George-Etienne Cartier

See also: Cartier

honourable the to sir George-Etienne Cartier , C.P. (September 6th 1814 - May 20th 1873) is a statesman Canadian-French and a Père of the confederation. The English orthography of its first name, George, instead of Georges, the usual orthography in French, is explained by the fact why it was named in the honor of George III of the United Kingdom.

It was born with St-Antoine, on September 6th, 1814, of Jacques Cartier and Marguerite Paradis. His/her grandfather had represented the Comté of Verchères in the old room of assembly, and had acquired in the trade of grains a considerable fortune, but his/her father devoured this fortune in little time in the merry company which remained then on the Chambly river. Nothing in particular announces the childhood of Sir George, if, it is not that there were not ten miles with the round of sharper and noisier child. Nobody liked any more to laugh and to shout and did not have strong any more voice; it is necessary to acknowledge that under this report/ratio it did not change. Having quickly learned what one could learn at the small school from St-Antoine, one put it at the Séminaire of St-Sulpice where it started to express some of qualities which were to ensure a future to him if shining. It did not have to make the choice of a career: he had been born lawyer; everyone said it and it knew it well itself, it had the bump of the strongly developed baffle.

He studied under one of the most eloquent lawyers of the time, Mr. Edouard Rodier; the Cléricature was not for him one time of recreations and of recreations, it immediately began this activity and working life which it continued until, last moment. One was then at the worst days of the national history, at that time unhappy where insolences of a foolish oligarchy pushed the people with the revolt. Mr. Cartier took seat under the flag which joined together, in the same patriotic feeling, all educated youth. Its character, its impetuosity and its need for emotions and activity naturally threw it in the camp of the patriots.

Since 1834, one sees it appearing in the elections and supporting the candidature of Papineau and Robert Nelson. It composed against the candidates bureaucrats, Walker and Donatien, a song which the patriots in the evening sang while returning from the public assemblies. In 1837, it was one of the burning members and most enthusiastic of the Fils of Freedom. It was called " Small George " and his songs were sung. The Wire of Freedom never met and never paraded in the streets of Montreal without singing: Above all, I am Canadian .

When the mandates of arrest were emitted, it left the city and moved as regards St-Antoine. It was in St-Denis, the twenty-four November 1837, under the command of Wolfred Nelson. It is him whom Nelson charged, during the combat, of going to St-Antoine to seek helps and ammunition. He appears to have fulfilled with zeal the mission which was entrusted to him, and nothing justifies the charges of which he was victim on this subject. Moreover, Mr. Cartier forever which been able to be loose; nothing was less in its nature.

After the Battle of St-Charles, Mr. Cartier united with Nelson, Brown and Marchessault, to try to repair, this disaster, by exciting the patriots to try one second time the fate of the St-Denis weapons. But these good people realizing that it was difficult to make the war with forks and rakes against well armed soldiers, was turned over from there on their premises to the approach of the English troops.

Mr. Cartier left then for the border in company of Brown, Nelson and Marchessault; returned to a certain place, they separated, and the noise ran that Mr. Cartier was death of cold or of hunger in the forest. His/her parents and friends cried his fate and the Canadian of Quebec, written by Mr. Etienne Parent, said by recording its death: " It was an young man endowed at the most point with qualities with heart EFF with the spirit and in front of which brilliant a carrière." opened;

But Mr. Cartier, who was not man to let itself die of hunger or cold in wood, reconsidered his steps, while it was said dead, and went to take refuge with his cousin Henri Cartier in a farmer of Verchères where it spent the winter. A man who appears to be well with the fact from what occurred in 1837 and 1838, published, in the Courrier of St-Hyacinthe, of the interesting details on this episode of the life of Mr. Cartier. Here what he says:

With the dispersion of the patriots, after the battle of Saint-Charles, Sir George with her cousin Henri Cartier, in his alive doctor with Yau-dreuil, took refuge with the " Beauce" from Verchères, to one mile and three quarters of the village of Saint-Anthony, in a rich person farmer, Antoine Larose, and spent all the winter there. Siugulière coincidence, curious bringing together, his future Fabre father-in-law was hidden very close, in the priest of Back-plate. It is George himself which wrote and made publierJ' article where one said it dead in wood. Those which have it well-known must recognize their man with this feature. Having received the newspaper which contained its article, and, after having read it, it passed it to his cousin while saying to him: Now, my dear Henri, we will be able to sleep quiet " (textual).

However, it had counted without the love. Antoine Larose had a maidservant who received the assiduous visits of a rider. Or our in love had been unaware of the presence of the proscribed young people, in the house of Antoine Larose, all the winter; or its beautiful had bound the language by the empire to him which she exerted on him one could not say to which time our rider discovered the presence of two young people at Antoine Larose. One evening, everyone of the house being in the room with him, the rider had seen, under the stove, in the close room, two pairs of legs. This evening, its beautiful was obliged to say all to him while enjoignant the secrecy to him. In spring our in love became jealous like Turkish. One evening, it made a scene with its amante. He showed it to prefer the two young Sirs to him, declared to him that non-seulement he was going to reveal their retirement, but even as he was going to denounce Antoine Larose with the authorities.

After her departure, the young girl hastened to inform her Master and the two Misters Cartier. One solved décamper immediately. It passed without accident to the United States, were fixed at Plattsburgh and are reflected in pension at Délies Gregory or Micrometer caliper and which had their residence at the bottom of the Cumberland bay, from where the sight on the Lac Champlain is splendid. Later, like the greatest number of their friends, the greatest number of important refugees, among which Ludger Duvernay appeared, resided at Burlington, they left Plattsburg and went to reside at Burlington, from where they returned to Canada.

The authorities left them quiet, but the arrests having started again, when the emigrated Canadians led by Robert Nelson crossed the border, a few months after, Mr. Cartier found still average to detect the police force. This time, to be more in safety, it hid with his friend, Mr. Hubert, in a house whose owner, Mr. Moffatt, were one of the principal bureaucrats of time. They remained two months in this peaceful hiding-place where they lived merrily and drank more once, in company of some friends, with the health of Mr. Moffatt and bureaucrats.

Mr. magistrate of Leclerc police force having learned where they were, made them say that they could leave without fear. They trusted its word, and the citizens of Montreal, who believed them parties for the United States, transfer them to reappear with surprise; they were even more surprised when they learned that Mr. Cartier and Mr. Hubert had spent two months under the protective roof of a bureaucrat. One had fun much of that in Montreal during several days. Mr. Cartier delivered himself then entire to the exercise of his occupation of lawyer and conquered in little time one of the first places in the Barreau of Montreal.

The litigants were filled with wonder at the care, energy and the devotion with which it defended their interests; the glares of its strong and strident voice, its master key-of noisy weapons with the judges and lawyers, its set out again prompt and hard charmed them. Spirit practical, clearly and lucid, it was always found in the labyrinth of the Legal procedure and was pointed out by the facility with which it cleared up these arid points of law which fout the despair of young lawyers.

One admired its untameable tenacity and its fruitfulness of resources and argumentation which made the terror of the judges and lawyers. Its pleadings faggots of quotations and authorities were true cobwebs, Picuve S with the innumerable antennas; its adversaries did not know how to leave there. Its frames of mind and character, its reputation and its ambition naturally intended it for the public life. Since 1841, in the first elections which took place under the Acte of Union, Misters Lafontaine and Baldwin wanted to make there enter; in 1844 they made the same attempt; but all was useless.

Mr. Cartier showing in that the judgment and the firmness which were to characterize it in all the phases of its life, did not want to throw himself in the chances and the vicissitudes of the policy, before being himself made by the profession an independent position. But there did not remain indifferent to the success of the political philosopher's stone which Misters Baldwin and Lafontaine continued then, while working to put the new mode in operation in a way favorable to the rights of the two provinces by the establishment of the responsible Système.

It was one of the first to accept the program of these two famous political leaders and was apart from the room one of most useful and powerful champions of their policy. Lastly, in 1848, the nomination of Mr. James Leslie at the legislative council having made necessary an election for the county of Verchères, Mr. Cartier arised and was elected by a great majority on Mr. Marion. It arrived in safe deposit, aguerri, with funds considerable of legal and political knowledge, a great experiment and a character without spot.

He did not hasten to begin; its beginnings were modest; it is only at its third session, in 1851, qu ' it definitively took a considerable share in the debates. But its first speeches immediately placed it at the first rank among the members of the liberal party, and consequently one could expect that it would have, one day, the first place. It showed while arriving powerful lawyer of the railroads, the channels, all the companies which caused to increase the trade of the country. The science of the political economy, practical knowledge missed at our public men; he wanted to fill this fatal vacuum in Low-Canada, el preferring the public interest with his personal tastes, the useful one for pleasant, he delivered himself to eludes questions which the majority of the men flee.

Misters Baldwin and Lafontaine being withdrawn of the policy in 1851, were replaced by the ministry Hincks - Morin continued to him to control the country with the support of the liberal party. By twice, Mr. Cartier refused to enter this ministry to which it gave nevertheless an effective contest. It was time when the political parties underwent in the two provinces of the considerable modifications. The spirit of division was put in the liberal party of High-Canada, and made him lose the capacity by forcing Mr. Hincks to withdraw itself, and the liberals became the party of national fanaticism, of religious intolerance.

Mr. Morin addressed to Mr. McNab, the chief of preserved 'teurs, to form a ministry of coalition, and the conservative party, of fanatic who it was, became right and moderate as the liberal party was it under Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Morin judged soon by the way, itself, to withdraw itself from the policy to find on the bench a more peaceful position, a manner of making the good in conformity with penny character. The elections of 1854 had just taken place, and the radical party, rested by Mr. Papineau on his return of the exile, had gained announced victories. Mr. Morin had been, with the opening of the Parliament, opposite a phalange of burning, impetuous and pitiless young people geus, decided with all to saber, with all to reverse.

Little made for these impassioned fights, he believed that its time was finished, that the conservative party had need for a firmer hand and more young person to direct it. Mr. Cartier thought, him, that its hour had arrived, one would have said that it had finally found the adversaries until it waited and which it was intended to fight. He entered the ministry McNab - Taché and became in fact the chief of Low-Canada, the champion of the Parti liberal-conservative.

The two parties unrolled their flag and immediately drew their tendencies and their program. The liberal party, which had already alienated the clergy and the men moderated by its radical ideas and certain variations of feather condemnable, had moreover misfortune to be allied to the most fanatic men of High-Canada, seemingly at least. Mr. Cartier included/understood the fault which its adversaries made, denounced their ideas and their projects and was posed in front of Low-Canada like the representative and the most energetic defender of the national interests and monk of the Canadian-French. Its name became a power which twenty years of fights could not break.

Mr. Cartier had become, while entering the cabinet McNab-Morin, the colleague of Mr. John A. Macdonald, and they had contracted this alliance which made them so strong and held so a long time the victory attached to their flag. Except for the eighteen months during which the liberal party led the businesses of the country, of 1861 to 1863, Mr. Cartier formed part since 1855 of all the administrations, that is to say like secretary-provincial, prosecutor-general, inspector-general, and finally Minister for the militia; and it did not cease being the most influential man of Low-Canada.

To say all that it has fact would be to make the history of the country since twenty years and would require an important volume, because it attached its name to all great measurements of public interest, put everywhere the mark of its fertile spirit, the seal of its activity. " We owe him inter alia things, known as the Mail " of Outaouais, the Large-Trunk, including the bridge Victoria, " laws on education, of the important reforms in " our criminal laws, a big part in the abolition of the " system seigneurial, the legal decentralization of Low-Canada, the law of the grounds of the townships of the East, the coding of the laws, the reorganization of the militia, and the principal share in the formation of the federal mode under which we are placed. Since blackjack years, he was president of the committee of the railroads, which is not a situation of mean importance. One owes him the bill of the Railroad of the Pacific, and his cry: " Let us embark for the West, " launched with the voting of this bill, " will remain in annals parlementaires."

The friends of Mr. Cartier like to speak about energy that it deployed in several circumstances to safeguard the rights and the honor of Low-Canada; they point out what it did in London, in 1866, when the delegates of the other pro-vrncesvoulurent to transform the federal union into legislative union. Made indignant to see that one wanted to violate the basic principle of the federal act, he threatened to withdraw and raise Low-Canada against England if his/her colleagues persisted in their disastrous resolution. One still quotes the national triumph which it gained, when it made adopt by the Parliament a constitution which made Province of Manitoba a French province. Its admirors do not weary themselves to repeat that Low-Canada controlled under Mr. Cartier and made feel its influence everywhere. Now in a few words let us summarize the principal reproaches which its adversaries make him.

Mr. Cartier subordinated too much, says one, the general interest or national and political morality with the spirit of party and the ambition which animated it. The love of the capacity and confidence in itself made him make as disastrous faults with its reputation as with the public property! They reproach him for having changed the constitution of the country without consulting the people, to have made accept with too much precipitation by Low-Canada a political system which one was right to defy oneself. They say that it has had to see itself with pain that it had not under confederation influence that it had before, and that one day would come where Low-Canada would be obliged to undergo, in important matters, the yoke of a majority which grows bigger. the every day.

Why it could not succeed in obtaining the achievement crowned promises made with the mongrels to engage them with to put the weapons low? How it is made that ilait itself IE these promises, some time before its death, him that Riel and the Mongrels had just made elect in the county de' I Provencher? Why, after having said, to make accept the confederation, that the right to veto granted to the federal government would be a safeguard for the catholic minorities, it did not hold word, when the catholics of New Brunswick, tormented by unjust laws, requested the federal government to repudiate them? The reproach the most serious fact with Mr. Cartier is to have had recourse to the electoral Corruption to maintain with the capacity and to be itself opposite until the fin* with all law-which was proposed to put an end to a plague which made of so great devastations. They quote in support of their assertion, the sad business of the Pacific; they show us on a side Mr. Cartier granting one day to Sir Hugh the contract that he had hitherto refused to him; and, other with dimensions, the large capitalist signing at the same time a writing in which it is committed providing a considerable amount of money to carry the elections of 1872.

Some people say that one should not be too severe for some of the last acts of the life of Mr. Cartier, considering the health condition had had to decrease its energy for some time. Among the causes which contributed to the political decline of Mr. Cartier and with its defeat in division-is, in 1872, it is necessary to announce the religious quarrel raised by division beyond parish of Montreal. Mr. Cartier believing that the Sirs of the Seminar had the law and the acquired right in their favor, embraced their cause with his usual energy, and attracted himself a war which weakens it considerably among the clergy to which it owed his political clout mainly.

The statesman belongs to the history; it only can give him the place which is appropriate to him, the row to which he has right. Many men calumniated during their life were blessed by the posterity, and much whose life had been only one sequence of success and applause, were thrown to the Voirie after their death. The praise and the blame if have been exaggerated in our country for thirty years, that one cannot any more with what leave it on the true proportions of the Canadian public men. These two species of exaggeration had disastrous results for the company. Besides the conditions of existence and the requirements of the national conservation make very-difficult the appreciation of the statesmen.

How to disentangle in the middle of such an amount of complicated events and die fast transformations, the reasons which made them act, when they themselves are obliged to conceal them for not froisser national susceptibilities of those with which they are forced to act in concert? Which skill it is necessary for them to reconcile the interest of the race of which they have the destinies between the hands, with the requirements of general prosperity, the shared interest of the country? Who can say now that it is the patriotism, the ambition or the need which made them act in such and such circumstance? At all events, it is a flower that the adversaries even of Mr. Cartier will not be able to be prevented from throwing on its tomb, it is a word of praise which they will not refuse to address to him: it is that if the spirit of party and the ambition made him make faults, it at least did not make use of the capacity to grow rich, it forever thought of making its fortune at the expense of the public.

Nobody will deny the strength of character and great faculties of the man who, during thirty or forty years, did not cease a moment fighting, triumphing over all them •obstacles sown on its road and increasing the every day its influence and its reputation? How with the sight of so much of broken existences delalents lost, not to return justice to a life filled so well, with a compatriot whom the entire country looks like one of its glories, whose death is a mourning for four million men who however did not have all his religious and national ideas. Invited to manage the political heritage Misters Lafontaine and Morin, it bore the Canadian name well and did not decrease with the eyes from abroad the honne opinion that these two great men had given the people.

As one for some time established comparisons between these three famous chiefs of Low-Canada, we will say, us also, our thought. Mr. Cartier did not have the high reason, the calm and major judgment of Lafontaine, the extent of spirit, the political science and the spirit of sacrifice of Mr. Morin, nor the moderation and the political dignity of the one and other; but it carried it of much on them by the action, energy, the knowledge of the world, the parliamentary strategy, the fruitfulness of spirit, the heat and the skill in the fight. They were men with principles, he was, him, the man with success, the man of combat par excellence. 11 could have done what they did, but they could never have led the conservative party in such difficult times, to fight with as much success against such able adversaries, at one time when there were necessary to go up to the capacity and to remain there qualities and even defects which they did not have, to employ of the means which would have been repugnant to them.

The failure of the political career of Mr. Dorion who had more than very other dignity, delicacy, the political character of these two remarkable men, shows the truth of this advanced. At his come to power, Mr. Cartier could put on his side the religious feeling and national of his compatriots, and at one time when progress and for material prosperity were asked, it was made lawyer of the channels and the railroads. It had this manner to help it the moral fiber and the material force. Exploiting with skill the faults of its adversaries, it was posed like the champion, the defender inébranlable of the religion and dft nationality threatened by George Brown and her liberal allies of Low-Canada.

It convainquit the people that the triumph of his adversaries would be a national calamity, which only was able for him to save the fatherland in danger. It gained so much the public confidence which it could without losing its prestige to link itself with this George Brown and these men that it said so dangerous, to make the confederation. Mr. Cartier was primarily an head of party, an organizer, an administrator.

The dominant features of sound caraclère were energy, the Impétuosité, the spirit of domination, the desire to be made a name, the Confiance in itself, the love of work. Energy! It had some to transport the mountains, to climb the sky. 11 was ruait on its adversaries with the ardor of the Zouaves going up to the attack of Malakoff; it was without fear and pity as Turcos which eat their adversaries when they cannot make use any more of their hands.

Its love of work as its energy passed in proverb; one cannot have an exact idea of the amount of work which it made the every day, of the zeal which it employed with any knowledge, with all to see and with to do everything. It put to work passion that others put to have fun; he would have liked never not to lose a moment, one second, to have unceasingly the harness on the back. " One does not work enough, often said it; there are too much lazy in the monde." " Thus work, says it, in one moment of bad mood, with somebody who asked him for a council, study and you will know what I know. How did I learn that, me, think you that it is while sleeping? " It could have added that it was by working fifteen hours per day.

Its promptness, its impatience and its absolutism made him support with difficulty contradiction and resistance; he saw little thing apart from itself, he wanted all to concentrate, all to absorb, see in his orbit only satellites, and believer to personify all his fatherland, he thought that all was well since he was itself satisfied. If it had been able to make excommunicate as heretics all those which did not think like him, it would not have failed to do it, it would have even made them burn.

It did not save at least the coarse words, persecutions and the vexations to them; his/her friends themselves had sorrow to sometimes support its roughnesses and its transport. That undoubtedly contributed have to deprive of the helps and of the councils of several men of talent, others remained to him attached only by terror. But the majority forgave him these defects easily, because it knew that under these outside abrupt it hid a devotion without terminals to his political friends. This devotion even carried it too far while making him give loads and honors to men who of it were not very worthy.

In the relations of the private life it was pleasant, cordial, hospital, liberal with excess. It is known that he liked to receive and that with Ottawa as in Montreal and Quebec, he opened every week his house with his friends of which several were its political adversaries. Nobody in the meetings where it was spoke, laughed, sang and danced with more liveliness and of spirit; it had bursts of laughter to break the panes, made word games which were not always masterpieces, and found the means of liking everyone, of putting in all the hearts the joy and cheerfulness. One left at his place with the intention to return there and well decided to forgive him in the interval his impatiences and his sarcastic remarks.

Mr. Cartier small, but was rather well taken of size, osseous, nervous and strongly made up, light, sharp and jerked in his movements. He had the face well done, massive and right, the glance burning and mobile, the coloured dye, the high mouth, the bottom of the strongly developed face, the opened aspect, full with fire and intelligence.

One easily guessed, by seeing it, a man worked by the thought, devoured by the need to act; it ran rather than it went, looking at skilful and on the left, seeing everyone, noticing all, never not losing the thread of its thought. Mr. Cartier was not a man with brilliant theories; as he thought rather to act that for the pleasure of thinking, he saw in all things only the practical side, he stripped a question of all his ornaments to take of it only marrow, the substance.

One would have seldom said, to hear it speak, that it had one day traded with the Muses. Its speeches were dry like the deserts of the Sahara, the flowers of the literature and of the eloquence did not grow there. He spoke with broken sticks, by sudden starts, with facts, precedents and memories that its happy memory provided him as by enchantment. He could extremely by the way recall to his adversaries facts that they believed forgotten.

Aiming above all to the result, it dealt little with the means and did not choose its weapons, it resembled under this report/ratio to the children of Green the Erin: a stone, a stick, all that fell to him under the hand it took it and launched it to the tôte of its adversaries. Its words resounded in the room like the blows of hammer on the anvil. Its hard eloquence, Franche, corrosive and substantial liked however to the people and in the majority of the room.

It did not miss the honors: in England as in Canada, one paid homage to his talents and his public services. In 1868, having refused the title of Compagnon of the Bath, that one offered to him, when Sir John received that of commander, England favorably appreciated the feeling of pride placed well which animated it, and baronnet created it.

As, the news as Sir George-Etienne Cartier had died in London produced like an electric shock of an end of the country to the other, one of these feelings which leave entire people under the impression of a vague but painful feeling, as if it had lost part of itself, a scrap of its being.

Opposite this tomb between opened, all the parties, forgetting their passions or their opinions, raised the voice to proclaim that Low-Canada had just lost one of its most remarkable illustrations. Its body was brought back to Canada, and was buried with the Cimetière Our-Lady-of-Snows with Montreal.

Honors

The international airport Macdonald-Cartier of Ottawa as well as the Autoroute Macdonald-Cartier in Ontario are named in the honor of Cartier and its counterpart father of confederation John A. Macdonald. The Laval-native station Cartier of the Subway of Montreal as well as the adjacent boulevard of the same name is also named in its honor. Moreover, one monument is set up to him on the Royal Mont with Montreal.

Famous quotation

An inhabitant of Low-Canada is an English who speaks French.

Random links: