[woop] LAURENCIANA 47 
XI. I can never read books like Jacques Cartier’s log and Audu- 
bon’s Journals, and then compare their day with ours on the actual 
ground, without feeling the keenest pangs of regret for all we have 
lost. By this I don’t mean to cry for the moon, or wish for an impos- 
sible return to incompatible conditions. And I know perfectly well 
that human history is the most interesting, human development the 
most important, and human life the most valuable. But it is in our 
own civilised human interest that I most regret the wanton and shame- 
less destruction of wild life that has so often taken place, and that is 
still taking place, in Canada, as in all new countries. There are three 
stages in our attitude toward wild life, corresponding to the three 
stages in our own historical development—the pioneering, the ex- 
ploiting, and the national. Of course these stages overlap and inter- 
mingle, and all of them exist side by side to-day in different parts 
of the country. But each has a spirit of its own. The pioneering 
age is frankly at war with the wilderness. The exploiting age is heed- 
less, wasteful and wantonly destructive in its overmastering desire to 
get rich quickly at all costs. And the national age at last produces 
a leading public, wise enough to follow the foresightful few in saving 
what is left. We are just reaching the national age at a few centres 
of population, and we should now do our utmost to check the excesses 
of the exploiting and pioneering ages, without hampering their legiti- 
mate growth. We can do this by preserves and sanctuaries. Game 
preserves appeal to influential bodies of well-to-do sportsmen; and the 
preservation of all wild animals that have a commercial value appeals 
to strong business interests; so that public and private preserves have 
a double chance. But sanctuaries hardly touch the fringe of practical 
Canadian politics, as they cannot be justified to the ordinary man in 
easy terms of dollars and cents, and most people who do think them 
worth while are inclined to suppose that we can afford to leave their 
actual establishment to the next generation. Yet this is precisely 
what we cannot do, without grave risk of losing the opportunity for 
ever. 
There are two kinds of sanctuary. One is to protect certain 
animals anywhere in town and country. The other is to protect a 
certain part of wild nature for all the animals whose habitat it is. The 
Americans have already set us noble examples of both kinds, and the 
sooner we follow them on a larger scale than hitherto the better for 
us and our posterity. Let us take the great waste places that remain 
before it becomes too late, and choose those parts of them which com- 
mercial man covets least and wild life needs most. The surplus in- 
habitants of these sanctuaries will help to replenish the neighbouring 
preserves—an argument that will go home to sportsmen and those 
