Page:In Flanders Fields and Other Poems.djvu/137

And the New and has been written mainly for purposes of advertising. If the French made a heroic stand against the Iroquois, the sacred spot is now furnished with an hotel from which a free 'bus runs to a station upon the line of an excellent railway. Maisonneuve fought his great fight upon a place from which a vicious mayor cut the trees which once sheltered the soldier, to make way for a fountain upon which would be raised "historical" figures in concrete stone.

The history of Canada is the history of its people, not of its railways, hotels, and factories. The material exists in written or printed form in the little archives of many a family. Such a chronicle is in possession of the Eckford family which now by descent on the female side bears the honoured names of Gow, and McCrae. John Eckford had two daughters, in the words of old Jamie Young, "the most lovingest girls he ever knew." The younger, Janet Simpson, was taken to wife by David McCrae, 21st January, 1870, and on November 30th, 1872, became the mother of John. To her he wrote all these letters, glowing with filial devotion, which I am privileged to use so freely.

There is in the family a tradition of the single name for the males. It was therefore proper that the elder born should be called Thomas, more learned in medicine, more assiduous in [113]