The ghosts of 1911 are not far away
“It is her own soul that Canada risks today.” Rudyard Kipling’s cable to a Montreal newspaper was an explosive intervention in the country’s 1911 election, which turned on a familiar question: should Canadians submit to the “economic force” of the United States? The Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier had gambled that Canadians would welcome an expansive free trade agreement but Kipling urged this young nation not to yoke itself to a reckless people who “have so decimated their resources” that they needed “virgin fields” elsewhere. His words decisively reinforced Laurier’s Conservative opponents, who alleged he was colluding with Americans to annex Canada. Laurier soon went down to a crushing defeat.
