The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1967, Síða 90

88
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Summer 1967
statement takes in far too little ter-
ritory.
Now let me cite to you a thought-
provoking statement of Stephen Lea-
cock’s, from his book, Canada The
Foundation of its Future: “But al-
though it remained for centuries a
closed chapter (he is speaking of the
discovery of Vinland, Wineland, the
Good, by Leif Ericson), this coming of
the Norsemen to Canada is of more
than academic or historic interest. It
bears directly on our future. We want
them back again. Of all the people
who have come to settle among us,
there are none to whom the Canadian
climate and environment is as con-
genial as to the Scandinavian races.
They are in a sense, more Canadian
than ourselves. I have heard it argued
by one of the most illustrious scientists
of McGill that the peculiar tone and
rigour of our climte, or most of it,
will turn us all into Scandinavians be-
fore it has done with us.”
Canada is a rich mosaic. The dom-
inant colours in this mosaic are Bri-
tish and French. Tonight, we have
reached the last lay of the second
month of our centennial year, and
English-speaking and French-speaking
Canadians are calling names at each
other, like two spoiled brats across a
back fence, brats that each deserves
a sound spanking. Not all of them, of
course, but large numbers of them, go
to the facts of history with closed
minds. They go in search of those
subtle half-truths that can be twisted
to support their own side of the case.
They are not impartial judges. They
are advocates pleading a cause.
Any mature Canadian, no matter
what his racial origin may be, would
welcome a cultural duality in Canada;
indeed, a cultural plurality, if we
could rise to that height at our present
stage of development. But a political
duality would be our ruin as a na-
tion. Our provinces would become the
Balkan States of North America.
Both races, — the English and the
French — are at fault. It may be an
idle question, but can the degrees of
fault he apportioned? To attempt an
answer to this question, at this time,
may be an offence against good taste,
If so, I am guilty of that offence. It
seems to me that at this stage the
French-speaking Canadian is feeling
his nourishment more than the English-
speaking Canadian, that he has grown
the fatter upon a moonshine diet of
historical myths, half-truths, and, in
the parliamentary phrase, just plain
terminological inexactitudes.
To possess her immortal soul in-
violate, for another hundred years,
Canada has need of her minority races.
They may be able to hold the balance
true, to introduce a note of sanity into
the chaos of discord.
In his invocation to Iceland, Dr.
Johannesson said (the translation is
Paul Bjarnason’s):
“Remember, then, thy destiny
and dower.
Thy duty to the world each
pregnant hour:
To be a guiding light to peace
and power.”
If the Icelander owes a duty to the
world at large to be a guiding light,
and he does, as all men do, to th"
limit of their ability, the Icelandic
Canadian, in addition to this duty,
owes a more immediate duty — one
nearer home — a duty to promote the
unity of Canada.
“Know ye not that a little leaven
leaveneth the whole lump.” No minor-
ity race is better equipped than the
Icelandic Canadian race to act as the
little leaven that may leaven the