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Title: Canada Our Home, 1883
Author: James McIntyre [
More Titles by McIntyre]
The following response to Canada our home was given at a banquet of the Caledonian Society, Ingersoll:
In responding to the sentiment Canada our home perhaps it would be appropriate to point out the prominent and distinguishing characteristics between the land of our nativity and the land of our adoption. In this Canada of ours we have no bonny blooming heath, no banks and braes covered o'er with daisies and gowans, no fragrant hedges showering down white spray in the May time, no whin and broom prodigal in their gaiety of yellow flowers, no hills nor glens where fairies gambol in pleasant and harmless sport, no grand ruins of ancient cathedrals and castles, no feathered songsters like the mavis and blackbird.
Full oft we did enraptured hark
To heavenly song of the skylark.
But Canada is a young giant in its infancy with the noblest chain of lakes in the world on its frontier, and the most magnificent river the St. Lawrence. This land also possesses the largest fertile wilderness on the globe, but it is one which will ere many years have passed away, blossom like a garden, and where naught but grass and flowers now grow in wild luxuriance. Soon the husbandman will plow and sow and reap a rich reward in yellow golden grain. Domestic cattle quiet will graze where now the Buffalos roam and in spots now covered o'er with Indian wigwams, where white men never trod cities will occupy their sites with busy trade and millions flock from eastern lands to take possession of the great Northwest. Then Winnipeg perchance may be the capital of the Dominion. In the day foretold when this indeed shall be the "Greater Britain" with Ontario's towns for workshops for this vast prairie land.
Then poets will arise and high their lays will soar,
Worthy of the muse of a Burns or a Moore,
A Shakespeare and a Milton, the great and the wise,
Will sing of the glories of our northern skies,
Of its lakes and rivers and its mountains grand,
Of its fertile plains and great prairie land,
A fit theme for song this empire gigantic,
Whose arms stretch from Pacific to Atlantic.
[The end]
James McIntyre's poem: Canada Our Home, 1883
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