Page:EB1922 - Volume 30.djvu/607

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CANALEJAS Y MÉNDEZ
561

ship in Canada, none was more important than the Dominion Archives, the Royal Society of Canada, the Champlain Society, and two important Canadian periodicals, the University Maga- zine and the Canadian Historical Review. The Archives per- form a triple service, in collecting and safeguarding the manu- script treasures of Canada, in affording facilities for research to students, and in publishing selected documents from its col- lections. The Champlain Society, with headquarters in Toronto, devotes itself to the publication of important works bearing upon Canadian history, and the reprinting of old works in the same field. J. B. Tyrell's editions of Hearne's Journey (ion) and David Thompson's Journals (1916), Dr. Doughty's edition of Knox's Historical Journal (1914-16), Grant and Bigger's edi- tion of Lescarbot's New France (1911) and Col. Wood's Select British Documents of the Canadian War of 1812 (1920), are admirable examples of Canadian scholarship. The establish- ment of the University Magazine under the control of three of the principal Canadian universities, and the transformation of the annual Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada into a quarterly Canadian Historical Review widened the oppor- tunities for the intellectual discussion of Canadian questions by Canadian writers in a Canadian periodical.

In imaginative literature during this later period, there are found several arresting books, such as Clive Phillipps-Wolley's Songs from a Young Man's Land (1917), John McCrae's In Flanders Fields (1918), Lloyd Roberts' Poems (1919), Norah Holland's Spun Yarn and Spindrift (1918), Marjorie Pickthall's The Lamp of Poor Souls (1916), Bliss Carman's April Airs (1916), Duncan Campbell Scott's Lundy's Lane and. Other Poems (1916) and Beauty of Life (1921), Arthur S. Bourinot's Poems (1921), and Bernard F. Trotter's Canadian Twilight (1917). In fiction, the principal names were Sir Gilbert Parker, C. G. D. Roberts, Arthur Stringer, Theodore Roberts, W. A. Fraser, L. M. Montgomery, C. W. Gordon, Basil King and Norman Duncan. Among Canadian humorists Stephen Leacock (b. 1869 in England; on the staff of Upper Canada College, 1891-9; and later head of the department of political economy at McGill University) during 1911-21 had gradually established a wide- spread popularity, and his volumes of humorous essays and sketches gave him an international reputation as a writer, some- what eclipsing his professional position as an economist. In this connexion also may be mentioned the Goblin, a really excellent comic monthly published by undergraduates of Toronto Univer- sity. Two delightful books for children are Isabel Ecclestone MacKay's The Shining Ship (1918) and Cyrus MacMillan's Canadian Wonder Tales (1918). R. P. Baker has written a History of English Canadian Literature to Confederation (1920).

(L. J. B.)

French-Canadian. During 1910-21 there was a very natural desire among French-Canadian writers to do all that could be done toward keeping their compatriots true to type in race, religion, speech, thought, aspiration, letters and whatever else might encourage a distinctive form of life to persist unchanged by contact with the English-speaking world. Among the extreme Nationalists this unfortunately led to a self-conscious particularism, tending rather to weaken both ideas and expres- sion by confining them within a narrow pale than to win an assured position in the intellectual world at large. The best written, however, of all the French-Canadian papers was Le Devoir, edited by Henri Bourassa, the Nationalist chief, who had kept it easily first in literary excellence, with the able as- sistance of Omer Heroux, Georges Pelletier, Ernest Bilodeau, Madame E. P. Benoit (" Monique "), and Madame H. St. Jacques (" Fadette "). Another Ultra, the Abbe Lionel Groulx, edited L' Action Frangaise, a monthly numbering among its contributors that excellent stylist, Pere Beaude, whose nom de plume is Henri d' Aries. A wider outlook was taken by Le Canada Fran$ais, successor to La Nouvelle-France, once led by the scholarly pen of the Rev. Camille Roy. The widest and most diverse views were to be found in La Revue Moderne, edited by Madame Huguenin. La Revue Trimestrielle also took broad views, and had done good service to literature.

Three types of French-Canadian history were represented by (i) the Histoire du Canada, a big school-book written by the Christian Brothers from their own point of view, and without any reference to archives; (2) the five volumes of the Cours d' Histoire, ardently written by the Abbe Groulx in admirable French, and based on original sources, but carefully dividing the sheep of his own party from the goats of all others; and (3) the Cours d'Histoire du Canada by Thomas Chapais, whose scholarly taste, deep reverence for original research, and wide experience of public life preeminently fitted him for his distin- guished role as professor of the Universite Laval. Montreal was highly favoured in possessing that indefatigable archivist, E. Z. Massicotte. But Quebec was the headquarters of the new Provincial Archives, established in 1920 under the direction of Pierre Georges Roy, whose name had become famous for all that concerns the discovery, study, classification, and enlight- ened cataloguing of original documents, as well as for archival work at large.

Folklore was more and more studied by C. Marius Barbeau (Dominion Anthropologist), E. Z. Massicotte, C. Tremblay, Dr. Cloutier, Gustave Lanctot, and others. The Journal of American Folklore devotes one number a year to the work of French-Canadians.

Pure literature made a very real advance in the decade. The great French-Canadian drama was still to seek; but in poetry Jean Nolin's Les Cailloux showed good achievement and still greater promise, while power was the predominant note of Charles Gill's Le Cap Eternite. Two women who emerged as poets had already done well and seemed likely to do bet- ter: Marie Le Franc's Les Voix au Cozur et I'Ame is both psy- chology and art; while Blanche Lamontagne's Visions Gas- pesiennes, Par Nos Champs et Nos Rives, and La Vieille Maison showed a continual advance from merely tuneful and rather diffuse description to something like creation. Jules Fournier and Olivar Asselin, both most competent critics, had edited the Anthologie des Poetes Canadiens (1920). Fiction was well repre- sented by Damase Potvin's L'Appel de la Terre. The late Louis Hemon, a Frenchman who lived and worked with the French-Canadian habitants, had, in "hisMaria Chapdelaine (1916), written a novel which was a true work of art and racy of the soil.

In other literature Laure Conan produced the best of intro- spective sketches in L'Obscure Souffrance, which is a kind of journal imaginaire. Her terse and finely chosen style greatly helped her penetrating vision to reach the very heart of her subject in everything she wrote, as, for instance, in her Sil- houettes Canadiennes. Edouard Montpetit was both reminiscent and " previsionist " in his Au Service de la Tradition Franqaise. And Adjutor Rivard, whose Chez nos Gens gives moving glimpses of habitant life, has placed all students of French under a deep debt of gratitude in his magnificent Etudes sur les Parlers de France au Canada. (W. Wo.)


CANALEJAS Y MÉNDEZ, JOSÉ (1854-1912), Spanish politician, was born in Ferrol July 31 1854. Coming of a middle-class family with university connexions, he graduated (1871) at the university of Madrid and took his doctor's degree (1872), becoming lecturer on Literature (1873). For a time he entered his father's engineering works as general secretary and studied railway problems, but continued his literary work, publishing a history of Latin literature in two volumes. He was early attracted to politics, sympathizing first with the Republican and then with the Liberal party. He was elected deputy for Soria in 1881 and his parliamentary ability asserted itself from the first. He became under-secretary for the prime minister's department under Posada Herrera in 1883, then Minister of Justice (1888) and of Finance (1894-5). He was president of the Chamber in the Moret administration, and became prime minister and chief of the Liberal party in 1910. It was while in office that he was murdered in Madrid Nov. 12 1912. Canalejas was a remarkably consistent statesman. He believed in the possibility of a monarchy open to a thoroughgoing democratic policy both in economic and in strictly civil and political matters. A sincere Catholic, he was nevertheless a strong anti-clerical, and a champion of