|
September 8th, 1921 (pdf)
Here is an article from this
edition...
CANADA’S DEBT TO SCOTCH PIONEERS
EDINBURGH, Scotland, Sept, 8.— The Canadian prime minister, Arthur
Meighen, fulfilled a number of engagements in Edinburgh before his
departure for the Dominion. He received the freedom of the capital
city and had bestowed upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws
of Edinburgh University.
At the freedom ceremony Baillie Barrie, the acting chief magistrate,
said the Corporation of the citizens of Edinburgh were proud to
avail themselves of the opportunity of admitting to their burgess
roll one who had played so prominent a part in the affairs of the
great Dimonion of Canada. They were apt to think of Canada’s sons as
being of the old pioneer type, but while the old time qualities of
endurance and grit were still present, they must not forget the
studious and acute intelligence and the deep culture which were also
present in the vast continent, and in Mr. Meighen Canada had an
outstanding personality among the prime ministers of the Empire.
The wonderful progress and development
of Canada, the speaker said, formed one of the romances in the
history of the Empire. Scotsmen had played a great part in the
development of Canada, and it was an interesting fact to Scotsmen
that the first two prime ministers were Scots— Sir John Macdonald
and Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Billie Barrie said they were proud of
the record of Scottish people in the building up of the Dominion,
and he instanced Lord Strathcona and Lord Mount Stephen as men who
had done much to open up and develop the great agricultural and
mineral wealth of the country.
Edinburgh a Real Mecca
Mr. Meighen, in reply, said that across in Canada Edinburgh was
regarded as one of the real Meccas oi tho world, as one of the few
places that had both a brilliant present and a fascinating past. It
was difficult for him to describe how citizens in a far-off land
looked upon the historical places of these citizens. As a citizen of
Canada, even though his ancestors had never been traced east of the
Irish Sea, he knew how to appreciate tho obligation Canada owed to
Scotland. From these rugged hills Canada had drawn unnumbered
thousands of the most rugged of her men, and from Scotland’s towns
and countryside they had gathered an equal stream of talented and
noble women.
They would still, of course, have had a Canada, and a fine Canada,
if they had never had immigration, but it would not have been a
Canada such as they had today; it would not have teen so strong; it
would not have been so British. As a citizen of the Empire, too, he
was glad that there was a Scotland. Under every sky Scotsmen had
played their part, giving the world an illustration of how to
combine devotion to peace with dauntlessncss in war.
Honor to His Country
To realize at last his long-deferred hope of seeing Edinburgh. Mr.
Meighen said, was a peculiar pleasure in itself, but to be admitted
at the same time as a freeman in such circumstances of cordiality
and ancient dignity was a distinction so great that even pleasure
was submerged in gratitude and pride. He thanked them with deep
sincerity for the kindness they hnd shown to him and the honor they
had done to his country.
At the subsequent laureation ceremony which took place at the
university, the vice-chancellor, Sir Alfred Ewing, presided over the
proceedings, tn presenting Mr. Meighen for the honorary degree of
LL.D., Professor MacKintosh said that town and gown joined hands
that day in doing the honors of the Scottish capital to n
distinguished visitor from Overseas and Canada’s able representative
at the imperial conference. While he represented the oldest of the
dominions, Mr. Meighen was the youngest of the prime ministers of
the Empire.
The principal, having performed the capping ceremony, said the links
between the mother country and the dominions were bonds of sentiment
and affection, bonds which they believed could never be broken,
possessing a far greater potency than could be possessed by anything
that could be formulated, and possessing only infinitely greater
promise for the future.
Canada’s Debt to Pioneers
In his reply Mr. Meighen said that more perhaps than any other race
the Scottish men and women of early days in Canada set their hearts
on education, and it was the simple truth to say that whatever of
moral and intellectual virility Canada enjoyed, she owed to severe
self-discipline and the passion for education of her pioneers. The
early growth of the Canadian universities had its explanation in
that fact.
Even before Canada received her present political institutions,
there were established several universities modeled very much after
those in the mother country. The one he called his own owed its
discipline to the energy and devotion to learning of Scotsman.
Compared with Edinburgh University, its tradition was short, but
when one remembered that the British flag had flown over Canada for
only 16O years, a university with a charter a century old was no
longer juvenile. It had grown to extraordinary dimensions and was,
if measured by the number of students within its pale, the largest
in the world.
He hoped the glamour of the practical would never be allowed to
obscure the lofty but fundamental purpose of every seat of learning,
the cultivation of the understanding and the purifying ot taste.
Only in that way could they cause the light to 1 slune, only in that
way could they diffuse those better things that interest,
invigorate, inspire, sustain, comfort in adversity, and temper in
triumph; only in that way could they contribute to the production of
those finer fruits of literature and art by which people were so
wont to judge the human standard of a nation, and which survived
without concern of time long after the nation itself had passed
away. |
