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official set: yet the democratic spirit has so pervaded this circle, that it includes some who are not distinguished by any high-sounding titles; and there is really less of snobbishness about it than was conspicuous at the "White House Court" within recent years. Americans of social position and culture are made most welcome, and I cannot imagine any more delightful winter life than Christmastide at Ottawa offers.

As with the capital, so with all the large cities, only there is lacking in each that special glamour which shines from delightful Rideau Hall. There is, however, just a suggestion of that semi-Court life at each of the Provincial capitals, provided the Lieutenant-Governor is disposed to have it so. The residences of those who make any pretence to social life are all well provided with heating-plants; and there will always be found that almost indispensable accessory to æsthetic comfort, the open fireplace with its blazing logs, about which hosts and guests gather when the function is of smaller dimensions than a ball or rout. If the stranger is so fortunate as to receive an invitation from a British or French host who is interested in the history or folklore of the Dominion, it will be round the hearth that the past will be made to live itself over again. I know that while I am always glad to go to Canada at any season, it is upon my winter visits that I look back with greatest pleasure and most satisfaction.

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CHAPTER XX

SOME CANADIAN TOWNS

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HE number of really old towns in the Dominion is not very great. How could it be, when we consider the methods followed by the French in their attempt at colonisation? But if we bear in mind the measure of interest that hangs round the half-dozen or so places which are to be considered in this chapter, there is material enough to fill a dozen volumes. Of Quebec alone so much has been written and the subject has not yet been exhausted that there are books enough to fill a small bookcase. There is a period of more than a century and a half from the date of Quebec's birth, 1608, until — I am not going to say death — her marriage to Great Britain, in 1763, by the old custom of capture. The story of this "Great Mother of Canada" is alive with thrilling, dramatic incidents for the pen of historian, the verse of poet, the plot of novelist. Individual impressions of to-day seem to be but tame and uninteresting, when we have at our disposal for a study of Quebec's creation, development, and vicissitudes, such material as the Relations of Jesuit Fathers, who were pioneers both in evangelisation and in discovery. Of Francis Parkman's books, although some of his statements are criticised adversely and his conclusions disputed, it is but truth to say that they

did for Canada as much as Prescott's volumes did for Mexico. I mention only a few more writers who have gleaned from earlier ones, yet added picturesque touches of their own: William Kingsford, Sir James Macpherson Le Moine, Dr. A. G. Doughty, Sir Gilbert Parker.* Beyond this I dare not go, for a complete bibliography of Quebec alone would cover pages. Many important names are omitted, not from lack of appreciation or willingness to comment, but because of the limitations of space. The narrative of the five sieges that the old town has sustained-1629, 1690, 1759, 1760, 1775would fill several volumes; and that of probably the most famous of all, the great Battle of the Plains of Abraham, when both victorious and vanquished leaders lost their lives, is so overflowing with interest, event, tragedy, victory, discomfiture, that it has served as the subject for a whole volume unto itself. Still, is it not correct to say that never yet has the fortress of Quebec succumbed to actual capture by assault?

If Quebec no longer alone guards the gateway to Canada, it is because the developments of the last quarter of a century have opened to the visitor other means of ingress than that of the St. Lawrence River; but if that stream is "the life of Canada," as it has been aptly called, it is at Quebec the pulse still beats; and there need be little regret on the part of her citizens as they see the trans-Atlantic steamers pass on their way to or from the commercial metropolis of the Dominion, Montreal.

If the birth of Quebec was in the year 1608, the con* For titles of their books, see bibliography at end of this volume.

ception may be said to have taken place more than half a century before, when, in 1535, Jacques Cartier wintered at Stadacona. That was an event of great importance for the future of Canada. It takes us back to a date only forty-three years after Columbus' first memorable voyage. It antedates by seventy-two years the founding of Jamestown, Va. (it was nine years later than the settlement of the Spanish colony on the site of Jamestown, soon abandoned), by eighty-eight years the founding of New Amsterdam (New York City). It was before the date of St. Augustine, Fla., 1565. Quebec has the right, therefore, to call herself one of the oldest cities founded by Europeans in America, if she may not boast of being the very oldest.

Certainly there is no city in North America that is more famous historically, and in all the world there are few more picturesquely located. From the promontory where stands the Chateau Frontenac, one of the Canadian Pacific Railway's hotels, and especially from the windows of one of the towers, there is on a fair day - a view that is not surpassed easily and is rarely matched. Down the river over Isle Royale, with a hint of the Falls of Montmorency; across the St. Lawrence into the rolling country that stretches away to the Height of Land forming the International Boundary; up the river past the Plains of Abraham; northward into the Laurentian Hills; on every side there is scenery in which grandeur and pastoral simplicity are blended with historical recollections that form visual and mental pictures of unequalled brilliancy.

The bold promontory, on which the Chateau stands,

naturally divides the city into two parts, the Citadel and the Lower Town. If there is perhaps a hint at regularity in the streets of the former, those of the latter are a maze so intricate that none but the habitué can safely trust himself alone in them. But getting lost in the streets of Quebec is half the fun of a visit: the old and the new jostle each other in strange propinquity, and yet at every turn there crops up something which recalls an event of years ago.

With modern Quebec is closely associated the history of the reigning house of the British Empire, for the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father, when commanding the 7th Royal Fusiliers, lived for four years in the city.

It seems a pity that De Monts and Champlain should have discarded the pleasing Indian name, Woolastook, for the principal river of New Brunswick, and rechristened the stream St. John, just because they chanced to discover it on the anniversary of St. John, June 24th, in 1604, and that the English did not restore the original name. Just where the town of St. John stands, river and tide waters meet, and such is the strength of the latter's flow for it rises thirty-five feet in the harbour that when nearly full it turns back the stream, making even the river proper appear to flow upstream. Near this intermittent fall or rapid is a promontory on which stands the older and more important part of the City of St. John. It extends onto other heights, and St. John may truthfully be called a city built on hills. From many points charming views are had of distant heights crowned by buildings which recall old times.

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