menace of French aggression from the north it relieved them of a
sense of dependence on the mother country and so made possible
the birth of a new nation in the United States. At the same time,
in the northern half of the continent, it made possible that
other experiment in democracy, in the union of diverse races, in
international neighborliness, and in the reconciliation of empire
with liberty, which Canada presents to the whole world, and
especially to her elder sister in freedom.

In 1763 the territories which later were to make up the Dominion
of Canada were divided roughly into three parts. These parts had
little or nothing in common. They shared together neither
traditions of suffering or glory nor ties of blood or trade.
Acadia, or Nova Scotia, by the Atlantic, was an old French
colony, now British for over a generation. Canada, or Quebec, on
the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, with seventy thousand
French habitants and a few hundred English camp followers, had
just passed under the British flag. West and north lay the
vaguely outlined domains of the Hudson's Bay Company, where the
red man and the buffalo still reigned supreme and almost
unchallenged.

The old colony of Acadia, save only the island outliers, Cape
Breton and Prince Edward Island, now ceded by the Peace of Paris,
had been in British hands since 1713. It was not, however, until
1749 that any concerted effort had been made at a settlement of
this region. The menace from the mighty fortress which the French
were rebuilding at that time at Louisbourg, in Cape Breton, and
the hostility of the restless Acadians or old French settlers on
the mainland, had compelled action and the British Government