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Canada at the Cross
Roads. By Agnes C. Laut. Toronto: The Macmillan Company. 1921. Pp. 279.
Miss Laut asks in this
book a very pertinent question. Why is it that, in the Dominion of
Canada with its immense natural wealth, its almost boundless
opportunities for advancement and prosperity, there are barely eight and
a half-millions of people, a mere handful compared with the number the
country might, support? Miss Laut’s answer to this conundrum is that
Canada has never really pulled together, never made a concerted effort
to come into and to enjoy its heritage. Canadians have been too modest,
she says. They have always meekly accepted the statement that the United
States was the country of promise, the land of milk and honey, and so
for decade after decade the young men and women of Canada have been
drawn away to the south, heedless of the opportunities that have lain at
their very doors. The time has come, says Miss Laut, when Canada stands
at the cross-roads. One road leads to a great and rich Canada, the other
leads to a Canada which is nothing more than a hanger-on, a poor
relation of the United States. What Canadians have to do is to believe
in their own country, to believe that within its own borders lie
opportunities for careers for the most ambitious; in short, to stay at
home and build a greater Canada than has been. Too many young men and
women have left Canada to find careers elsewhere, while they might have
done equally well, perhaps better, by staying at home. Only too often
the Canadian universities are training men and women not to be leaders
of Canadian life and thought, but to be recruits for positions in the
United States. What is wanted is more confidence in Canada.
Such is Miss Laut’s
thesis, and she backs up her contentions with some very telling figures
and facts. Miss Laut knows her Canada; she writes at first hand and from
intimate knowledge; and the feeling that she has something to say that
ought to be said makes her very vigorous in the saying of it. She is not
ashamed to be a booster; she boosts with great energy, and the effect is
sufficiently striking. If we may make one criticism, and it is a kindly
one, and made in all good will to the author, it is that Miss Laut’s
somewhat staccato style is a little wearing on the reader. What may be
entirely admirable in a newspaper or magazine may be a trifle out of
place in a book.
H. Michell
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