572 Our North Land. 



invited. The confederation and consolidation of British North 

 America is a work which we may fairly expect to see fully completed, 

 considerably within the next fifteen years, and when the world's 

 history of the nineteenth century is written, with all its accounts 

 of the fall of dynasties in the Old World, and its triumphs of 

 peace and war in the New, there will be no page in all the 

 vast volume brighter or more attractive than that upon which 

 the achievements of Canadian nation-building are recorded. ' The 

 world has not yet fully realized the significance of Canada. The 

 country has rested so many years in obscurity, and been spoken 

 of only with associations of discouragement and unimportance 

 that it will be with some difficulty and 'reluctance that the 

 nations of the world will come into anything like an adequate 

 realization of Canada's position. But if such recognition is slow it is 

 none the less sure. Canada is destined to become one of the great 

 powers of the world, in a future so near that the oldest persons of 

 the next generation will live to see it accomplished and universally 

 acknowledged. 



The Union of 1867 included but a small area, and was, after all, 

 in itself not a very significant accomplishment. No wonder that its 

 consummation attracted but little attention outside of Canada. The 

 Provinces then united to form the Dominion, were all embraced 

 within the 60th and 85th meridians of west longitude, and the 42nd 

 and 50th parallel of north latitude. But, as I have said, the work 

 did not stop with the first Union but has been going forward until 

 to-day the Canadian Confederation includes a territory stretching 

 from the 60th to the 140th meridian of longitude west, and from 

 the International Boundary Line, in various latitudes from the 42nd 

 to the 49th parallels, to the Arctic Ocean, comprising almost half 

 the continent, including productive areas sufficient to sustain more 

 than fifty millions of people. 



The first great want of the Canadian Confederation was the 

 means of intercommunication between the Provinces, independent of 

 a foreign nation. To reach the North- West or British Columbia it 

 had hitherto been necessary to traverse United States railways. 

 Such is still the case in respect of British Columbia, but by the close 



