PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
The Canadianization of Western Canada 
Canadian national life may be said to have begun with the Con- 
federation of 1867. Before that time our country, with its disjuncta 
membra, gave occasion, in its six divided provinces and vast unorgan- 
ized territory, for a Brito-Canadian writer—who has never done us 
justice—to call it: “A mere fringe along the north of the American 
Republic.” 
But the fiat went forth: Let the dry bones live; and bone was 
fitted to its bone; and muscle joined with muscle to make the union 
strong; and the winds of kindly Heaven blew upon it, and there stood 
on the first ‘ Dominion Day” a great army of stalwart northern men, 
ready for exploits, waiting to subdue the wilderness and make the 
desert a beautiful garden. 
Our poets are the singing birds of the Confederation Era of “ Union 
and Progress,” and they sang of the rise of the new nation. 
Because it was British born, one said: 
“This Canada shall be 
“The worthy heir of British power and British liberty.”’ 
(Machar). 
and again the sweet poetess sang: 
“We are put for the right to keep 
Unbroken still the cherished filial tie 
That binds us to the distant sea-girt isle.” 
(Machar). 
and because we are free-born Britons came the boast of another: 
“Come of right good stock to start with, 
Best of the world’s blood in each vein; 
Lords of ourselves and slave to no one, 
For us or from us, you'll find we’re MEN.” 
(Robert Reid). 
Moreover the bards did not forget that we are a vast Composite, 
to be more firmly knit together: 
