Page:Canada.pdf/8

 her proud face set, she has forced her way onward and upward to a place amid the nations of the earth—a sister not unworthy to stand by the side of her older and stronger and richer brother to the South.

What is Canada?

From the land of Evangeline and Gabriel, Nova Scotia by the sounding sea, with her hardy fishermen, her wealth of fruit, her stores of coal and of gold; through Prince Edward Island, the true New Scotland of the Western Continent, but blest with soil and climate denied to the old, and New Brunswick, with her forests and farms, we come to old Quebec, the home of the habitant, but the home, too, of the poet and of the statesman. Her cities—Montreal, nestling under her historic mountain, at the head of navigation and at the receipt of custom, the busy mart for half a continent, a competitor not to be despised by any, not even by this mighty city Quebec; called by her admirers a bit of the Middle Ages set down in the present, does not, upon the heights where fought and died Wolfe and Montcalm, sit idly contemplating her own beauty and charm, and so fail to hear at her door the insistent knock of trade or omit to answer the call of commerce. The fields of the Old Province are recovering their former fertility—and if it be said that some of her people are not sufficiently alive to material and financial progress, it may not be forgotten that it is not always those who are careful and troubled about many things, who receive the Master's approval: it was Mary who had chosen the better part—and she but sat and listened. My own Province of Ontario—Ontario, the Queen Province