A Canadian Nation

A Canadian nationality -- not French-Canadian, nor British-Canadian, nor Irish Canadian: patriotism rejects the prefix -- is, in my opinion, what we should look forward to, that is what we ought to labour for, that is what we ought to be prepared to defend to the death. Heirs of one-seventh of the continent, inheritors of a long ancestral history -- an no part of it dearer to us than the glorious tale of this last century -- warned not by cold chronicales only but by living scenes passing before our eyes of the dangers of an unmixed democracy, we are here to vindicate our capacity by the test of a new political creation...

if we would make Canada safe and secure, riche and renowned, we must all liberalize, locally, sectionally, religiously, nationally. There is room enough in this country for one great free people; but there is not room enough, under the same flag and the same laws for two or thre angry, suspicious, obstructive nationalities. Dear, most justly dear to every land beneath the sun are the children born in her bosom and nursed upon her breast; but when the man of another country, wherever born, speaking whatever speech, holding whatever creed, seeks out a country to serve and honour and cleave to, in weal or in woe, when he heaves up the anchor of his heart from its old moorings, and lays at the feet of the mistress of his choice -- his new country --all the hopes of his ripe manhood, he establishes by such devotion a claim to consideration not second even to that of the children of the soil. He is their brother delivered by a new birth from the dark-wombed Atlantic ship that ushers him into existence in the new world; he stands by his own election among the children of the household; and narrow and unwise is that species of public spirit which, in the perverted name of patriotism, would refuse him all he asks . . . I am not about to talk politics . . . but I am so thoroughly convinced and assured that we are gliding along the currents of a new epoch, that if I break silence at all, in the presence of my fellow subjects, I cannot choose but speak of the immense issues which devolve upon us, at this moment, in this country. Though we are alike opposed to all the invidious distinctions on this soil, we are not opposed, I hope, to giving full credit to all the elements which at the present day compose our population . . .

We Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, born and bred in a land of religious contreversy, should never forget that we now live and act in a land of the fullest religious and civil liberty. All we have to do is, each for himself, to keep down dissensions which can only weaken, impoverish, and keep back the country; each for himself do all he can to increase its wealth, its strength, and its reputation, each for himself . . . to welcome ever talent to hail every invention, to cherish every gem of art, to foster every gleam of authorship, to honour every acquirement and every natyural gift, to life ourselves to the level of our destinies, to rise above all love limitations and narrow circumscriptions, to cultivate that catholicity of spirit which embraces all creeds, all classes, and all races, in order to make of our bondles province, so rich in known and unknown resources, a great new northern nation."

- Thomas D'Arcy McGee 1862