Canada Day

“Here is a people of two distinct races, speaking different languages, with religions and social and municipal and educational institutions totally different; with sectional hostilities of such character as to render government for many years well-nigh impossible; with a constitution so unjust in the view of one section as to justify any resort to enforce a remedy. And yet, sir, here we sit, patiently and temperately discussing how these great evils and hostilities may justly and amicably be swept away forever. (Hear, Hear). We are endeavoring to adjust harmoniously greater difficulties than have plunged other countries into all the horrors of civil war. We are striving to do peacefully and satisfactorily what Holland and Belgium, after years of strife, were unable to accomplish. We are seeking by calm discussion to settle questions that Austria and Hungary, that Denmark and Germany, that Russia and Poland, could only crush by the iron heel of armed force. we are seeking to do without foreign intervention that which deluged in blood the sunny plains of Italy. We are striving to settle forever issues hardly less momentous than those that have rent the neighboring republic and are now exposing to all the horror of civil war. (Hear Hear). Have we not then, Mr. Speaker, great cause of thankfulness that we have found a better way for the solution of our troubles than that which entailed on other countries such deplorable results? And should not every one of endeavor o rise to the magnitude of the occasion and earnestly seek to deal with this question to the end in the same candid and conciliatory spirit, in which, so far, it has been discussed? (Loud cries of hear hear).”

-George Brown, Legislative Assembly, February 8, 1865