United States or Pakistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A company of voyageurs, largely French-Canadian, however, was recruited in Canada, at Britain's expense, and did good service in the rapids of the Nile. Sir John Macdonald did not, of course, proclaim Canada's neutrality in this war, any more than Hincks and MacNab had done in the Crimean War, when hired German troops garrisoned Dover and Shorncliffe. Canada simply took no part in either war.
As soon as a man donned the bronze shoulder badge with "Canada" on it he became a Canadian, and forgot his hyphen. There was no mention of the British-born, the French-Canadian, or Canadian-born. These great issues had to be left for discussion and settlement to those who stayed at home. As a matter of fact, there was only one pure bred Canadian in the "Red Watch."
"There's no Indian sign about it, old man," said Dick. "It isn't any lambasting Jan's afraid of. You watch his face now, when I lift this stick." The men all watched, and noted that Jan did not move so much as an eyelid in response to the lifting of a stick. "Well, that's queer," said old Cartier, the French-Canadian dealer, who was visiting a friend in the barracks.
In appearance they were strikingly different. Narcisse was a typical French-Canadian lumberman; he was about five feet eleven inches in height, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, broad-shouldered, powerful and good-natured.
A French-Canadian, Larant, and another half-breed also, had the furs, which they had hunted for, forcibly taken from them by legal authority, while in a third case an offender against the game laws had been actually deported to York Factory. Alarm was now general among the French half-breeds. Hitherto the English half-breeds had been loyal to the Company.
It is called by Maine woodsmen a brûlée, name borrowed from their French-Canadian neighbors, who dwell across the boundary line which separates the Dominion from the United States. The word signifies "burnt tract;" but it gives a feeble idea of the fire-smitten, blackened region on which the lads looked.
"Here, Arthur, copy the name and address off this. It's one of those French-Canadian names, hard to spell if you don't see it." He paused an instant to hear how far Mr. Bayweather had progressed, and heard him saying, "In the decade from 1850 on, there was a terrible and scandalous devastation of the mountain-land . . ." and said to himself, "Halfway through the century.
William Smith, the new chief justice, was as different from Carleton's last chief justice, Livius, as angels are from devils. Smith had been an excellent chief justice of his native New York in the old colonial days, and, like Inglis, was a very ardent Loyalist. He respected all reasonable French-Canadian peculiarities.
"The wisest man I ever knew," said Frank, dropping his cigar, "was a little French-Canadian trapper up in the Saskatchewan country. A priest asked him one day what was the best thing in life, and he answered: 'For a young man's mind to be old, and an old man's heart to be young. The priest asked him how that could be.
Presently Phil was able to recognize the familiar words of an old voyageur chantey, a paddling song of the French-Canadian rivermen: "En roulant, ma boulé, roulant; En roulant, ma bo-u-lé." With paddles swinging in unison to the rhythm came four men in a large Indian canoe, speeding with the current down the centre of Indian creek.
Word Of The Day