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Flag of the Canadian Mercantile Marine. Authorized 1892.

CANADIAN FLAGS.

A SHORT HISTORY

OF THE

CANADIAN PEOPLE

BY

GEORGE BRYCE, M.A., D.D., LL.D.

Hon. Professor of Manitoba Coll., Winnipeg: A Founder of
Manitoba Univ.; Vice-Pres. Archæol. Instit. of America; Mem.
Roy. Commn. on Tech. Education; Mem. Conservation Commn.
of Canada; Pres. of Royal Society of Canada (1909); Robertson
Memorial Lecturer (1912)

NEW AND REVISED EDITION

ILLUSTRATED

LONDON

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO. LD.

1914

PRINTED BY

HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD,

LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

Replace. Hird 6-12-37 34250

PREFACE

It is no easy thing to write a competent and reliable history of any country covering four centuries of time. Jacques Cartier discovered Canada about forty years after Columbus stumbled upon the Continent of America. Further, if the period is long, Canadian history also presents peculiar difficulties in the varied, obscure, and sometimes uncertain sources of its development.

Effort after effort has been made to write stories of Canadian life, "drum and trumpet histories," accounts of its battles, invasions, startling incidents, and amusing domestic life, but these do not make up a comprehensive and satisfying history.

Going to the other extreme, numerous Canadian writers have collected vast vistas of dates and statistics, "dryas-dust" compilations of the rise and fall of ministries, dreary chronicles of Parliament, tedious party reminiscences, and sapless condensations of legal enactments.

Few can read and profit from such history. Probably in the field of English History the most successful work of history, in a useful, compact, and attractive volume, has been "Green's Short History of the English People."

While Macaulay, though beautiful in style, imagination, and invective, proves biassed and unsatisfying, Hallam too prosy and serious, though accurate and just, Froude plainly one-sided and somewhat inaccurate, Green is

simple, judicious, and filled with the spirit of his age and generation.

The author in a former edition borrowed Green's name, in his writing "A Short History of the Canadian People." While the writer knows well that he fell far short of the ideal before him, yet his work on the Canadian People, which for some time has been out of print, was well received, was recommended widely by Boards of Education, Normal Schools, Public Libraries, and Booksellers, as being fair, accurate, and as the first attempt to systematize Canadian history and to trace from the many rivulets to the great stream of Canadian life, the chivalrous French occupation, the United Empire Loyalist early settlement, the coming of the German, Dutch, and other European elements, the flow of English, Irish, and Scottish colonists, and the exciting life of the Canadian and Hudson's Bay Company fur-traders.

For some time the English publishers have been asking for another edition of the "Canadian People," but other public duties have made it hitherto impossible to bring the matter to completion by the author.

Some of the main features for which the author has been complimented, in addition to his grasp of the subject and Canadian spirit, are (1) A just story, (2) The lists of authorities, (3) The text of the British North America Act, (4) The list of all Dominion and Provincial Governors, (5) The useful table of Canadian Annals, (6) A good Index and Map of Canada.

These having been found useful are continued and enlarged in the present edition, and a number of illustrations are given for the first time.

In this edition the writer has great pleasure, while considerably curtailing and even dropping the misty and somewhat mythical features of early America of the

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