Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British Views of Canada 1880–1914 9781487576769

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IMPERIAL DREAMS AND COLONIAL REALITIES

R.G. MOYLES and DOUG OWRAM

Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities BRITISH VIEWS OF CANADA,

1880-1914

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 1988

Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada Reprinted in 2018

ISBN 0-8020-2675-3 ISBN 978-1-4875-7740-7 (paper) Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Moyles, R.G. (Robert Gordon), 1939Imperial dreams and colonial realities Includes index. ISBN 0-8020-2675-3 1. Canada - Foreign public opinion, British. 2. British - Canada - History. 3. Canada in literature. 4. Canada - Social life and customs 1867-1918. * 5. Great Britain - Foreign relations Canada. 6. Canada - Foreign relations - Great Britain. I. Owram, Douglas, 1947- . II. Title. FC88.M69 1988 F1021.M69 1988

971.05

C88-094641-5

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Social Science Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and block grants from the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

vii

Introduction 3 1 'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter': Assessing the Future of the New Dominion 11 2 'The Wild and Woolly West': A 'Boy's Own' View of Canada 37 3 'Hunter's Paradise': Imperial-Minded Sportsmen in Canada 61 4 'Quaint Quebec': British Views of French Canada 87 5 'A Farm of One's Own': The British Emigrant's View of Western Canada 115 6 A Different Kind of Frontier: The Investor's View of Canada 141 7 Specimens of a Dying Race: British Views of the Canadian Indian 167 8 A Country in Need of Culture and Refinement: A Middle-Class Female View of Canada 187 9 Canadian Society: A Question of Manners 213 Epilogue: The End of an Imperial Era 233 NOTES INDEX

243 265

Acknowledgments

As with most authors we are indebted to a number of people and institutions for their help during the research, writing, and publication of the book. Our thanks to the competent librarians of the British Commonwealth Association as well as to those of Special Collections at the University of Alberta for their assistance in digging out obscure works. Thanks as well to the Central Research Fund of the University of Alberta which provided assistance for Gordon Moyles to make a research trip to the United Kingdom. Finally, thank you to Gerry Hallowell and Jean Wilson who took the work from manuscript to book with skill and patience. 10 36 60 86 114 140 166

PICTURE CREDITS

'A Decided Preference,' Punch, 8 May 1987, p 218 'Archie McKenzie, the Young Nor'-Wester,' The Boy's Own Paper, 2 July 1892 From George Monro Grant, Picturesque Canada (1882) n, between pp 852 and 853 From ibid., I, p 39 The Western Provinces of Canada, immigration pamphlet, courtesy of University of Alberta Special Collections Fertile Canada, pamphlet collection of the Library of the Archives of Ontario Chief Duck, son of Running Rabbit, Blackfoot, n.d.; courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta, H. Pollard Collection

Acknowledgments viii 186 212

Ms Brown, boiling the spuds, 1907; courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta, Ernest Brown Collection From Mrs George Cran, A Woman in Canada (1910), between pp 34 and 35

IMPERIAL DREAMS AND COLONIAL REALITIES

Introduction

History offers no example of colonial possessions or colonial governments like those of Great Britain. The Empire of Rome at the height of its power, the Empire of Alexander at the period of its widest extension, the power of Spain in its fullest, were but narrow in comparison with the vast network of nations which occupies vast tracts of the habitable globe. The Economist (1880)

On 22 June 1897 Queen Victoria proudly celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of her reign - not merely as Queen of England but as ruler of an Empire on which, quite literally, the sun never set. Nearly a quarter of the world's people were her subjects, occupying one quarter of the earth's land surface. In far-off comers of the globe they paused to pay a moment's homage to her venerable majesty, whose dominion they favoured but little understood - the descendants of West Country fishermen in the coves of Newfoundland and of deported criminals in the goldfields of Australia; neophyte civil servants in Bombay; Matabele tribesmen in Rhodesia; soldiers in Afghanistan. A population so vast and varied - a territory so dispersed - that not even Victoria herself could have comprehended its magnitude and mystery. She was, of course, considerably enlightened by the Jubilee itself; for it was, above all, a 'festival of empire,' designed to celebrate not only the Queen's longevity but Britain's imperial achievement and to display its richness of resources. It paraded before Victoria's eyes, and the eyes of millions of Britons, all that was strange, rare, and exotic, as well as the multitude of representatives from all those distant lands shown as 'red spots' on Mercator's world map.

4 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities 'There were Rajput princes and Dyak headhunters, there were strapping troopers from Australia. Cypriots wore fezzes, Chinese wore conical straw hats. English gentlemen rode by, with virile moustaches and steel-blue eyes, and Indian lancers jangled past in resplendent crimson jerkins. 11 Every colour of skin was there, almost every religion; their languages and dialects numbered in the many hundreds; and the gifts they bore, the wares they exhibited, bespoke a wealth so great that even the imagination of Cecil Rhodes was overwhelmed by its enormity. The Jubilee was spectacle enough to drive Britons to a state of imperial frenzy. And it did. This - the high noon of Empire - was a moment towards which imperial ideology had been advancing for twenty-five years. It was the climax of the 'Age of New Imperialism,' a period of conscious expansion, of planned proprietorship, and, above all, of unprecedented public interest in the Empire. Imperialism became both an upper-class profession and a lower middle-class obsession. It is often presumptuous even to attempt to cite a specific date as either beginning or ending an historical period; but, without doubt, Benjamin Disraeli's so-called Crystal Palace speech of 1872, establishing his intention to 'reconstruct our Colonial Empire,' marked a distinct change in government policy and public awareness. Hitherto, the Empire had been accrued haphazardly, by individual (often accidental) initiative, and Liberal policy opposed the very idea of 'empire-building.' Gladstone, in fact, was known to have 'groaned over the burden' of Empire and would, had it been practical, have freed England of that burden. 'If you look at the history of this country since the advent of Liberalism, forty years ago,' lamented Julian Vogel in 1877, 'you will find there has been no effort so continuous, so subtle, supported with so much energy, and carried on with so much ability and acumen, as the attempts of Liberalism to effect the disintegration of the Empire. ' 2 Clearly exaggerated, and obviously biased, but a view which, when one considers the anti-empire opinions of such influential Liberals as Richard Cobden and John Bright, was essentially true. Deploring such 'little England' policies, the Tories under Disraeli set out to create an 'imperial vision. '3 In the 1880 election they made it the subject of public debate, belittling the Liberal argument that imperialism 'endangered the moral character' of Britain, and insisting that the civilizing mission it entailed was a God-given

Introduction 5 responsibility. A doctrine of imperialism emerged and, from that time on, imperialist propaganda saturated British society: the Empire was no longer a burden but a blessing, worthy of being perpetuated, extended, and even fought for. The British people were continually called upon to accept and show themselves equal to their unique destiny - that of a 'dominating race which must absorb within itself all lower races, and make itself the ruling power for the good of the planet. ' 4 So enthusiastically did the British respond to that challenge that in just two decades more than 4,000,000 square miles of new territory was added to the Empire; and by 1897 'imperialism' had become a household word. Schoolboys measured its geographical dimensions, sang its hymns in their assemblies, recited Kipling and Newbolt at their convocations, read Haggard and Henty in their leisure, and prepared themselves to be the empire guardians on their playing-fields. A newly enfranchised lower middle-class 'followed the flag' in a burgeoning penny press, eagerly devouring news of the exploits - the triumphs and tragedies - of Gordon, Livingstone, and Wolseley, of Khartoum, Victoria Falls, and Red River. At this climactic moment in the Empire's history, writes James Morris, 'the British were not merely interested in imperial affairs ... they were imperially brain-washed. There was hardly a moment of the day then, hardly a facet of daily living, in which the fact of Empire was not emphasized. From exhortatory editorials to matchbox lids, from children's fashions to parlour-games, from music hall lyrics to parish church sermons, the imperial theme was relentlessly drummed. Empire was the plot of novels, the dialogue of plays, the rhythm of ballads, the inspiration of oratorios. It was as though the whole nation was being deliberately disciplined into the imperial fervour. ' 5 As indeed it was. For the political realities of Empire the wars, the subjugation of native rights, the imposition of British values, the financial costs - could only be justified as long as the dream, the popular myth, survived. And so for three busy decades the imperial enthusiasts were busy telling the British public what it already believed - that the Empire was a very good thing; in doing so they revealed to their eager audiences the many faces, the varied opportunities, the immeasurable richness of the vast territories under Victoria's dominion. To armchair hunters there came the thrill of a kill in a far-off, inhospitable jungle; to prospective emigrants the offer of new hope,

6 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities and financial success, in a young and growing colony; to investors the possibility of greater profits; to missionary zealots the promise of unparalleled Christianization; to imaginative juveniles the excitement of exotic adventures; and to the host of 'ordinary' readers a continuous spate of new and wonderful experiences, simply by following the path of their beloved Union Jack. In all this vicarious excitement - in the many shelves full of imperial literature - Canada figured prominently. In poetry and prose, in articles and full-length books, in pamphlets and broadsides, the 'eldest daughter of the Empire' was written about, both factually and imaginatively, more often and with greater enthusiasm than in any period of British history before or since. The Boy's Own Paper, for example, commenced its illustrious career with a serialization of R.M. Ballantyne's 'The Red Man's Revenge' and thereafter continued to publish approximately six Canadian stories a year. The very popular Wide World Magazine, whose motto was 'Truth is stranger than fiction,' offered in its first year (1898) four 'curious' articles on such Canadian topics as 'Castaways in the Frozen North'; it maintained that same rate of Canadian content for the remainder of its existence. MuTTay's Magazine chose as its first major contribution the fascinating two-part autobiographical sketch by Lady Agnes Macdonald entitled 'By Car and Cow-Catcher.' And the politically inclined reader of Nineteenth Century could, in the first twenty years of its existence (1879-1900), have read more than sixty articles on Canada and Canadian-related topics. Add to these the hundreds of books about Canada written for a British audience - from the Marquis of Lorne's Canadian Pictures (1884) to H. Jeffs' Homes and Careers in Canada (1914) - and one is justified in suggesting that the reading British public knew Canada almost as well as they did their own small islands, or thought they did. Just what the British thought of Canada, or what they thought Canada was, is graphically revealed in that literature, though it is a varied and often strange conglomeration, saturated by the ideals and vanities of a people engrossed in their own glory. It could, at one extreme, reflect the boredom of the aristocratic and wealthy: 'For various agricultural reasons, hunting came to its last sad day even earlier than usual this spring, and we found that we should have time for a good long excursion before the hot weather set in. '6 At another, it could offer comfort to the earnest and struggling

Introduction 7 settler who, unlike the seasonal traveller, had to try not only to observe the Canadians but become one of them. It could include the merely eccentric, such as the impressions of a retired engineer who travelled across Canada but seemed only to notice the railway stations. Or it could concentrate on the pretentious, such as the many wild-eyed schemes for getting Canada to support Imperial Federation. In other words, the literature embodied the serious and the frivolous, offering acute observations and superficial commentary. It was, in fact, as varied as British society itself, and a society that could publish My Life among the Wild Birds of Spain, 7 the 'memoirs' of an 'inveterate birdnester,' was, after all, one that could tolerate and accept many different kinds of literary diversions. Canada, it seems, in the heyday of imperialism, provided ample material for many writers of just such diversions. One quickly recognizes that only occasionally does the literature about Canada written during this period accurately depict the reality of life in this country. The title of our book reflects the dichotomy which exists between the expectations created by the literature by the dreams of imperialists - and the reality of actual experience - of colonial life. This dichotomy stemmed partly from the immense difficulty of understanding a society so far removed from the British purview, a society rapidly developing its own sense of identity and purpose. But it was essentially created by the fact that the initial images of Canada which the British reader encountered were in the writings of imperial mythmakers, enthusiasts, or fictionalists. Even those writers who ventured out to experience Canada for themselves found it hard to comprehend the colonial reality or to relate the essence of Canadian society to their readers. Most were simply restricted by time, class, and location. Very few of those who wrote of Canada at first hand ever spent more than a few months in the country and those who did were often of the official classes, such as Lady Dufferin or the Marquis of Lome. Not many of the common folk who came to settle had the time or inclination to write down, much less publish, their impressions, though unpublished letters home undoubtedly did much to shape British views as well. When the occasional common settler did publish his or her views, as did W.M. Elkington in Five Years in Canada (1895), the different perspective could be very revealing. Finally, it was not easy to comprehend Canada because so few

8 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities British travellers, or indeed Canadians, could become familiar with the whole of it. The standard traveller landed at Quebec City, took a boat or train to Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, saw Niagara Falls and perhaps a bit of southern Ontario. He or she then headed to the region which held the greatest fascination for the British the West. For it is a striking fact, and one reflected in this work, that the British concentrated their attention and their writing on those parts of Canada which contained relatively few of its people - the farms, towns, mountains, and lakes of what are now the four western provinces. Few spent much time in the Maritimes, if they went there at all, and few settled in one spot long enough to get beyond a rapid impression. Preconceptions, therefore, often formed the basis of an opinion; and when preconceptions clashed with new realities, new stereotypes were created, and most writing rarely went beyond the stereotypes. In this book we have isolated nine stereotypical views of Canada - or themes that occupied a majority of writers - in the literature just described. We know that other themes exist, and some would have proven valuable in understanding both the era and British attitudes towards Canada in that era. Generally, however, the chapters included reflect our perception of the dominant motifs in the various kinds of published imperial literature. Thus, in the abundance of literature by British sportsmen we discovered an overriding inclination to depict Canada as a 'hunter's paradise'; while the popular fiction of The Boy's Own Paper vivified Canada primarily as the 'wild and woolly west.' In both kinds, however, the intrepidness required of the hero-sportsman is very much akin to that suggested by imperial propagandists as being so necessary to the youthful empire-builder; and the language and codes of conduct are also imperial ones. In other words, the ideals of imperialism permeate much of the literature and colour the different views, and it is this preoccupation with the imperial dream, set against the realities of colonial life, which provides the thematic unity for the book. The prospective emigrant reading the large mass of 'emigration literature' saw Canada as the 'golden land of opportunity,' where land was free for the asking and success guaranteed; the relative harshness of the climate and the hard work, not to mention the signs that stated 'No Englishman Need Apply,' came as great surprises to many. The literature directed at the 'distressed' middle-

Introduction 9 class genteel lady, with no prospects at home, presented Canada as a cultural backwoods desperately needing her refining touch, but it turned out, again and again, that the 'lady's help' being advertised for was just another name for 'domestic servant.' The politicians reading about Canadian affairs in such journals as Fortnightly Review and Nineteenth Century were reassured by the recurring image of Canada as a 'dutiful imperial daughter,' but were nevertheless worried by threats of independence and annexation. Whatever the view, therefore, whether it involved emigration, an analysis of French Canadianism, native customs, or investment in colonial resources, it was likely shaped by imperial expectations by the fact that Canada was a colony and the hope that she would always remain one. The reality rarely accorded with the dream. Our intention here has been twofold. First, we have tried to synthesize these various 'views' into readable essays; and, second, we have tried to retain the actual flavour of the original literature by offering quotations from as wide a sampling as possible. We feel, to paraphrase a cliche, that a direct quotation is often worth a thousand words of analysis; the tone of a piece is often as revealing as the stated facts. We have not excluded analysis, and have tried to present as clearly as possible the reasons why certain views dominate and why specific patterns and images recur. But we are primarily concerned to recreate, in a descriptive fashion, the actual 'views' themselves. In this regard, and in the knowledge that imperialism is a complex area of study, it is only fair to offer a note of caution. These are composite views, covering a third of a century, and in our search for patterns there is always a danger that certain nuances and shifts through time have been overlooked, or that some issues have been over-simplified. We therefore ask for leniency on the part of our readers and look forward to the work of others whose different perspectives will improve upon ours.

,I '

« 1 ..,-._...._,~~

A Decided Preference. John Bull (to Miss Canada): 'Thank you, my dear! Your favour is as welcome as the flowers in May!' ('The immediate point is that Canada has decided to shift her main market from the United States to the United Kingdom.' Times, Monday, April 26.)

1 'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter': Assessing the Future of the New Dominion

It is not unreasonable to believe that the period will be reached when her sons will begin to think of Canada as Canada and not as a mere dependency, and when it will be an ambition among her people in travelling over the world to make the name of Canada recognized and respected by all persons. J. W. Longley (1891) English papers are continually speaking of Canadian loyalty. Now if the English papers did this in a matter-of-fact sort of way it would be less galling. But it is continually 'exciting surprise' in the good old British heart that this sort of thing exists. E.E. Sheppard (1884)

On 30 October 1872, the Times of London, reflecting the enlightened colonial views of a Liberal government, urged the people of Canada to assume complete political independence. 'Take up your freedom,' it stated; 'your days of apprenticeship are over .. . From this time forth look after your own business yourselves; you are big enough, you are strong enough, you are intelligent enough, and if there were any deficiency in any of these points it would be supplied by the education of self-reliance. ' 1 A few days later, the Poet Laureate of England, Alfred Tennyson, wrote this brief but bitter comment in his diary: 'Lady Franklin has sent me the Canadian bit of the Times. Villainous.' The great poet's sense of imperial allegiance was so outraged by the villainy that he made it the subject of poetic comment in the epilogue to his new Imperial Edition of the Idylls of the King (1873). Dedicated to Queen Victoria, it read in part:

12 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities And that true North, whereof we lately heard A strain to shame us: 'Keep you to yourselves; So loyal is too costly! Friends, your love Is but a burthen: loose the bond and go.' Is this the tone of Empire? Here the faith That made us rulers? This, indeed, her voice And meaning, whom the roar of Hougoumont Left mightiest of all peoples under Heaven?

When Tennyson's new edition of the Idylls reached Canada early in 1873 it received a tumultuous welcome. Newspapers which otherwise scarcely would have noticed a new edition of poems - even by the Laureate - talked at length of the honour Tennyson had bestowed in defending Canada's loyalty to Britain and the Empire. Editors pontificated, politicians applauded, and the governor-general, Lord Dufferin, felt it incumbent on his royal office to tender the nation's thanks: Ottawa, Feb. 25th, 1873 My Dear Mr. Tennyson, I cannot help writing a line to thank you on behalf of the generous and loyal people whose government I am now administering, for the spirited denunciation with which you have branded those who are seeking to dissolve the Empire, and to alienate and disgust the inhabitants of this most powerful and prosperous colony. Since aniving here I have had ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with the intimate convictions of the Canadians upon this subject, and with scarcely an individual exception, I find they cling with fanatical tenacity to their birthright as Englishmen, and to their hereditary association in the past and future glories of the mother country. Though for two or three generations his family may have been established in this country, and he himself has never crossed the Atlantic, a Canadian seldom fails to allude to England as 'Home.' They take the liveliest interest in her welfare, and entertain the strongest personal feeling of affection for their Sovereign . . . Your noble words have struck responsive fire in every heart; they have been published in every newspaper, and have been completely effectual to heal the wounds occasioned by the senseless language of the Times . Yours sincerely, Dufferin2

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 13 Inspired by such widespread effusion, Canada's own Poet Laureate (though an unofficial one) decided that she too would offer her congratulations. Characteristically, Agnes Maule Machar of Kingston did so by returning Tennyson a courtesy in kind- a poem aptly entitled 'To the Laureate': We thank thee, Laureate, for thy kindly words, Spoken for us to her to whom we look With loyal love, across the misty sea; Thy noble words, whose generous tone may shame The cold and heartless strain that said, 'Begone! We want your love no longer; all our aim Is riches - that your love can not increase.' Fain would we tell them that we do not seek To hang dependent like a helpless brood, Who, selfish, drag a weary mother down; For we have British hearts and British blood, That leaps up, eager, when the danger calls! Once and again our sons have sprung to arms To fight in Britain's quarrel, not our own, And drove the covetous invader back .. . ... Still we would Believe in thee, and strive to make our land A brighter gem to light the royal crown Whose lustre is thy children's - is our own. 3

Machar's poem touched a responsive chord and found a favourable public reception in Great Britain, being published in the prestigious journal Good Words in 1873. In 1899 it was reprinted, along with a selection of her other verse, in a small book again published in London, whose title, Lays of the 'True North,' renewed her acknowledgment of Tennyson's earlier 'noble defence' of Canada's loyalty. The dates of both appearances are symbolic, for they mark the beginning of the Age of New Imperialism and the High Noon of Empire. 'To the Laureate' was, in fact, exactly the kind of message the British wanted to hear throughout that momentous period, and it was expressed with a perfect blend of obeisance and bravado.

14 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities The British were, of course, in this period when imperial ideology had established 'something close to hegemony over British cultural life,' accustomed to such declarations of undying loyalty. Their politicians and publicists never tired of quoting Tennyson: Sons, be welded each and all Into one imperial whole, One with Britain, heart and soul! One life, one flag, one fleet, one Throne! Britons hold your own. 4

And the Empire's men-of-action, the soldiers, civil servants, explorers, and colonists, were bolstering their morale by intoning the well-worn lines of Henry Newbolt - 'Play up! play up! and play the game!' - and Rudyard Kipling: God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle line, Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine. Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget.

'Lest we forget' what? That, above all, the imperial mission was a civilizing, Christianizing one. 'The desire to do good,' writes the popular historian James Morris, 'was a true energy of Empire, and with it went a genuine sense of duty - Christian duty, for though this was an empire of multitudinous beliefs, its masters were overwhelmingly Church of England. ' 5 What Kipling and Newbolt did was to personalize that sense of duty, to make men and women feel in their hearts what others, such as the Earl of Camarvon, had tried to implant in their minds. In the far reaches of the Empire, Camarvon suggested, were 'races struggling to emerge into civilization ... To them it is our part to give wise laws, good government, and a well-ordered finance, which is the foundation of good things in human communities; it is ours to supply them with a system where the humblest may enjoy freedom from oppression and wrong equally with the greatest; where the light of morality and religion can penetrate into the darkest dwelling places. This is ... the true strength and meaning of imperialism. ' 6 Camarvon' s only wonder

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 15 was that any recipient of such magnanimity could ever fail to be grateful and content.

Reading Machar's poem or Dufferin's letter, it is easy to understand why most British imperialists rested easy in the assurance that Canada would remain forever a loyal and contented member of the Empire. Indeed, when they read more widely in their own periodicals and poetry anthologies - in Murray's Magazine, Good Words, The Imperial Reciter, or Patriotic Song - they might also have believed that Machar and Dufferin were speaking for a majority of Canadians; were in the vanguard of a vast army of proimperialists who kept declaring with John A. Macdonald: 'A British subject I was born - a British subject I will die. ' 7 How could they not entertain such a belief when a host of other poets, British and Canadian, and a large number of political publicists, were busy depicting Canada as a dutiful imperial daughter. There was, .on the one hand, such British offerings as Kipling's 'Our Lady of the Snows' and Arthur Bennett's 'To Canada,' designed not only to recognize Canada's importance to imperial unity but also to assure a doubtful British public that, in spite of some independent urges and a large non-British population, she remained a 'British' Canada. On the other side were the poems of a group of Anglo-Canadians- Clive Phillipps-Wolley, Jean Blewett, Francis Sherman, Arthur Stringer, and Wilfred Campbell-which appeared in British magazines and anthologies and which reinforced that view. These, coupled with the writings of such seeming proimperialists as George Denison, George Parkin, and Sandford Fleming, convinced most British imperialists that Canadian historian J. Castell Hopkins was correct when he wrote this in the Review of Reviews in 1893: Canada is contented with her present national position, and conservative Canadians entertain a profound belief in the superiority of the British system of government ... They are every year becoming more attached to Great Britain and more grateful for the power and liberty which can be obtained within the British realm .. . Their commerce, railways, steamship lines, cable projects, and waterways all converge, east and west, toward Britain and British countries, instead of south to the United States. 8

16 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities Listening to Hopkins, the nai've British imperialist might have felt that very little had changed in Canada since 1871 when Lord Dufferin and Agnes Machar made their avowals of allegiance. Wilfred Campbell's 'Jubilee Ode' would have done nothing to dispel that belief: And we, thy loyal subjects far away, In these new lands that own thy sceptre's sway, Betwixt thy Royal Isle and far Cathay Across the thunder of the western foam, 0 good gray Queen, our hearts go home, go home, To thine and thee! We are thine own while empires rise and wane, We are thine own for blessing or for bane, And, come the shock of thundering war again, For death or victory! Not that we hate our brothers to the south, They are our fellows in the speech of mouth, They are our wedded kindred, our own blood, The same world-evils we and they withstood, Our aims are theirs, one common future good Not that we hate them, but that there doth lie Within our hearts a golden fealty To Britain, Britain, Britain, till the world doth die.9

All this sentiment was very well, of course, and no doubt much appreciated by British imperialists, especially to those for whom Kipling, Rider Haggard, and Edward Elgar were the true voices of imperialism. More astute observers, however, those used to the vagaries of mere rhetoric, would have known better than to accept such declarations as evidence of a universal or unconditional loyalty. On reading more widely, and perhaps more closely, they would have perceived in nearly all the poetry and political statements just enough contradiction, evasiveness, and stubbornness to make them wary of placing any bets on Canada's continued loyalty to Britain or the Empire. There were, for example, in the so-called imperial poems published by Canadians in British journals and anthologies, enough subtle equivocations, juxtapositions of loyal sentiment with national progress, and undertones of national pride to undermine even

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 17 the most overt avowals of unconditional loyalty. In the first place, the poets, in spite of a declared commitment to British idealism, unconsciously rejected certain modes of colonial conduct: they viewed the Empire not as landlords but as tenants; and, in spite of their superficial acquiesence, they often became defensive when faced by British condescension and presumptuousness. They were, indeed, more Canadian than they thought, and as the Age of New Imperialism wore on - as the imperial vision faded - a more insistent note of distinctive nationalism crept in, seemingly unbidden, but not to be denied. The perceptive British imperialists could, for example, begin to appreciate this reluctance by comparing their own 'imperial' poetry - by Arthur Bennett, Lewis Morris, and others - with that written by Canadian poets. It makes itself quite evident, for example, in their treatment of topography. The British poets (most of whom had never been to Canada) persisted in describing Canada in some cliched variation of Kipling's famous title 'Our Lady of the Snows,' an epithet that did not please many Canadians when the poem first appeared. Without exception, British poets all stretched their hands of friendship 'across the great dividing sea ... / To where Canadian rivers freeze/ In the wild western land. ' 10 Or they revived a picture of the land they had first seen in the pages of R.M. Ballantyne's novels: And from her far and wintry North The great Dominion issues forth, Fit nurse of stalwart British hearts and strong; From her black pine woods, deep in snow ... From the lone plains, wherethrough the icy wind Sweeps from the North, leaving the Pole behind. 11

It is not difficult to imagine that Canadians then, like Canadians now, would have considered this universal depiction of their country as a 'wintry wasteland' an insult. That Canadian poets, in spite of their overt imperialism, shared their countrymen's distaste is evident in their own depiction of the Canadian landscape as always pleasantly pastoral. Their Canada is summery and green, the 'black pine woods' have been displaced by the 'white pine's velvet fringe': Well do we love our own Canadian land,

18 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities Its breezy lakes, its rivers sweeping wide, Past stately towns and peaceful villages, And banks begirt with forests, to the sea; Its tranquil homesteads and its lonely woods, Where sighs the summer breeze through pine and fem. 12

Both topographical depictions were extremes, the one too unrealistically stark and the other too suggestive of England's 'daisied meads.' But the difference between them should have provided the astute imperialist with the smallest hint that perfect imperial unity would not easily be achieved. For just as the British were not willing to abandon their stereotypes or their position of superiority, so the Canadians, resenting both, were not willing to remain mere 'colonials.' Lending support to that impression was the distinct difference between the attitudes conveyed by the poetry of the two groups. The British poets, supporting a popular conception of colonial proprietorship, constantly implied a possessiveness which, at times, bordered on the childish. Their Empire was a jealously guarded family estate: it was ours, they insisted, to do with as we see fit. Their chief metaphor, one also beloved by the prose propagandists, was the Empire as a 'maternal mansion.' If one room in the 'Old House' were a bit too narrow or uncomfortable, or perhaps the cupboard grew a little bare, the tenants naturally looked around for another, more commodious, room. Put in a less homely manner, the same 'ownership' view might sound like this: 'The present tie between us and our colonies,' wrote J.A. Farrer in 1885, 'is one of suzerainty on the one side and of vassalage on the other. Why should we surrender our position of paramount supremacy, and either descend to political equality with our subject colonies, or raise them to our political level? There can be no empire without subject dependencies. ' 13 Few British poets dared to be as callously frank as that, although some came very close: Let all men know it, England shall be great! We hold a vaster Empire than has been! Nigh half the race of men is subject to our Queen! Nigh half the wide, wide earth is ours in fee!' 4

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 19 Most simply used the orthodox diction, words like 'colony' and 'England's subjects,' without considering (or even caring) that they might give offence. To most British readers, such proprietary language most certainly would not have given offence; and they would, without any doubt, continue to share Arthur Bennett's view: 'No feud have we with any nation, / But what we have we mean to hold. ' 15 For Canadians, however, and especially for such men as Wilfrid Laurier and Charles Tupper, it was another matter. In an era when 'nationhood' and 'freedom of destiny' were becoming important issues, the persistent tone of possessiveness, in poetry and prose, was bound to irritate. Many times, in the meetings of the Royal Colonial Institute, for example, Canadians had to defend themselves against being labelled 'colonials' in the face of British insistence that calling Canada a 'nation' was, logically speaking, a 'very serious solecism. ' 16 It was no wonder that Canadians were becoming impatient with and angered by British colonial attitudes. It cannot be denied, of course, that there were among Canadian poets and politicians some who unreservedly supported 'landlord' colonialism. Take Clive Phillipps-Wolley, for example. A very recent upper middle-class immigrant, Phillipps-Wolley saw Canada primarily as a source of profitable investment and superb hunting, and saw himself as a generous benefactor simply by being here. He was so staunchly British that he dared chide Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier for being too nationalistic: British are we. The feet of Britons trod The long lone trails that knit the world in one Prayer to our country's God Men's, women's graves - the deeds that these have done, The long years spent from home, the bitter toil, Have made this British land and sanctified its soil. 17

In Phillipps-Wolley's Canada all the inhabitants, it seemed, could lay claim to a British birthright; there were no Indians, French Canadians, or Ukrainians. Or at least they did not count for much. 'Through the land of the lakes in the East, to the land of the Douglas pine' they were all 'British in Britain's van': 'Bone of your bone are we, and in death would be dust of your dust.'

20 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities Nor were such arch-imperialists scarce in the 1890s. One has to look no further than the national election of 1891, when the mild threat of annexation and the anti-imperial views of Goldwin Smith were countered by well-organized and massive pro-imperialist demonstrations; when Laurier's bid for power was thwarted partly by imperialists who made his 'reciprocity' platform seem like an annexationist takeover; when Goldwin Smith's lectures were branded as 'deliberate and treasonable' attempts to 'undermine the loyal sentiment that held Canada to the Empire'; and when Colonel George Denison could declare, in his usual jingoistic fashion, that if the time ever came when either annexation or independence had to be 'seriously discussed,' he would argue it in only one way and that was 'on horseback with [his] sword. ' 18 Clearly, Clive PhillippsWolley was not a voice crying from the wilderness of British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. But, again, Phillipps-Wolley was much more unequivocal in his imperialism than most Canadian poets and publicists could ever be. For most poets, as well as for most politicians, the overriding condition was 'Canada first within the Empire.' Faced by 'grandmotherly interference' and unwarranted condescension, they showed their true colours by insisting that, though they would remain imperial partners, they would not become colonial serfs. Even the hackles of Wilfred Campbell, as staunchly imperialistic as anyone, could rise when faced by the kind of petty possessiveness espoused by some British imperialists: The Celt, he is proud in his protest, The Scot, he is calm in his place, For each has a word in the ruling and doom Of the Empire that honors his race; And the Englishman, dogged and grim, Looks the world in the face as he goes, And he holds a proud lip, for he sails his own ship, And he cares not for rivals nor foes:But lowest and last, with his areas vast, And horizon so servile and tame, Sits the poor beggar Colonial Who feeds on the crumbs of her fame. How long, 0 how long, the dishonor,

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 21 The servile and suppliant place? Are we Britons who batten upon her, Or degenerate sons of her race? It is souls that make nations, not numbers, As our forefathers proved in the past. Let us take up the burden of empire, Or nail our own flag to the mast. Doth she care for us, value us, want us, Or are we but pawns in the game; Where lowest and last, with our areas vast, We feed on the crumbs of her fame? 19

This seemingly contradictory stance, so puzzling to British observers, and sometimes so unnerving, represented the prevailing national attitude. Canadians could, with unease, be satisfied with the imperial bond - were unwilling to modify it for purely theoretical reasons - yet did not consider it disloyal to want to develop a national identity within it. Thus it was that some Canadians could, in one and the same breath, declare undying allegiance to the Empire and pledge all their devotion to the building of a great nation. It was why Wilfrid Laurier could, with impunity, repeat Kipling's famous line, 'Daughter in my mother's house, but mistress in my own'; why Charles G.D. Roberts could write nationalistic poetry and yet accept a knighthood; why George Denison could help found the 'Canada First' movement and yet hope that he would see the day when the British Empire would be united into one 'great confederation of nations'; and why Jean Blewett in the 'Native Born' could pen these lines: Well we love that sea-girt island, and we strive to understand All the greatness, all the grandeur, of the glorious Mother Land; And we cheer her to the skies, cheer her till the echoes start, For the old land holds our homage, but the new land holds our heart! 20

It was this basic paradox, an almost universal declaration of loyalty to the Empire and Motherland coupled with a growing nationalistic pride, that faced British imperialists throughout the Age of New Imperialism, and which they either rejected or strove hard to understand. And it manifested itself not only in the poetry but in the politics as well.

22 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities

When political commentators shaped what they called the 'Canadian problem' into a question, as they often did, it went something like this: 'The twentieth-century Canada, what is it to be in the long run - a British Canada, an American Canada, or an independent Canada?' 21 What they saw was a country on the verge of nationhood, trying to decide where its future lay, debating the merits of complete independence, continued imperial partnership, and annexation with the United States. Therefore, in a vast number of articles in leading British journals, as well as in several books dealing with imperial policy, those possibilities were discussed at length under such titles as 'Canada and Imperial Federation,' Canada and the Canadian Question, 'The Future of the Canadian Dominion,' The Struggle for Imperial Unity, 'The National Development of Canada,' and The Canadian Nationality. Reading these articles and books (as well as the poetry), British imperialists were again tossed to and fro on alternate waves of hope and disappointment: at one moment they were assured that Canada would remain forever a member of the Empire, loyal to the Motherland, and proudly British; at another, they were advised that the colony was making a 'feline' move towards complete independence 'under the specious name of nationhood' or, worse, that it was contemplating union with the United States. The period of greatest political concern over Canada's loyalty were the last two decades of the nineteenth century, troubled years for Canada and years of uncertainty for British imperialists. It was, for example, quite evident that Canadians of all ranks were beginning to grow tired of 'landlord colonialism' - of the very terms 'colony' and 'colonial' - and the disaffection revealed itself in various ways. Canadians grumbled when Great Britain chose to send only her poor as immigrants - 'filial ingratitude' the British called it. Some Westerners, bothered by the know-it-all attitudes of many English settlers, were known to have placed 'No Englishman Need Apply' signs on their premises. More than 17,000 Ontario residents were supporting the Toronto News, whose editor and proprietor, Edmund E. Sheppard, had made it explicitly a mouthpiece of democracy and independence. And G. Mercer Adam, a staunch literary nationalist, was prompted to suggest that those wide enough

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 23 awake to 'see the retarding effect [of colonial control] ... can hardly wish it long to continue. ' 22 If he failed to notice these distant grumblings, these almost groping attempts at independence, the perceptive British imperialist could hardly have missed the many references to the 'colonial yoke' in his own periodicals. Whether written about in bitterness by some commentator on emerging nationalism or with hope by an incipient nationalist, Canada's growing independence - its dream of nationhood - was a prominent feature of imperial discussion. As early as 1880 the prominent British journalist William Clarke succinctly outlined the case that frequently began articles, by arguing that the status quo could not, as far as he was concerned, be maintained for much longer: An enormous territory of three and a half millions of square miles, with an increasing population, with growing commerce, with great cities rising to affluence and renown, cannot be much longer retained as a mere colonial appendage. It will not do to say that the Canadians have perfect freedom and self-government, that the authority of the Crown is still more nominal than in England, and that, therefore, Canada possesses all the substantial elements of national life. The very fact that Canada has certain elements of a vigorous nationality which, if placed under favourable conditions, would develop, only renders the feeling of colonial status and the rank of a mere dependency more irksome to an ambitious people ... When they were a small and feeble folk, the condition of colonists did not appear to them in itself disagreeable; but now that 'the little one has become a thousand,' the mere colonial status is strongly resented by that self-respecting dignity in the absence of which the opinions of Canadians, whatever they were, might safely be disregarded. 23

The force of Clarke's argument was clearly felt some years later when the possibility of an Imperial Federation was being vigorously touted as a means of holding the Empire together. To a large degree the idea was hit upon by ex-colonial administrators, members of the Royal Colonial Institute established by them in 1868 as a kind of solidarity base for colonial enthusiasts - 'men with a distinguished colonial past but with a dated and patronizing view of the communities in which they had served. ' 24 They felt strongly that an Institute dedicated to the unification of the Empire would help coun-

24 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities teract the 'disintegrationist' policies of Liberal politicians and help give disaffected colonials a new sense of purpose; and it was out of the Institute in 1884 that the idea arose of an Imperial Federation League. In the words of Canadian railway builder Sandford Fleming, the founders of the League hoped that by their initiative 'some political organization [would] be arrived at by which the various units which make up the Empire, while maintaining full control over their own local affairs, [would] be held together by an alliance founded in mutual affection and a consensus of belief in the common benefit which all derive. ' 25 It was clear from the very beginning, however, that Imperial Federation, though it enjoyed widespread support, would be a difficult concept to define and even more difficult to implement. The reports of the League itself bear out that observation. Even at the inaugural meeting, held at the Westminster Palace Hotel, London, on 29 July 1884, the inevitable confrontation between 'landlord' and 'tenant' began to emerge. And it was the Canadians on the 'tenant's' side - politicians Charles Tupper, Oliver Mowat, and d' Alton McCarthy - who were the prominent spokesmen, unwilling to be pressured by superior forces. After discussion (and no doubt a satisfying dinner), the Honourable W.H. Smith, prominent British politician, moved the main motion of the evening: 'That political relations between Great Britain and her Colonies must inevitably lead to ultimate Federation or Disintegration. That in order to avert the latter, and to secure the permanent Unity of the Empire, some form of Federation is indispensable. ' 26 In reply, Charles Tupper, Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, began by sounding most reasonable. 'I do not believe,' he stated, '[that] it is possible to discover, in all great questions that occupy the attention of the statesmen of this country, a question in which these British islands or the great colonial dependencies of these islands are more vitally interested than the consideration of the means by which the tie that now binds them together may be drawn still closer and perpetuated indefinitely.' There was, however, that small matter of Canadian rights and autonomy which led Tupper to balk at hasty or ill-considered schemes which might damage the interests of the Dominion. 'I am not prepared to agree,' he warned, 'that [the present] relations must be changed in order to prevent disintegration.'

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 25 I go most heartily with the language and sentiments of gentlemen present in desiring to draw closer the tie which binds us to the mother country, and I should be greatly pleased if any slight modification of this resolution could be adopted, so as not to put us in the position of declaring to the world that the connection can only be maintained by a federal union, but that we do not know whether a federal union is practicable. 27

The final resolution, voted on unanimously, but defining the purpose of the Imperial Federation League in very vague terms, was this: 'That, in order to secure the permanent unity of the Empire, some form of Federation is essential.' 'Some form of Federation' - that was the phrase which puzzled most people and which, over the next decade, generated vociferous debate in and out of the League. The questions prompted by it, the answers proposed, and the frequent disavowals by colonial representatives that the answers satisfied at all, made for a very confusing though popular game of rounders. For every concrete proposal advanced, an objection was raised. There should be, suggested Canadian imperialist George Parkin, a leading spokesman for the League, an Imperial Parliament, a supreme parliament overriding all others, representing a 'collection of equal states.' It would stand in relation to the colonial parliaments as the Canadian federal parliament stood in relation to its provincial parliaments. 28 This would be quite impossible, came the immediate rejoinder: even under the most generous terms, Canada would be 'swamped' in an Imperial Parliament, comprising no more than a tenth of such an assembly. Moreover, as J.W. Longley, Attorney-General of Nova Scotia, stated, the British would be very reluctant to 'admit colonists to a coequal position in the control of the empire. ' 29 When it finally emerged that such an assembly would control the 'revenue and expenditure' of the federated Empire, the implications were clear and the response unequivocal: Canada, John A. Macdonald averred, would never consent to be taxed by a central body sitting in London, in which she would have practically no voice.30 Given such strong objections, it was highly unlikely that Canadians should look with any favour on further proposals to the effect that an Imperial Parliament would 'administer the resources of the Empire' and control the settlement in each colony. 31 In the opinion of Canadians, such silly suggestions were hardly worth discussing,

26 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities stemming as they did from backward-looking British imperialists. Indeed, when it came to questions of 'reciprocity' and 'free trade,' Canadians were justified in suspecting that the Imperial Federation League was composed primarily of free traders and existed as their excuse to impose free trade policies on the reluctant colonies. Ever since Macdonald had induced the Canadian parliament to impose protective duties in 1878 (at the same time offering the United States a measure of reciprocity), the colony had been repeatedly criticized for its selfishness. Thus, it was only reasonable to assume that an Imperial Parliament eventually would redress what Britons saw as a wilful act of defiance. 'The protectionist policies of Canada,' wrote one federationist, 'are deplorable, and while a Federated Empire would not see the immediate removal of restrictions, the time would come when free-trade would dominate. ' 32 This fear of the imposition of a trade policy that could favour only Britain was the straw that broke the imperial camel's back. As Wilfrid Laurier so correctly summed it up, what the British imperialists termed 'the Empire's interest and the Empire's policy were in most cases Great Britain's interest and Great Britain's policy. ' 33 Clearly, any form of imperial federation would be, as far as many in the colonies were concerned, a backward step. To most British imperialists, naturally single-minded in their devotion to the Empire (for Britain was the Empire), the leading role taken by Canadians in thwarting Imperial Federation was, like the half-hearted expressions of loyalty, either puzzling or deplorable. How could Canadians, they wondered, as John A. Macdonald and many more had done, pledge undying allegiance to the Queen, declare themselves loyalists, support a 'moral tie,' and yet work so hard to scuttle a political and economic union? It was indeed a mystifying contradiction, and one not at all resolved by Canada's attitude towards annexation with the United States.

It seemed to many British observers, in fact, that if Canada were

to make a move away from imperial partnership, the logical one, in the absence of any imperial system of defence, would be towards some form of union with the United States. There were reasons

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 27 convincing enough. The most important of these, according to William Clarke, was that Canada 'belonged' to the American continent: If any one would have us believe that Canada ought to be permanently connected with some European country, the onus probandi lies with him. Such an arrangement takes the Canadian people out of their sphere, and transfers their interests and sympathies to a distant continent from which Nature has widely sundered them. Besides, the configuration of the American continent is as distinctively favourable to a unity of nationality and of polity as that of the European continent is to diversity of nationality. The boundary between the United States and Canada is, throughout almost its entire length, an imaginary line ... No gulf sunders the one land from the other, naturally, commercially, socially, or religiously ... The continent is one, and should be the home of one people. 34

Nor would the union of the two peoples, with such similar cultures and economic systems, be hard to effect. If it were to be an 'absorption' or 'annexation,' the transition would be, as Clarke put it, 'mere child's play.' 'The various provinces - Quebec, Ontario, &c. - would simply become States of the Union, self-governing as before, but sending representatives and senators to Washington. The great outlying districts, as yet unpeopled, would, like the Northwestern districts of the United States, be divided into territories. All local government would go on just the same as before, and no man would perceive the change until he began to breathe the new life of the young republic. '35 When Clarke made those suggestions in 1880, few imperialists saw much danger in such disloyal sentiments. The great struggles of the past - the War of 1812, the border troubles of the 1830s, the Oregon boundary dispute of the 1840s, and the Fenian raids at the end of the Civil War- all seemed but remote echoes. Within a few years, however, cries of 'annexation' began to re-echo throughout the nation. The failure of Canada to live up to its economic promise, regional and racial strife, and other matters had left a palpable feeling that the Dominion had not really come together as a nation. In the minds of some British observers, it never would. 'This only seems certain,' wrote Charles Binmore in 1888, 'that the dream of a great northern empire can never be realized, and that Canada will never stand among the nations as a separate independent

28 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities power. The element of cohesion, the very soul of a nationality has utterly failed to unify the people. '36 For such critics, union with the United States seemed inevitable. As had always been the case, discontent within its boundaries caused many Canadians to cast envious eyes across the border. In 1888, for example, the Toronto Globe asked its readers to declare, in signed letters to the editor, what future political status Canada should choose. Of the approximately seventy-five letters printed between 5 and 7 October, clearly one-third approved of annexation, slightly more favoured complete independence, about sixteen were satisfied with the status quo, and only six still argued in favour of Imperial Federation. Such disquieting, even if unscientific, signs were augmented by other events. In 1889 an avowed annexationist was elected to the Ontario legislature and, in a controversial 1887 move, the Dominion Liberal party advocated commercial union with the United States. The threat of annexation was, in the minds of many imperialists, very real; and there was no doubt in their minds about how the Americans felt. Arthur Bennett's poem, 'Brother Jonathan's "Love Song",' summed up American expectations: 0 Canada, sweet Canada, Thou maiden of the frost, From Flattery Cape to Sable Cape With love for thee we're crossed. We could not love thee less nor more, We love thee clear to Labrador; Why should we longer thus be vexed? Consent, coy one, to be annexed. 0 Canada, sweet Canada, Our heart is always true; You know we never really cared For any one but you. Your veins are of the purest gold (We've mined them some, the truth be told), True wheat are you, spite chaff and scorn, And 0, your dainty ears (of com). 0 Canada, sweet Canada, John Bull is much too old For such a winsome lass as you -

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 29 Leave him to fuss and scold; Tell him a 'Neighbour' you will be, He loves you not so much as we; Fair maiden, stand not thus perplexed, Come, sweetheart, come and be annexed. 3 ;

Quite obviously, Canada was moving towards a moment of decision, and in 1891 that moment arrived. The national election of that year brought into the open all the issues concerning independence, annexation, and imperial loyalty. The chief question facing the country, in the eyes of most British observers, was this: 'Is Canada to vanish from history? Is she to lose her identity, her individuality, her possibilities, by absorption into the United States?'38 What caused the question to be put so dramatically was not the election platforms of the incumbent Conservatives, under the aging Macdonald, and the Liberals, under Laurier; rather it was the way those platforms were altered by circumstances, emotional debate, and exaggerated fears. The Liberals had, perhaps unfortunately, adopted a policy of 'unrestricted ·reciprocity,' promising free trade in all commodities with the United States, and the measure was not at all unpopular. The Conservatives, however, made the Liberal platform seem an annexationist bid, an attempt to lure the people of Canada from their allegiance to Great Britain. They were abetted in their claim by the equally unfortunate fact that the Liberals, and Laurier, were taking some of their advice from the well-known antiimperialist Goldwin Smith. Smith, a former British political theorist and author of several studies on imperial themes, for many years after he came to Canada in 1871 had urged Great Britain to become a 'mother of free nations.' 'The notion peculiar to the modems, that a colony ought to remain a dependency has its root not in any ground of reason or policy, but in the feudal doctrine of personal allegiance as an indefeasible bond between the Hegeman and the lord ... To live not to yourself but to another man, said the philosopher of old, is moral slavery, and a dependency lives to the Imperial country, not to herself. '39 Not content to stop there, at a position where many Canadians might have agreed with him, Smith somewhat contradictorily took up the 'annexation' cause. Having assessed Canada's past achievements, its present economic situation, and not being convinced that

30 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities it could survive as a completely self-reliant nation, he persuaded himself - and sought to persuade others - that 'a union of Canada with the American commonwealth, like that into which Scotland entered with England, would in itself be attended with great advantages.' He was also convinced that Canada was already more American in temperament than British. The 'geography, commerce, identity of race, language, and institutions, with the mingling of population and constant intercourse of every kind, acting in everincreasing intensity, have brought about a general fusion, leaving no barriers standing but the political and fiscal lines. 140 There was therefore no reason, he argued, why 'the union of the two sections of the English-speaking people on this Continent should not be as free, as equal, and as honourable as the union of England and Scotland. We should rather say their reunion than their union, for before their unhappy schism they were one people. ' 41 Thus, by many slight exaggerations, Smith attempted to convince Canadians that this 'reunion' was merely a matter of natural evolution: Intermarriages between Canadians and Americans are numerous, so numerous as scarcely to be remarked. Americans are the chief owners of Canadian mines, and large owners of Canadian timber limits. The railway system of the continent is one. The winter ports of Canada are those of the United States. Canadian banks trade largely in the American market, and have some branches there. There is almost a currency union, American bank-bills commonly passing at par in Ontario ... Canadians go to the American watering-places, while Americans pass the summer on Canadian lakes. Canadians take American periodicals, to which Canadian writers contribute. They resort for special purchases to New York stores, or even those of the border cities. Sports are international; so are the Base Ball organizations: and the Toronto 'Nine' is recruited in the States. All the New-World phrases and habits are the same on both sides of the Line. The two sections of the English-speaking race on the American continent, in short, are in a state of economic, intellectual, and social fusion, daily becoming more complete. 42

To promulgate those views, Goldwin Smith wrote a full-length study of the issue called Canada and the Canadian Question which was published in 1891, though shortly after the election. The same topics were covered, more sensationally, in a series of public lectures given in early 1891, lectures on 'Loyalty,' 'Aristocracy,' and 'Jin-

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 31 goism' designed to promote the anti-imperialist movement and to aid the Liberal election. But Smith and the Liberals soon discovered that John A. Macdonald and his Tories could readily match their rhetorical wit and tum idealistic policy into frightening possibilities. Colonel George Denison, a well-known patriot, prolific public speaker, and friend of Macdonald, publicly branded Smith's speeches as a 'deliberate and treasonable design . . . to undermine the loyal sentiment that held Canada to the Empire, ' 43 and sought, by every means available, to thwart Smith's efforts. By giving pro-imperialist speeches on the same evenings as Smith gave his, by donating Canadian flags - the Red Ensign - to schools as prizes for best essays on patriotism, by publicly decorating imperial monuments, and by inundating newspapers with anti-Smith propaganda, Denison and his friends waged a 'very active campaign against the commercial union movement. ' 44 Denison, in fact, in one of his speeches went so far as to liken the supposed annexationists to traitors hanged during the War of 1812, suggesting that 'the same line of action would help us again in the same kind of danger. '45 Macdonald, for his part, without committing himself to the unwise position of supporting Imperial Federation, nevertheless cleverly manipulated the opposition's views, contrasting them with his own 'British till I die' convictions: As for myself, my course is clear. A British subject I was born - a British subject I will die. With my utmost effort, with my latest breath, will I oppose the "veiled treason" which attempts by sordid means and mercenary proffers to lure our people from their allegiance. During my long public service of nearly half a century [he was then seventy-six] I have been true to my country and its best interests, and I appeal with equal confidence to the men who have trusted me in the past and to the young hope of the country, with whom rests its destinies for the future, to give me their united and strenuous aid in this my last effort for the unity of the Empire and the preservation of our commercial and political freedom. 46

Needless to say, Macdonald and the Tories won the 1891 election and 'annexation' as a serious political threat was forever put to rest.

32 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities British imperialists, concerned about Canada's loyalty to Britain and its commitment to the Empire, were no doubt pleased with the colony's rejection of continentalism. But what did that really mean? Canada had just as firmly rejected any form of Imperial Federation, and did not, for the moment at least, seem too keen on complete independence. Just where, in Heaven's name, did Canada stand? And how could such leading citizens be so contradictory in their expressions of loyalty? The clear-cut positions they could understand. The pro-imperialists were, of course, the most pleasurable to hear from. Though they ranged from out-and-out colonialists like Clive Phillipps-Wolley to the more moderate supporters of Imperial Federation like George Parkin and Andrew Macphail, they nevertheless worked hard for imperial unity, 'free trade' with Great Britain, and against complete independence which, they thought, would lead to annexation. They enjoyed the support of a large number of 'English' Canadians and United Empire Loyalists, and they were represented in their views by the members of the federal House of Commons, who in 1890 issued this unanimous declaration of loyalty: Most Gracious Majesty, We, Your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, desire most earnestly in your own name, and on behalf of the people whom we represent, to renew the expression of our unswerving loyalty and devotion to Your Majesty's person and government. We have learned with feelings of entire disapproval that various public statements have been made, calling in question the loyalty of the people of Canada to the political union now happily existing between this Dominion and the British Empire, and representing it as the desire of the people of Canada to sever such connection. We desire, therefore, to assure Your Majesty that such statements are wholly incorrect representations of the sentiments and aspirations of the people of Canada, who are among Your Majesty's most loyal subjects, devotedly attached to the political union existing between Canada and the Mother Country, and earnestly desire its continuance.

Similarly, the 'independentists' (not to be confused with mere 'nationalists') were, though intolerable to most Britons, equally clear in their views. They felt, quite simply, that Canada should

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 33 become a completely independent nation, free of the control of both Great Britain and the United States. Though they were few in number, they were quite vocal in the 1890s, and had their views summed up nicely by the well-known Toronto lawyer, John S. Ewart, in his book The Kingdom of Canada (1908). Citing a long list of hindrances to self-reliance, Ewart made a persuasive case for political independence: All the power which we have comes from a statute passed at Westminster. It does not depend in any way upon our own declaration. The authority of the Parliament of Great Britain, of France, Germany, Italy, the United States, and so on, is all self-asserted. Ours is a gift from outside of us, the gift of the Imperial Parliament. And the Parliament which gave, can take away, or change as it pleases ... If Canada wished to have a biennial instead of annual Parliaments, she could not so enact. If she wanted to take her census every twelve years instead of ten, she would be powerless to make the change . . . If Canada desired to increase the membership of her Senate, or to decrease the qualifications for it, or even to change the quorum of the House of Commons, her power would be found to be inadequate ... Westminster can do these things for us. We cannot do them for ourselves. 47

The only answer, Ewart argued, was for Canada to become as independent as Great Britain herself. 'If [the British connection] depends upon the continuation of the shreds of paternalism which still remain, if it depends upon keeping us worried over irritating bits of grandmotherly interference, then for my part I say to the British connection "Adieu". ' 48 This position, to British observers, was not as worrisome as the 'annexationist' threat, for, even though there were committed independentists working throughout the era the movement did not command widespread support before the First World War. It was not, therefore, difficult to understand the positions of either the arch-imperialists or the independentists. But it was the defenders of the status quo who gave the British cause to worry. They all seemed to prefer the imperial connection, and P.H. Colomb, writing in Murray's Magazine in 1890, summed up their central position: 'The general opinion is that it is a mistake to suppose that the alternatives before Canada are those of independence, acceptance of Imperial Federation, or annexation to the United

34 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities States; and the prevailing tone of thought is in the direction of a continuance of the present system, which, on the whole, gives satisfaction to a majority of the Canadian people. ' 49 Yet, apart from that general agreement, their views were paradoxical and confusing: at one moment they could praise the imperial connection and at another denounce its logical commitments. And they numbered among their ranks such diverse personalities as John A. Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier, George Denison, and Wilfred Campbell. How could Wilfred Campbell, for example, be so firm in his expression of loyalty in his 'Jubilee Ode' and be so condemnatory in 'The Lazarus of Empire'? How could George Denison be so nationalistic as to found the 'Canada First' movement and yet denounce the supporters of independence as 'wanderers and Bohemians'; how could he be a 'nationalist' and an 'imperialist' at the same time? How could Macdonald vow to die 'British' and yet put so many roadblocks in the way of free trade? How could Laurier extol the British connection, accept a knighthood, and yet look to the United States for election money? Indeed, some British commentators, such as W.R. Lawson, considered Laurier's methods downright deceitful. He plays with [our ministerial pedants] like a clever angler, giving them the line they want, flattering them for their consistency, and apostrophizing their Free Trade principles as the glory of England! All the while he is whittling down the fiscal favours which they disdain to accept, and transferring them by degrees to our commercial rivals. Every transfer thus made is much more than a loss to British trade. It is another nail driven in the coffin of imperial federation. It widens the gulf between Canadians and the Mother Country. It weakens the ancient ties of blood and brotherhood which have hitherto bound them. It strengthens the tendency of Canadians to look out for themselves and leave us to our own devices. 50

Men like Lawson, therefore, steeped as they were in the 'landlord' tradition of British imperialism, never would understand how imperialism could, for some Canadians, be a form of nationalism. And the chief reason for their misunderstanding was this: for the British imperialism was synonymous with colonialism, and nationalism meant independence; for Canadians imperialism and colonialism were antithetic terms, and nationalism was realizable within the Empire. That was why George Denison could suggest, without

'A Dutiful Imperial Daughter' 35 considering it a contradiction, that the 'growth of a national sentiment' would not 'weaken the connection between this country and Great Britain' but would only 'strengthen and confinn the bond of union. ' 51 And why a poet like Charles Mair could write: For I believe in Britain's Empire, and In Canada, its true and loyal son, Who yet shall rise to greatness, and shall stand At England's shoulder helping her to guard True liberty throughout a faithless world. 52

The matter need not be belaboured, of course, for the writings of the period and Carl Berger's brilliant analysis, The Sense of Power (1970), have made it abundantly clear that this was the predominant Canadian attitude until the First World War, not born of stupidity or indecisiveness but of a genuine belief that Canada could still remain 'British,' could reject independence, annexation, and imperial federation, and yet hope to build a nation that would have an equal voice in imperial affairs. They finnly believed that as the political ties were loosened the moral ties would tighten. That was why poets like Campbell and Blewett and Shennan and Arthur Stringer, and men of affairs like George Parkin, Sandford Fleming, George Denison, and John A. Macdonald could choose as their motto, 'Canada First Within the Empire.' And though British imperialists, worried about Canada's future and looking for unsullied expressions of loyalty, were at times disappointed with this position - and never would be able to fathom the 'Canadian mentality' - they nevertheless rested content that such extremist moves as annexation and complete independence did not ever pose much of a threat to their peace of mind. Some of them, in fact, were willing to admit that 'landlord colonialism' had had its day, that loyalty could not be demanded as the right of sovereignty, and that Canada, at the very least, deserved the right (accorded most adults) to 'discuss with the parent' those things of 'supreme interest to the family.' Such a delicate balance would carry Canadians well into the twentieth century, contented with the status quo, waving a flag that would not bear a maple leaf until 1965 and happy with a constitution which, though meagrely amended, would not become their own property until 1982.

'A single report awoke the echoes of the valley.'

2

'The Wild and Woolly West': A 'Boy's Own' View of Canada

'Bah Jove, Fathaw! I'm going to Canadaw to shoot Indians - make my fawtune and all that sort of thing, don't cher know.' A.G. Racey cartoon, Montreal Star (1901) The adventure tales that formed the light reading of Englishmen for two hundred years and more after Robinson Crusoe were, in fact, the energizing myth of English imperialism. They were, collectively, the story England told itself as it went to sleep at night, and, in the form of its dreams, they charged England's will with the energy to go out into the world and explore, conquer, and rule. Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure (1979)

The Boy's Own Paper, affectionately known as 'The B-O-P,' at the peak of its popularity was each week avidly read by more than a million British boys. Future statesmen, empire-builders, and even prime ministers imbibed its unsubtle blend of imperial fervour and religious mission, cleverly woven into adventure stories set in the far reaches of Victoria's Empire. And though the jungles of Africa or the Australian bush proved immensely popular, no setting was more desirable than the 'wild and woolly west' of Canada. Almost every issue, from its beginning in 1879 to its demise in 1967, contained a 'Canadian' story. The BOP began its illustrious career with a serialized version of R.M. Ballantyne's 'The Red Man's Revenge: A Tale of the Red River Flood' (October 1879-March 1880). In these and subsequent issues its readers were transported across the vast Atlantic, in an imaginative leap as daring as any proposed by Shakespeare, and

38 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities became the heroes of adventures fraught with danger, populated by wild Indians and courageous hunters, and always somehow resolved in the hero's favour. With copies of Boy's Own they escaped the narrow confines of their London streets as they immersed themselves in W.H.G. Kingston's 'Coals of Fire' (1880), J. Macdonald Oxley's 'Archie Mackenzie' (1892), Argyll and Jessie Saxby's 'Rough and Ready Chums' (1897), Roy Carmichael's 'A Greenhorn in Prairieland' (1903), or Lincoln Wilbur's 'The Crazy Trapper' (1909). If those same boys read, as they most surely did, the more flamboyant Chums, which was not published by the Religious Tract Society and was therefore not so finicky in its tastes, their scalps would tingle as they defied death weekly in such adventures as 'Pursued by Red Indians: A Rescue from an Awful Fate' (1897), 'Chased by Scalp-Hunters' (1899), or 'Nearly Killed by Redskins' (1902). In the first fifteen years of Chums' existence (1892-1907), Canadian stories, primarily of the 'penny dreadful' kind, appeared in approximately one hundred of its weekly issues. When the magazines grew stale or perhaps whetted a keener appetite or when a serial was missed, the insatiable British boys turned to the novelists. Many of the serialized stories were themselves often later published as full-length romances: Ballantyne's Red Man's Revenge (1880) and Prairie Chief (1886 ), and Macdonald Oxley'sArchie Mackenzie (1893) andNomzan's Nugget (1901) thereby enjoyed a longer life than The Boy's Own Paper could have given them. In addition to these, Ballantyne and Oxley between them wrote another thirty-five novels set in Canada, all of which enjoyed considerable popularity with British boys. Their names and novels, like those of G.A. Henty and W.H.G. Kingston, are well known even to modern readers. Thus, when one adds to this list the hundreds of little known (yet once very popular) novels which flooded the juvenile market, one can begin to appreciate the ease with which a Victorian boy could have become acquainted with Canada, or at least with a fictional Canada. The names of Achilles Daunt, St George Rathbone, C.L. Johnstone, Clive Phillipps-Wolley, Edward Hoare, Charles Kenyon, and Eleanor Stredder- and such titles as Lost in the Wilds, The Young Ranchman, Canoe Mates in Canada, and The Young Emigrants - though little known today, were familiar to a host of young English readers before the turn of the century. Once widely read, they now languish in the company of

'The Wild and Woolly West' 39 other minor English authors, to be found serendipitously by some lucky reader. Take Argyll Saxby as a typical example. This son of the wellknown Scottish writer Jessie Saxby was a frequent contributor to The Boy's Own Paper. After visiting Canada, possibly with his mother (who wrote emigration propaganda), he wrote a number of ranching adventures enticingly titled Braves White and Red (1907), The Taming of the Rancher(1909), Comrades Three (1911), Tangled Trails (1915), and The Call of Honour (nd), all of them having such subtitles as A Tale of Adventure on the Canadian Prairie. Equally popular with British boys were the novels of the very British exMountie, John Mackie, who boasted that he never wrote about anything he had not experienced; judging by the action described in The Devil's Playground (1894), The Heart of the Prairie (1901), The Rising of the Red Man (1904), Hidden in the Canadian Wilds (1911), and Canadian Jack (1913) his life had been an exciting one indeed. Thousands of boys were led to believe that what Mackie and his heroes had done they could do as well. Like young Archie Belaney, who would later espouse the myth to an extreme that few others ever dared, they vicariously set their bedroll in 'some lonely valley of the Bow River at Blackfoot Crossing,' dared the wild rapids of the Athabasca River, outwitted Indians in the Qu'Appelle Valley, or thwarted horse thieves on the 'vast open border.' Archie seemed, so his school history claimed, 'more like a Red Indian than a respectable Grammar School Boy'; and when Lovat Dickson, who unravelled the mystery of the man who became Grey Owl, visited the home of Archie's maiden aunts he saw in their library, side by side with Grey Owl's own books, some 'touching souvenirs of the past in the shape of a number of ... boys' novels and the paper-covered penny dreadfuls of the day, these being chiefly stories about Red Indians which had had a great success with boys in the early part of this century. Nearly all these much-used books were inscribed with his name in his writing, and some had in the margins ink drawings he had made of Indians fighting against the white man. ' 1 To many boys like Belaney the very word 'Canada' seemed to epitomize adventure. 'What British boy,' asked Roy Carmichael, 'nurtured on the thrilling tales of Cooper and Ballantyne, has not felt an almost irresistible longing to visit the scenes depicted in such glowing colours by these talented authors? Visions of an immense

40 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities billowy prairie, with here and there on the horizon the peaked tepees or lodges of the noble red men, and herds of "buffalo" browsing peacefully or stampeding in alarm as the Indian horseman, whirling his lariat, swoops down upon them - all this, and more, is conjured up at the mere mention of the magic word "prairie".' 2 Carmichael's question was rhetorical, of course; the answer was too obvious. Indeed, thousands of young Englishmen eventually did 'visit the scenes,' their expectations predetermined by the stories they had read; and many thousands more, who never did 'go West,' nevertheless knew (or felt they knew) in an intimate way just what kind of place Canada was.

The fictional Canada to which young English readers were transported was, on the whole, a monotonously restricted area: it was, to use one of the most popular definitions, the 'great North-West.' More than 85 per cent of the so-called 'Canadian' stories in English juvenile magazines and novels were set in this ill defined and variously defined region, and the assumption must have been that the whole of Canada - if, indeed, there was any more - was exactly similar in both terrain and inhabitants. There was an occasional story set in the 'bush' of Ontario and less occasionally one, such as George Ethelbert Walsh's 'The Mysterious Beacon Light,' set in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, or Labrador. But by and large it was the 'western prairie' or the 'northern wild,' with some specific locations such as the Qu'Appelle Valley, the foothills of the Rockies, the Klondike, the Athabasca or Keewatin districts, the Red River area, or the us-Canadian border in Saskatchewan or Alberta. One could, for example, have read The Boy's Own Paper for almost fifty years and never have known that there were large cities like Montreal or Toronto, although every now and then a spoil-sport would point out that even Winnipeg had grocery stores and modem conveniences: 'Steeped in the thrilling lore of Fenimore Cooper, a boy setting foot to-day in the prairie province of Manitoba rubs his eyes in some disappointment and surprise as he lands, say, in Winnipeg, the capital of the West, and finds a city full grown and up to date, with electric lights and telephones, and motor-driven tramcars everywhere. The glamour of the Hudson's Bay storehouse, the chief rallying-centre of hunters

'The Wild and Woolly West' 41 and trappers and Indian braves in the lore of his schooldays, vanishes into thin air as he surveys a smart plate-glass emporium - a Regent Street shop transplanted five thousand miles overseas. '3 Most juvenile readers, however, simply would not have believed it. Not that the descriptions they read were ever precise or concrete or even vivid; on the contrary they were vague and imprecise both in terms of time and of place. But they left no doubt that, instead of cities or tram cars or civilized people, the 'great North-West' was a land of many rivers with dangerous rapids, wide prairies with treacherous sloughs, thick forests covered with snow, or sometimes mountains with inevitable avalanches. And any story might begin this way: Kneeling in a canoe, fashioned from the skin of an animal, and wielding a paddle with a dexterity equalled only by the savage Indian, a sturdily built lad of noticeably British breeding glanced ever and anon back along the dangerous course he had so recently passed. It was far away in the wilderness of the Northwest, where this fierce tributary of the great Saskatchewan came pouring down from the timber-dad hills; and all around the lone voyager lay some of the wildest scenery to be met with on the whole continent. Here and there in this vast territory one might come across the occasional trading post; otherwise the country at this time was a vast unknown land, seldom penetrated by human kind, save the resourceful and cunning native. 4

There nearly always was, of course, a police outpost, or a trapper's shack, or perhaps a fort or ranch, but they were usually 'isolated' or 'solitary' or 'remote,' and were reached only after considerable hardship had been endured and tortuous trails trekked. Those, in fact, were the hallmarks of romantic primitivism, the signs by which one recognized the wild 'North-West' or what to the readers of Boy's Own was Canada. The usual signs of progress, which the emigration pamphlets glowingly described, were conveniently ignored. While the missionaries and politicians might prefer to gauge progress by the number of new farms, schools, and churches they could count - and equate progress with civilization - story-writers achieved success only by ignoring those things; for them the untamed wilderness was all and its challenges were what identified its appeal. After all, what was the point of having gone through the character-building process of the English public school

42 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities - the cold baths, unheated dormitories, outdoor lavatories, and cross-country runs - if one could never put that education to the test? It little mattered, therefore, if the Rocky Mountains sometimes penetrated into Saskatchewan or that no foothills ever dotted the fictional landscape, or whether the intrepid hero really could, simply by 'turning to the right-hand seek the rugged haunts of the grizzly bear and the Rocky Mountain goat; or, by turning to the left, ride after the buffalo on his own undulating plain.' Such compression and distortion were, in fact, essential in a setting where action, adventure, and displays of courage were all-important. It was best that nothing be too specific or accurate; that setting be an impression only, an impression of a 'great wilderness' where, as R.M. Ballantyne put it, 'the red man and the buffalo roamed at will, and the conventionalities of civilised life troubled them not. ' 5 For that very reason, because the picture was an impression with little concrete detail, no distinctive variety or regional differences, it was the more forcefully imprinted on the naive imagination. The only variety in this otherwise simplistic picture might have come from changes in reader demand over a long period of time. Looking at The Boy's Own Paper, for example, one finds that in its early period, from about 1879 to 1890, the emphasis in the Canadian stories is on the 'far' north - on explorers, trappers, or Company (HBC and North West) apprentices primarily battling the elements but always pitted against one or two unscrupulous bosses, unethical rivals, or 'bad' Indians. A transition began to occur with the introduction of the Mounted Policeman as a hero or assistant hero, some of whom were at home in the 'snowy wastes' but most of whom were more adept at capturing whisky traders and horse thieves, whose notorious occupations were pursued much farther south on the prairies; stories of Indians and buffalo hunts therefore altered the picture of the 'northwest' and eventually led to the domination of the 'cowboy' story which, with the exception of occasional stories about 'Eskimos' and trappers, seemed to be the readers' favourite after 1910. In these later stories the 'vast wilderness' was less likely to be covered with snow and could even be pleasantly appealing: 'The mellow radiance of a wann September afternoon poured down into the lovely valley of the Bow River at Blackfoot Crossing, till it seemed overflowing with rich golden-brown sunshine. It was one of those early autumn days that would glorify even the most common-

'The Wild and Woolly West' 43 place scene with a rich halo of gold and orange and fiery bronze. '6 But the light could be deceptive, as it nearly always was in such stories, for hidden in the shade of the poplars might be Blackfoot or Cree warriors, and the ear might descry what the eye could not - the sound of distant hooves (a buffalo stampede?) or the hiss of a rattlesnake. No matter how picturesque the setting, eventually the story would reveal the wild Canadian North-West.

What of the people who populated those stories - the inhabitants of the vast North-West? Who were they and what were their attitudes to the land in which they lived or travelled through? By and large, there were four more or less distinct groups: the heroes; the hero accomplices (kind factors, policemen, sweethearts, devoted male companions, and an occasional 'good' Indian); the Indians themselves (some of whom were scoundrels and some not); and a myriad of rogues and scoundrels. The heroes, of course, were nearly always English, of English extraction, or, just as close, Scottish - what Argyll Saxby would call 'healthy, well-knit Saxons.' And most of them were young adventurers (some on holidays), a few of whom would return home after having improved the quality of life in the colony. They were, quite unashamedly, guardians of imperialism, protectors of and propagandists for the British way of life which espoused a firm belief in 'wholesome adventure, cold baths and Christianity. ' 7 They proved that the British public school education, with its primary insistence on 'manly sports,' produced just the right sort of person to be a hero in any foreign part of the Empire: Many a lad .. . who leaves an English public school disgracefully ignorant of the rudiments of useful knowledge ... and who has devoted a great part of his time and nearly all his thoughts to athletic sports, yet brings away with him something beyond all price- a manly, straightforward character, a scorn of lying and meanness, habits of obedience and command, and fearless courage. Thus equipped, he goes out into the world and bears a man's part in subduing the earth, ruling its wild folk, and building up the Ernpire. 8

In the fictional Canadian North-West there were many young men of that kind, fine exponents of British manliness and muscular

44 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities Christianity. They were the typical empire-guardian man so brilliantly described by Patrick Howarth in his book, Play Up and Play the Game (1973): 'imbued with a strong sense of institutional loyalty, upper middle class by background, conformist in belief, dedicated to a concept, not simply of "my country right or wrong", but of a nation enjoying a natural moral prerogative.' Add to this 'a natural power of command' and we have the type of youth made immortal in the poetry of Kipling and Henry Newbolt. 9 Honour even in defeat, fair play- especially to one's adversary, a stiff upper lip, and self-reliance: those were the values instilled on the public school playgrounds and which served to produce the heroes of both fact and fiction. The heroes of Argyll Saxby's Comrades Three (1911) are excellent representatives of the type. Though Stewart Edyvean 'was dressed in the suitable garb of the West ... there was no mistaking the sturdy set of his figure, the honest blue eyes, and the lips that seemed to be ever twitching to let free a laugh - there was no mistaking these for evidences of a thoroughly British boy, bred in an English public school that had painted him from head to foot with the sign "gentleman".' His companion, Fred Calvert, was a 'young Cornish giant, every inch of him, clothed in the cowboy's garb that added to his manliness without burying his nationality. ' 10 They were, of course, 'old Dunmere boys' who meet by accident in the wilds of Canada (the chances of such happening being perhaps a million to one) and, as in the days when they played for the glory of their school - 'Middle stump, first ball!' - they now team together to civilize the Canadian West, till finally they could start a Dunmere ranch! 'Let us make it the largest and best in the West for the sake of the old days that made us chums. Real school chums ought to be comrades for life! Is it not so?' 11 First and foremost, then, the hero must be physically strong and able to meet the hardships imposed by frontier life, and to meet them not merely stoically but with joy. Macdonald Oxley, following closely in the stylistic footsteps of Ballantyne, sets the example for most other writers; his Archie McKenzie, the 'Young Nor-Wester,' was in the first flush of that precious pleasure which comes from the sense of being considered something more than a mere boy. He did not cherish the ideal of manhood. But to send a bullet or an arrow straight to its mark, to paddle a canoe hour after hour without missing a stroke, to

'The Wild and Woolly West' 45 tramp on snow-shoes four miles an hour for half a day without sitting down to rest, to bestride a half-broken horse and stick there until the creature, panting and exhausted, confessed defeat, to set a trap so cunningly that even the wary wolverine would fall a victim: these were some of the attributes of manhood according to his way of thinking, and all these he possessed in a degree which rendered the pretty high opinion he held of himself at least excusable, if not altogether admirable. 12

Oxley may have thought it wise to use a little irony at the end of his glowing picture, but others would not: Argyll Saxby, for one, unequivocally stated that if you did not have that kind of stamina and that sense of enjoyment in testing muscles against the challenges of nature - if you did not have the 'backwoods spirit' - 'it must be that you are a weakling boy who lacks the real boy's love for out-of-door freedom. ' 13 Challenge and response was part and parcel of the 'satisfaction of Empire-building.' As James Morris put it, 'a puritanical pleasure in hardship was often allied with a boyish delight in rip-roar, the two formidably combining to produce a breed of stoic adventurers, for whom the imperial mission was a larger embodiment of a personal challenge. ' 14 Thus the emphasis lay heavily on spartan endurance. But physical strength and stamina were nothing without their mental equivalents. It was taken for granted that the sense of moral superiority implanted by the public school, though it created a sense of moral obligation which obviated excessive cruelty, gave the hero the self-assurance needed to face and quell (almost with a glance) large numbers of hostile natives: 'As the wild beast of the forest is often cowed by the unflinching gaze of a hunter, so is the savage often overawed by the imperious voice ... of the white man. ' 15 Just being British, therefore, was enough; if the hero had no uniform, it was evident in his bearing and manner; if he happened to wear a symbol of British authority, the task was even easier, as this anonymous contributor to Chums made perfectly clear: The scarlet tunic! What a story! When but one man even, wearing it, appeared in the middle of a band of several thousand blood-thirsty Sioux Indians, fresh from the war trail, their hands still red with the blood of white men or women, and lusting for more white man's gore; or when the scarlet tunic came into sight of white or half-breed murderers, thieves and cutthroats, the wearer brusquely approaching the leader of the band

46 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities and formally placing him under arrest, seized him by the collar, without even drawing a pistol, marched him to where two horses were standing and rode off with him to the nearest post of the Mounted Police, perhaps one hundred miles away, not a hand would be raised in attempted rescue or in attack upon the representative of England's King or Queen, as the case might be, for, as the saying went in those remote places, 'If you shoot or stick a knife into a member of the North-West Mounted Police, you are doing the same thing to the entire British nation, and the English will follow you to the ends of the earth and punish you. ' 16

It was that sort of support - the assurance that the whole nation was an 'old boy's club' - that gave the budding imperialist his confidence. But, since it was a moral superiority (supported by middle-class evangelism) which, as many commentators have noted, laid burdens on a man, it also presupposed absolute integrity, fairness, and high-mindedness which could be summed up as either 'gentlemanliness' or 'gentility.' Norman Thompson, in Macdonald Oxley's Norman's Nugget, 'one of the warmest hearted, brave-spirited, genial fellows that ever sought elusive fortune in the wilds of British Columbia,' sets the ethical example for all the other heroes: 'despite the temptations that beset him he would have nothing to do with tobacco, liquor, or cards. Others might be able to use them with impunity, he argued, but that was no warrant of his doing so, and he had come to British Columbia to seek his fortune, not for diversion or dissipation.' Similarly, though Victor Ravenshaw, in R.M. Ballantyne's The Red Man's Revenge, has more experience in the art of sinning, he too comes to the same conclusion: '[He] was too honest and manly to deny the fact that he had not yet acquired a liking for tobacco, and admitted to himself that, in very truth, his object in smoking was to appear, as he imagined, more like a man, forgetful or ignorant of the fact that men (even smokers) regard beardless consumers of tobacco as poor imitative monkeys. He soon came to see the habit in its true light, and gave it up, luckily, before he became its slave. ' 17 It was quite clear, then, that to be a hero in such a story, only muscular Christians need apply. In one amusing story, Argyll Saxby's 'The Last of the HorseThieves' (1907), we are offered a portrait of the kind of sissified Englishman who was not needed, the kind, indeed, who would turn up as so-called gentlemen emigrants or remittance men, and then

'The Wild and Woolly West' 47 be parodied in the cartoons of A.G. Racey. The hero of the story, Wilfred Gilbert, decides he must, in order to catch the horse thieves at their game, trick Jake Binnings and his gang into committing a crime. He therefore disguises himself as a 'tenderfoot' - a newly arrived Englishman 'straight from West Kensington' whose name is William Algernon Marmaduke. When not even the reader knows (though he might suspect) who the tenderfoot really is, Saxby relishes his suspense: 'The bronchoe [sic] on which he rode was one that looked as if it were all the time longing to lean up against the nearest tree and dream of its childhood in the distant past; whilst the youth who rode it looked too young to have any past to dream about ... His whole aspect betokened one who had arrayed himself in the attire of one of the bold bad cowboys peculiar to the "penny dreadfuls"!' 18 As expected, the greenhorn is greeted by raucous laughter when he says: 'Excuse me, gentlemen, if I intrude, but do you know of any restaurant where I could have a little lunch. I have ridden quite three miles today and my horse and I feel quite exhausted.' And by just as much laughter when Jake replies: 'There ain't no restyour-aunts nor rest-your-uncles in these parts, but if you care to rest your Royal Highness in our humble mansion, I guess we can raise a tub of hog-feed for both you and that thoroughbred of yours.' Eventually, of course, the disguised Gilbert turns the tables on his hosts and, having lured them into criminal action, soon has his evidence and eventually sees the gang jailed in Regina. Saxby is clearly having fun, and the story is delightful if predictable, but just as clearly he means to inform all young readers that only 'real' not 'weakling' boys can hope to become heroes or Empire men. Though the ideas of Christian manliness and imperial guardianship are more subtly conveyed in The Boy's Own Paper than in Chums magazine, and more ingeniously promulgated in the better novels, they are unmistakably the raision d'etre of the many Empire adventures in both novels and magazines in the period of the juvenile story's greatest impact. 'It is true,' writes Eric Quayle of R. M. Ballantyne, 'that he portrayed a world in which the good were terribly good, and the bad terribly bad, and the British were terribly British - and worth ten of any foreigners alive, by Jingo! But in the age in which he lived it was not only the young who believed that a benevolent God had arranged things thus ... Ballantyne, G.A. Henty and the rest of the boys' authors of the period

48 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities never for one moment doubted the innate benevolence of British imperialism, coupled, as it always was, with the blessings of Christianity which sooner or later were visited on the conquered. ' 19

Whether conquered or not, most of the other inhabitants of the vast North-West were clearly inferior to the hero and were treated with considerable condescension, in a measure directly equivalent to their place on an established hierarchic scale - the hero accomplices taking precedence over ordinary folk (settlers) who ranked higher than the Indians, while the scoundrels, lowest on the totem pole, were given the usual taste of British justice. What characterized the difference, and defined the hierarchy (apart from the primary attribute of Christian manliness), was a decreasing scale of gentility, defined variously as 'manners' or 'gentlemanly behaviour' or 'polish.' Thus it was, for example, that even a white scoundrel could be less harshly treated, in a fictional way, than a native character: Miles McDougall (in Archie McKenzie) might be merely a 'brute' while a harmless Inuit might be a 'Mongol-faced savage.' Women, when male writers condescended to allow them as characters, were either low on the scale of gentility or were anomalous. If indigenous to a wild society they could hardly be refined. If not, they were, like Ravenshaw's wife (in The Red Man's Revenge), either useful helpmeets: 'well-favoured' and 'of considerable intrinsic value' but nevertheless possessed of 'an insufficient intellect' and 'highly unpolished'; or, when 'highly polished,' they were mere adornments, though they could figure prominently in the plot as attractions to the unerotic heroes and sometimes as rewards for having saved fathers or relatives from some disaster or another. As such they were, like Dorothy in John Mackie's Rising of the Red Man (1904), idealized to an inhuman and sexless degree: 'She grew and blossomed into a beautiful womanhood, as blossoms the vigorous wild-flower of the prairies. When she smiled there was the light and the glamour of the morning star in her dark hazel eyes, and when her soul communed within itself, it was as if one gazed into the shadow of the stream. There was a gleam of gold in her hair that was in keeping with the freshness of her nature, and the hue of perfect health was upon her cheeks. ' 20 Perhaps, for the youthful reader who indulged in sexual fantasies,

'The Wild and Woolly West' 49 the North-West held yet another promise of adventure; such women were indeed the stuff of dreams. In most stories, however, such creatures barely intruded into the plots. Unlike adult sensationalism, it would never do to have the youthful heroes pining away for some maiden. They were too manly for that. And just as the hero found women attractive but incidental so too did the reader. Most skimmed such unexciting passages as Mackie's, eager to resume the real adventure, for it was adversaries not helpmeets that made the West challenging and wild. 'Bring on the Indians!' surely was their cry. The most common kind of Indian to be met with on the prairies of juvenile literature was the 'war-whooping scalp-hunter.' This was especially so after the turn of the century and always so in the 'penny dreadfuls' and in such magazines as Chums . Writers like Samuel Walkey and Julian Linley, for example, who promised nothing more than raw adventure, were always on the 'war-trail of the redskins,' filling their pages with 'hordes of savages' all of whom were described in this or similar manner: 'Red Fox, the chief, was a repulsive, savage giant, his belt adorned by a dozen fresh scalps.' They were, not necessarily by nature but for the sake of the action, treacherous, brutal, untrustworthy, and omnipresent. They ravaged the plains, always in full regalia, and tested the mettle of many a fine hero. In such stories native customs were never described and complex emotions never allowed; natives were expedients - albeit essential ones - in creating thrills and satiating bloodthirsty readers. As Samuel Walkey made clear in the opening paragraph of one of his stories in Chums, the magazine and author were without a conscience: If you will listen to the tale of a forest ranger I can promise those of you who love adventure some breathless hours. You shall hear the war-whoop ring through woodland glades. You shall see the Redskins on the warpath. Scalping knives shall flash; tomahawks shall glitter ... And you shall watch the great drama of the stirring days when ... the red man, with scalpingknife and tomahawk, went out upon the warpath. 21

That view of Indians, soon to gain prominence in the American 'western' dime novel, was not the only one presented by writers of Canadian stories. It was, of course, the one which dominated the imaginations of most juvenile readers and the one that gained

50 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities popularity through the penny dreadfuls. But many of the more refined writers, and particularly The Boy's Own Paper in its early years, were unwilling to label all Indians 'savages'; they tried, after a fashion, to emulate Fenimore Cooper's 'noble red man' view. As the Governor-General of Canada, the Marquis of Lome, noted in an 1885 issue of Boy's Own, though 'Cooper in his novels exaggerated the stateliness and virtues of the red man,' his picture was in the main a 'true one. ' 22 Many writers like Ballantyne, Kingston, Oxley, and Mackie therefore took considerable pains to show the nobleness of the Indian: [The chief] let his blanket fall from his shoulders, and underneath there showed a richly-wrought shirt of true barbaric grandeur. On a groundwork of crimson flannel was wrought a rare and striking mosaic in beads of blue and yellow and red. The sun glowed from his breast, countless showy ermine tails dangled from his shoulders, his arms and his sides like a gorgeous fringe, and numerous tiny bells tinkled all over him as he moved. His features were large and marked, his forehead high, and his nose aquiline. His Mongolian set eyes were dark and full of intellect, his expression a strange mixture of alertness, conscious power, and dignity. He was a splendid specimen of humanity. 23

Such writers tended to be more anthropological in their approach, interpolating descriptions of native customs, buffalo hunting, the making of pemmican, constructing snowshoes, and so forth in fairly realistic detail and not just as a matter of dramatic moment. Though the term 'redskin' is common in their stories, the terms 'Injun' and 'Nitchie,' so popular in the cheap adventure novels, rarely occur, except in the speeches of the scoundrels. 24 But no matter how earnest such writers might be in their attempts to seem fair and unprejudiced, it is quite clear that they never were able to avoid the stereotype. The Indians, though noble, are savages; the most noble of them all are those who have accepted Christianity; of these, there are just a few. For even though the 'nobleness' was acknowledged and might even be of heroic proportions, fictional exigency dictated that the majority would be of the villainous kind. This necessity led to all sorts of compromises and equivocation, to simplistic treatment of important cultural issues, and to discussions of the right and wrong of 'killing Injuns.' Thus, Achilles Daunt in The Three Trappers has a long section on just that subject:

'The Wild and Woolly West' 51 The youths endeavoured to dissuade the old fellow from his purpose [of seeking revenge], but for some time in vain. He could not be got to understand that any moral guilt was attachable to the shooting of a mere Indian, the more especially when, as in this instance, the individual Redskin had attacked his friend Bucknall, who came near to losing his scalp in the encounter ... 'But surely, Jake,' said Pierre, 'you must allow that an Indian, however savage he may be, is still a man; and that to kill a man for no other reason than to earn some powder and tobacco, is a hideous crime, for which you will have to answer to the Almighty.' 'Ugh!' exclaimed the incorrigible old sinner, 'ye talks like one o' the black-robe missioners as makes it wrong to drop a deer o' a Sunday. I've bin, man and boy, all my life in the plains an' in the hills, an' niver yit did this coon hear tell o' its bein' wrong to shoot a Redskin . . . When Injuns ur a-streakin' it in thur paint acrost the plains, I tells ye, young fellers, that ef ye don't drop them, they'll drop you. Thur ain't no two tunes to that song, I guess!' 'But,' resumed Pierre, ' ... remember that if the Indian is a savage, he is so through no fault of his own. He is only what his bringing up has made him. And if he, in his utter blindness, massacres his enemies and is cruel and treacherous, you, who are a white man and of a superior race, ought not to imitate his bad example.' 'Wal, mister,' said the hunter gruffly, 'ye ought to hev bin a missioner. Thur's not a many on the plains as carries a rifle ud think an' talk like that; an' I'd advise ye to sell yer rifle an' buy hymn-books an' black clothes, an' run a mission among the Blackfeet. Jest tell them not to rise the ha'r o' the whites, and not to murder and do wuss to thur weemen. Tell 'em it ain't accordin' to the Bible; an' see what they'll say! Oncommon lucky you'd be ef they didn't begin right straight away on yerself. He! he! he!' And here the old fellow chuckled merrily, as if this termination to a missionary career was peculiarly funny. 25

In Argyll Saxby's 'Rough-and-Ready Chums,' where the Sun Dance is referred to as 'a rite as revolting to the civilized mind as it is admirable to the savage,' we have another example of the simplistic kind of treatment often bestowed on native culture. The story has its conflict in the unwillingness of an Indian boy, Sequa, to undergo the test of manhood, a refusal to have his flesh tom in the Sun Dance ritual. When the chief is about to kill his cowardly son, the hero, Bertie Caryll, intervenes and the Indians are overawed by his 'unflinching gaze' and 'imperious voice.' Later, of course, after having profited by his association with the white man and his re-

52 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities ligion, Sequa proves his bravery by saving his father's life. In essence, such writers as Saxby were tom between two desires: to make the Indian the chief protagonist of their stories; and yet to at least acknowledge the complexity of their society and minds. What usually emerged was a kind of schizophrenic native or native society, summed up in such obviously distorted descriptions as this: Redskins of today may be divided into two classes - namely, the woods Indian and the reservation Indian. Between these two there is as much difference as between a Chinese and a negro. The former is the only living representative of Fenimore Cooper's heroes. He still wears deer or mooseskin moccasins; binds his long hair with a narrow fillet, and his waist with a red sash, carries a scalping-knife and decks his clothes with a variety of ornamentation. These redskins never enter the settlements, and are never seen except by bold fur-traders and pioneer explorers. The reservation Indian dresses like a European, and is generally very degraded and disgusting in his habits and character. 26

Though this looks like an attempt to preserve the myth of the 'noble savage,' it is more likely merely an attempt to maintain a potential for fictional violence - to support the view that fictional Indians did indeed exist and were perhaps awaiting the right moment to 'rise up' against their white oppressors. Side by side with this kind of thinking, there existed a fear that the Canadian Indian would lose his potential as a fictional villain. There was, as our later examination of British views of the Canadian Indian makes clear, a growing body of literature that liked to make its reader believe that the Indians of Canada were (and always had been) less warlike than their American counterparts. Writers like the Saxbys felt it was wrong to overglamorize (even in a savage way) the Canadian Indian. In their story 'Rough-andReady Chums' they have a character called 'Old Sam,' a Yankee, who represents the American position: 'A brave thing to do [he says when the hero has brought Sequa back); but I wish you had left a bullet or two in their hides, jest to mind them that you had called. That's the way we leave our cards when we call on them folks down in Texas. But, boss, you've done no wise deed in bringing a Nitchie into your shak [sic). Don't be surprised if someday you find your scalp or your watch amissing. Powder and shot is all that will teach a redskin to give over his bloodthirsty ways.' The Yankee is, of course, proven wrong, and the authors make it quite clear that 'the Indians in the States are not treated so kindly and

'The Wild and Woolly West' 53 justly as they are in Canada, and consequently they are more treacherous and revengeful. ' 27 But 'treacherous and revengeful' was exactly the kind of Indian the juvenile reader wanted: after all, Deadeye Dick and Buffalo Bill Cody, whose dime novel careers were becoming well known to English boys, had created just those expectations. The more sensational juvenile magazines were not reluctant to comply, and their stories of scalpings and bloody ambushes, vividly portrayed, were devoured weekly. There seemed little that the respectable magazines and novelists could do except to follow their example, although most never imitated their excessive violence. In addition, readers were beginning to dislike the long-winded tales imitative of Ballantyne and Oxley, with their frequent interpolations on religion, and began to demand the kind of streamlined tales, with plenty of action and pithy dialogue, that they could read in Chums and the dime novels. It was a case of being 'quick on the draw,' of introducing oneself with a gun ('Put 'em up, Injun,' rapped out one man, 'Guess your name's Whitey, eh?'), and speaking the lingo of the West. Language and dialect had always been the primary means of identifying the sub-hero category: the hero's English was impeccable (as were his manners), the hero accomplice often spoke less polished English and sometime with a foreign accent, but the scoundrels had developed a dialect all their own. It was in this area, along with the 'savage' depiction of Indians, that the 'Canadian' stories begin to become confused with the American; one just cannot tell at times whether one is reading a 'Canadian' or an 'American' western adventure - they all soon become just 'western thrillers.' Sometimes, as in Achilles Daunt's The Three Trappers, when the scoundrel is a stereotype Metis or French Canadian, one knows that the story must be set in Canada: 'Eh, Jake! vieux garcon! qu'allez-vous faire ici?' exclaimed a small wirylooking French Canadian. 'Je suis ravi de vous voir. Oat is,' said he, correcting himself, 'How are you? - how you get alongs?' 'Wal, Porky, jest middlin'. Who's yer lot?' asked Jake, viewing the other individuals in the canoe. 'Zese? Oh, dey are chasseurs - trappeurs of ze Compagnie - brave gens - fine fellows - mais ils sont braves comme dix mille demons!' 28

But when, as became increasingly the case, the dialect was supposed to be 'ginuwine' cowboy or rancher or adventurer (nearly all

54 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities of whom spoke the same dialect), one begins to lose track of locale and suspects that it is the American dime-novel dialect which is being imitated: 'Yes, pardner- treach'ry,' growled Pete with a curse. 'Sor'l,' he continued, 'yer remember that night we slid out an' tried ter steal a march on the Reds?' His companion consented laconically. 'It war' kept close 'mongst our little party, and no one but thet same little party knew what was in the wind. Wal, d'yer remember what happened? Did we ketch the Injuns nappin'? Nary! They were wide awake an' waitin' fer us whites, and we walked slick into their ambush like beavers; aye, but we kim out, what was left of us, like wildcats. ' 29 'Twur about ten yeem agone,' he commenced, 'that the thing I ur a-gwine to tell ye happened. I wur a-trappin' on one' the cricks that run into the head-waters o' the Yellerstone, an' a likely spot it ur, 'ceptin' for them Siuoxes. A fellur has to keep his eyss skinned thur, I guess, or his topknot wull kim off sure. '30

Thus, when creeks became 'cricks,' horses become 'cayuses' or 'hosses,' robbers 'vamoosed,' faithful companions became 'pardners,' and 'jolly fellows' became merely 'fellurs,' and when the Indians (the 'Injuns' or 'Nitchies') all wear ceremonial headdress, whether hunting down the buffalo or 'paleface,' we know we are not far from the formula fiction of The Wild West Weekly. It was then that the 'Wild West' expanded its fictional boundaries, when writers who had never been near the place of their fictional crimes (and couldn't care less) gave everyone a six-gun (and some an eightgun), had Dacotah Indians and rattlesnakes on the banks of the Athabasca River, and generally made no distinction between Canada and the United States. The Age of New Imperialism had certainly died.

'I was a cowboy for eighteen months after emigrating to Canada ... and it's the jolliest, wildest, freest and most exciting life a man can lead. ' 31 So boasted a former cowboy to a Boy's Own correspondent in 1903. Immediately into the minds of its young readers must have flashed a picture, vivified for them so many times, of that ubiquitous rider, with his six-gun blazing, tearing across the open prairie at

'The Wild and Woolly West' 55 breakneck speed, pursued by a raging prairie fire or pursuing some barely discernible horse thief, whiskey smuggler, or renegade Indian. So reluctant were such writers to dispel the myth that, even in their 'factual' accounts, they hedged and played at half-truths: 'The cowboys are very handy with their guns,' one Boy's Own writer solemnly noted, 'but I don't think there is much killing nowadays. At any rate, I never saw it. Of course everybody carries a shooter, for one never knows when one may need it, and they are always very quick to draw, but as a rule one of the boys steps between them and prevents bloodshed. '32 In the minds of most young Englishmen, then, and at least up until the First World War, Canada was the 'wild North-West.' It was either a land of snowy wastes or a vast 'billowy prairie,' filled with wolves and bears (both grizzly and polar), peopled by 'redskins' and Mounties, where adventure lay beyond every muskeg and mountain. It was variously labelled 'the great lone land,' 'the wild north land,' 'the rugged West,' 'the wild and woolly west,' or something of a similarly intriguing nature. Certainly more than a few of the many thousands of Englishmen who emigrated to its shores, most of whom had read Ballantyne or Kingston or Chums or Boy's Own, had just such a picture in their minds, some of them so sure of its accuracy that they arrived, like the fictional Clarence de Brown-Jones, 'brandishing snowshoes, bowie knives and revolvers. ' 33 And it would be some time before the nervousness of the new young emigrant would disappear: he might, like some new arrivals in Winnipeg, on recalling stories of the shooting prowess of westerners, take most of the furniture in his hotel room and pile it against the door to serve in place of a lock. It is, of course, only occasionally that one finds such explicit statements about emigrant attitudes and their indebtedness to romantic fiction. Most writers, like Ralph Stock in his fascinating book, Confessions of a Tenderfoot (1913), simply take it for granted that the romantic view was the prevalent one and generally make derisive remarks about those 'who go to the Canadian North-West with the idea that cattle-ranching consists of riding over the plains in a red shirt and a Baden-Powell hat, with a revolver, a cartridge belt and lasso. ' 34 Some writers merely confirm the existence of such prevalence: the well-known war poet Rupert Brooke 'had the common European fantasy about North American Indians based on the "Red Indians" of the Boy's Own adventure stories of his youth. Like Archie Belaney, the Englishman who conned the world as

56 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities Grey Owl, Rupert had a fascination and an empathy for what he thought was the simple natural life of the "noble savage". '35 Not a few, like S. MacNaughtan and Roy Carmichael, who both visited Canada and lived to write about it, only offer hints of disappointment to the effect that the Canadian West was not as exciting as they thought it would be. 'The traveller jo~rneys away from Western Canada with a sense of regret,' states MacNaughtan, 'at not having discovered why it should be called the "wild and woolly west". '36 And 'at first sight,' writes Carmichael, 'the prairie is disappointing. There are no Indians or buffaloes "on the horizon," and the horizon itself is much nearer than is generally imagined by those of us who gained our ideas from the books of adventure in vogue in our boyhood's day. '37 There were, of course, many voices ready to set a young man straight, to re-colour the romantic picture, to deny it entirely, or to offer what they thought to be a more accurate one. The 'settlement' propaganda - those thousands of advertisements, tracts, and booklets aimed at prospective emigrants - perhaps went to the other extreme but were abundantly available. The juvenile novelists who thought they knew Canada better than the non-resident kind, and who resented their purely imaginative depictions, sometimes made an effort to disabuse youthful readers of their far-fetched views. One reviewer of Egerton Ryerson Young's Three Boys in the Great Lone Land thought it strange 'that boys could have such jolly fun with a lot of Christian Indians.' Young, a Canadian clergyman and prolific author of juvenile novels with religious themes, suggested that the reviewer was correct in stating that boys' ideas about Indians were 'associated with the tomahawk and the scalpingknife, and that they had the impression that the only good time they could have among them was when the blood-curdling warwhoops were heard and redskins were being shot down by adventurous lads led on by cowboys.' But, Young concluded, 'there has been altogether too many of these false and erroneous ideas about the Indians circulated. Such things are now impossibilities. '38 Boy's Own, too, perhaps as a reaction against the excesses of Chums and other sensational magazines, was willing to counter fiction with fact. 'There are two sorts of Red Indians,' wrote H. Mortimer Batten, a respected English naturalist who had spent his journeyman years in western Canada, 'the Red Indians of fiction and those of real life: and to the man who really knows and has lived among the latter - those shy, retiring people of the northern

'The Wild and Woolly West' 57 plains and forests - the contrast is truly ludicrous. ' 39 But as Batten should have known, most youthful readers had lived their lives only among the former kind - 'the Red Indians of fiction' - and that made all the difference. Moreover, as will be shown later, the Indian of real life was often measured against the standards set by the Indians of fiction. It is quite understandable, therefore, given the wide gap in imaginative impact between Batten's fact and Walkey's fiction, or between an emigration pamphlet and Chums magazine, that many boys who emigrated would have ignored the seeming truth and practical advice in favour of more exciting prospects. That most boys, real boys that is, would prefer to espouse the latter view was well known and had itself been a subject for fictional comment in R.M. Ballantyne's popular novel The Young Fur Traders: 'Charley, my boy [began Mr Grant], your father has just been speaking of you. He is very anxious that you should enter the service of the Hudson's Bay Company; and as you are a clever boy and a good penman, we think that you would likely get on if placed for a year or so in our office here. I need scarcely point out to you, my boy, that in such a position you would be sure to obtain more rapid promotion than if you were placed in one of the distant outposts, where you would have very little to do, and perhaps little to eat, and no one to converse with, except one or two men ... Why, you might even come to fill my place in course of time! Come now, Charley, what think you of it?' Charley's eyes had been cast on the ground while Mr Grant was speaking. He now raised them, looked at his father, then at his interrogator, and said: 'It is very kind of you both to be so anxious about my prospects. I thank you, indeed, very much; but I - a -' 'Don't like the desk?' said his father, in an angry tone. 'Is that it, eh?' Charley made no reply, but cast down his eyes again and smiled (Charley had a sweet smile, a peculiarly sweet, candid smile), as if he meant to say that his father had hit the nail quite on the top of the head that time, and no mistake. 'But consider,' resumed Mr Grant, 'although you might probably be pleased with an outpost life at first, you would be sure to grow weary of it after the novelty wore off, and then you would wish with all your heart to be back here again. Believe me, child, a trader's life is a very hard and not often a satisfying one -' ... 'In fact,' broke in the impatient father, resolved, apparently, to carry the point with a grand coup - 'in fact, you'll have to rough it, as I did,

58 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities when I went up the Mackenzie River District, where I was sent to establish a new post, and had to travel for weeks and weeks through a wild country, where none of us had ever been before - where we shot our own meat, caught our own fish, and built our own house - and were very near being murdered by the Indians - though, to be sure, afterwards they became the most civil fellows in the country, and brought us plenty of skins. Ay, lad, you'll repent of your obstinancy when you come to have to hunt your own dinner, as I've done many a day up the Saskatchewan, where I've had to fight with Redskins and grizzly bears, and to chase the buffaloes over miles and miles of prairie on rough-going nags till my bones ached and I scarce knew whether I sat on -' 'Oh!' exclaimed Charley - starting to his feet, while his eyes flashed and his chest heaved with emotion - 'that's the place for me, Father! Do, please, Mr. Grant, send me there, and I'll work for you with all my might!' 40

It would be presumptuous to insist that the picture of Canada presented by the juvenile magazines and novels was the one held by all young Englishmen in the Age of New Imperialism. But by the same token, it would be folly to underestimate either the pervasiveness or the impact of such literature. One does not need to be reminded of the 'playing fields of Eton,' or the influence of the Sunday School moralists, or even of the many Americans who could, for so many years, only visualize Japanese people as comic book 'Nips,' to be convinced of the truth of that statement. It would, therefore, be a mistake to belittle the powerful impact of children's stories - their books and magazines - on their later social attitudes and moral behaviour. The Boy's Own Paper, for example, had a life-span of almost ninety years (1879-1967), reached a peak circulation of one million copies an issue around the tum of the century, and was the boyhood inspiration of such eminent men .as English prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay Macdonald. The lessons of imperialism were learned as much from its pages, and from the pages of G.A. Henty, Rudyard Kipling, and R.M. Ballantyne, as from the English classroom. In his memoirs of his military career, Sir George Younghusband, a veteran Victorian soldier, offered the following testimony to the influence of romantic fiction: 'I had never heard the words or expressions that Rudyard Kipling's soldiers used. Many a time did I ask my brother officers

'The Wild and Woolly West' 59 whether they had ever heard them. No, never. But, sure enough, a few years after, the soldiers thought and talked and expressed themselves exactly as Rudyard Kipling had taught them in his stories. Rudyard Kipling made the modem soldier. ' 41 And what Kipling had done for the soldier, Ballantyne and others could do for the Canadian North-West; if they said it was 'wild and woolly,' then it was. Where, one might finally ask, was the harm in all this? Perhaps none, if one merely considers the young emigrant soon disabused of his fantasies, for disappointment of that kind dies easily. Yet the casual depiction and stereotyping of juvenile literature was a symptom of the problems and contradictions inherent in comprehending a world-wide Empire. The little geographical licences which saw the Rocky Mountains slope into the foothills of Saskatchewan or the stereotypes of the western frontier and its peoples reflected the gulf which could exist between the images instilled in the minds of those at the centre of Empire and the realities of the various components. Moreover, the stereotypes framed by, or reflected in, the juvenile literature were not neatly separable from the adult world. Take, for example, Beckles Willson's 1907 history of Canada entitled Romance of Empire. In it he sets out to recount 'the doings of the valiant heroes, the bloodthirsty villains, the virtuous ladies who played their part in the Canadian drama.' On the cover is an illustration depicting Indians with (blood-stained?) tomahawks hiding in ambush behind trees, and between the covers are the stories of 'war and butchery' by 'deluded half-breeds and redskins' until 'gradually the ferocious red-man with his musket and tomahawk has been driven from his lodges and wigwams in the east, to make way for bustling cities and thriving towns and villages ... Canada was not easy in the making; much blood flowed and many loyal hearts were broken before the Great Dominion rose. ' 42 Obviously the line between fiction and fact - indeed, between juvenile fiction and adult fact - was not always clear. As shown in the ensuing chapters, many of the stereotypes and simplicities peddled to the youthful reader were but extensions of themes which dominated the literature for adults. A fog of cultural difference, distance, and misperception shrouded the reality of colonial Canada from those who, at the centre, dreamed the dreams of Empire.

3

'Hunter's Paradise': Imperial-Minded Sportsmen in Canada

Sport makes manly boys and gentle men; quickens the judgment, puts pluck in the heart and strength in the body. Caspar Whitney (1894)

If there was no sport to be had in America, there would have been mighty few Englishmen developing it today. It is the love of sport, or something uncommonly like it, which makes Englishmen colonize at all. Clive Phillipps-Wolley (1897)

As they explored, and conquered, and extended the Empire, the British hunted. They rode, in a state of imperialistic fervour, all over Victoria's vast dominion, sticking pigs in India, stalking zebra along the African veldt, and charging after buffalo across the Canadian prairie. For many of them, unrestricted hunting was the expected rest and recreation of empire-builders - 'we have done our duty, now we must play.' But for many more, hunting was part and parcel of the empire-building process; the play habits of the British; especially of the aristo-military caste, were closely linked to their professional pursuits. It had always been that way. 'Hunting,' boasted Izaac Walton's venator in The Compleat Angler (1654 ), 'trains up the younger nobility to the use of manly exercises in their riper age . . . How doth it preserve health and increase strength and activity. ' Sport gave pleasure, of course, but more importantly it taught courage and endurance, fostered gentlemanly conduct and fair play, and bred the determination necessary to great deeds. A true sportsman was not one who merely 'braced his muscles' but, in the pursuit of

62 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities some great sport, learned to control his anger, to take no unfair advantage of his adversary, to resent as a dishonour any suspicion of trickery, to bear aloft a 'cheerful countenance' under disappointment, and never to admit defeat until the last breath was out of his body. Sport, therefore, especially the aristocratic sport of hunting, was ideal training for the manly game of war; and never was that opinion more fervently espoused than in the Victorian era, when it was commonly asserted that no man was fit to hold a commission who did not 'ride well to hounds.' Military esprit de corps was strengthened by esprit de sport: 'The spirit that animated those six hundred horsemen at Balaclava, as "boldly they rode and well, into the jaws of death," is the self-same invincible feeling of British pluck that carries nearly every fox-hunter to the end of a hard run over a difficult line of country. Much that is demanded of the fighter in the field is also required from the peaceful rider in the huntingfield. ' 1 From the lowly recruit, who may have 'tossed the caber' in his youth, to the highest-ranking officer, who had acquired a reputation for 'pluck' on the fox course, the sportsman was Britain's most coveted fighting soldier. It is not surprising, then, to find that the upper classes, gentry as well as nobility, deemed it a social duty to be physically fit, to be able at least to ride and hunt; nor that Victoria's military leaders, especially after retirement, became her aristocratic sportsmen par excellence. Many of their names, like their shotguns, were doublebarrelled - take Seton-Karr, Phillipps-Wolley, or Baillie-Grohman - or, more likely, were preceded by a title. By far the majority seemed to be dukes, or lords, or viscounts; and in a book on English Sport published as late as 1903 most of the contributors could have found a place in Burke's Peerage - Lord Willoughby de Broke, Lady Augusta Fane, the Earl of Suffolk, the Marquess of Grandby, and Lord Delamare. That must have seemed divinely right, for were they not, after all, the leaders among empire-builders and therefore entitled to the privilege of a sporting leisure? Like the knights of Camelot, whose romanticized exploits permeated Victorian public school culture, British gentlemen hunters invested their sport with a code of conduct. It was most ostentatiously displayed in the fox-hunt where a primal instinct had been transformed into an elaborate social ritual complete with rules of etiquette and dress. It may have been an unconscious attempt to

'Hunter's Paradise' 63 disguise the brutality of the event, to diminish the act of killing, but it became a way of life, influencing the course of a nation. Though less obvious in big-game hunting, the same gentlemanly code of conduct prevailed; a code of conduct similar in many ways to that followed by the soldier and the imperial guardian, all of whom were likely to be the same person. According to that code, hunting foxes and big game, civilizing savages, and facing opponents on the battlefield demanded a show of courage in the face of danger, a demonstration of fair play - give the animal or native a 'sporting chance' - and an explicit refusal to indulge in blood lust or to gloat in victory. One never, for example, took advantage of an animal placed at one's mercy by some natural impediment. How unsportsmanlike, suggests John J. Rowan, a frequent hunter in Canada, is the 'cold-blooded pursuer' who, seeing his quarry stuck in deep snow, knowing that his kill is sure, 'does not waste a bullet [but] comes up leisurely behind the totally exhausted quadruped, disregarding the pleading glance of the wild and beautiful eyes, and getting on its back, holds it down in the snow till he cuts its throat with his knife. Of all butchery this is the worst. ' 2 The mere love of slaughter, then, did not bespeak a sportsman; that feeling, as one writer put it, might be better gratified in the abattoir than in the hunting field. The true sportsman did not pursue his ambition for the 'mere purpose of killing' but for the pleasure derived from the invigorating exercise, the enjoyment of nature, the possibility of adding to a knowledge of natural history, new regions and strange people, and the test of courage and skill demanded by the task. The ritual itself, the actual display of prowess and courage, was therefore as important as the actual kill; if there were savages to quell, that would be the essential element of success. Thus, whether it was a red-coated huntsman pursuing the fox, a redcoated policeman quelling hundreds of Indians by a show of unflinching courage, or the Marquis of Lome testing his skill in a massive herd of stampeding buffalo, the method and the message were pretty much the same.

Almost as much as sport itself, the Victorians loved their sporting literature. They delighted in being told, and in telling themselves,

64 Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities just how terribly keen, and tenacious, and sporting they were. Foxhunting had produced a literature of its own; but, apart from that, there were numerous 'sporting magazines,' with such names as Field and Fores 's Sporting Notes and Sketches, and hundreds of books which, increasingly as the Victorian age unfolded, catered to the more exotic taste for 'big game' exploits. The names and deeds of William Charles Baldwin, Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, and Sir Francis Galton were as