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The February meeting of the Teachers' Association in connection with McGill Normal School was signalized by an eloquent and impressive lecture on Canada by the Very Reverend Dean Carmichael.

Within our limits it is impossible to give even an adequate resumé of the lecture. A few paragraphs, illustrative of salient points, are all that can be given. These might profitably be read and considered, map in hand, by the pupils of all our schools.

In his introductory remarks the lecturer said that he was influenced in choosing his subject by two considerations-First, we much need to evoke a national spirit as Canadians. This would not be a spirit of disloyalty to Britain, which had given unbounded liberty of self-government to this Dominion; but would result in blending the finer characteristics of English, Scotch, Irish, French and German into a new and admirable national type. Secondly, he wished to appeal on this behalf to teachers, who, because they had to mould the plastic minds of youth, were more influential than politicians and the press. These were necessarily partisans, and viewed all questions through rosy or blue-tinted spectacles; but the teacher, whose glasses should be of clear and flawless crystal, ought to awaken the minds of children to consider the past heroic history, and the coming marvellous development of their beloved land. The pupils of our schools should not

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

be taught boastfulness, but they should learn that they are "citizens of no mean city," and shonld resolve with love, loyalty and determination to keep their great country a distinct force among the nations of the earth.

THE GREATNESS OF CANADA.

Canada is a great country; not a few acres of snow as the French King described it when signing it away to Britain, but containing 3,470,000 square miles-a domain thirteen times as large as the German Empire, three times as large as British India, larger than the United States, including Alaska. What, though it be said that a few hundreds of thousands of miles of this vast territory are useless for purposes of agriculture? Ffty years ago a property valued only for its firewood, was sold for a song; now it yields from beneath its limestone upwards of 400,000 barrels of salt annually. Twenty-five years ago the inestimable wealth of the Klondike was unsuspected. Beneath the soil of Canada lies inexhaustible wealth of gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, mica, phosphates and coal.

THE COAL OF CANADA.

If at her present rate of expenditure of 114,000,000 tons of coal annually there be danger of collapse of England's coal supply, while she possesses Canada, she need not suffer from cold. In the coal beds of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, of Manitoba and the Peace River country, and of Vancouver, there are areas of coal exceeding by nearly 9,000 square miles the whole surface of the Island of Great Britain. The late Spanish-American war has shown that without coal supplies, readily available, the most magnificent fleets of battle ships are powerless. Hence the feverish haste with which the great nations of Europe are seizing on all available coaling stations. To other nations belongs the past; to us the future, because of our unlimited supplies of coal.

CANADA, BRITAIN'S HIGHWAY TO THE ORIENT.

Canada is the connecting link between the East and the West. What the awakening of the Orient means to the future development of the world we do not know. What may come from the breaking up of China, from the up

rising of Japan, from the portentous increase of Russian power in north-eastern Asia, it is impossible to predict. But whatever the gravity of the issue, whatever the danger or whatever the opportunity, it is a matter of vital importance to Great Britain that she has a highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific through a land that proudly bears aloft her flag. When with a few other spectators, said the Dean, I saw the first through train to Vancouver leave the station at Montreal, I strongly realized that Canada had become an important factor in the trade and the politics of the world.

CANADA AS A WHEAT-GROWING COUNTRY.

Said Dean Carmichael, before I recently travelled through the country west of Lake Superior I loved Canada; now I glory in it, in its power, resources and promise. We know the value of the great wood-land country; but it is impossible to overestimate the riches of the vast prairie land-through which for days we travel by steamfertile, well-watered, inexhaustible. Near Brandon I drove through a one thousand acre field of wheat, where it was just possible to see the horses' heads and backs above the luxuriant grain. Yet Manitoba is but a small Province. Five hundred thousand square miles of fertile territory, drained by the Saskatchewan and the Peace River into Lakes Winnipeg and Athabasca, would support 30,000,000 of inhabitants. We only need population to become the greatest wheat-growing country of the world.

IMMIGRATION.

The great need of our immense North-West is population. To an onlooker it appears as though we had done nothing to encourage immigration. The number of immigrants entering the United States by the port of New York alone exceeds by many times all who enter Canada. There every effort is made to attract desirable additions to the population. Here our immigration officers are dingy and ill-appointed. And yet money invested in encouraging immigration is most profitably invested. In ten years the Canadian Government expended $3,000,000 on immigration; during the same time immigrants brought into the Dominion wealth estimated to amount to $22,000,000.

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