‘Accident’ is not the proper word wherewith to describe the acquisition of the largest Dominion of the British Crown: but haphazard indeed was the manner in which Canada came to be the largest and most important of its great Company of Nations overseas. Enemies of modern Israel always represented Britain as an imperialist power, with a government ever plotting and planning to acquire territories. The British Government was supposed to he continually engaged in sending out bands of rapacious adventurers to seize other nations’ properties.

This picture is not merely a caricature, but a complete falsehood, clearly dictated by existing envy and hatred. When Britain’s colonies were being founded, Germany and Italy were congeries of little states with no national unity. Russia was struggling to achieve the status of a civilized power. Spain had long ceased to be formidable. France was the only rival to Britain.

By contrast, the British Empire grew and developed in a manner, humanly speaking, most accidental and curiously arranged. Indeed, if it had not been a part of a great Providential plan it must have failed. Canada became a British possession by what almost appears as an afterthought. When ceded by France it was not appreciated by Britain or her government. The successful expansion to the Pacific was achieved by the untiring efforts of loyal Canadians themselves.

The Canadian problem, as it appeared in the 18th century - and more especially in the Seven Years War of 1756 - arose on account of the Thirteen Colonies, the origin of the present U.S.A. It used to be said that Newfoundland was the oldest British colony, as it had been claimed for Elizabeth I. in 1583: but it was a long time before British settlers went there.

From 1607 (the founding of James Town) to 1776, the Thirteen Colonies grew until there were some millions of English-descended settlers along the eastern seaboard of North America. Much fewer were the French Canadians - perhaps not more than 100,000. But what they lacked in numbers, they made up in skilled, energetic leadership. Briefly, the French strategy was to make a line of forts and trading posts behind the American colonies and to link their own settlements near the Great Lakes, down the valley of the Mississippi to New Orleans. If this could be made good, then the American colonies could not extend westward beyond the Alleghany Mountains.

It was a sound plan. It is astonishing how the British Government did not grasp its importance. Time and again the French could have been stopped by the colonists. Thus in 1629 Quebec was captured, but supinely given hack in 1632. Even more important, the great French fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton was captured by the American colonists in 1715, only to be restored to France. It had perforce to be captured again in 1758.

Even when the British defeated the French at Quebec in 1759, the French colony’s fate lay in the balance. When it was retained by Britain at the first peace of Paris in 1763 there was much grumbling in Britain because this barren territory of Canada had been preferred to the rich sugar producing island of Guadeloupe. It is probable that the Government was persuaded to retain Canada, because it was afraid of an outburst of popular indignation if it renounced the land for which Wolfe had given his life.

With France out of North America, it was time for the American colonists to plan for independence. When they achieved it, there were thousands of loyalists, the ‘United Empire Loyalists’, who refused to stay in the new Republic. At great hardship to themselves they trekked to Canada. Some went to Nova Scotia. Others went to Quebec among the French Canadians. Again, others toiled through forests and along rivers to western Canada, henceforth to be known as Ontario. This was the beginning of the British element in Canada which was to become the large majority and to extend Canadian boundaries to the Pacific.

Canada was not to experience much more of war on her own territory. Apart from the British-American War of 1812 there were only a few revolts of small disaffected elements. In 1840-41 Upper and Lower Canada were united. In 1867, the Canadian Provinces were to form a federal union as the Dominion of Canada. The word ‘Dominion’ was adopted from the verse in Psalm 72:8: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth”.

The great new country, once described, incredible as it may sound, by the Duke of Wellington, as ‘just a frontier’ has its frontier of 3,000 miles with the United States. No forts, no armed guards on those 3,000 miles; the borders of two great democracies and both mighty members of the Commonwealth of Nations predicted more than 3,000 years before by the patriarch Jacob-Israel (Genesis 35:11).