Up to the north, extending from the Great Lakes and the Forty-ninth parallel to the arctic seas is a country much like the United States, yet different. It is an old country but also young and new. More than three hundred years ago it was settled by the French, and today there are are over three million descendants of these early settlers, mostly in Quebec. They still speak French as their mother tongue and preserve in rural Quebec the ways of France of olden times.
Most Canadians, however, are of English-speaking origin, descendants of people who came to Canada from the British Isles during the last two hundred years. They made their first homes in the east, but their descendants spread westward through prairie and mountain to the far Pacific. They have cleared the forests, dug mines, built cities, highways, and railroad, and have brought civilization to the most remote places. Canadians live as do people of the United States, some in the cabin of the pioneer, others in the comfortable town and country houses of older and more prosperous communities.
Canada is a free, democratic country, united under the British Crown with the other nations of the British Empire for the preservation of just such liberty as Americans also know and defend. This common love of liberty should make us friends.
This book is mainly about British Columbia, the most westerly Canadian province. We who live here think it a beatiful country. You can easily reach us by motor car, ship, and train. You will be welcome anywhere in Canada.
—H.B. King
Chief Inspector of Schools
British Columbia
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