Meanwhile in Canada


The Canadian Confederation began on the 1st of July 1867 forming the federal dominion of Canada divided into four provinces; Ontario, Quebec, New-Brunswick and Nova Scotia. At the turn of the twentieth century, around the time of writing the two poems in question, Canada was undergoing many attempts to gain national unity, more precisely between the anglophone and francophone or protestant and catholic communities.
The prime minister from 1896 to 1911 was Sir Wilfrid Laurier of the liberal party. He did much for this national harmony although never attaining it and strongly believed in a future independent Canada, assisting in the creation of two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Laurier's “national policy” did much for the now thriving economy of Canada with the protection of Canadian industries, the goal of settling the west and building a better transportation system. Within 15 years, upwards of 1 million people moved to manitoba and the newly formed western provinces bringing towns, ports, railroads etc not to mention much wealth for the country. Laurier even coined the phrase “the twentieth century belongs to Canada” with reference to its success. This expansion of course brought more conflict with native communities. Although Laurier believed in this unified country, wanting to bring together the french and english speakers of Canada, he was not sympathetic to the native american culture and even removed the right of status indians to vote. The general view of native americans by the euro-canadian population was one that either glorified the “noble savage” or one that saw them as being dangerous, uncivilized and untrustworthy, often stemming from faulty and sensationalist stories circulated by the media. Many thought that the true native americans no longer existed since they had come into contact with the west and so had lost their authenticity. Either way, the consensus was that they needed to be assimilated, for their own good as well as that of the country and so solutions to what was called the “indian problem” in both the US and Canada continued to be put in place.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Laurier>