All too often. however, our poets and orators are unduly proud of the sheer vastness of Canada. They forget that the most important thing about Canada is the Canadian nation itself. It is the people that make any country great. It is the character of human beings and their achievements thàt will really command respect. In the world of today Canada is not primarily a large area on a map, but community of 11,500,000 people living under a common government on the northern half of the North American Continent. Canada is the Canadians.
But who are the Canadians? Well at least 98 per cent. of us are trans-plated Europeans. The past 400 years have seen the greatest migration in all history. Beginning with Spain. Portugal, France, Holland and Englund, the countries of Europe sent their colonists across the seas, and today 200,000,000 descendants of these European nations inhabit the two Americas along with a few Indian survivors, a few Asiatic immigrants and some negroes brought in from Africa.
Such are the varied human in-gradients that history has poured into the huge mixing bowl of Canada's national life. Surely no mincemeat in the world could have more spice and favour than the Canadian people. No one element predominates, even the Anglo-Saxons are less than one half of the total. We are all minorities but all Canadians, entering each with his own capacities into the richness of the national amalgam. It follows from all this that there is no such thing as a French race, an It race, an Anglo-Saxon race or a Ger-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.