacific, dedicated a cairn to recall the stirring events of an almost forgotten past.

Spain, which was still firmly entrenched in its vast American possessions, had not yet abandoned thoughts of world dominion when its ambitions flared up in the incident at Nootka. The proud nation which had sent Columbus to America, and whose gold-laden galleons from Mexico and Peru had fired the jealousy and the enterprise of Europe, was to make at Nootka one more throw of the dice. Spanish dons had crept up the coast as far as California, but the race which had sent Drake nosing his way into the Pacific in 1578, had taken Canada from the French, had wrested sea supremacy from the Dutch, had now scented trade in the North Pacific.

The world navigator, Captain James Cook, who had aided Wolfe to thread the unknown waters of the St. Lawrence to Quebec, had anchored in Nootka Sound in 1778. His crew, after Cook’s death, had carried home the news of the wonderful sea otter, whose fur would be coveted by the fashionables of Europe. Already the Russians were moving south from Behring Sea, and soon the Spaniards sailed north from California for the pelts of the otter.

The clash came at Nootka, when in 1789 the haughty Don Martinez seized four British ships and the fort. News of the outrage inflamed London, and Pitt, then at the height of his power, believed Spain unfitted for a war. Madrid yielded to Britain’s firm demands, restored the ships, paid an indemnity and agreed to return the territory.

Captain George Vancouver, who had gone with Cook as a midshipman to the northwest coast about the time the United States was starting its Revolution, was now Britain’s diplomat to the Pacific. He sailed by way of Cape of Good Hope and Australia, and reached Nootka in August, 1792. A Spaniard of the old school, the chivalrous Don Quadra, awaited him in the shelter of Friendly Cove, and their days passed in dinners and salutes, until the British powder was exhausted.

Chivalry and mutual respect, even affection, did not, however, achieve a settlement, and after weeks of negotiation Vancouver and Quadra had to refer their territorial dispute to their home governments. Quadra sailed south to Mexico, while Vancouver explored the coast and islands, narrowly missing Alexander Mackenzie at Bella Coola, “from Canada, by land,” in the Summer of 1793.

Two junior officers at Nootka, in the Summer of 1795, hauled down the Spanish flag and hoisted the Union Jack, thus saving a thousand miles of coast from the possession of the Spanish crown. The sea otter was soon on the way to extinction, and it was many years before the West coast had permanent occupancy and enterprises.

Nootka, save for a salmon cannery, has returned to the Indian village status in which it was found by Captain Cook in 1778.

Works of Francis Parkman:

The Old Regime in Canada.

The Jesuits in North America.

La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West.

Pioneers of France in the New World.

Frontenac and New France.

Montcalm and Wolfe.

A Half Century of Conflict.

Makers of Canada Series:

Lord Sydenham. By Adam Shortt.

Louis-Joseph Papineau. By Alfred D. DeCelles.

General Brock. By Lady Edgar.

Champlain. By N. E. Dionne.

Lord Dorchester. By A. G. Bradley.

Sir Frederick Haldimand. By Jean N. McIlwraith.

John Graves Simcoe. By Duncan Campbell Scott.

Count Frontenac. By William D. Le Sueur.

Sir James Douglas. By Robert Hamilton Coats and R. E. Gosnell.

Wolfe and Montcalm. By Abbé H. R. Casgrain.

William Lyon Mackenzie. By Charles Lindsey.

Mackenzie, Selkirk and Simpson. By Rev. George Bryce.

Chronicles of Canada Series:

The Mariner of St. Malo. By Stephen Leacock.

The Founder of New France. By Charles W. Colby.

The Jesuit Missions. By Thomas Guthrie Marquis.

All Afloat. By William Wood.

The Great Fortress. By William Wood.

The Father of British America. By William Wood.

The ‘Patriotes’ of ’37. By Alfred D. DeCelles.

The Acadian Exiles. By Arthur G. Doughty.

Adventurers of the Far North. By Stephen Leacock.

The War with the United States. By William Wood.

Tecumseh. By Ethel T. Raymond.

The Railway Builders. By Oscar D. Skelton.

The United Empire Loyalists. By W. Stewart Wallace.

The Winning of Canada. By William Wood.

The Family Compact. By W. Stewart Wallace.

The Day of Sir John Macdonald. By Sir Joseph Pope.

Acadia, 8.

Acadians, Expulsion of, 6, 12, 18, 19-23, 29.

Adolphustown, Loyalists at, 153-156.

Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 9, 16.

Albanel, Father, 55.

“Albemarle” and Nelson at Quebec, 59.

Allan, Colonel John, 39, 40.

Alexander, Sir William, 5.

Alwington House, Kingston, 222.

American Revolution, 153-157, 162.

Amherst, General Sir Jeffrey, 9, 10, 13, 75, 89-94, 100.

Amherstburg, 152, 171-175.

Anger House, Ridgeway, 232.

Annapolis Basin, 6.

Annapolis Royal, 3-6, 17.

Archibald, Sir Adams, 242.

Arctic Ocean, 235.

Argall, Captain Samuel, 5.

Armitage, Archdeacon, Halifax, 14.

Arnold, General Benedict, 68, 103, 106-109.

Arthabaska, Que., 125-128.

Astorians, The, 279.

Athabasca, 273.

Bagot, Sir Charles, 223.

Baldwin, Hon. Robert, 224.

Barclay, Captain Robert H., 173-174, 199.

Batoche, 253, 254, 260-263.

Battleford, 257.

Bay of Quinte, 155.

Beaubassin (Amherst, N.S.), 34-35.

Beauséjour, (See Fort Beauséjour).

Beauharnois, De, 79.

Beaver Dams, Battle of, 164, 208.

Bella Coola Rock, 273-277.

Beverley Swamp, 148.

Bigot, François, 7, 36, 53, 76, 90.

Bishop, Captain R. P., 277.

Bishopp, Colonel Cecil, 196.

Black, Rev. John, 246-247.

Blackfoot Indians, 264-268.

Blake, Hon. Edward, 128.

Blomidon, Cape, 19.

Bonaparte, Prince Louis Napoleon, 98.

Bonaventure, Governor, 29.

Bonsecours Church, Montreal, 66.

Booker, Lieut.-Colonel, 231.

Boscawen, Admiral Edward, 9.

Boston, Mass., 12, 36.

Bougainville, General de, 91, 92, 101.

Bourgeoys, Marguerite, 70, 74.

Bourlamaque, General, 100.

Bow River, 264.

Boyd, General, at Chrysler’s Farm, 203-204.

Bradstreet, Colonel John, at Kingston, 145.

Brébeuf, Father Jean, 64, 74, 136-141.

British Columbia, birth of, 282.

Brock, General Sir Isaac, 152, 163-164, 168, 171-173, 180, 188-192, 196.

Brown, Hon. George, 31.

Brown, General Jacob, 206.

Brulart de Sillery, Noel, 61.

Brulé, Étienne, 129-130, 176.

Bryson’s, Que., 110.

Buffalo, N.Y., 229, 232.

Burgoyne, General John, 105.

Burlington Heights, 148, 164, 193-195, 197, 201, 206.

Byron, Captain John, 11.

Campbell, Sir Alexander, 228.

Campbell, Wilfred, 131.

Canadian National Railways, 202.

Canadian Pacific Railway, 252, 267, 271, 278.

Canal at Sault Ste. Marie, 176-179.

Canard River, 172.

Cap Rouge, 91, 92.

Cap des Rosiers, 47.

Caraghouha, village of, 132, 134.

Cariboo gold seekers, 238.

Carignan-Salières Regiment, 64, 86.

Carleton, Governor Sir Guy, 68, 89, 103, 104, 105, 106-109;

(Lord Dorchester), 167.

Carleton, Governor Sir Thomas, 42.

Carman, Bliss, 16, 23.

Cartier, Jacques, 27, 45-48, 49-52, 54.

Cartier, Sir George E., 119.

Cartwright, Sir Richard, 228.

Chambly (See Fort Chambly).

Chambly, Jacques, 86.

Champlain, Hélène, 60.

Champlain, Samuel de, 3, 4, 47, 53, 57-60, 86, 129-131, 132-135.

Champlain & St. Lawrence Railway, 114-116.

Chandler, General, at Stoney Creek, 194.

Charles I, 5.

Charlottetown Confederation Conference, 30-33.

Charlottetown, Port Lajoie, 27-29.

Chase, Samuel, at Montreal, 68.

Chateau Bigot, 51.

Chateauguay, Battle of, 110-113.

Chauvin, Pierre de, 54.

Chenier, Dr. J. O., 121-124.

“Chesapeake” and “Shannon,” 14.

Chignecto, Isthmus of, 34.

Chipman, C. C., 242.

Chippawa, 197, 205-208, 230.

Christian Island, 132.

Christie, W. J., 250.

Chrysler’s Farm, Battle of, 193, 202-204.

Clergue, Francis H., 179.

Clive, Robert, 9.

Colbert, 149.

Colborne, Sir John, 122-124.

Colonial Advocate, The, 216-220.

Compagnie des Indes, 68.

Columbia River, 279-281, 283-284.

Confederation Conference, Charlottetown, 30-33.

“Continental” currency, 68.

Cook, Captain James, 90, 166, 276, 287, 289.

Cornwall, Ont., 202.

Cornwallis, Lord, 12.

Council House, Kingston, 157-159.

Counties of Ontario named, 159.

Crabtree, A. Greene, pirate, 40.

Cromwell, Oliver, 5.

Crowfoot, Chief of Blackfeet, 264-268.

Crown Point, 105.

Culloden, 37, 273.

Cut Knife Creek, Battle of, 237-239.

Daniel, Father Anthony, 139.

D’Aulnay at Port Royal, 5.

David, Senator L. O., 125.

Declaration of Independence, 105.

De Monts, Sieur, 3, 5.

Denonville, Marquis of, 144.

De Noyan, at Kingston, 145.

De Roquemont at Gaspé, 48.

De Salaberry, Colonel Charles Michael, 110-113.

Desjardins Canal, 148.

Detroit, 152, 163, 171-173, 273.

Dickson, Robert, 181.

Dollard at Long Sault, 70-73.

Dollier de Casson, Father, 146-148, 148-152.

Dominion Atlantic Railway, 23.

Don Martinez, 287.

Don Quadra, 288.

Douglas, Sir James, 284.

Drucour, Governor, at Louisbourg, 10.

Drucour, Madame, 10.

Drummond, General Sir Gordon, 197-198, 207.

Drummond, Lieut.-Colonel William, 198.

Drummond, William Henry, 121.

Duck Lake, fight at, 254.

Dufferin, Lord, 239.

Dufferin Terrace, Quebec, 94.

“Duke William,” The, 29.

Dundas, Ont., 148, 217.

Dunkirk, 7.

Dunnville, Ont., 230.

Du Lhut, Daniel Greysolon, 184.

D’Urfé, Abbé, at Kingston, 143.

Durham, Lord, 120, 221.

Elcho Harbour, 276.

Elgin, Lord, 69, 223.

Elson, John M., 162.

“Empress of Scotland,” 50.

“Evangeline,” 19, 20, 23.

Exploration stimulated by Renaissance, 45.

Family Compact, 216-220.

Fenians at Ridgeway, 229-232.

Fish Creek, Battle of, 252-256.

Fleming, Sir Sandford, 248.

Fort Amherst (Port Lajoie), 29.

Fort Anne, 6.

Fort Beauséjour, 18, 21, 34-38.

Fort Chambly, 86-88, 104.

Fort Chippewyan, 274, 277.

Fort Churchill, 233.

Fort Cumberland, 37.

Fort Edward, 16-18.

Fort Erie, 196-198, 229.

Fort Frontenac, 142-145.

Fort Frederick, Kingston, 142.

Fort Garry, 236-239.

Fort Gaspereau, 37.

Fort George, 160-164, 168, 193-195.

Fort Gibraltar, 236.

Fort Hope, 284.

Fort Langley, 282-285.

Fort Lawrence, 17, 34, 35.

Fort Lennox (See Isle aux Noix).

Fort Louisbourg (See Louisbourg).

Fort Malden, Amherstberg, 171-175.

Fort Meigs, 173.

Fort Mississauga, 165.

Fort Niagara, 161-164.

Fort Prince of Wales, 233-235.

Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Treaty, 248-251.

Fort Rouge, 236.

Fort St. Joseph, 180-183.

Fort Ste. Marie, 136-141.

Fort Ste. Marie II, 140.

Fort Stephenson, 173.

Fort Toronto (Old Fort), 166-170.

Fort Rouille, Toronto, 169.

Fort William, fur traders at, 184-187.

Forty Mile Creek, 195.

Francis I of France, 49.

Francklin, Michael, 41.

Franklin, Benjamin, 68.

Franquet, Colonel, 29.

Fraser Highlanders, 52.

Fraser River, 276, 282-285.

Frenchmen’s Creek, 229.

French-Canadians wooed by Americans, 68.

Frontenac, Count, 66, 142, 145.

Fraser, Simon, 277.

Foxhounds, first pack in Canada, 85.

Fredericton, first Parliament Building at, 42-44.

Fundy, Bay of, 6, 23.

Fur Trade, 42, 53, 56, 68, 176-179, 184-187, 236-239, 240-243, 273, 278-281.

Gallinee, Father, 146-148, 149.

Galt, Sir Alexander T., 32.

Garry, Nicholas, 237.

Gaspé, Jacques Cartier at, 45-48.

Gaspereau River, 19, 22.

Gauvreau, J. W., 135.

George II., 11, 37.

Georgian Bay, 129-131, 132-135, 136-141.

Girod, Amury, 121.

Givens, Colonel, at York, 169.

Gore, Colonel Charles S., 117-120.

Gourlay, Robert, 218.

Grand Pré, 18, 19-23.

Grand River, 150, 201.

Grant, George Monro, 248.

Grass, Michael, 157.

Gray’s “Elegy” recited by Wolfe, 92.

“Golden Dog,” 51, 91.

Great War, Fleet leaves Gaspé for, 48.

Haldimand, Sir Frederick, 84, 101.

Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 6, 16.

Halifax, 9, 17, 34.

Halifax, St. Paul’s Church at, 12-15.

Hamilton, Ont., 146-148, 193, 230.

Hampton, General Wade, 110-113, 202-204.

Hardy, Sir Thomas Masterton, 14.

Harrison, General W. H., 173-175, 200-201.

Harvey, Colonel John, 193-195.

Haviland, Colonel, at Isle aux Noix, 101.

Hay Bay, 156, 227.

Hearne, Samuel, 235.

Hébert, Louis, at Quebec, 60.

Hébert, Phillippe, 80, 113, 127.

“Hector,” landing of, at Pictou, 24-26.

Henry IV of France, 5, 55, 57, 60.

“Hiawatha,” 148, 179.

Highlanders’ Landing at Pictou, 24-26.

Hincks, Sir Francis, 224.

Hochelaga (Montreal), 51.

Holland, Samuel, 155.

Holmes, Admiral Charles, 91.

“Hope” lands settlers at Pictou, 25.

“Hope” brings Loyalists to Canada, 155.

Horse, first in Canada, 64.

Horton’s Landing, N.S., 23.

House, Oldest in Canada, 61-65.

Howe, Joseph, 24.

Hudson Bay, 55, 159, 233-235.

Hudson, Henry, 233.

Hudson’s Bay Company, 72, 184-187, 233-235, 236-239, 240-243, 251, 254, 278, 282-284.

Hull, General William, 171-173.

Humber River, Ontario, 129.

Hurons, 72, 129-131, 132-135, 136-141.

Iberville, Sieur d’, 233.

Indian Treaties, 242, 248-251, 264-268.

Iroquois, 62, 63, 70-73, 79-81, 132, 139-140.

Isle aux Noix, 99-102.

Isle Orleans, 91.

James I., 5.

Jamestown, 3, 5.

Jesuit Fathers, 55, 63, 136-141.

Jesuit Mission House, Sillery, 61-65.

Joan of Arc, 80.

Jogues, Father Isaac, 63, 178.

Johnson, Colonel, at Moraviantown, 201.

Johnson, Sam, at Ridgeway, 231.

Joliet, Father Louis, 148, 150.

Kent, Duke of, 6.

Kildonan Church, 244-247.

Kildonan, Scotland, 244.

King’s College, Windsor, N.S., 16.

Kingston, Ont., 63, 142-145, 157-159, 168, 207, 209-212, 215, 221-224, 225-228.

Kirby, William, 51, 91.

Kirke, David, 47.

Knox College, Toronto, 246.

Knox, Captain John, 38.

Kootenay House, 278-281.

L’Assomption, Que., 126.

La Barre, Governor, 144.

Labrador, 45, 55.

La Brosse, Father, legend of, 56.

Lachine, 146, 147, 178.

Lacolle Mill, Battle of, 204.

Lacombe, Father, 268.

Lafayette, Marquis de, 105.

Lafontaine, First mass at, 132-135.

Lafontaine, Hon. L. H., 224.

Laird, Hon. David, 250, 264.

Lake Champlain, 100, 105, 110.

Lake Erie, 148, 149-152.

Lake Erie, Battle of, 174.

Lake George, 63.

Lake Huron, 134.

Lake Michigan, 150.

Lake Nipissing, 129.

Lake Ontario, 129, 147, 154, 160.

Lake St. John, district of, 56.

Lake Simcoe, 129, 136.

Lake Superior, 150, 176-179, 184.

Lake Windermere, 278-281.

Laprairie, 69, 114-116.

La Pérouse, Admiral, 235.

Lalement, Father Gabriel, 64, 136-141.

Lalement, Father Jérôme, 138.

Laliberté, Alfred, 73.

La Salle, Sieur de, 143-145, 146-148, 161.

La Tour, Charles de, 5.

Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 121, 125-128, 225.

Laurier, Lady, 125.

Laval, Bishop, 55, 149.

Lawrence, Governor Charles, 12, 21, 22, 34.

Le Caron, Father, 132-135.

Le Loutre, Abbé Louis Joseph, 21, 34, 36, 37.

LeMoine, Sir James, 63.

Le Moyne, Charles, 70.

Lescarbot, Marc, 3, 5.

Lévis, Chevalier de, 95-98.

Lévis, Heights of, 91, 92.

Lexington, Battle of, 103.

Limoilou, Quebec, 49.

L’Incarnation, Marie de, 55, 62.

Lincoln, Abraham, Laurier’s love for, 127.

Long Sault, Dollard at, 70-73.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 19, 148, 179.

Lower Fort Garry, 240-243.

Louis XIV, 53, 144, 149.

Louis XV, 9.

Louisbourg, 7-11, 21, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 37, 38, 48, 89.

Loyalists, United Empire, 41, 142, 152, 153-156, 221, 227.

Lundy’s Lane, Battle of, 197, 205-208.

Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer, 284.

Machias, Rebels at, 39, 40.

Maisonneuve, Sieur de, founder of Montreal, 64, 70.

Malpeque oysters, 29.

Mance, Jeanne, 70.

“Marie Chapdelaine,” 56.

Marie de Medicis, Queen, 61.

Marie Antoinette, 167.

Marquette, Father, 178.

Massé, Father Enemond, 63.

Maurepas, Countess de, 80.

Metcalfe, Sir Charles, 223.

Melicites in fur trade, 42.

“Mer Douce,” 134.

Merritt, Hon. William Hamilton, 224.

Mexico, Gulf of, 21.

Michilimackinac, 130, 182.

Micmac legend, 23.

Middleton, General Sir Frederick Dobson, 254, 259, 262.

Midland, Ont., 140.

Miller, Colonel, at Lundy’s Lane, 207.

Minas Basin, 19, 21, 23.

Minto, Lord, 255, 260.

Mississippi River, 144, 181.

Monckton, Colonel Robert, 37.

Monnerie, Lieut. de la, 80.

Montcalm, Marquis de, 52, 75, 87, 89-94, 145.

Montgomery, General Richard, 68, 87, 101, 104, 105, 106-109.

Montgomery, John, 211, 219.

Montmagny, Governor Charles, 64.

Montmorency River, 91, 96.

Montreal, 51, 63, 66-69, 70-71, 110, 114-116, 117, 124, 129, 132, 148, 202-204, 223, 273, 277.

Montreal Towers, 74-76.

Moore, Thomas, at Niagara, 163.

Moraviantown, Battle of, 175, 199-201.

Morgan, Daniel, at Quebec, 109.

Morin, Hon. A. N., 224.

Morley, Alta., mission at, 270-272.

Morris, Hon. Alexander, 250.

Morrison, Colonel J. W., 203-204.

Mounted Police, 254, 264-267.

Mowat, Sir Oliver, 228.

Murray, Captain, at Fort Edward, 18.

Murray, General James, 75, 95-98.

MacDonald, Sir John A., 31, 33, 128, 156, 211, 225-228, 254, 267.

Macdonald, Hon. John Sandfield, 224.

Macdonald, Hugh, father of Sir John, 227.

McDonald, Captain, at Quebec, 92.

Macdonell, “Red George,” 112.

Macdonell, Colonel John, 164, 191.

McDougall, Rev. George, 269-272.

McDougall, Rev. John, 269-272.

McDougall Mission at Morley, 269-272.

McGee, Hon. D’Arcy, 32.

McIlwraith, Jean N., 59.

Mackenzie, Hon. Alexander, 212.

Mackenzie, Sir Alexander, 273-277, 288.

Mackenzie River, 274.

Mackenzie, William Lyon, 211, 213, 216-220.

McLennan, William, poem by, 3.

McLeod, Lieut.-Colonel, at Blackfoot Crossing, 264.

McNeal, Captain, at York, 169.

Nauderie, Thomas Tarien De La, 81.

Nelson, Lord, 14, 59.

Nelson Monument, Montreal, 66.

Neutrals, Indian tribe, 64, 160.

Newark (See Niagara).

New Brunswick founded, 41.

New Brunswick Legislature at Fredericton, 42-44.

Newfoundland, 45.

New Glasgow, Que., 126.

New Westminster, B.C., 282-284.

New York, 41, 155.

Niagara, 154, 159, 160-164, 188-191, 221.

Niagara River, 160, 164, 196.

Niagara Falls, City of, 205.

Nootka, 286-289.

Nordberg, Swedish engineer, 84.

North West Company, 176-179, 184-187, 236, 244, 273-277, 281.

Notre Dame des Victoires, Church of, 58-59.

Nova Scotia, founding of, 5.

O’Connell, Cardinal, at Fort Ste. Marie, 140.

Ogdensburg, 215.

Ohio River, 147.

Oka, 74, 121.

Onghiara, Indian village of, 160.

O’Neil, General John, 229-232.

Order of Good Cheer, 3.

Ottawa River, 129, 132, 139, 178.

Otter, General Sir William, 257.

Papineau, Louis Joseph, 117.

Paraguay, Jesuits in, 137.

Parkman, Francis, 56, 129.

Parliament Buildings burned, Montreal, 69.

Parliament meets at Niagara, 159, 162.

Peace River, 275-276.

Peacock, Colonel George, 230.

Peltrie, Madame de la, 55, 62.

Penetanguishene, 129, 134.

Pepperell, Colonel Sir William, 9.

Perade, de la, 81.

Percé Rock, 47.

Peribonka, 56.

Philadelphia colonists for Nova Scotia, 25-26.

Phips, Sir William, 66, 233.

Pictou, Highlanders’ landing at, 24-26.

Pike, General Zebulon M., 169-170.

Pilgrim Fathers, 3.

Pisiguid, 16, 18.

Pitt, William, 9, 89, 91, 287.

Plains of Abraham, 89-94, 95-98.

Plattsburgh, 102.

Play, First in North America, 5.

Pompadour, Madame, 9, 91.

Pontgravé, Sieur François, 55.

Poulin de Francheville, 83.

Poulin, Mademoiselle, 84.

Poundmaker, 257, 259.

Poutrincourt, Baron de Saint Just, 3, 5.

Powell, John, at Niagara, 190.

Port Colborne, 231.

Port Dover, Ont., 149-152.

Port Lajoie, Charlottetown, 27-29.

Port Royal, 3, 5, 233.

Port Stanley, Ont., 150.

Prescott, Ont., 203, 211, 213-215.

Pres-de-Ville, Quebec, Battle at, 106-109.

Preston, Major, at St. Johns, Que., 104, 105.

Prevost, General, Sir George, 181.

Prince Edward Island, 18, 27, 29, 45.

Prince of Wales’ ranch, 271.

Procter, General Henry A., 173-175, 199-201.

Punshon, Rev. William Morley, 270.

Purdy, Colonel, at Chateauguay, 112-113.

Put-In Bay, Battle at, 174.

Qu’Appelle, 249, 254.

Quebec, 11, 29, 33, 37, 38, 41, 48, 49-52, 55, 57-60, 63, 89-94, 95-98, 106-109, 132, 140, 145, 155, 233.

Quebec Bridge, 65.

Queen Mary, 195.

Queen Victoria, The Steamer, 31.

Queen’s Rangers, 166.

Queenston, 163, 206.

Queenston Heights, Battle of, 188-192.

Radisson, Pierre, 72.

Ragueneau, Father Paul, 138.

Railway, First Canadian, terminus of, 114-116.

Ramezay, Claude de, 66.

Ramezay, Chateau de, Montreal, 66-69.

Rebellion of 1837, 213-215.

Rebellion of 1885, 252-256, 257-259, 260-263.

Rebellion Losses Bill, 69, 124.

Récollets, 132, 136.

Red River, 240-243, 244.

Red River carts, 236, 238.

Renaissance and exploration, 45, 136-137.

Responsible government, 223.

Riall, General, Sir Phineas, 206.

Richard, Edouard, 127.

Richelieu, Cardinal, 61, 138.

Richelieu River, 86, 99-102, 103-105.

Rideau River, 142.

Rideau Canal, 227.

Ridgeway, Fenians at, 229-232.

Riél, Louis, 238, 241, 253-256, 260-263, 267.

Roberts, Captain Charles, 181-182.

Roberts, Charles G. D., 16, 34, 36.

Ross, John, land agent, 26.

Royal Military College, Kingston, 142.

St. Augustine, old house at, 61.

St. Catharines, Ont., 165, 230.

St. Charles, Que., 117, 119.

St. Charles River, 49, 52, 93, 95-98.

St. Croix Island, 3.

St. David’s, Ont., 191-192.

St. Denis, Que., Battle of, 117-120.

St. Eustache, Battle of, 121-124.

Ste. Foy, Battle of, 95-98.

St. Ignace, Indian village, 139.

St. John, N.B., Fort Howe at, 39-41.

St. John River, 41, 42.

St. John, N.B., Legislature at, 42.

St. Johns, Que., 69, 103-105, 114.

St. Joseph’s Island, 180-183.

St. Lambert, Que., 116.

St. Lawrence River, 47, 49, 55, 57, 66, 156, 202-204.

St. Lin, Que., 121, 126.

St. Louis, Indian village, 139.

Ste. Marie (See Fort Ste. Marie).

St. Maurice Forges, 82-85.

Sacket Harbour, 168, 203.

Saguenay River, 53, 56.

“Sam Slick,” 6, 16.

Sandwich, Ont., 171-175.

Sault au Matelot, Battle at, 109.

Sault Ste. Marie Lock, 176-179.

Sault au Récollet, 74.

Saunders, Marshall, 36.

Scarboro Heights, 168.

“Scarlet Sash,” The, 162.

Scott, Duncan Campbell, 205.

Scott, Frederick George, 57.

Scott, Thomas, Murder of, 239.

Scurvy attacks Frenchmen, 51.

“Seats of the Mighty,” 92.

Secord, Laura, 208.

Sedgwick, Major Robert, 5.

Selkirk, Lord, 185, 244, 277.

Seven Oaks, Battle of, 185, 237.

“Shannon” and “Chesapeake,” 14.

Shaw, Sophia, fiance of Brock, 190.

Sheaffe, General Sir Roger H., 169-170, 191-192.

Sheffield Township, N.B., Settlement in, 39.

Sherman, David, at Moraviantown, 199-200.

Shickshock Mountains, 47.

Shirley, Governor William, 36.

Sillery, Jesuit Mission at, 61-65.

Sillery Cove, 61.

Simcoe, Governor John Graves, 130, 157-159, 160, 166-170, 221.

Simcoe, Mrs., 157.

Simpson, Sir George, 236, 240-242.

Simpson, Mary, and Lord Nelson, 59.

Sloan, “Auntie,” at Ridgeway, 231.

Smith, Donald A., (Lord Strathcona), 241.

Smyth, General, at Queenston Heights, 191.

Sorel, 86, 155.

Spanish exploration, 45.

Stobo, Major Robert, 92.

Stone Fort (See Lower Fort Garry).

Stoney Creek, 163, 193-195.

Stopford, Major, at Fort Chambly, 87.

Stove-making at St. Maurice Forges, 83.

Strachan, Bishop John, 170.

Street’s Creek, 197.

Studholme, Major Gilfred, 39.

Sullivan, Alan, 64, 136.

Sulpician Mission, 74, 146.

Sulte, Dr. Benjamin, 84.

Suzor-Coté, A., 127.

Swift Current, 257.

Sydenham, Lord, 221, 223.

Tadoussac, 53-56, 60.

Tadoussac Chapel, 53-56.

Talon, Intendant, 82.

Tantramar, Marshes of, 34, 35.

Tecumseh, 171-175, 200-201.

Tête-de-Pont Barracks, Kingston, 142-145.

Thames, Battle of the, 199-201.

Thamesville, 200.

Thomas, William, architect, 192.

Thompson, David, 277, 278-281.

Thousand Islands, 209.

Three Rivers, 63, 82, 84, 101.

Ticonderoga, 87, 96, 145.

Tippecanoe, 201.

Toronto, 130, 156, 166-170.

Tupper, Sir Charles, 30.

Tyrrell, J. B., 278.

United Empire Loyalists, (See Loyalists).

Ursulines arrive at Quebec, 62.

Utrecht, Treaty of, 7, 234.

Vanalstine, Peter, 154-156.

Vancouver, Captain George, 276, 288.

Van Rensselaer, General Solomon, 191.

Vaudreuil, Governor, Marquis de, 76, 91, 93.

Verchères, Madeleine de, 77-81.

Vergor, Louis Dupont du Chambon de, 36, 91, 93.

Victoria Bridge, Montreal, 116.

Villebon, Chevalier de, builds fort, 42.

Vincent, General John, 164.

Von Schultz, 211, 214-215.

Voyageurs, 178.

Wabasso Park, Hamilton Bay, 146-148.

Walker, Admiral Sir Hovenden, 48.

Waterloo, Battle of, 193.

Welland Canal, 165, 219, 230.

Wellington, Duke of, 99, 123, 209.

Wentworth, Sir John, 14.

West, Dr., at Fort Niagara, 163.

West Indies, 8.

Westover, Ont., 148.

Wetherall, General Sir George Augustus, 119, 123.

Wetherall, Ned, 123.

Whiskey Traders in West, 267, 269.

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 246.

Whitney, Sir James, 202.

White, James, Indian Agent, 41.

Williams, Lieut.-Colonel, A. T. H., 262.

Winder, General, at Stoney Creek, 194.

Windmill, Battle of the, 213-215.

Windsor, N.S., Fort Edward at, 16-18.

Winnipeg, 185, 236-239, 244, 254.

Winslow, Colonel John, 18, 21.

Wilkinson, General, at Chrysler’s Farm, 202-204.

Wolfe, General James, 7, 9, 13, 38, 52, 59, 75, 89-94, 96.

Wolfe’s Cove, 90, 92, 108.

Wool Captain, at Queenston Heights, 190.

Yeo, Sir James, 195.

York (Toronto), 166-170, 217.

York, Duke of, 166.

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Plains of Abraham, Quebec	Frontispiece
Officers’ Quarters, Fort Anne, Annapolis Royal	4
Ruins of Fort Louisbourg	8
St. Paul’s Church, Halifax	13
Blockhouse of Fort Edward, Windsor, N.S.	17
Evangeline Statue and Acadian Chapel, Grand Pré	20
Hector Memorial, Pictou, N.S.	25

Site of Port Lajoie, Charlottetown	28
Province Building, Charlottetown	31
Tablet and Confederation Conference Room, Charlottetown	32

Ruins of Fort Beauséjour	35
Fort Howe, St. John	40
First Parliament Building, Fredericton	43

Gaspé Basin and Landing Place of Jacques Cartier	46
Jacques Cartier’s Wintering Place, Quebec	50
St. Croix Chapel, Tadoussac	54
Church of Notre Dame des Victoires and Site of Champlain’s “Habitation,” Quebec	58
Jesuit Mission House, Sillery	62
Chateau de Ramezay, Montreal	67
Dollard Memorial at Carillon	71
Sulpician Towers at Montreal	75
Madeleine de Verchères Statue, Verchères	78
Old Chimney, St. Maurice Forges	83
Fort Chambly	87
Wolfe’s Cove and St. Lawrence River	90
Ste. Foy Monument	96
Fort Lennox, Isle aux Noix	100
Earthworks at St. Johns, Que.	104
Scene of Montgomery’s Attack on Quebec	107
Chateauguay River and Battlefield	111
Terminus First Canadian Railway, Laprairie	115
Monument to Patriotes, St. Denis	118
St. Eustache Church	122
Law Office of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Arthabaska	126
Champlain’s Landing Place, Penetanguishene Harbour	130
Shrine at Lafontaine	133
Ruins of Fort Ste. Marie I.	137
Tête-de-Pont Barracks, Kingston, on Site of Fort Frontenac	143
La Salle’s Landing Place, Hamilton Bay	147
Sulpicians’ “Wintering Place, Port Dover	150
United Empire Loyalists’ Landing Place, Adolphustown	154
Executive Council House, Kingston	158
Magazine of Fort George, Niagara	161
Old Fort, Toronto	167
Earthworks of Fort Malden, Amherstburg	172
Fur Traders’ Lock, Sault Ste. Marie	177
Ruins of Fort St. Joseph	181
Fur Traders’ Monument, Fort William	185
Brock’s Monument, Queenston Heights	189
Stoney Creek Battlefield	194
Fort Erie	197
Battlefield of Moraviantown and Stone Marking Tecumseh’s Death	200
Battlefield of Chrysler’s Farm	203
Lundy’s Lane Monument	206
Fort Henry and Navy Bay, Kingston	210
Prescott Windmill	214
Ruins of William Lyon Mackenzie’s Printing Office, Queenston	217
General Hospital, Kingston, Meeting Place of First Parliament of United Canada	222
Boyhood Home of Sir John A. Macdonald, Kingston	226
John Anger House, Ridgeway	230

Fort Prince of Wales, Hudson Bay	234
Gateway of Fort Garry, Winnipeg	237
Lower Fort Garry	241
Kildonan Church, Winnipeg	245

Indian Treaty Monument, Fort Qu’Appelle	249
Battlefield of Fish Creek	253
Cut Knife Hill	258
Parish Church, Batoche	261

Crowfoot’s Grave	265
House and Church of McDougall Mission, Morley, Alta.	270

Bella Coola Rock	274
David Thompson Memorial Fort, Lake Windermere	279
Remains of Fort Langley	283
Nootka	287


MARITIME PROVINCES—

	Annapolis Royal	3
	Louisbourg	7
	St. Paul’s Church, Halifax	12
	Fort Edward, Windsor	16
	Grand Pré	19
	Highlanders’ Landing at Pictou	24

	Port Lajoie, Charlottetown	27
	The Birthplace of Confederation	30

	Fort Beauséjour	34
	Fort Howe, St. John	39
	First Parliament Building, Fredericton	42


QUEBEC—

	Jacques Cartier at Gaspé	45
	Jacques Cartier at Quebec	49
	Tadoussac	53
	The Cradle of Quebec	57
	The Oldest House in Canada	61
	Chateau de Ramezay, Montreal	66
	Dollard at Long Sault	70
	Montreal Towers	74
	Madeleine de Verchères	77
	St. Maurice Forges	82
	Fort Chambly	86
	Plains of Abraham	89
	Ste. Foy	95
	Fort Lennox, Isle aux Noix	99
	St. Johns	103
	Siege of Quebec, 1775	106
	Chateauguay	110
	Terminus of First Railway	114
	St. Denis	117
	St. Eustache	121
	Sir Wilfrid Laurier at Arthabaska	125


ONTARIO—

	Champlain on Georgian Bay	129
	First Mass at Lafontaine	132
	Fort Ste. Marie	136
	Fort Frontenac, Kingston	142
	La Salle at Hamilton Bay	146
	Wintering Place, Port Dover	149
	Loyalists at Adolphustown	153
	Executive Council House, Kingston	157
	Fort George, Niagara	160
	Old Fort, Toronto	166
	Fort Malden, Amherstburg	171
	Fur Traders’ Lock, Sault Ste. Marie	176
	Fort St. Joseph	180
	Fur Traders at Fort William	184
	Queenston Heights	188
	Stoney Creek	193
	Fort Erie	196
	Moraviantown	199
	Chrysler’s Farm	202
	Lundy’s Lane	205
	Fort Henry, Kingston	209
	Prescott Windmill	213
	William Lyon Mackenzie at Queenston	216
	Kingston as Capital	221
	Sir John A. Macdonald at Kingston	225
	Fenians At Ridgeway	229


WESTERN PROVINCES—

	Fort Prince of Wales	233
	Fort Garry	236
	Lower Fort Garry	240
	Kildonan Church	244

	Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Treaty	248
	Fish Creek	252
	Cut Knife Creek	257
	Batoche	260

	Crowfoot’s Grave	264
	McDougall’s Mission at Morley	269

	Mackenzie’s Rock at Bella Coola	273
	Kootenay House, Lake Windermere	278
	Fort Langley	282
	Nootka	286

	BIBLIOGRAPHY	291
	Index	297

Preface

Contents

Illustrations

Annapolis Royal

Louisbourg

St. Paul’s Church, Halifax

Fort Edward, Windsor

Grand Pré

Highlanders’ Landing at Pictou

Port Lajoie, Charlottetown

The Birthplace of Confederation

Fort Beauséjour

Fort Howe, St. John

First Parliament Building, Fredericton

Jacques Cartier at Gaspé

Jacques Cartier at Quebec

Tadoussac

The Cradle of Quebec

The Oldest House in Canada

Chateau de Ramezay, Montreal

Dollard at Long Sault

Montreal Towers

Madeleine de Verchères

St. Maurice Forges

Fort Chambly

Plains of Abraham

Ste. Foy

Fort Lennox, Isle Aux Noix

St. Johns

Siege of Quebec, 1775

Chateauguay

Terminus of First Canadian Railway

St. Denis

St. Eustache

Sir Wilfrid Laurier at Arthabaska

Champlain on Georgian Bay

First Mass at Lafontaine

Fort Ste. Marie

Fort Frontenac, Kingston

La Salle at Hamilton Bay

Wintering Place, Port Dover

Loyalists at Adolphustown

Executive Council House, Kingston

Fort George, Niagara

Old Fort, Toronto

Fort Malden, Amherstburg

Fur Traders’ Lock, Sault Ste. Marie

Fort St. Joseph

Fur Traders at Fort William

Queenston Heights

Stoney Creek

Fort Erie

Moraviantown

Chrysler’s Farm

Lundy’s Lane

Fort Henry, Kingston

Prescott Windmill

William Lyon Mackenzie at Queenston

Kingston as Capital

Sir John A. Macdonald at Kingston

Fenians at Ridgeway

Fort Prince of Wales

Fort Garry

Lower Fort Garry

Kildonan Church

Fort Qu’Appelle Indian Treaty

Fish Creek

Cut Knife Creek

Batoche

Crowfoot’s Grave

McDougall’s Mission at Morley

Mackenzie’s Rock at Bella Coola

Kootenay House, Lake Windermere

Fort Langley

Nootka

Bibliography

Index

First Parliament Building,
Fredericton

Terminus of First Canadian
Railway

Sir Wilfrid Laurier at
Arthabaska

Fur Traders’ Lock,
Sault Ste. Marie

William Lyon Mackenzie
at Queenston

Sir John A. Macdonald
at Kingston

McDougall’s Mission
at Morley

Mackenzie’s Rock at
Bella Coola