Canada - A Political And Social History (Paperback)

Text extracted from opening pages of book: Canada A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY Edgar Mclnnis PRESIDENT CANADIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Revised and Enlarged RINEHART & COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK TORONTO Copyright 1947, 1959, by Edgar Mclnnis All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 59-5551 To CHARLES HERBERT BEST NOTE TO THE REVISED EDITION THE TEN YEARS that have passed since this book was first published have brought striking and significant developments that are dealt with in a new chapter covering the postwar decade. I have taken advantage of this occasion to revise certain passages in the earlier text and to incorporate in the bibliography selected additions from the works published during this recent period. I should like to express my thanks in general to those readers whose suggestions with regard to both facts and interpretation have been so helpful to the work of revision, and in particular to Professors W. J. Eccles of the University of Alberta, John S. Galbraith of the University of California, and Alice R. Stewart of the University of Maine. All the maps, with the exception of Champlain's, have been redrawn by Mr. Theodore R. Miller. EDGAR MCINNIS Toronto October, 1958 VI FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION THE HISTORY OF Canada is a study in political survival. The task of creating a distinctive society has been achieved in the face of numerous and conflicting stresses, both internal and external. Interacting factors of economics and politics and geography, of traditions and aspirations, of national unity and sectional diversity, form the complex pattern thathas shaped the present Dominion. Throughout the whole story runs the constant effort to reconcile the divergent strains inherent in Canada's position and structure and to harmonize the varied and often clashing forces within a united and independent community. This process has given a unique character to the Canadian achieve ment. Its essential drama does not lie in armed struggles in which the nation's destiny is at stake, or in political conflicts in which irreconcil able and contending forces press their quarrel to a decisive issue. It lies rather in the slow and tenacious advance from one step to another along the road to nationhood, the patient evolution of successive com promises in politics and government, the determined conquest of the physical obstacles to national economic development. In their very nature, few of Canada's crucial problems could be solved by violent methods or intransigent decisions. Patience and compromise were virtues born of necessity, for the alternative would not be the triumph of one or other contending group but disruption or extinction or both. The recurrent nature of Canada's basic problems emphasizes both the urgent need for moderation and the striking degree to which this quality has been applied in Canadian affairs. Time and again, Canada has faced the gravest kind of dilemma in her relations with the two great English-speaking nations with whom her destiny is so inextrica bly bound up. Time and again, economic difficulties or racial antag onisms have threatened her internal structure with deadlock or collapse. Yet on each occasion Canadians have turned from extreme courses to seek a middle ground on which cooperation was possible, and outside ofwhich lay disaster. If the difficulties have never been completely removed, they have never become completely irreconcilable. It is this vii viii FOREWORD sound sense of the possible that has enabled Canada to surmount each successive crisis; and each one has uniformly been followed by a new period of progress in Canadian independence and Canadian unity, and by a fresh growth in economic strength and political stature. This book is an attempt to present the narrative of Canada's evolu tion in terms that will illustrate its basic determinants. A large part of its pr