Water in history

Flowing water has provided Canada with more than inspiration. During the period of European colonization, the rivers carried furs, trade goods, and explorers, heralding the influx of settlers into the wilderness.

The arrangement of streams and rivers flowing into Hudson Bay and into the Mackenzie and St. Lawrence Rivers permitted canoes to travel west and north across the length and breadth of the land that became Canada. Historian Harold Innis recognized this pattern stating, "It is no mere accident that the present Dominion coincides roughly with the fur-trading areas of northern North America." ¹ Innis differed sharply with those who suggested Canada is an illogical nation; on the contrary, he insisted that the natural water courses of the northern half of the continent provide the outlines of the nation.

The histories of the St. Lawrence and Red Rivers were indicative of the ways in which our waterways shaped the country. In Donald Creighton's vision of Canada, the St. Lawrence River was central to the political and economic development of a great nation. His enthusiasm about these waterways was expressed in The Empire of the St. Lawrence, written in 1937:

It was the one great river which led from the eastern shore into the heart of the continent... The river was not only a great actuality: it was the central truth of a religion. Men lived by it, at once consoled and inspired by its promises, its whispered suggestions, and its shouted commands; and it was a force in history, not merely because of its accomplishments, but because of its shining, ever-receding possibilities. ²

Furthermore, long before Canada became a nation, the Red River was central to life in Manitoba. Like those along the St. Lawrence, farms were laid out as long, narrow river lots, giving settlers access to the river.

Historian William Morton describes how a distinctive western society emerged on the banks of the Red River in the 19^th century. It was, he wrote, "an island of civilization in the wilderness." ³ The Red River Settlement was a uniquely dual society consisting of near equal numbers of French-speaking Catholic Métis and English-speaking Protestant settlers.

The distant government in Ottawa understood neither the make up of the population or its intimate relationship with the Red River. It inflicted on the people a land survey that ignored the river lot system, alienating people from their way of life. Violence erupted and the tragedy of the Red River Rebellion followed.

But some politicians of the time understood the fundamental significance of water to the proposed nation. Seven years before Canada became a nation, one of the most eloquent of the Fathers of Confederation, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, spoke of the link between water and people:

I see within the round of that shield the peaks of the Western Mountains and the crests of the Eastern waves – the winding Assiniboine, the five-fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, the Saguenay, the St. John, and the Basin of Minas – by all these flowing waters in all the valleys they fertilize, in all the cities they visit in their courses, I see a generation of industrious, contented, moral men, free in name and in fact, – men capable of maintaining, in peace and in war, a Constitution worthy of such a country.⁴

References:

1. Innis, Harold A. The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), p. 392.

2. Creighton, Donald. As quoted in The Writings of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing: 1900-1970, by Carl Berger, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986).

3. Morton, William. As quoted in The Writings of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing: 1900-1970, by Carl Berger, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), p. 247.

4. D'Arcy McGee, Thomas. Speech made in the Legislative Assembly, May 2nd, 1860. As quoted in Canadian Literature: the beginnings to the 20th century, ed. Catherine M. McLay (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1974), p. 181.

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