Source: A First Book of Canadian History
By W. Stewart Wallace
Copyright, Canada, 1928
Reproduced for educational purposes by: NAUresistance.org
The Dominion elections of 1911, in which Sir Wilfred Laurier and his government went down to defeat at the polls, turned on the relations between Canada and the United States. Laurier had always striven to develop Canada’s trade with other countries. Soon after coming into power he had, as we have seen, tried to increase the trade between Canada and the Mother Country by giving British goods a preference in the Canadian market by means of lower customs duties. Now he endeavoured to encourage trade between Canada and the United States, by means of an agreement for “reciprocity”, or lower customs duties on both sides. He found the American government willing to enter into such an agreement; and in 1911 he appealed to the Canadian people to support him in putting the agreement into effect. To his surprise he was decisively defeated. The “Reciprocity Treaty” was killed.
To understand this episode it is necessary to know somehting about the history of Canad’s relations with the United States. The Great Republic is the only near neighbour Canada has; consequently the relations between the two countries have been exceptionally long and close.
At first the people of the United States tried to conquer Canada. Both in 1775 and in 1812 American armies invaded Canadian soil. and sought to detach Canada from the British Empire. But both attempts failed; and since 1815 the countries have been at peace.
After the rebellion of 1837 American filibusters, in conjunction with Canadian rebels, created a number of disturbances along the border; and in 1866 some Irish-American Fenians invaded the Niagara Peninsula. But the Ameican government had no share in these hostilities. For over a hundred years Canada and the United States have enjoyed an uninterrupted period of friendly relations. In 1817, indeed, an agreement (know as the Rush-Bagot Agreement) was reached between them, whereby warships were virtually abolished on the Great Lakes and fortification of the international boundry line was forbidden.
This does not mean, however, that during the past hundred years there has been no friction. On several occasions disputes have arisen with regard to the boundry line that have caused bad feelings on both sides, and have nearly led to war. The commissioners who drew ip the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 had very poor maps of North America to guide them; and in defining the boundry they used language that was ambiguous. It was difficult to decide where they intended the boundry to run between Maine on the one hand and New Brunswick and Quebec on the other. Later a serious dispute arose as to the dividing line between British Columbia and the Oregon country; and feeling rose so high in the United States that a presidential campaign was faught on the cry, “Fifty-four forty or fight”. Finally , at the end of the nineteenth century, controversy arose with regard to the boundry between Alaska and British Columbia. But most of these disputes were settled by arbitration, and all of them were settled without recourse to fighting. Canada unfortunately, did not in any case get all to which she thought she was entitled. The United States got a huge wedge of territory which jutted in between Quebec and New Brunswick; it got the rich lands of the lower Columbia valley to the south of British Columbia; and it got a boundry line which cut off the northern part of British Columbia from the sea. But perhaps Canada obtained all that could be expected under the circumstances.
Other disputes have been connected witht the fisheries. The Americans have always had, by treaty, certain rights in regard to fishing in British Waters in North America, and in rregard to frequenting British coasts for the purpose of drying their fish, but it has at times been difficult to prevent them from exceeding these rights. In 1870 it actually became necessary for the British Admiralty to dispach a small fleet of cruisers to protect the Canadian fisheries from American fishermen. The result was that the fisheries dispute was referred to arbitration; and American fishermen were given the priviliges they desired, on condition that Canada received adequate compensation from the American government. Other difficulitites have arisin from time to time between the two countries, in regard both to the fisheries and to other matters; but in each case a peaceful solution has been reached through negotiation or arbitration. In 1910 the two countries agreed to setup an internation joint commission to which all questions in the dispute between them might be referred; and the result has been in recent years the growth of a spirit of co-operation between Canada and the United States which has no parallel in any other part of the world. War between the two countries is now unthinkable; and there runs between them a boundry line of three thousand miles, undefended on either side.
There have been those who have prophesied that the “Ultimate Destiny” of Canada was Union with the United States. In 1849, a number of prominent Canadians, angred by the attitude of the British government toward Canada, actually signed a manifesto advocating the annexation of Canada to the Great Republic. But this was a mere outburst of temper. Years afterward, one of those who had signed the document confessed that “there was not a man who signed that manifesto who had any more serious idea of seeking annexation with the United States than a petulant child who strikes his nurse has of deliberately murdering her”. At a later period, Golwin Smith, a distinguished Oxford professor who had come to live in Toronto, advanced the view that Canada was destined to become part of the United States, and tried to encourage the idea of the potential Union of the two countries. But he obtained little support for his views among Canadians; and indeed his views were so unpopular that the usefulness of his career in Canada was partly destroyed. No Considerable section of the Canadian people has ever seriously entertained the idea of annexation to the United States.
The idea of commercial Union, or free trade, between the two countries has, however, obtained wider support. The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854-66, which made possible the free exchange, between Canada and the United States, of natural substances and raw materials, was such a boon that politicians of both parties sought to have it renewed. Repeatedly advances were made to Washington, only to be rejected. Since 1866 the United States had erected against Canadian goods a high tarrif barrier, which excluded from the American market everything which the Americans could do without. When therefore, Sir Wilfrid Laurier succeeded in 1911 in arranging for the reciprocity in trade between the two countries, he felt that he had achieved a great success– a success denied to those who had pre-ceded him.
But since the death of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854-66, many things had taken place. The British North American Provinces had become a federation. Canada had adopted a policy of protective tariffs. Three transcontinental rail-ways had been built, carrying trade east and west, rather than north and south. Canada was no longer so urgently in need of American markets. On the other hand, there was the possibility that reciprocity in trade would lead to Commercial Union, and that Commercial Union would lead to Political Union. The president of the United States had described Canada as being “at the parting of the ways”, and a prominent Democratic politician in the United States confessed that he was in favour of reciprocity because he hoped “to see the day when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British North American possessions, clear to the North Pole”. These utterances had perhaps more to do with deciding the verdict of the Canadian people than anything else; and when the election returns were counted, it was found that Laurier and Reciprocity had been defeated!
The steadfast opposition of Canada to Union with the United States does not proceed from any dislike of, or hostility to, the American people. The opposition pro-ceeds from that passionate loyalty to the British Empire which has been an outstanding feature of Canadian life at every crisis of the national history since the United Empire Loyalists hewed their homes out of the Canadian forest, and to a belief that the North American continent is large enough to provide room for two experiments in democracy, each along its own lines.
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