32 RURAL LIFE IN CANADA 



of Ontario in 1871 was 1,306,405. It is now 1,194,785. 

 There has been a loss in forty years of 111,620. Her 

 urban population was then 313,446. It is now 

 1,328,489. There has been a gain of 1,015,043. In all 

 eastern Canada there was in 1871 a rural population of 

 2,898,486. There is now 2,864,713, a loss in 40 years 

 of 23,773. There was then in all eastern Canada an 

 urban population of 680,296. There is now 2,599,228. 

 There has been an urban growth in forty years of 

 1,918,932. 



In Quebec the problem assumes a special form. All of 

 the forces at work elsewhere are at work there also, with 

 an added one racial dispossession. Originally all 

 of that great triangle of territory between the 

 United States border and the St. Lawrence River as 

 far down as Quebec was, save for a fringe of counties 

 along the St. Lawrence and of parishes along the 

 Eichelieu, settled by English-speaking people. To-day, 

 through the action of a movement displacing and replac- 

 ing one people by another, this great region, containing 

 fifteen counties one of the finest in all Canada is 

 overwhelmingly French-speaking. 



This is not the first time in history that civilization 

 has been confronted with a problem arising out of the 

 displacement of one people by another. In ancient 

 Britain it arose at the close of the first half of the fifth 

 century. For a century and a half the problem pressed. 

 Then it passed. It was not solved. It ceased. A race 

 was extinguished. When Hengist landed on Thanet 

 in 449 Roman culture stretched across Britain and 

 reached the farthest shores of Ireland. It was the vigor- 

 ous civilization which later made Ireland the chosen 

 home of letters and arts. When Llywarch sang the 



