From: smith@minerva.harvard.edu (Steven Smith)
Newsgroups: can.politics,soc.culture.canada
Subject: Re: History of North America Re: REpublicanisn vs. Monarchists (Was Re: Beauregard vs. Yadallee)
Date: 3 Sep 92 16:39:52 GMT
Article-I.D.: minerva.SMITH.92Sep3113952
	<SMITH.92Aug29140617@minerva.harvard.edu> <12721@grayt>
Organization: Harvard Robotics Lab, Harvard University

grayt@Software.Mitel.COM (Tom Gray) writes:

> I know of no Crown colonoies which were established in the 
> Canadian west (Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta).

Perhaps my friends in British Columbia have a point when they posit
that they are ignored by eastern Canada.

> The enormous economic investment which occurred in the Canadian
> west came from the Canadian economy. The building of the Pacific
> railway almost bankrupted and destroyed Canada.  It was a Canadian
> achievement in which the British played NO PART.
> 
> Canadian soldiers did not fight in any British colonial war.  This
> was a major point of contention in Canada. Volunteers were allowed
> to participate but there was no official Canadian participation in
> any British colonial war.
> 
> |foreign affairs exclusively until just after the turn of the century.
> 
> This is just not so. Canadians won the right to represent themsleves
> internationally at the time of Confederation. There was an
> embassy in Washington and even London. Canadians did not see 
> themselves as the arms of any empire.

These fallacious statements are corrected by Tom Box
(CZ94@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA) in his recent post.

> |Canada's early political phrases ``A British subject I will die,''
> |``Canada first within the Empire,'' and ``Daughter in my mother's
> |house, but mistress in my own'' (from Kipling), uttered in response to
> |such ideas as American annexation and Imperial federation, indicate
> |the direction she chose to follow in the last century: a
> |self-governing nation loyal to the British Empire.
> | 
> |> MacDonald, Mackenzie and Laurier who followed them were all committed
> |> to the creation of a new nation state. A nation state with ties to the
> |> UK but an independent nation state nonetheless.
> |
> |This was the essential desire of Imperial Britain: to be ``the mother
> |of free nations.''  If frankness were a Victorian quality, they might
> 
> I said an independent state with a separate national identity. You
> keep bringing up the rehetoric of the "little England" crowd of
> British politicians and expect it to apply to Canada. Give some
> exaamples of policies of Canadian governments which showed a
> desire for an imperial alliance. I cannot even conceive of
> W.L. Mackenzie or H. Mercier supporting such a concept.
> It was against the policies of both governing parties.
> Just where do you find evidence in Canadian history of any
> desire to to form a united empire?
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> You never offer any facts from Canadian history. You offer assertions
> and vague quotes from British sources. Their is little understanding
> of Canadian history in your posts.

This is also fallacious and completely misrepresents my remarks.  I
used two British sources: (i) an appeal by English intellectuals for
Canada to ``end its apprenticeship,'' and (ii) Lord Tennyson's poetic
reprise exhorting Canadians to maintain their loyalty to Britain and
the Empire.  Canadians responded to Tennyson with a (mawkish) poem of
their own thanking the Laureate for his attentions and expressing
their undying loyalty to their sovereign Queen Victoria.  All other
sources in my posts are Canadian.  It was Wilfred Laurier who invoked
Kipling's famous line ``Daughter in my mother's house, but mistress in
my own.''  It was Macdonald who declared that he would die a British
subject.  It is _my_ posts that possess little understanding of
Canadian history?  Well, perhaps they do from the perspective of your
evidently incorrect and distorted view of the subject.

Steven Smith
Xref: sparky can.politics:6274 mtl.general:235