The Mission of the Scot in Canada
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<Jfie ^Atlsslon of ufie Ocot In L^anaaa, raser. r < v/ : The Mission of the Scot in Canada. Alexander Fraser, Toronto. TORONTO Printed by R. G. McLean, 32-34 Lombard Street. 1903. The Mission of the ALEXANDER FRASER, Scot in Canada.* TORONTO. Mr. President: I need not assure yon, sir, that I esteem the honor you have conferred upon me by having included me in this series of lectures, very highly indeed, and for more reasons than one. Time was when many prominent Scots of Montreal were well known to Toronto Scots because of the friendly inter- course which existed between the Scots of the two cities, and it was no strange sight to see a Montrealer at a Highland gathering in the summer, or a Hollowe'en supper or St. Andrew's ball in the winter, in Toronto. Of the old guard Col. Stevenson alone seems to have survived. To him we still extend a wel- come greeting on rare occasions, and our earnest wish is that his bow may long abide in its strength. Of the younger generation, you, Mr. President (Mr. J. T. Mitchell), alone have made a visiting connection with our Scottish societies in Toronto, and it would have become me very ill indeed did I not respond most cordially to an invitation from your society during the year you have the honor to preside over it. I take the opportunity of congratulating you on the im- portant position you have been called upon •Lecture delivered before the Caledonian Society of Mont- real, 5th December, 1902. 3 36*080 to occupy. So far as the Caledonian Society of Montreal is concerned you stand in this proud city as the representative of the Scot- tish cult, as the young man among all others available this year most worthy to be en- trusted with the honor of the Society and the good name of the Scot at home and abroad. I doubt not that you realize your responsibilities, and that having kept the faith, you will discover some means of leav- ing behind you when your term of office shall have expired some monument of your tenure of it in the form of extended usefulness on the lines laid down by your worthy predeces- sors. But there is a better reason than any personal one why I feel honored by your in- vitation. We are both of us, each in his own capacity, captains in one and the same cause; and the cause must ever be greater than the man. Our cause is the same in which this great Society, as a corporate body and by the individual efforts of its members is so grandly engaged—the cause of our people, our race and our adopted country. I bear with me the greetings of the Scots of Toronto to those of Montreal, and I wish to convey them to you in a setting of good-will unalloyed as the gold of true fellowship, and sparkling as Scotland's own topaz. Sprung from the same soil, with emotions, sentiments and feelings in common, may we know each other better in the future than in the immedi- ate past, and may opportunities be provided whereby the spirit of brotherhood can be ex- tended and our common sympathies obtain a common outlet for this expression. I am permitted this evening to say some things to you which I hope will work, ultimately in this direction. In the course of my correspondence with your committee I came to understand that a discussion of the subject of my paper and of the views expressed upon it would be a welcome, as it has been a usual feature of the evening's proceedings. I shaped my remarks accordingly. You will find them bristling with points requiring, and I hope, deserving, discussion, for I wish to build on a rock, not on sand. But I desire to build. I have been fairly long in the fight and mere pleasure now jades. "Life is real, life is earnest and the grave is not its goal." Year by year that truth makes a deeper impression. There is so much to do, and sad to say the laborers are com- paratively few. We have many orators, but oratory without substance becomes weari- some. It may be likened to a glass of good Scotch whiskey; it exhilarates in the even- ing, with the morning the effect has passed away. Ours is an age of haste and hurry; the lotus eater on the enchanted shore is an anachronism ; we understand better the ambi- tion of the Village Blacksmith to have "some- thing attempted, something done." My subject then is, the form of service which the Scot can best render to Canada, keeping in view his true attitude to his own native type, or as stated in the syallabus "The Mission of the Scot in Canada." There are some things which, while not ap- parently springing from this subject, serve as a necessary foundation to it, and will, therefore, be taken at the beginning of this address. We are assailed because we have organized Scottish societies in Canada. I have noticed an objection to our organizations in the press of this city, but I do not know whether or not public attention has been aroused here. With us in the West a good deal has been said against national societies and more is felt than has been expressed. The position which has been taken is that our societies tend to keep alive racial divisions, that they hark back to the Old Land, and consequently are serious obstacles in the way of and a menace to Canadian national sentiment and national unity. The boy and girl born in Canada are taught in the schools, and sometimes in the home, to underrate the term Scotch, English or Irish, and to take a pride in being a Canadian. As this crusade is persistent and is becoming widespread, its character and object cannot be overlooked by any member of a Caledonian or other Scottish society in Canada. The question can be considered calmly and without exciting strong feeling, for there can be no doubt the motives inspir- ing those who are ranged on opposite sides are praiseworthy and honorable. On the side of young Canada this has to be said that the object is not to repudiate the sources whence Canadians have come; there is a strong and probably a growing feeling of ' pride in Great Britain's history, and in our own political connection with so glorious a people. The efforts to establish a Canadian nationality independent in itself, as every nationality must be, is the outcome, doubt- less, of a laudable desire to imbue our young citizens with a love for this land of their birth. With that sentiment no people can be in closer accord than the Scots, a people, as a whole, characterized by their perfervid love for the land of Wallace and of Scott. But what must be pointed out is that there is a vast and fundamental difference between the embodiment of a desire such as might be exemplified in love of country on the one hand, and on the other, any effort in the direction of creating a nationality. The dis- tinction here suggested must needs be empha- sized, otherwise there is apt to be confusion, a mis-use of terms, and unsatisfactory re- sults. Canadian nationality! What is it? There is no answer forthcoming. It is a question without an answer, for Canadian nationality has as yet no existence, and I propose to show in a few words that it were idle to speculate on what it may be, in the future. As yet we have not even the material on which to base a fair calculation. Oftentimes you hear a young man or woman of Scottish descent say proudly, "I am not Scotch; I am a Canadian.' ' On the same principle, that of birth, a young man born in Glasgow of Russian parents could say, "I ' am not a Russian ; I am a simon pure Scot. So could the Chinese baby born in Vancouver, but it needs no argument to show that the young in each case is a Scot, a Russian and a Chinese still. Nor is the case settled by the number of generations that may intervene, it is settled only by a change of type. There are dalesmen in Yorkshire descended from the Danish invaders in the time of Alfred the Great. They have their original charac- teristics, and a different dialect to that com- mon among Yorkshiremen. Their neighbors still call them the "Danes"—a thousand years have not made Englishmen of them. In fact there is no English in the same sense as there is a Scottish nation. The name of a country such as Canada, for instance, does not confer nationality. The English are not named after England, nor the Scots after Scotland, nor the Irish after Ireland. The Angles as a people gave their name to Britain, so did the Scots to ancient Alba, so did the sons of Eire to Erin or Ireland. Canadians as we know the name, did not give their name to Canada. But the name Canada is likely to designate our country for many centuries. When her vast prairies shall have been filled, her mineral lands peopled, her rivers and waterways become the loci of busy ports, and when this population shall have assumed stability; when the landscapes, the climates, and the exigencies of life shall have impressed their image on the heterogeneous peoples who then shall flourish under the Canadian flag, then, and then only, shall we have the amal- gam from which we may begin to speculate upon the form and character of the embryo Canadian nation.