l899-'00 TRANSACTIONS II 



Others like them all attest that when French were fighting Indians 

 and when they were fighting English, when English were fighting 

 French and Indians, there were among English, French and 

 Indians, heroes in plent5^ "Troops of heroes undistinguished 

 died" in the winning of Canada for civilization. We are only 

 now beginning to appreciate at their true worth the pioneers of 

 Canada. The United Empire lyoyalists who passed the early years 

 of their life in Canada encompassed with trials, cheerfully borne 

 and successfully overcome, that would have daunted all but men 

 and women cast in heroic mould ; the pioneers who entered each 

 of the 45 counties into which Ontario is divided and by painful 

 processes hewed out the farms from the forest and lived noble 

 lives in lonely log huts scantily furnished— of these it has been 

 said and truly "no better stuff stood beside Nelson on board the 

 'Victory', no better stuff climbed the heights of Alma or charged 

 the Dervishes at Khartoum "and we may add 'or plunged into the 

 pitiless storm of shot and shell on their resistless way up the. 

 precipitous sides of Elandslaagte, or swept their brave foes away 

 along the banks of the Modder River. ' ' 



The islands of our north have had their heroes, too, and the 

 seamen who won them for the Empire and for Canada are the 

 peers of those who toiled and were martyred along our southern 

 borders. 



The general name by which these islands are known is "Dis- 

 trict of Franklin." 



They are appropriately so named in honor of Sir John Frank- 

 lin, whose exploits in circum-polar regions and whose tragic fate 

 are fittingly commemorated by a monument in Westminster 

 Abbe^^ by a marble slab prej: u'ed under the direction of Eady 

 Franklin and erected in 1851 by Captain McClintoch on Beechy 

 Island ; and by Sir John Macdonald's selection of the great ex- 

 plorer's surname as the official and distinctive appellation of our 

 Arctic Archipelago. 



HOW DID IT BECOME OURS TO GUARD AND KEEP FOR THE EMPIRE ? 



It was transferred to Canada when the North West Terri- 

 torities were handed over to our care to develop and make the 

 great wheat- raising country it is destined to become, thus solving 



