CANADA
differences rather than their destruction, common sense, and
wise forbearance can slowly 'blaze the trail' to happier rela-
tions. Unsatisfactory as these at times have been, they have
seldom passed beyond the degree of serious misunderstanding
and rivalry.
To the French Republic in the instant of its anguish, Mr.
Winston Churchill on 16 June 1940 offered a Solemn Act of
Union with the British people. If this Union is offered again
when Britain and Canada and their allies have re-won for
France her freedom, the century and a half of peace and co-
operation, though not always of harmony, between the
British and French peoples in the Canadian federation stands
as a hopeful and not unworthy model for Europe.
Geography: A Man usqne ad Marel
In the vast Canadian estate, as great as the whole of Europe,
stretching from a latitude almost as southern as Rome and
Madrid to the North Pole and from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Pacific, there are few geographic influences to aid the
hands of men in the ready shaping of a single nation. The
Appalachian and Acadian region occupied by the three
Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and
Prince Edward Island; the vital system of the St. Lawrence-
Great Lakes waterways uniting the heart of the continent—
Ontario, Quebec, and the American middle-west—with the
Atlantic; the steppe-like prairies of Manitoba, Saskatchewan,
and Alberta, and the great bulk of the Rocky Mountains
rising sheer from prairies on the east and the salt sea on the
west are all northern projections of similar regions in the
United States.
Three geographic factors—the Canadian rivers, the Cana-
dian Shield, and the climate—differentiate the Canadian
1 The term 'Dominion' was taken from the verse in Zechariah, chap,
is, reading: 'And his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from
the river even to the ends of the earth/ This is represented on the
Canadian coat-of-arms by the words *a man usque ad mare*.