The first open sign of the racial division which was to bedevil the life of the province came in 1806 when, in order to meet the attacks of the Anglicizing party, the newspaper "Le Canadien" was established at Quebec.Its motto was significant: "Notre langue, nos institutions, et nos lois." Craig and his counselors took up the challenge.In 1808 he dismissed five militia officers, because of their connection with the irritating journal, and in 1810 he went so far as to suppress it and to throw into prison four of those responsible for its management.The Assembly, which was proving hard to control, was twice dissolved in three years.
Naturally the Governor's arbitrary course only stiffened resistance; and passions were rising fast and high when illness led to his recall and the shadow of a common danger from the south, the imminence of war with the United States, for a time drew all men together.
While the foundations of the eastern provinces of Canada were being laid, the wildernesses which one day were to become the western provinces were just rising above the horizon of discovery.In the plains and prairies between the Great Lakes and the Rockies, fur traders warred for the privilege of exchanging with the Indians bad whiskey for good furs.Scottish traders from Montreal, following in the footsteps of La Verendrye and Niverville, pushed far into the northern wilds.* In 1788 the leading traders joined forces in organizing the North-West Company.Their great canoes, manned by French-Canadian voyageurs, penetrated the network of waters from the Ottawa to the Saskatchewan, and poured wealth into the pockets of the lordly partners in Montreal.Their rivalry wakened the sleepy Hudson's Bay Company, which was now forced to leave the shores of the inland sea and build posts in the interior.
* It is interesting to note the dominant share taken in the trade and exploration of the North and West by men of Highland Scotch and French extraction.For an account of La Verendrye see "The Conquest of New France" and for the Scotch fur traders of Montreal see "Adventurers of Oregon" (in "The Chronicles of America").
On the Pacific coast rivalry was still keener.The sea otter and the seal were a lure to the men of many nations.Canada took its part in this rivalry.In 1792, when the Russians were pressing down from their Alaskan posts, when the Spaniards, claiming the Pacific for their own, were exploring the mouth of the Fraser, when Captain Robert Gray of Boston was sailing up the mighty Columbia, and Captain Vancouver was charting the northern coasts for the British Government, a young North-West Company factor, Alexander Mackenzie, in his lonely post on Lake Athabaska, was planning to cross the wilderness of mountains to the coast.With a fellow trader, Mackay, and six Canadian voyageurs, he pushed up the Peace and the Parsnip, passed by way of the Fraser and the Blackwater to the Bella Coola, and thence to the Pacific, the first white man to cross the northern continent.Paddling for life through swirling rapids on rivers which rushed madly through sheer rock-bound canyons, swimming for shore when rock or sand bar had wrecked the precious bark canoe, struggling over heartbreaking portages, clinging to the sides of precipices, contending against hostile Indians and fear-stricken followers, and at last winning through, Mackenzie summed up what will ever remain one of the great achievements of exploration in the simple record, painted in vermilion on a rock in Burke Channel:
Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.The first bond had been woven in the union of East and West.Between the eastern provinces a stronger link was soon to be forged.The War of 1812gave the scattered British colonies in America for the first time a living sense of unity that transcended all differences, a memory of perils and of victories which nourished a common patriotism.
The War of 1812 was no quarrel of Canada's.It was merely an incident in the struggle between England and Napoleon.At desperate grips, both contestants used whatever weapons lay ready to their hands.Sea power was England's weapon, and in her claim to forbid all neutral traffic with her enemies and to exercise the galling right of search, she pressed it far.France trampled still more ruthlessly on American and neutral rights; but, with memories of 1776 still fresh, the dominant party in the United States was disposed to forgive France and to hold England to strict account.
