IOO TOURING QUEBEC AND THE MARITIMES

John A. Macdonald and Sir George Cartier, hearing of the movement, made a request that they might be per- mitted to send delegates to consider a greater and wider union—the Dominion of Canada. I may say that these delegates met in the city of Charlottetown, and in this very building, and you will have the privilege of seeing the table, around which the Fathers of Confederation sat, and the chairs in which they sat. You will also see the tablet on which is inscribed ‘In the hearts and minds of the Delegates who assembled in this room on September Ist, 1864, was born the Dominion of Canada. Providence being their Guide, they builded better than they knew.’ These delegates, as you doubtless know, sat here for a period of about ten days, when they adjourned their de- liberations to the city of Quebec, where in 1864 they passed some seventy resolutions, which later became our Canadian Constitution. This, I think, was one of the great- est events in our Canadian history.

“I had the privilege of visiting your Western Provinces

saw there. You certainly have a marvellous country. One thing I was impressed with was the optimism and loyalty of our western people. At every single city and town I happened to be in, they went to a great deal of trouble explaining to me the possibilities of their country. They had faith in their country, and it gave me an inspiration, ‘

‘The Garden of the Gulf.’ You will pardon me if I say this: I believe we have one of the finest little Provinces. Perhaps I may be pardoned if I say we have the finest little Province in Canada. It is little, it is true, yet it includes about one million four hundred acres of land