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Discourse
Markers
An Enunciative Approach

GRAHAM RANGER
 Discourse Markers

“This book is an extremely valuable contribution to the study of discourse mark-

ers from an enunciative perspective. It begins at the beginning, with a thorough,
yet accessible, introduction to the Theory of Enunciative and Predicative
Operations. It then proceeds through a comprehensive review of previous works
to a corpus-based study of discourse markers in English. I highly recommend
this book for any student or advanced researcher looking for a solid, consistent
theoretical model to capture the inherent variability of discourse markers.”
—Guillaume Desagulier, Université Paris Nanterre, France

“This book will most certainly create a greater awareness and appreciation of
Culioli’s Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations as a framework for
modeling natural language activity. The advantages of the method are illustrated
by the insightful analysis of the discourse markers ‘anyway’, ‘in fact’ and ‘indeed’
and ‘I think’.”
—Karin Aijmer, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
 Graham Ranger

Discourse Markers
An Enunciative Approach
Graham Ranger
Département des études du monde anglophone, UFR-ALL
Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse
Avignon, France

ISBN 978-3-319-70904-8    ISBN 978-3-319-70905-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70905-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930133

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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 Preface

This book is intended for researchers and graduate students in linguistics

but also for anyone interested in linguistic theorisation and / or the for-
mal modelisation of the discursive phenomena of natural language.
Chapter 2 focusses on theorisation. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 provide an
application of the theory to a number of discourse markers. While Chaps.
3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 frequently cite concepts and issues evoked in Chap. 2,
each chapter can stand alone and be read independently, for those whose
interest points them towards one particular question.
The Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations is a well known
and widely respected theory, practised in France and other countries. It
provides a rigorous, comprehensive framework for modelling the dynam-
ics of natural language activity. Many aspects of it can be related to other
major theories of language, including Transformational Grammar,
Generative Semantics, Functional Systemic Linguistics, Cognitive
Grammar or Construction Grammar, among others. Despite these fea-
tures, the theory remains little known in English-speaking linguistic
circles.
With this book I hope to contribute to a greater awareness within
anglophone linguistics of this fascinating approach, with a sustained
application of the theory to the problematics of discourse marking in
general and to a number of discourse markers in particular. One very

v
vi Preface

important difference between the theory and many other approaches is

the idea that pragmatic potentials are in a large measure built into the
semantics of linguistic items – provided one recognises that fully-fledged
meaning emerges only at the end of a complex process of configuration
relative to context and situation.
The presentation of the Theory of Enunciative and Predicative
Operations in the following pages draws heavily upon the writings of
Antoine Culioli and his close collaborators. The presentation of the the-
ory and its application of the theory to specific discourse-marking issues
nonetheless represents a personal reading and interpretation of these texts
and is not intended to provide in any sense a definitive account. Not all
enunciative linguists would necessarily choose to give priority to the same
aspects of the theory as me, nor indeed would all enunciative linguists
agree with my analyses.
If this book encourages the reader to explore the theory further, to
return to the foundational texts and to forge his or her own opinions on
these questions, then it will have fulfilled much of its intended
purpose.
The material for this book has developed over some twenty-five years
of teaching and research. I would like to thank my students at the
Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse, who have, often unwit-
tingly, contributed to the emergence of new problem areas and with these
the development of new ideas. I thank also those colleagues with whom I
have, directly or indirectly, been able to discuss its contents, or who have
contributed by their research to my own reflexion. These include – non-­
exhaustively – Jean Albrespit, Agnès Celle, Hélène Chuquet, Jean
Chuquet, Gilles Col, Lionel Dufaye, Claude Delmas, Guillaume
Desagulier, Catherine Filippi-Deswelle, Yann Fuchs, Lucie Gournay,
Jean-Rémi Lapaire, Jean-Marie Merle, Renaud Méry, Aliyah Morgenstern,
Denis Paillard, Catherine Paulin, Blandine Pennec, Wilfrid Rotgé,
Martine Sekali, Shirley Thomas and Anne Trévise. Thanks also to the
anonymous reviewers of the first drafts of this book, as well as to the
reviewers of the articles which have served over the years as a testing
ground for many of the ideas it contains.
 Preface
   vii

Lastly my thanks go to Professor Antoine Culioli, for the inspiration

and enthusiasm of his work, and to his students, whose patience and
enthusiasm have contributed to the propagation of the ideas of this semi-
nal thinker.

Avignon, France Graham Ranger

 Contents

1 Introduction   1
1.1 Introduction   1
1.2 The Term discourse marker  2
1.3 The Multiplicity of Theoretical Approaches   3
1.4 The Multicategorial Nature of Discourse Markers   4
1.5 The Multifunctional Nature of Discourse Markers   6
1.6 Summary and Outline of the Book   9
Bibliography  12

2 The Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations  17

2.1 Introduction  17
2.2 The Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations  19
2.3 Aims of Linguistic Enquiry  19
2.4 Methods of Linguistic Enquiry  24
2.5 Discourse Markers Within the TEPO  37
2.6 Multicategoriality Revisited  38
2.7 Multifunctionality Revisited  42
2.8 The Schematic Form  57
2.9 Towards an Enunciative Definition of the Discourse
Marker Category  64

ix
x Contents

2.10 Chapter Summary  77

Bibliography  86

3 Anyway: Configuration by Target Domain  93

3.1 Introduction  93
3.2 Previous Studies  96
3.3 A Schematic Form for anyway102
3.4 Regulation of Interpropositional Relations 105
3.5 Corrective Values: Regulation of Operations
of Representation109
3.6 Regulation of Intratextual and Intersubjective Relations 114
3.7 Summary and Discussion 129
Bibliography 133

4 Indeed and in fact: The Role of Subjective Positioning 135

4.1 Introduction 135
4.2 Previous Studies 138
4.3 Accounting for Variation in indeed / in fact143
4.4 Corpus Findings 154
4.5 Further Cases 162
4.6 Concluding Discussion 171
Bibliography 176

5 Yet and still: A Transcategorial Approach to Discourse

Phenomena 179
5.1 Introduction 179
5.2 Previous Studies 182
5.3 Schematic Forms for yet and still186
5.4 Aspectuo-Modal Values 187
5.5 Quantifying Values 198
5.6 Argumentative Values 203
5.7 Summary 221
Bibliography 223
 Contents
   xi

6 Discourse Marker Uses of like: From the Occurrence

to the Type 227
6.1 Introduction 227
6.2 The Preposition like: Schematic Form and Variations 230
6.3 The Discourse Marker like240
6.4 Quotative be like253
6.5 Discussion and Conclusion 264
Bibliography 272

7 I think: Further Variations in Subjective Endorsement 275

7.1 Introduction 275
7.2 Previous Research 276
7.3 Schematic Form and Parameters for Configuration 281
7.4 Case Studies of Contextually Situated Values 286
7.5 Concluding Discussion 298
Bibliography 302

8 General Conclusion 305

Index 311
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 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The notional domain 31

Fig. 2.2 The branching path model 33
Fig. 3.1 Sequential relationship leading from p to q103
Fig. 3.2 Relationship marked by anyway104
Fig. 3.3 Concessive anyway106
Fig. 3.4 Additive anyway107
Fig. 3.5 Corrective anyway111
Fig. 3.6 Resumptive anyway118
Fig. 3.7 Resumptive anyway in chronological projection 119
Fig. 4.1 Evolution of indeed in the COCA 1990–2012 144
Fig. 4.2 Schematic form for indeed146
Fig. 4.3 Parametered schema of indeed for values of reinforcement 147
Fig. 4.4 Parametered schema of indeed: alignment with an
absent speaker 148
Fig. 4.5 Parametered schema of indeed: alignment with the
cospeaker148
Fig. 4.6 Schematic form for in fact149
Fig. 4.7 Parametered schema of in fact: self-correction 150
Fig. 4.8 Parametered schema of in fact: opposition with an absent
speaker151
Fig. 4.9 Parametered schema of in fact: opposition with the
cospeaker151

xiii
xiv List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 Representation of perfective aspect 188

Fig. 5.2 Prospective validation, threshold, effective validation 189
Fig. 5.3 The branching path model and aspectual determination 189
Fig. 5.4 The branching path model and the notional domain 189
Fig. 5.5 Points tm and tn within a larger set on the ordered class
of instants 190
Fig. 5.6 Representation of yet another success200
Fig. 5.7 Preconstructed situation: frozen yoghurt is good for you202
Fig. 5.8 Constructed situation: frozen yoghurt is not good for you202
Fig. 5.9 Abstract representation of concessive still209
Fig. 5.10 Instantiated representation of concessive still209
Fig. 5.11 Abstract representation of concessive yet210
Fig. 5.12 Instantiated representation of concessive yet210
Fig. 5.13 Abstract representation of conclusive values for initial still219
Fig. 6.1 A representation of predicative like (similarity) 233
Fig. 6.2 A representation of non-predicative like (exemplarity) 236
Fig. 6.3 A representation of the schematic form for like239
Fig. 6.4 A representation of discourse marking like248
Fig. 6.5 A representation of quotative be like259
Fig. 6.6 A representation of the schematic form for like indicating
enunciative responsibilities 266
Fig. 7.1 A representation of initial I think in evaluative context 287
Fig. 7.2 A representation of initial I think in assertive context 290
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 Diversity of source categories for discourse markers 5

Table 2.1 Three levels of representation 20
Table 4.1 “The lexical field of actuality” 141
Table 4.2 Cross-corpus frequencies of indeed and in fact145
Table 4.3 Constructional frames for indeed and in fact155
Table 4.4 Frequencies of initial and medial indeed in the spoken BNC 157
Table 4.5 Conjunction collocates of indeed in a 1-L window sorted
by relevance (M.I.) 159
Table 4.6 Conjunction collocates of in fact in a 1-L window sorted
by relevance (M.I.) 159
Table 4.7 Conjunction collocates of medial indeed in a 1-L window
sorted by relevance (M.I.) 160
Table 4.8 Conjunction collocates of medial in fact in a 1-L window
sorted by relevance (M.I.) 160
Table 5.1 Modal collocates of yet in a 1-L window sorted by
Log-likelihood196
Table 5.2 3-L 3-R adverbial collocates of sentence initial yet by
M.I. score 213
Table 5.3 1-L conjunction collocates of yet and still sorted by
Log-likelihood213
Table 7.1 Occurrences of I think by position in a random sample
from the spoken BNC 286

xv
 1
Introduction

1.1 Introduction
In this book I will be pursuing two main objectives. The first is to provide
an introduction to the Theory of Enunciative and Predicative Operations
(TEPO), developed over the last forty years or so by Antoine Culioli and
associated researchers.1 The second is to use the tools of the theory to
describe a selection of present day English discourse markers, including
anyway, in fact and indeed, yet and still, like and I think. The way the
theory moves from close observation of situated language use to the pos-
sibility of cross-linguistic generalization, from Saussurean parole to langue,
and back again, has led to the development of a number of concepts
which are particularly well suited to the description of discourse phe-
nomena, in their sometimes baffling complexity. Before I present the
theory, however, let me begin by considering some of the difficulties the
study of discourse markers holds for the linguist.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

G. Ranger, Discourse Markers,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70905-5_1
2 G. Ranger

1.2 The Term discourse marker

The first difficulty is terminology, as the term discourse marker is not uncon-
troversial in itself: many authors use alternative designations, and, even
when the term of discourse marker is used, its extension is variable. Brinton
(1996, p. 29) and Fraser (2009, p. 2) together list nearly thirty terms cover-
ing coextensive or overlapping domains, including comment clause, connec-
tive, continuer, cue phrases, discourse connective, discourse-­deictic item,
discourse operator, discourse particle, discourse-shift marker, discourse-signal-
ling device, discourse word, filler, fumble, gambit, hedge, indicating devices,
initiator, interjection, marker, marker of pragmatic structure, parenthetic
phrase, phatic connectives, (void) pragmatic connective, pragmatic expression,
pragmatic particle, reaction signal and semantic conjuncts. Both authors,
incidentally, opt to use pragmatic marker as the most general term.
While some of the above items, such as hedge, initiator or parenthetic
phrase designate fairly clearly delimited subcategories (albeit on the het-
erogeneous criteria of semantics, interaction or syntax, respectively),
other items mean different things for different researchers. For some, par-
ticle is a syntactic term used only for invariable one word items (certain
adverbs, prepositions, etc.), for others, particle is seen more inclusively
and used indifferently for all sorts of related items.2 Fraser, in common
with many, prefers marker but uses the term discourse marker only as a
subcategory of pragmatic marker for those items which “signal a relation
between the discourse segment which hosts them, and the prior discourse
segment” (Fraser 2009, p. 296). Despite the terminological diversity,
however, discourse marker seems to be the most frequent label. As
Schourup notes, “The term D[iscourse] M[arker] […] is […] the most
popular of a host of competing items used with partially overlapping
reference” (Schourup 1999, p. 228).
In the scope of the present study, I will initially be using discourse
marker pretheoretically, as the most general term available to refer to a set
of markers which cannot be described satisfactorily without reference to
discursive phenomena. I shall however be returning more precisely to the
term in Chap. 2, in a critical discussion of how “discourse” and “marker”
are each to be understood within the Theory of Enunciative and
Predicative Operations.
 Introduction 3

1.3  he Multiplicity of Theoretical

T
Approaches
This terminological confusion surrounding the set of discourse markers
derives, on the one hand, from the fact that this is a relatively recent
domain of linguistic enquiry and, on the other, from the variety of theo-
retical approaches adopted, each with its own research programme and its
own set of (often unvoiced) assumptions about what aspects of language
it is interested in researching.3
The study of discourse markers as such would undoubtedly have been
difficult within the mainstream linguistic movements of the 1950s and
1960s.4 The pressure of the written norm sidelined spoken items like
Well, Oh or Ah, as well as purportedly non-standard uses of markers such
as anyway, like or whatever.5 At the same time, the Saussurean focus on
langue pushed discourse markers into the realm of parole, while Generative
Grammar was theoretically unprepared either to look closely into ques-
tions of performance or to consider the transsentential and intersubjective
features of language which the study of discourse markers cannot ignore.6
Since the 1970s and the 1980s, interest in discourse markers has
increased exponentially, however, from a whole range of theoretical per-
spectives. In conversation analysis or ethnomethodological approaches,
discourse markers are studied in so far as they reveal the structures of
conventionalized rituals of conversational interaction.7 Neo-Gricean and
more generally pragmatic approaches focus on the way discourse markers
orient interpretative possibilities, providing procedural indications that
contribute to constraining available interpretations, in accordance with
the Gricean cooperative principle. Such approaches have been developed
more particularly, in the framework of Relevance Theory, in respect of
Grice’s maxim of Relation: Be relevant.8 Anscombre and Ducrot consider
discourse markers as evidence of the way in which argumentative possi-
bilities are not the result of mere pragmatic enrichment but are inscribed
in the semantics of linguistic items themselves,9 while Grize, Sanders or
Mann and Thompson, for example, from very different methodological
perspectives, look at how discourse markers participate in marking recur-
ring “argumentative schemata” or “coherence relations” in natural
4 G. Ranger

l­ anguage.10 Discourse markers in English often concurrently have hom-

onymous, non-discursive uses from which they are diachronically derived.
This feature has inspired studies in phenomena of grammaticalization –
or pragmaticalization – which posit pragmatic principles at work behind
regular patterns of language change.11
Other perspectives could be mentioned, but whatever approach is
adopted will have an inevitable influence both on the terminological
options and on the extension of the area of enquiry. Terms such as “ini-
tiator”, “continuer” or “reaction signal”, for example, imply a conversa-
tion analysis approach, while “pragmatic connective” suggests a
pragmatic approach to intertextual relations. Correlatively, conversation
analysts and ethnomethodologists will probably have more to say about
“Oh”, “Ah”, “Mmm” etc. (interjections or backchannels) than those
who study argumentation in language, who are more likely to focus
their attention on “However”, “Nevertheless” or “So”, for example. The
object of study “discourse marker” (in the broadest sense), therefore,
will not include the same linguistic items, depending upon the angle of
approach.
The diversity of theoretical perspectives on discourse markers often
makes inter-theoretical comparison and dialogue difficult, not to say
impossible. The articles anthologised in Fischer (2006), although
intended to “present such a path through the jungle of different
approaches” (Fischer 2006, p. 1), unfortunately do little to alleviate the
impression of confusion in the domain.12 The different conclusions as to
what discourse markers are, and what they do, seem to be dictated by
preexisting and often incommensurable differences in theoretical
standpoint.

1.4  he Multicategorial Nature of Discourse

T
Markers
A further hurdle in the study of discourse markers is their multicategorial
nature. A large number of discourse marker forms derive transparently
from other linguistic categories. The table below gives an indication of
the diversity of source categories for discourse markers (Table 1.1):
 Introduction 5

Table 1.1 Diversity of source categories for discourse markers

Categories Markers
Subordinating conjunctions because, since, though …
Coordinating conjunctions for, so, and, or, but …
Independent clauses I mean, you see, you know …
Imperatives say, let’s say, look, listen …
Subordinate clauses as it were, so to speak, what’s more
…
Manner adverbs consequently, surely, frankly …
Other adverbs nevertheless, anyway …
Prepositions like
Prepositional phrases on the contrary, after all, in particular
…
Interjections Oh, Ah, Gosh …
Interrogatives Why, What …
Various unclassifiable fixed expressions Proof that, The fact is that …

In this respect Fraser notes that discourse markers “do not constitute a
separate syntactic category” , going on to add, “There are three sources of
D[iscourse] M[arker] – conjunction, adverb, and prepositional phrases –
as well as a few idioms like still and all and all things considered” (Fraser
1999, p. 943). Fraser’s “discourse markers”, of course, constitute only a
subcategory of the larger extension we accord to the same term here.
The only really consensual syntactic property of discourse markers in
the broadest sense is their syntactic and prosodic detachability, and their
overall preference for clause-initial position.13
Given the lack of arguments for a syntactic category of discourse mark-
ers, research more usually focusses on functional properties, as Schourup
puts it:

D[iscourse] M[arker]s are most often said to constitute a functional cate-

gory that is heterogeneous with respect to syntactic class. On this view DM
status is independent of syntactic categorization: an item retains its
­non-­DM syntactic categorization but does ‘extra duty’ as a non-truth-­
conditional connective loosely associated with clause structure. (Schourup
1999, p. 234)

It is accordingly to the function(s) of discourse markers that we now

turn.
6 G. Ranger

1.5  he Multifunctional Nature of Discourse

T
Markers
The functions of discourse markers can be evoked with at least two goals
in mind. The aim can be to describe general properties with a view to
delimiting a class of discourse markers relative to other categories, or to
use specific properties with the aim of distinguishing different types of
discourse markers within the overall discourse marker category. Let us
look at each of these approaches in turn.
Most definitions agree to consider that discourse markers are non
truth-conditional, that is, that they contribute nothing to the truth-­
conditional, propositional content of their host utterance. Definitions in
terms of positive properties are less consensual, however.
For Schiffrin, discourse markers are “sequentially dependent elements
which bracket units of talk” (Schiffrin 1987, p. 31). This is a working
definition which is refined in the course of the discussion in her Discourse
Markers. In the final chapter, she writes: “markers provide contextual coor-
dinates for utterances: they index an utterance to the local contexts in
which utterances are produced and in which they are to be interpreted”
(Schiffrin 1987, p. 326 original emphasis). The “local contexts” Schiffrin
is speaking of include both participants and text.
For Fraser, discourse markers – Fraser’s “pragmatic markers” – are non-­
propositional contributions to sentence meaning which are “[…] linguis-
tically encoded clues which signal the speaker’s potential communicative
intentions” (Fraser 1996, p. 68).
A difficulty with this type of functional definition, however, is that it
does not delimit a finite class, since, as Fischer notes, the general ­functions
proposed by Fraser or Schiffrin might just as well be carried out by other
linguistic expressions:

For instance, conversational management functions are also fulfilled by

speech formulas and nonlexicalized metalinguistic devices, such as au ris-
que de me répéter [at the risk of repeating myself]. Stance can be expressed by,
among others, modal verbs, adverbs, parenthetic clauses, or tag questions.
And linking functions can also be fulfilled by conjunctions and speech
formulas. (Fischer 2006, p. 5)
 Introduction 7

Correspondingly, definitions of the discourse marker category are

often an ad hoc mixture of non truth-conditionality, functional features –
such as Schiffrin’s or Fraser’s – and formal features (short words or fixed
phrases, adverbs, etc.) – which aim to exclude from the category of dis-
course markers the nonlexicalised metalinguistic devices, speech formu-
las, et cetera, mentioned by Fischer.
Not all approaches to discourse markers consider them as non truth-­
conditional. Argumentation Theory (Anscombre and Ducrot 1983, etc.)
or Relevance Theory as presented in Blakemore (2004) prefer to consider
truth-conditionality irrelevant to the representation of linguistically con-
structed meaning. In the next chapter I shall propose a definition of the
properties of discourse markers within the Theory of Enunciative and
Predicative Operations which also rejects the truth-conditional paradigm.
Let us move on now to see how a functional approach might help
determine classes within the set of discourse markers. There are numerous
attempts to define specific properties of discourse markers or families of
discourse markers within an overarching category.
Fraser’s 1996 contribution draws the conclusions from his broad func-
tional definition of “pragmatic markers” to distinguish four subcategories:
basic markers (markers of “illocutionary force”, essentially, including mood),
commentary markers (Fraser gives the examples of sentence-­initial stupidly,
frankly etc.), parallel markers (vocatives, certain interjections), discourse
markers (relating text to foregoing discourse) (Fraser 1996, pp. 168–169).
These categories form the object of further subcategorisation.
Schiffrin (1987) distinguishes five different “planes of talk” on which dis-
course markers operate: “exchange structures, action structures, idea struc-
tures, participation frameworks, and information states”, a list which is
reduced by Redecker to three “components of coherence […] ideational struc-
ture, rhetorical structure, and sequential structure” (Redecker 1991, p. 1167).
Brinton (1996) lists no fewer than nine functions of discourse markers
ranging from the clearly argumentative function of marking “sequential
dependence” (pace Levinson 1983) to the interactional functions of indi-
cating “cooperation, sharing, intimacy” (1996, p. 36). These are however
synthesized, in Brinton as in Fernandez-Vest (1994, p. 31) and elsewhere,
to a more fundamental opposition between the textual (consequently,
however, etc.) and the interpersonal (frankly, you see, etc.).14
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8 G. Ranger

It would be possible to quote further attempts at subcategorisation

within the broad class of discourse markers (particles, etc.). The point
however is clear: the lack of any clear consensus as regards the functions
of discourse markers is a predictable consequence of three factors: the
diversity of theoretical approaches to the question, the members included
in the discourse marker category and the heterogeneous nature of dis-
course markers themselves.
We have seen that discourse markers derive from a range of grammati-
cal categories and often continue to function standardly within their
source categories. Adverbs such as hopefully, or frankly, for example,
might function either as discourse markers, expressing speaker comment
or stance relative to the host clause, or as manner adverbs. In addition to
this, many discourse markers can also often function on more than one
discourse level. Take the marker anyway, in examples (1)–(4):

(1) Maybe he would feel better if he had something. He put a forkful in his
mouth. It was cold. He ate it anyway. HJC 141215
(2) “I think a course of electroconvulsive therapy is what young Byrne
needs.” “The mental hospital?” Sister Cooney looked concerned. “Yes, but
don’t tell him that – not for the moment, anyway.” A7J 559
(3) Why not resign? Even contemplating walking out over such a small
matter may seem ridiculous, but within the context of that small world, the
dispute was a major one. Also, and I don’t want to go on about this, I was
a lonely person in those days and I had very little else to think about.
Anyway, on with my story, for soon other pressures were to be brought to
bear. A0F 130
(4) Inside, the elderly English upper-class proprietor told me that true
Communism only survives in Albania. Who wants true Communism any-
way? Not the Albanians, I’m sure. ADM 2146

In each of these examples anyway functions as a discourse marker, but

in different ways, as we can show by the reformulations available for each
example. In (1), the function of anyway is equivalent to even though: He
ate it even though it was cold. In (2) anyway might be reformulated as in
any case, or at least but not with even though. In (3) sentence-initial any-
way provides a way of returning to a topic after a previous digression (cf.
on with my story) and might be replaced in this role by So or Well. In (4)
 Introduction 9

anyway, in association with an interrogative, adds a conflictual note to

the question Who wants true Communism? which might alternatively be
rendered by an intensive such as Who ever / on earth …? et cetera. In
terms of functions, it might be possible to speak, within the discourse
marker paradigm, of an intertextual, concessive function (1), an interper-
sonal, self-corrective function (2), a topic-management function (3) or
an interpersonal, intensive function (4). However, it appears problem-
atic, if not undesirable, to limit each use in context to one function: in
(4), for instance, anyway certainly contributes to making the question
sound more polemical than it would do otherwise, and hence could be
qualified as having an interpersonal function, but it also relates the inter-
rogative back to some foregoing text, and in this respect carries out a
textual, linking function. Similarly, in (3) the sentence-initial use of any-
way serves a recentring function, resuming a previous topic, but also par-
ticipates in an informal style which in turn carries implications for the
relation between speaker and co-speaker et cetera.16
In short, not only are discourse markers multifunctional, in that the
category as a whole covers a range of different types of functions, but in
addition, many individual markers are liable to be used in different, often
overlapping ways. This leads to a further problem in describing the mean-
ing of discourse markers: if one linguistic form is associated with more
than one meaning in context, should we see this as homonymy, poly-
semy, or should we aim for a monosemous account of meaning, from
which the various situated meanings might be derived?17 Of course this
question is not specific to discourse markers, but in view of the properties
of this linguistic category, it is particularly germane to their study and we
shall correspondingly return to it at length, in the framework of the
TEPO, in the next chapter.

1.6 Summary and Outline of the Book

The preceding pages have dealt with some of the issues raised by the study
of discourse markers. I began by showing that the term discourse marker
itself is not universally accepted and that, when it is used, depending
upon the author, it does not necessarily include the same phenomena.
10 G. Ranger

Indeed there is no consensus as to the list of members of the class of dis-

course markers, even when the term is taken in its broadest acceptation.
It is difficult to establish common ground for dialogue between often
divergent theoretical positions, each with its own approach, questions
and assumptions as to the object of research. Part of this theoretical diver-
gence can be attributed to the relative novelty of discourse markers as a
research field. Part of it, however, is due to the nature of discourse mark-
ers themselves, which derive from numerous source categories – where
they may continue to function as before – and which, even when they do
recognizably function as discourse markers, often carry out more than
one function simultaneously. Consequently, the study of discourse mark-
ers raises, more acutely perhaps than elsewhere, the familiar question of
how to account for asymmetric form-meaning mappings.
The TEPO developed as a formal linguistics that eschews the traditional
modular separation of domains between syntax, semantics and pragmat-
ics. This property makes it particularly sensitive to the formalization of
discourse phenomena. Culioli has devoted a number of papers to certain
discourse markers in French, including donc, bien or mais, while, more
recently, Paillard has developed a specifically enunciative approach to the
study of the category of discourse markers in French with a series of foun-
dational articles and his Inventaire raisonné des marqueurs discursifs du fran-
çais.18 Work on English discourse markers within the TEPO has tended to
focus on specific markers or configurations. In the following chapter, I will
present the TEPO and reformulate some of the issues raised above, within
this framework, before going on to illustrate the methods of the theory in
the study of the English discourse marker anyway (Chap. 3). The subse-
quent chapters will look in turn at the discourse markers in fact and indeed
(Chap. 4), yet and still (Chap. 5), like (Chap. 6) and I think (Chap. 7).

Notes
1. In French the theory is known as the Théorie des Opérations Prédicatives
et Énonciatives, commonly abbreviated to TOPE.
2. See for example Östman’s use of the term particle for the comment clause
you know (Östman 1981). Fried and Östman (2005, p. 1757) justify the
 Introduction 11

use of pragmatic particle as a catch-all term. Lenk (1998) chooses to con-

sider discourse marker as a subcategory of particle. Schourup (1999,
pp. 229–231) or Fischer (2006, p. 4) contain useful presentations of the
terminological difficulties, commenting upon the particle / marker dis-
tinction in some detail. The term particle would appear to be more wide-
spread among researchers working on Germanic languages (except
English) where the category of modal particles is long established, as noted
by Wierzbicka (1986, p. 520). Fernandez-Vest defends the use of the term
particule in French (Fernandez-Vest 1994), while Dostie discusses the
opposing positions of Fernandez-Vest and Fraser (Dostie 2004, pp. 41 sq).
3. Schourup concludes along similar lines: “Such variation is to be expected
in an area that has only recently become a focus of intensive study and
which bears on many different areas of discourse research, cognitive,
social, textual, and linguistic” (Schourup 1999, p. 242).
4. Which is not to say that discourse markers had not fallen under scrutiny
previously. Finell (1986) discusses Jespersen’s and Sweet’s early contribu-
tions to the field.
5. See Östman (1995, p. 95) for support but also for a brief presentation of
work on pragmatic particles in languages other than English before the
1970s.
6. One exception to this would be J. R. Firth and in particular the neo-­
Firthian approach in Halliday and Hasan’s pioneering study of Cohesion
in English (2013).
7. See for example Schegloff and Sacks (1973) or Schiffrin’s justly influen-
tial Discourse Markers (1987).
8. As in Relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1986) and, more specifically on
discourse markers, Blakemore (1989a, 1989b) and Blakemore (2004).
In a non-Relevance Theoretical approach, successive studies by Fraser
(1988, 1990, 1999, 2006a, 2006b, 2009 or 2013) give a progressively
finer-­grained taxonomy of discourse markers (which for Fraser are a sub-
set of pragmatic markers).
9. See in particular L’argumentation dans la langue (Anscombre and Ducrot
1983).
10. Useful references here are Grize (1990, 1996), Knott and Sanders (1998),
Sanders et al. (1992) or Mann and Thompson (1983).
11. Key texts here are From Etymology to Pragmatics (Sweetser 1990),
Grammaticalization (Hopper and Closs Traugott 2003), or, for more
punctual studies of specific markers, Closs Traugott (1995, 1999 or
2005).
12 G. Ranger

12. Paillard (2009, p. 118) or Paillard and Vũ (2012, p. 10) arrive at a simi-
lar conclusion.
13. Even so, there are discourse markers which only accept clause-final posi-
tion, such as adverbial though and many the meaning of which changes
significantly according to position, such as after all, or anyway.
14. Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 26) also make this distinction, again pres-
ent in the opposition between stance adverbials and linking adverbials in
Biber et al. (1999, pp. 853–892), or indeed disjuncts and conjuncts in
Quirk et al. (1985, pp. 612–647). Pennec’s recent enunciative study
makes distinctions of a similar nature, too (Pennec 2016, pp. 78–81).
15. Examples here and elsewhere, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from
the British National Corpus, accessed essentially via the BNCweb online
platform. The alphanumerical references given after each example iden-
tify texts and line numbers respectively (Hoffmann et al. 2008).
16. These remarks should be understood as pretheoretical. We return to any-
way in more detail in Chap. 3.
17. The contributions in Fischer (2006) are in fact organized according to
the criterion of whether they adopt a polysemous or a monosemous per-
spective on discourse markers.
18. See, for example, Culioli (1990, pp. 115–126, pp. 135–176), Paillard
(1998, 2000, 2002, 2009, 2011, 2015) or Paillard and Vũ (2012).

Bibliography
Anscombre, J. C., & Ducrot, O. (1983). L’argumentation dans la langue.
Philosophie et Langage. Bruxelles: P. Mardaga.
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman
Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow: Longman.
Blakemore, D. (1989a). Semantic Constraints on Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Blakemore, D. (1989b). Denial and Contrast: A Relevance Theoretic Analysis of
“But”. Linguistics and Philosophy, 12(1), 15–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/
BF00627397.
Blakemore, D. (2004). Relevance and Linguistic Meaning: The Semantics and
Pragmatics of Discourse Markers (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 99).
Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Brinton, L. J. (1996). Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and
Discourse Functions (Topics in English Linguistics 19). Berlin/New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
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may go back again. They often do. The English immigrants are largely
unmarried young men, and there are no women in the West. They are
making ready the land, but the inheritors of it have yet to appear. It is not
strange if Mr. Bourassa sees those inheritors among his own people—only
it is not yet their time, not for many years yet—not for so many years yet
that it seems almost unpractical and absurd to look forward to it. Even such
a faith as that which Mr. Bourassa has confessed to in regard to the Eastern
provinces—Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick—that 'In fifteen
years they will have become French in language and Roman Catholic in
faith,' seems highly unpractical. Ontario is not likely to become Roman
Catholic any faster than Ulster. But on the other hand it will only increase in
its anti-Frenchness and its anti-Roman Catholicism in so far as it is upheld
and influenced by Imperialism. Imperialism to Mr. Bourassa is that bogey
which goes about linking up all those small non-conforming, hustling,
militant and materialistic communities which unaided would come into the
Catholic French-Canadian fold. It is that odious system which prevents
other nations within the Empire—such as French Canada—from developing
along their own natural lines. It is something which easily causes Mr.
Bourassa to forget that England and Englishmen—representing a distant
sovereignty which keeps the world's peace—have been a boon and a
blessing to French Canadians rather than otherwise; and causes him to
remember that they may in a moment become an imminent sovereignty—
imposing conscription, war, chapels (things that the Ontarian takes to like a
duck to water) upon the whole Canadian community. Such impositions
would not only strengthen the non-French Canadians, and ruin the natural
progress-to-power of the French Canadians; but they would topple down
like a house of cards those splendid dreams which might in a French-
Canadianised Canada become realities. What dreams? Rome shifted to
Montreal for one, and the Vatican gardens of the future sweeping down to
the St. Lawrence. The whole vast wealth of the Dominion diverted to the
carrying out of those traditions which are neither French nor English but
Canadian ... started four hundred years before by the captains and the
priests, voyageurs and martyrs, who in an age of unbelief went forth in
response to miraculous signs for the furtherance of the glory of God.
 CHÂTEAU FRONTENAC AND DUFFERIN TERRACE. NIGHT.
QUEBEC.

I said that Quebec was full of memories. It is well to remember that most
of these are French-Canadian memories. The Englishman, at home or
touring, thinks most naturally of Wolfe in connection with Quebec, and
thinks with pride how that fight on the Plains of Abraham marked, in Major
Wood's words, 'three of the mightiest epochs of modern times—the death of
Greater France, the coming of age of Greater Britain, and the birth of the
United States.' The splendid daring climb of the English army, the romantic
fevered valour of its general, the suddenness and completeness of the
reversal of positions, unite to make us think that never was a more glorious
event, or one better calculated to appeal to men of the New World. But do
not let us forget that for French Canadians—great event as it was, severing
their allegiance to France for ever on the one hand, leaving them free men
as never before on the other—it was only one event in a new world that was
already for them (but not for us) three hundred years old. 'Here Wolfe fell.'
But here also, long before Wolfe fell, Champlain stood, and French captains
led valiant men on expeditions against strange insidious foes, and the Cross
was carried onwards by the priests, and amid mystic voices and divinations,
and slaughterings and endurances, the faith prevailed and the character of
the people was formed. They have no hankering for France—these people
to whom Wolfe's battle seems but one out of many. France, they think, has
forsaken the Church. But they are French still—these people—and
amazingly conservative in their customs and their creed. We may tell them
that England—which sent out Wolfe—has given them material prosperity,
equality under the law, the means of justice. They will reply, or rather they
will silently think, and only an occasional Nationalist will dare to say:—

'We owe nothing to Great Britain. England did not take Canada for love,
or to plant the Cross of religion as the French did, but in order to plant their
trading posts and make money.'

Gratitude is not a virtue nations take pride in possessing; they are indeed
seldom nations until they have forgotten to be grateful. I suppose French
Canadians are on their way to forgetting to be grateful to England for what
she did in times past, but it is not because they have any real quarrel with
England, or desire to injure her. Merely because they feel that from England
exudes that Imperialism which appeals in no way from the past, and
menaces, they think, their future.

CHAPTER V

THE ATTRACTION OF THE SAGUENAY

Almost directly one lands in Canada, one feels the desire to move west.
It is not that the east fails to attract and interest, or that a man might not
spend many years in Quebec province alone, and still have seen little of its
vast, wild, northern parts. Again there is the Evangeline country, little
known for all that it is 'storied.' But the tide is west just at present.
Everybody asks everybody else—Have you been West, or Are you going
West? And every one who has been West or is going feels himself to be in
the movement. Some day no doubt the tide will set back again, or flow both
ways equally. To-day it flows westward.

I should have been sorry, however, if I had not gone eastward at least as
far as the Saguenay, and I am duly grateful to the American who, so to
speak, irritated me into going there. He was a thin, pale youth, somewhat
bald from clutching at his hair, who sat next to me at dinner my third day at
Quebec. He announced to the table at large that he was travelling for his
pleasure, but to judge from his strained face, travelling for his pleasure was
one of the hardest jobs he had tried. He had been doing Quebec, and he
gave all Canadians present to understand that Quebec had made him very
very tired. Look at the trips around too. Look at the Montmorency Falls.
Had anybody present seen Niagara? Well, if anybody had seen Niagara, the
Montmorency Falls could only make him tired. One or two Canadians
present bent lower to their food. But on the whole Canadians do not readily
enter into argument, and half Niagara Falls is Canadian too, so that finding
no opponents the youth proceeded triumphantly to give the relative
proportions in figures of the two falls. As he directed them chiefly at me, I
felt bound to say that I had seen falls about a tenth the size of either which
had struck me as worth going to see. He then said that he guessed I was
from England. I said this was so. Thereupon he told me that everybody in
England was asleep. I suggested that sleep was better than insomnia, and
shocked by my soporific levity, he advised me to go and have a look at New
York if I wanted to know how things could hum. I said I supposed that New
York was a fairly busy place. A silly remark—only he happened to be a
New Yorker, and all that tiredness left him. I learnt so much about the
busyness of New York that I have hardly forgotten it all yet.

Afterwards, but some time afterwards, when the American had left the
table, a Scottish Canadian asked me if I had done the Saguenay trip, and
when I said that I had not done it, he strongly advised me not to miss it.

'It's the finest trip in Canada. Yes, sir.'

I decided to go. It takes just two days from the start at Quebec to
Chicoutimi and back, and you go in a spacious sort of houseboat which
paddles along at just the right pace, first on one side of the river then on the
other, stopping to load and unload at the little villages along the St.
Lawrence. There to the left—a great sheet of silver hung from the cliff—
were the Montmorency Falls, which had made that young American tired. A
hundred and twenty years ago Queen Victoria's father occupied the Kent
house, hard by the Falls, now a hotel. Wolfe lay ill for two weeks in a farm
close by; probably on no other sick-bed in the world were plans so big with
fate conceived. Then the Ile d'Orléans floats by—that fertile island which
Cartier named after the Grape God four hundred years ago, because of the
vines that grew there. All this waterway is history, French-Canadian history
mostly. With a fine mist hung over the river, concealing the few modern
spires and roofs, you can see the country to-day just as Cartier saw it when
he came sailing up. Neither four hundred nor four thousand years will serve
to modernise the banks of the St. Lawrence. Take that thirty-mile stretch
where the Laurentides climb sheer from the water. That is what Cartier saw
—nothing different. No houses, no people; only the grey rock growing out
of the green trees, and the grey sky overhead. Lower down, with the sun
shining as it did for us, Cartier would see, if he came sailing up to-day, all
those picturesque French-Canadian villages which have sprung up along the
shore—Baie St. Paul, St. Irénée, Murray Bay, Tadousac, with the white
farms of the Habitants, and the summer homes of the Quebeckers and
Montrealers, and the shining spires of the churches, and the wooden piers
jutting far out into the river. Those piers are particularly cheerful places.
There are always gangs of porters waiting to run out freight from the hold,
and a gathering of ladies in gay frocks who want to greet friends on board,
and heaps of little habitants playing about or smoking their pipes. The
habitant appears to start his pipe at the age of eight or nine years, judging
from those who frequent the piers.

I think I was the only Englishman on board that boat. Most of the
passengers were Americans, but cheerful ones—not like that young man at
the hotel—and we were all very keen on seeing everything, so that it
became dusk much too soon for most of us. We got to Tadousac just about
dusk, which I was particularly sorry for, since of all the places we passed, it
held the most memories. In 1600 the whole fur trade of Canada centred
round this benighted little spot, and the men of St. Malo were the rivals of
the Basques for the black foxes trapped by the Indians of that date. I should
like to have seen this queer little port by daylight, but I suppose for most
purposes Parkman's description holds good, and cannot easily be beaten:—

'A desolation of barren mountain closes round it, betwixt whose ribs of
rugged granite, bristling with savins, birches, and firs, the Saguenay rolls its
gloomy waters from the northern wilderness. Centuries of civilisation have
not tamed the wildness of the place; and still, in grim repose, the mountains
hold their guard around the waveless lake that glistens in their shadow, and
doubles, in its sullen mirror, crag, precipice and forest.'

I know that Parkman goes on to say that when Champlain landed here in
April 1608 he found the lodges of an Indian camp, which he marked in his
plan of Tadousac. When we landed, there were also a few shacks in much
the same spot, and in one of the best lighted of them hung a placard to this
effect:—

THE ONLY REAL INDIAN

BUY WORK FROM HIM.
 The lodges Champlain saw belonged to an Algonquin horde, 'Denizens
of surrounding wilds, and gatherers of their only harvest—skins of the
moose, cariboo, and bear; fur of the beaver, marten, otter, fox, wild cat, and
lynx.'

Other days, other harvests. From the shack of the Only Real Indian I saw
one stout tourist issue forth (a Chicago pork-packer he must have been, if
persons ever correspond to their professions), laden with three toy bows and
arrows, as many miniature canoes, and what appeared to be a couple of
patchwork bedspreads. That the descendant of braves should live by making
patchwork bedspreads seemed too much, even though I had given up as
illusions the Red Indians of my boyhood. Far rather would I at that moment
have seen the stout tourist come forth, either scalpless himself, or dangling
at his ample belt the raven locks of the Only Real Indian.

In the night we went on to Chicoutimi, but saw nothing of that, being

asleep. We had sung songs, American songs—'John Brown's Body,'
'Marching through Georgia,' etc., till a late hour of the night; and in any
case the bracing river air would have insured sleep. Only in the morning as
we came down the Saguenay again did I wake to its beauty and strangeness.
Men have learnt to tunnel through rocks at last, but the Saguenay learnt this
art for itself thousands of years ago. A wide water tunnel through the sheer
rock, a roofless tunnel, open to the sky, that is the Saguenay—most
magnificent at the point where Cap Trinité looms up, a wall of darkness
fifteen hundred feet high.

It is a curious fact that famous landscapes always produce a remarkable

frivolity in the human tourist visiting them. Perhaps it is man's instinct to
assert himself against nature. When the boat draws opposite Cap Trinité,
stewards produce buckets of stones and passengers are invited to try and hit
the Cap with the stones from impossible distances. I do not know that it
greatly added to the pleasure of the trip, but we all tried to hit the cliff with
the stones and most of us failed, and had to content ourselves with drawing
echoes from it. After that we went on, and some of the white whales which
are characteristic of the Saguenay began to appear, and experienced
travellers explained that they were not really white whales but a sort of
white porpoise. Once again, as we passed it, Tadousac was invisible, but
this time because a white fog had wrapped it round. So silently we turned
out of the Saguenay into the St. Lawrence. I think the silence of the
Saguenay was what had most impressed me. Not very long before I had
steamed down the Hoogly where by day the kites wheel and shriek
overhead, and the air buzzes with insects' sounds, and all night the jackals
scream—a noisy river, full of treacherous sandbanks, its shores green with
the bright poisonous green of the East. The Saguenay, unique as it is in
many ways, seemed by the contrast of its deepness and silence, and by the
fresh darkness of the rocks and trees that shut it in, to be peculiarly a river
of the West. I do not know if it would have made the somewhat bald young
American tired.

It is only fair to say that his attitude about Quebec is not at all
characteristic of his fellow-countrymen. For most Americans, Quebec
province (and still more perhaps the woods of Ontario) is becoming almost
as popular a playground as Switzerland is for Englishmen. Camping out has
become a great craze among Americans, and if the camping out can be done
amid unspoilt natural surroundings, close to rivers where one can fish and
woods where one can hunt, an ideal holiday is assured them. I forget who it
was who said that much of the old American versatility and nobility had
disappeared since the American boys left off whittling sticks, but in any
case the desire to whittle sticks is renewed again among them, from Mr.
Roosevelt downwards. And in Canada this whittling of sticks—this return
to nature—can easily be accomplished. For the north is still there,
unexploited. In Quebec province, fishing and hunting clubs of Quebec and
Montreal have secured the rights over vast tracts of country. So vast are
those tracts that one or two clubs, I was told, have not even set eyes on all
the trout streams they preserve. This may be an exaggeration, though
probably not a great one. There remains—especially in Ontario—much
water and wood that any one may sport in unlicensed, or get access to by
permission of the local hotel proprietor. Some of the Americans on the boat
had been fishing in Quebec streams and told me of excellent sport they had
had, so that I began to wonder why no Englishmen ever came this way. The
voyage to Canada is a little further than that to Norway, but there are more
fish in Canada. And there is certainly only one Saguenay in the world.
 CHAPTER VI

STE. ANNE DE BEAUPRÉ AND A TRAVELLER'S

VOW

Ste. Anne de Beaupré is usually referred to as the Lourdes of Canada.

When a metaphor of this sort is used it usually means that the spot referred
to is in some way inferior to the original. In the case of Ste. Anne de
Beaupré, the inferiority is not, I believe, in the matter of the number of
miracles wrought there, but in the matter of general picturesqueness. Ste.
Anne de Beaupré is not nearly so picturesque as Lourdes. If you wish to
palliate this fact, you say, as one writer has said, that 'The beauty of modern
architecture mingles at Beaupré with the remains of a hoary past.' If you do
not wish to palliate it, you say, as I do, that Ste. Anne de Beaupré is not in
the least picturesque. I did not particularly care for the modern architecture,
and the hoary past is not particularly in evidence. Do not suppose me to say
that Beaupré has not a hoary past. Red Indians, long before the days of
railroads, travelled thither to pray at the feet of Ste. Anne. Breton seamen,
who belong only to tradition, promised a shrine to Ste. Anne, if she would
save them from shipwreck. They erected the first chapel. The second and
larger chapel was built as far back as 1657, and miracles were quite
frequent from then onwards. Nevertheless, the basilica is quite new, and so
is the whole appearance of the place.

I visited it in company with a French-Canadian commercial traveller. He

was a great big good-looking youth with curly hair and blue eyes, and he
travelled in corsets or something of that sort for a Montreal firm. I could not
help thinking that many ladies would buy corsets from him or anything else
whether they wanted them or not, because of his charming boyish manner
and his good looks. He asked me to go to Ste. Anne de Beaupré with him.
He said that he supposed that I was not a Catholic, but that did not matter.
He wished to go to the good Ste. Anne, and it would be a good thing to go.
He had been several times before, but he had not been for several years. He
could easily take the afternoon off, and first of all we would go by the
electric train to the good Ste. Anne, and then on the way back we would
step off at the Falls station, and see the Montmorency Falls, and also the
Zoo that is there. It would be great fun to see the Zoo. He had not seen the
Zoo for several years, and the animals would be very interesting.

So we took an afternoon electric train. There are electric trains for

pilgrims, of whom a hundred thousand at least are said to visit the shrine
yearly, and there are also electric trains for tourists. We took a tourist train,
and having secured one of the little handbooks supplied by the electric
company, had the gratification of knowing that even if the car was pretty
full it was, so the company claimed, run at a greater rate of speed than any
other electric service.

At times in Canada I found myself getting very slack in attempting

descriptions of things simply because some company that had rights of
transport over the particular district had, so to speak, thrust into my hand
some pamphlet in which all the description was done for me. Thus it was in
the case of the district line between Quebec and Ste. Anne de Beaupré. 'It is
difficult,' I read in the electric company's handbook which we had secured,
'to describe in words the dainty beauty of the scenery along this route.'

'That is a nuisance,' I said to my companion, 'because words are the only

things I could describe it in.'

'It is much better to smoke,' said he.

So we smoked; and now I tell you straight out of that illogical pamphlet,
that 'The route from Quebec to Ste. Anne may be compared to a splendid
panorama. There are shady woodlands and green pastures, undulating hills
and sparkling rivers, whose banks are lined with pretty villages, the tinned
spires of the parish churches rising above the rest of the houses, sparkling in
the sun.' There, a little ungrammatically, you have the scene 'to which,' adds
my pamphlet, 'the Falls of Montmorency river add a touch of grandeur.' Ste.
Anne de Beaupré itself is twenty-one miles from Quebec. We went straight
from the station into the church, where the first thing to catch the eye are
the votive offerings and particularly the crutches, walking-sticks, and other
appliances left there by pilgrims who, having been cured of their infirmities
by miracle, had no further use for these material aids. It is difficult to
arrange such things in any way that can be called artistic, and since the
general effect is nothing but ugly it might be wise for the church officials
also to dispense with such material aids to faith. Apart from these the most
striking object is the miraculous statue. It stands on a pedestal ten feet high
and twelve feet from the communion rails. The pedestal was the gift of a
New York lady, the statue itself was presented by a Belgian family. At the
foot of it many people were kneeling. A mass was being said and the church
was very full, and every time a petitioner got up from his knees from the
feet of the statue another moved down the aisle and took his or her place. I
suppose we were in the church fully half an hour before my companion
found an opportunity to go and kneel at the feet of the good Ste. Anne, and
having watched him there, I got up from my place and went out into the
village. It was rather a depressing village, full of small hotels and
restaurants and shops stocked with miraculous souvenirs. I suppose more
rubbish is sold in this line than in any other. After inspecting a variety of it,
I bought a bottle of cider and a local cigar and sat on a fence smoking until
my friend reappeared. He came out most subdued and grave—not in the
least the boisterous person who had gone in—and said we would now go
back. As we had to wait half an hour for a returning train, I suggested that
we should go and have some more cider, but he said no, he would rather
drink from the holy spring. 'Although this water,' said my pamphlet, 'has
always been known to be there, it is only within the last thirty or thirty-five
years that the pilgrims began to make a pious use of it. What particular
occasion gave rise to this confidence, or when this practice first spread
among the people, cannot be positively asserted. However it may be, it is
undeniable that faith in the water from the fountain has become general, and
the use of it, from motives of devotion, often produces effects of a
marvellous nature.' Unfortunately, the fountain was not working, owing, I
expect, to the water having got low in the dry weather, and my friend had to
go without his drink. He said, however, that it did not matter, and remained
in a grave, aloof state all the way back in the train as far as the Falls station,
and indeed till we got to the Zoo in the Kent house grounds. There, the
exertion of trying to get the beavers to cease working and come out and
show themselves to me—an exertion finally crowned with success, for the
fat, furry, silent creatures came out and sat on a log for us—livened him up
a bit. But he fell into a muse again in front of the cage containing the timber
wolf, and remained there so long that I was almost overcome by the smell
of this ferocious animal. I got him away at last, and I do not think he spoke
after that until we got to Quebec and were walking from the station to our
inn.

'I have made a vow,' he then said suddenly.

'What sort of vow?' I inquired.

'I made it this afternoon,' he said, 'to the good Ste. Anne—never any
more to drink whisky.'

'It's not a bad vow to have made,' I said.

'No,' he said seriously, 'whisky is very terrible stuff. I shall never drink it
again. When I drink it it goes very quickly to my head. Soon I am tight.
That will not do.'

'Much better not to drink it certainly,' I agreed.

'Yes,' he continued vehemently. 'I am married. You did not guess that
perhaps? Also it is only recently that I have gone "on the road." If the
company I work for hears that I go about and get tight, I shall at once be
fired. So I shall not drink any more whisky. Never. That is why I made the
vow to the good Ste. Anne.'

We walked in silence the rest of the way to the inn, and I reflected on the
nature of vows. It seemed very possible that a vow like this might easily be
a help to my companion. He was obviously not what is called a strong
character. It is strange how often a charm of manner goes with a weakness
of the will. And commercial travelling—particularly perhaps in Canada—
lays a man open to the temptations of drink. If he went on drinking, it
would probably mean the ruin of the young girl he had married. Only one
has always the feeling that a vow is only a partial aid to keeping upright,
just as a stick is to walking. A man may lean too heavily on either.
Moreover, the making of a vow, while it may strengthen a man temporarily
in one direction tends to leave him unbalanced in other directions. It makes
him feel so strong perhaps in one part of him that he forgets other parts
where he is weak. I rather think that the last part of these somewhat
superficial reflections upon vows occurred to me later in the evening, and
not as we were walking home. We had had supper by that time, and my
companion had drunk a good deal of water during the meal—a beverage, by
the way, which is not particularly safe either here or in any other Canadian
town. At times he had been depressed by it, at times elevated. After we had
smoked together and he had grown more and more restless, he jumped up
and said:

'Let us go out for a walk.'

'Where to?' I asked.

'Oh, up on to the terrace,' he said. 'I tell you,' he went on excitedly,

'where I will take you. There is a special place up there that I know very
well. It is where one meets the girls. We will go there to-night and meet the
girls.'

Really, I could have given a very good exposition of the temptation

offered by vows at that moment when he suggested this Sentimental
Journey.

CHAPTER VII

A HABITANT VILLAGE AND ITS NOTAIRE

'Il trotte bien.'

The second time I made use of this simple compliment I was again being
driven by a French Canadian, and again it was on an extraordinarily bad
road. But the vehicle was a sulky, and the road was a country road—about
halfway between Quebec and Montreal. I had been already two days in the
Habitant country which the ordinary Englishman misses. Tourists in
particular will go through French Canada too fast. Their first stop after
Quebec is Montreal, and the guide-books help them to believe that they
have lost nothing. It may be that they do lose nothing in the way of
spectacular views or big hotels, but on the other hand they have
undoubtedly lost the peaceful charm of many a Laurentian village, and they
have seen nothing at all of the life of the French-Canadian farmer. That is a
pity for the English tourist, because they too, the Habitants, belong to the
Empire, and we ought to know them for what they are apart from their
politics—courteous, solid, essentially prudent folk, often well to do, but
with no disposition to make a show of themselves.

I had spent my two days at the villa of a most hospitable French lady, in
one of the older villages on the St. Lawrence. It was not exactly a beautiful
village—rather ramshackle in fact—but remarkably peaceful, and the great
smooth river running by must give it a perennial charm, such as comes from
having the sea near. I had missed my train going from that village, and had
passed the time by taking lunch at a little inn near the station. It was Friday,
and the landlord gave me pike and eggs for lunch. I had seen my pike and
several others lying in a sandy ditch near, passing a sort of amphibious life
in it, until Friday and a guest should make it necessary for one of them to go
into the frying pan. The landlord came and chatted with me while I had
lunch, and was grieved to find that I was not a Catholic. I was English, but
not Catholic? I said that was so, and he shook his head sorrowfully. But
there were Catholics in England, he asked a little later. I said, Oh yes,
certainly. Many? I said that there must be a good many, but I could not tell
him the exact numbers. Would a tenth of the English at least be Catholics,
he next demanded? I said I thought at least that number, but I left him, I
fear, a disappointed man. He had hoped more from England than that, and
even my strenuous praise of the fried pike did not draw a smile from him.

My compliment about the horse drawing the sulky—to go back to that

drive, obtained a better response. The driver replied in the French tongue:
'Monsieur, he trots very well, particularly in considering that he has the age
of twenty-eight years.'
 I said that this was wonderful, and the driver replied that it was, but that
in French Canada such wonders did happen. He was intensely patriotic, and
this made the drive more interesting. He was all for French-Canadian
things, excepting, I think, the roads, which were indeed nothing but ruts,
some of the ruts being less deep than the others, and being selected
accordingly for the greater convenience of our ancient steed. I liked his
patriotism. It was at once so genuine and so complete. For example, when I
said that I had not seen any Jersey cows on the farms we had passed, the
driver said: 'No. The cow of Jersey is a good cow and gives much milk. But
the Canadian cow is a better cow and gives still more milk.' I was unable to
make out what the prevailing milch-cow was in that part. Canada has, I
believe, begun to swear by the Holstein, but this can hardly as yet be
claimed as the Canadian cow. Still it passed the time very pleasantly to have
my driver so enthusiastic, and of what should a man speak well, if not of his
own country? He articulated his French very slowly and distinctly, so that I
was able to understand him more easily than I should have understood a
European Frenchman. I was surprised at this, because one is usually told
that French Canadians talk so queerly that they are very hard to follow.
Perhaps my obvious inferiority in the language caused those Habitants I met
to adapt themselves to my necessity. I can only say that from a few days'
experience of conversation with all sorts and conditions, I carried away the
impression that French-Canadian was a very clear and easy language. As
for the country, I should call it serene and spacious in aspect rather than
fine. The farmhouses are pleasant enough and comfortable within, but their
immediate surroundings are apt to be untidy. Very seldom of course does
one see a flower garden, and vegetables do not make amends for the lack of
flowers. On the other hand, the tobacco patch that is so frequently to be
seen in the neighbourhood of the small farms is pleasant to look at,
especially for one who thinks much of smoke. There is not much
satisfaction to the eye in the small wired fields, nor would either the
farming or the soil startle an English farmer. I think that the maple woods
are the one thing that he would regard with real envy.

Nevertheless, no one would have denied that it was a really pretty

village, to which my driver brought me at last in the sulky. It was built all
round an old church in a sort of dell, behind which the land rose steeply to a
wood of maples. I had been given an introduction to the curé, and we drove
to his house by the church, only to be told by the sexton (I think it was the
sexton) that Monsieur le Curé had, much to his regret, been called to
Quebec, but had begged that I would go over to the notaire, who would be
pleased to show me everything that was to be seen. We went to the notaire. I
think he was the postmaster too—at any rate he lived in the post office, and
a very kindly old gentleman he was. I do not know one I have liked more on
so short an acquaintance, though he did start by giving me Canadian wine
to drink. It was a sort of port or sherry—or both mixed—and was made, I
think he said, in Montreal. It had the genuine oily taste, but also a smack of
vinegar. That in itself would not have mattered so much, if the notaire had
not said it was best drunk with a little water, and provided me with water
from a saline spring which had its source in his backyard. These saline
springs seem not uncommon in Canada, and must be considered as a
distinct asset. But not mixed with port. Some local tobacco which was very
good, as indeed much of the tobacco grown in Quebec province seems to
be, took the taste away, and after that the notaire proposed that he should
take me out to see one of the huts where they boil down the maple water in
the early spring. He told me that my own horse and driver should rest, and
that we should go on the carriage of Monsieur Blanc which was, it
appeared, already in waiting, together with Monsieur Blanc himself.
Monsieur Blanc was the local miller, and solely for the purpose of showing
the village to a stranger from England he had put himself to all this trouble.
After we had all bowed to one another and exchanged compliments, we
started for the maple wood, and all the way the notaire explained to me the
economy of the village. It appeared that the farms round averaged eighty
acres of arable land, and a man and his son would work one of that size.
Each farmer would also have rights of grazing on pasture land which was
held in common—not to mention his piece of maple wood. All the farmers
belonged to a co-operative farmers' society, which saved much when
purchasing seeds, implements, and so forth. The notaire himself was
secretary of this society. I believe he was also secretary of pretty well
everything that mattered, and might be regarded as the business uncle of the
parish in which the curé was spiritual father. As we drove along, avoiding
roads as much as possible, because the fields were so much more level, he
greeted everybody and everybody greeted him, stopping their field work for
the purpose. Jules left hay-making to show us the shortest cut to the nearest
hut; Antoine fetched the key. It was a tiny wooden shack, the one we
inspected—standing in the middle of the trees—with just room in it for the
heating apparatus and the boilers to boil the maple water in. The cups which
are attached to the trees in the early spring, when the sap begins to run—the
tapping is done high up—hung along the wooden walls. The notaire
explained the whole process to me. In the spring, when all is sleet and slush
and nothing can be done on the farm, the farmer and perhaps his wife come
up into the wood, and tap the trees and boil the water up until the syrup is
formed. It takes them days, very cold days, and they camp out in the hut,
though it hardly seemed possible that there should be room for them. But it
is all very healthy and pleasant, and they drink so much of the syrup, while
they are working, that they usually go back to their farms very 'fat and
salubrious.' So the notaire said, and he also assured me that seven years
before another English visitor who spoke French very badly (he put it much
more politely than that though) had come to the village in the spring, and
slept in one of the huts for days, and helped make the sugar and enjoyed
himself thoroughly. I told the notaire I could quite believe it and wished I
had come in the spring too. I am not sure that I shall not go back in the
spring some day, for the simplicity of the place was fascinating, even
though the railway had come closer, and land had doubled in value, and the
farmers were more scientific than they used to be and made more money,
though even so—as the notaire earnestly declared—they would would
never spend it on show. I remarked that the notaire, even while he was
recounting these modern innovations, such as wealth, was not carried away
by the glory of them as a Westerner would be. He took a simple pride in the
fact that the village marched forward, but he was prouder still that it
remained modest. And when we got back to the post office, he told me that
what he liked best was the simplicity of it all. People used to ask him
sometimes why he who spoke English and Latin and Greek, for he had been
five years at college, qualifying to become a notaire, should be content to
live in such a small out-of-the-way place, instead of setting up in Quebec or
Montreal. They could not understand that to be one's own master, and not to
be rushed hither and thither at the beck of clients, contented him, especially
in a place where the farmers looked upon him as their friend, and he could
play the organ in the village church. He made me understand it very well,
even though his English was rusty (for I think the syrup-making
Englishman had been the last he had talked with), and he had a scholarly
dislike to using any but the right word, and he would sometimes bring up a
dozen wrong ones and reject them, before our united efforts found the only
one that conveyed his precise meaning.

I think I understood, and many times on the way back, seated behind the
twenty-eight year-old horse, I said to myself, that altogether the notaire was
a very fine old gentleman, and if there were many such to be found in the
French Canadian villages, I hoped they would not change too soon. To
make the money circulate—after the fashion of the Toronto drummer—is a
virtue no doubt; but courtesy and simplicity and prudence are also virtues
that not the greatest country that is yet to come will find itself able to
dispense with.

CHAPTER VIII

GLIMPSES OF MONTREAL

Just as a man who knows mountains can in a little time describe the
character of a mountain that is new to him, so a man who knows the
country in general will soon find himself becoming acquainted with new
country. It is not so with cities. Only a long residence in it will reveal the
character of a city. I suppose that is because man is more subtle than nature.
A clay land is always a clay land; it produces the same crops, the same
weeds, the same men. But who will undertake to say what a city on a clay
land produces? Only the man who has long been familiar with the particular
city, and he probably will not even be aware that it stands on clay.

This is preparatory to saying that being a stranger to Montreal, I did not

find out much about it in the few days I was there, and I will not pretend
that I did. It is, I suppose, architecturally, far the most beautiful city in the
Dominion, and indeed in the Western Hemisphere, and for that very reason
appears less strange to European eyes than most other Canadian towns. I
would not suggest that all European towns are architecturally beautiful, or
that Montreal is anything but Canadian inwardly. Superficially it looks like
some fine French town. It also smells French.

'But them thereon didst only breathe

And sentst it back to me,
Since when it blows and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee.'

Thus England might address France on the subject of Montreal, though

indeed France did more than breathe on Montreal. I would not be taken to
suggest that the smell is a malodorous one—merely French. You get just
that smell in summer in any French town from Rouen to Marseilles, and it
is probably due to nothing but the sun being at the right temperature to
bring out the mingled scent of omelettes and road grit, cigarettes, apéritifs,
and washing in sufficient strength to attract the sensitive British nose. As
for Montreal's French appearance—the city is by all accounts strictly
divided into a French East-end and an English West-end, St. Laurent being
the dividing line. But when I passed west of St. Laurent, and hundreds of
French men and French women and French children continued to file past
me, and I asked my way many times in English and was not understood, I
began to doubt the reality of that dividing line. It seems a pity that there
should be one, but there is of course, and it runs through Canada as well as
Montreal. Race and religion and language combine to keep that line marked
out, and it only becomes faint in business quarters.

The time has gone by for great commercial undertakings to be conducted

by means of gesticulations or by the aid of an interpreter. Master and man
must speak the same language, at any rate outwardly. Therefore all clerks
learn English, which is also American; and I take it that statistics, if they
were kept, would show many more French Canadians speaking English
every year—whatever they may be thinking.

So commerce, long the butt of moralists, takes its part among the moral
influences of the world. Already writers like Mr. Angell have begun to
assure us that it alone—by reason of its enormous and far-reaching interests
—can keep international war at a distance: here is an example of how it
increases peace within a nation. In the end, perhaps, Mammon himself may
appear, purged of his grossness upon the canonical list—St. Mammon!
 Montreal has, so I am told, sixty-four millionaires—real, not dollar
millionaires; self-made, not descended millionaires; strenuous, not idle
millionaires. Most of them live in Sherbrooke Street, or near it, on the way
up to the Mountain. It is a fine wide road with an extraordinary variety of
houses in it. You cannot point to any one house and say this is the sort of
house a millionaire builds, for the next one is quite different, and so is the
next and the next. It is natural that Canadians should be more original in
their house-building than our millionaires. They are more original men
altogether. They have made their money in a more original way, and when
they have made it, they have to think out original methods of spending it—
unlike ours, who find the etiquette of it all ready made for them, and a
practised set of people who want nothing more than to be able to help
millionaires scatter their money in the only correct and fashionable way.
You have to think everything out for yourself in Canada, even to the
spending of your money. That is, if you have the money in large quantities.
For the ordinary person the inherent slipperiness of the dollar suffices, and
he will find that it will circulate itself without his worrying. The diversity of
house-building, such as may be found in Sherbrooke Street, should give
encouragement to Canadian architects, but does, as a matter of fact, let in
the American architects as well. I could not feel that they had altogether
succeeded in this street—certainly not half so well as they have succeeded
in some of the business buildings, especially the interior of the Bank of
Montreal—but that is not surprising. Architects must have their motives,
and the reasons that went to the building of some of the stately private
houses of Europe have ceased to exist now. The most that a man can
demand from his house—certainly in Canada—is that it shall be luxurious.
Nobody is going to keep retainers there. The three hundred servants even
that went to make up the household of an Elizabethan nobleman could not
be had in Canada either for love or money. Those three hundred serve in the
bank or the shops—not in the houses—and it is there that the big man
works also. Slowly we come to the right proportions of things; nor am I
suggesting that the private houses of the Canadian millionaires are in the
least lacking in size. They are as large as they need be, if not larger; and
where they did not altogether succeed was, I thought, in the attempt made
with some of them to achieve importance by rococo effects. The road itself,
curiously enough, was rather bad and rutty; I began to think, seeing it, that
there is some strange influence at work in French Canada which prevents a
road from ever being first-rate. It may be that since roads there are only
needed in summer, for a half year instead of a whole one, the care and
affection we lavish upon them is not necessary. The good snow comes and
turns Sherbrooke Street into a sleigh-bearing thoroughfare only comparable
with those of St. Petersburg. The ruts are drifted up and vanish—why
bother about them? It is a good enough explanation. If another is needed, it
may be that there is money to be made—by those in charge of the keeping
up of the roads—by the simple method of not keeping them up.

Montreal has slums as well as Sherbrooke Street, which seems to show

that sixty-four millionaires are no real guarantee of a city's perfectness. I
heard about those slums from the editor of one of Montreal's leading
newspapers. The subject arose out of a question I put him as to whether he
could tell me the difference between Conservatives and Liberals in Canada.
Some people maintain that the difference even in England is so slight as to
be unreal. To a Canadian who is not much of a politician (but is, of course,
either a Liberal or a Conservative), the question amounts to being a catch
question. He has to think for a long time before he answers. This editor,
who was a Liberal, took it quite coolly.

'Oh,' he said, 'Liberals here are very much like Liberals in the old
country; we stand for Social Reform and the interests of the People.'

Then he told me about the slums in Montreal. But for these I should have
felt doubtful about the parallel, even though it was drawn by so eminent an
authority as the editor of a newspaper. For, naturally, at present in most
parts of Canada there is no People (with our own English capital P) to stand
for, just as there are no peers and no Constitution. Where there are slums,
there may be a People to be represented. The more is the pity that there
should be slums. Why does Montreal possess them? Largely, I suppose, for
the reason that any very great city possesses them. There are landlords who
can make money out of them, there are people so poor that they will live in
them; and their poverty is accounted for by the fact that cities draw the
destitute as the moon the tides. It seems against reason that Canada, capable
of absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants, calling for them to be
absorbed, so long as they are able men, should have any destitute to be
drawn to the cities; but it has to be remembered that no immigration laws
can really prevent a percentage of incapables arriving. They may not be
incapables as such, but they are incapables on the land, which is indeed in
Canada endlessly absorbent, but absorbent only of those who have in them
in some way the land-spirit. To expect the land to take on hordes of the city-
bred without ever failing is to dream. It would be easier for the sea to
swallow men clothed in cork jackets. Some are bound to be rejected, and
they turn to the cities. But the cities of a New World cannot absorb
indefinite numbers of men; London or Glasgow cannot. The work is not
there for them—not for all of them.

The Canadian winter also has to be remembered as a factor driving men

to cities like Montreal. Even good men on the land cannot always during
the winter obtain work on the farms; or think that the little they can make
there is not worth while. So they, too, make for the cities, not always to
their own improving. This problem of the Canadian winter is one that has
still to be reckoned with, and no doubt the Canadians will solve it in due
course—perhaps by some extension of the Russian methods whereby the
peasant of the summer becomes the handicraftsman of the winter. It is not
the winter itself that is at fault in Canada, as used to be thought; it is the
method of dealing with it. The Canadian may not mind the hard, cold
months—may even boast of them, but he cannot ignore them. And the
solution of the winter problem seems to be that though Canada is marked
out as an agricultural country, it must also equally become a manufacturing
one, so that men—who cannot hibernate like dormice—may be able to
work the year through. The whitest nation is that nation whose leisure is got
by choice not by compulsion.

There must be local reasons, too, for Montreal slums, but these a visitor
is not happy in describing. Municipal mismanagement is unfortunately not
exclusive to Europe; and my editor gave me examples of it in Montreal
which were impressive without being novel.

He also pointed out that there were forty thousand Jews in Montreal, as
though that might have something to do with her slums. Others point out
that the Catholic Church, which believes that the poor must be always with
us, is supreme in Montreal; poverty and the faith, they say, go always
together. I think it is truest to argue that, while all these things are in their
degree contributory, it is not fair to fix on any one of them as the chief
cause of the ill. One thing is certain. Montreal's slums are not typical of
Canada, but of a great city. No great city has as yet found itself completely,
and the greater it is, the less soluble are its problems of poverty. It may be
that they can be resolved only by the great cities ceasing to exist in the form
we know them.

Meanwhile it looks as though the welfare of employees is not being

neglected by the leading directors of industry. Take, for example, the Angus
Shops, which are larger than any other engineering shops in the world. Here
are built these huge houses of cranks and pistons, the railway engines of the
Canadian Pacific, that hustle one from end to end of the Dominion; here
also are turned out all else that appertains to the biggest railway company in
existence. In these shops a system has been introduced which might be
called a Bourneville system, only Canadianised. The management refers to
it as Welfare Work, and it consists mainly in certain methods whereby the
men can obtain good food—while they are working—at low prices,
apprentices are helped to an education, the cost of 'holiday homes' is
defrayed, and so on. Very sensibly the management admits the system to be
a part of a business plan, which it finds remunerative. The idea that
beneficence plays a leading part in it is almost scouted; indeed it would not
be easy to persuade Canadian working-men that their bosses were doing
things from charity. I went over the shops, and found them built on a vast
and airy scale. Not being an engineering sort of person, I usually feel, when
I invade a machinery place, like some unfortunate beetle that has strayed
into a beehive, and may at any moment be attacked by the busy and
alarming creatures that are buzzing about there. As I watched the huge
engines, swung like bags of feathers from the roof, some black demon
would heave showers of sparks at me, and when I started back, another
would come raiding out with red-hot tongs. I admired respectfully. But I am
one of those who can enjoy my honey just as much without knowing just
how it was made. Still, here was a big bit of Montreal, and what miles of
French houses with green shutters one drove past to get to it!

It would be absurd to suggest that poverty or slums are conspicuous

things in Montreal. The average tourist will see none of them, but only
many beautiful things—from the Bank of Montreal to the Cathedral, from
the Lachine Rapids to the Mountain. I will not describe shooting the
Rapids, it has been so often done. I wish I could describe the view from the
Mountain. It is the most beautiful view of a city that can be seen. Marseilles
from her hill is beautiful, so is Paris from Champigny. From neither of
these, nor from any hill that I know of, is there so complete a view of so fair
a city. The Mountain is wooded, and through the arches of the trees you
gain a score of changing outlooks; but from the edge you see all Montreal—
houses and streets and spires, each roof and gate, each chimney and
window—so it seems. And beyond, the great river, and beyond, and on
every side—Canada. If there were a mountain above Oxford, something
like this might be seen.

It was up this wooded steep to Fletcher's field, where an altar had been
set up, that the great Eucharistic procession of 1910 wound its way. I was in
Montreal just before this event, for which the Montrealers had spent months
preparing, and I realised a little why Montreal hopes some day to be the
New Rome. The whole city was in a fervour of enthusiasm. A society had
been formed for the special purpose of growing flowers to line the way
along which the Cardinal-legate would walk, and gifts of money for the
same purpose had been received from every part of Canada. The papers, of
course, were full of every detail about Church dignitaries arriving or about
to arrive. Nor were the shops behindhand. 'Eucharistic Congress! House
decoration at moderate prices' was everywhere placarded; and papal flags
and papal arms were to be had cheap. There were Congress sales, too, and
you could buy Congress 'creations' from the dressmakers, Congress hats
from the milliners, Congress boots from the bootmakers.

On the day that Cardinal Vannutelli arrived, in a dismal and violent

downpour of rain, all Montreal in macintoshes was to be seen dashing for
the Bonsecours wharf to offer its respectful greetings to the papal legate.

Will the Montrealers' dream of providing the New Rome ever be

achieved? Who can say? Rome, though Italians may become subversive of
the faith, will perhaps stand for ever. If it ceased, as the centre of the
Catholic faith, Montreal might certainly claim to take its place. It is already
the centre of French-Canadian Catholicism; it might become the religious
centre of Canada. There is no certainty that Catholicism will persist in
Canada only among the French Canadians. It seems equally possible that
Rome will prevail among non-French Canadians. Both in Canada and the
States her strides forward have been enormous—comparable perhaps only
to the steps taken in other directions by Free Thought in Europe. Is it that
Catholicism makes peculiar appeal in a new country, or that in these new
countries the propagation of the faith has been great and unceasing? These
are debatable questions (though undebatable, I think, is the statement that in
the New World Rome has a marvellous history of things attempted
splendidly and achieved without reproach). I will not debate, then, but
rather return to the Mountain and ask you to picture the great Eucharistic
procession moving slowly up to it—up to the altar built there in the open,
under the high and clear Canadian skies—all the inhabitants of a mighty
city moving with it, till the city itself is left behind and all that is low and
earthly left for the moment with it. Then you will have in your mind one
picture of Montreal at least not unworthy of it. It will be a picture of
Montreal at its best and highest—a city of the faithful—near to their
Mountain.

CHAPTER IX

TORONTO, NIAGARA FALLS, AND A NEGRO

PORTER

From Montreal to Toronto is a pleasant run through a southern part of

Canada. One passes orchards and woods and Smith's Falls, where bricks are
made, and Peterborough, which has the largest hydraulic lift-lock in the
world. The Union railway station at Toronto, when I got there, was a
seething mass of people and baggage, with an occasional railway official
hidden in the vortex. I spent an hour trying to put a bag into the parcel-
room, and after that gave up trying. Canadians are singularly patient in
matters of this kind. Laden with heavy bags, they will collect in crowds
outside the small window of a parcel-room, and burdened thus will wait
there for hours without a murmur, while the youth inside lounges about at
his leisure. My temper has frequently been stretched to the limit in
Germany when I have had to wait perhaps ten minutes for a penny stamp
while the Prussian postal official behind the glass slit curled his moustaches
in imitation of the Kaiser. I think the methods at that parcel-room in Toronto
were even more trying. I will admit that it was Labour Day, and that
Toronto was also in the throes of the World's Fair. But in a city of that size
one would expect some preparation to be made for forthcoming throes. The
truth seems to be that throughout Canada important events, attracting
immense crowds, are brought off without any extra provision being made.
Montreal managed to contain its Congress hordes pretty well, but Toronto
during the World's Fair had a general air about it of sleeping six in a bed, if
it slept at all. I kept coming across the same sort of thing at other places.
Calgary, I remember, looked for the few days I was there like the Old Kent
Road on a Saturday night, so crowded was it with people who had come in
to witness the return to its native heath of a victorious football team. Regina
was overrun with the Canadian bankers who, in massive formation, were
touring the North-West. In one or two small places in the Rockies enormous
trainloads of Canada's leading merchants, who were inspecting British
Columbia with an eye to its future, were deposited for a day in passing, and
caused as much confusion as the canoe-loads of savages must have done
when they descended on Robinson Crusoe's island.

Labour Day is in the New World very different from what it is with us.
In Canada, if you like, you may for three hundred and sixty-four days
labour and do all that you have to do, but the three hundred and sixty-fifth
is Labour Day, and no manner of work—except transportation—may be
done that day. Transport work is necessary, because by way of observing
Labour Day it is the thing to go somewhere in great multitudes, preferably
by rail, and pursue the sort of pleasure that is only to be obtained by those
who seek it multitudinously.

Toronto was on this occasion a chosen spot for people to rollick in. This,
added to the fact that the World's Fair was also in progress, prevented me
from being able to get a room for the night, though I applied at five
different hotels. At the sixth, which was full of excited commercial
travellers, I was granted a bed on a top landing. I did not mind so much
because I was seeing Toronto in a lively state. Ordinarily, I imagine,
Toronto is the least bit too decorous, not devoid of cheerfulness, but not
joyous either. There is nothing Parisian about Toronto, you would say. This
stands to reason, because if there is any Parisian air in Canada at all it
belongs to Montreal, and Toronto would be the last place to imitate
Montreal in any manner. The extraordinary rivalry that exists between the
great East Canadian cities never leads to imitation. On the plains it is
different. Winnipeg is the great model for all the little towns on the plains.
But while Quebec resents the idea that Montreal is a much more important
city than itself, and Montreal regrets that the seat of Government should be
at so small a place as Ottawa, and Toronto considers Montreal ill-balanced
in spite of its wealth, each of them would only consent to expand its own
real superiority along its own particular lines and in its own particular
manner.

Still on Labour Night Toronto was quite gay. It did not look like the
Boston of Canada at all, though it has substantial grounds, I read
somewhere, for making this claim. I could realise that it was entitled to
make this claim if it wanted to. If one shut one's eyes to the crowds, one
could feel an air of brisk sobriety permeating it; and everything that one
reads about it goes to show that a brisk sobriety is what it aims at. It keeps
the Sabbath, for example, most strictly, though it hustles or almost hustles
the rest of the week. I should guess Toronto places briskness next to
godliness, not a very bad second either. Its industries and its opulence are
too well known to be worth detailing here. What struck me as most
interesting about Toronto was that it seemed to represent more than any
other place in Canada what we mean in England when we talk of
Canadians. We do not mean the French Canadians of Quebec Province, nor
the American Canadians and English public-school boys who are to be
found in such numbers in Alberta and the plains. The sort of people we are
thinking of are people who have been born in Canada, who have even spent
generations there, but are, nevertheless, British by descent and British in
tongue. There are people of this sort in other parts of Canada. The
inhabitants of the Maritime Provinces are such, in spite of the fact that Mr.
Bourassa has claimed that within fifteen years they will have become
French in language and Roman Catholic in faith. Mr. Bourassa has made
the same claim, to be sure, with regard to the inhabitants of Ontario. In the
meantime, it would be truer to describe the inhabitants of Ontario as
Canadians in the English sense. And Toronto is their capital. It is, of course,
the home of the United Empire Loyalists who settled here when the States
broke away from our rule. The temper that made any rule but England's and
any liberty that was not English liberty unendurable still remains, and I
think Mr. Bourassa will have his work cut out to Gallicise them. Still even
the sternest traditions of loyalty do not prevent—nay, even encourage—a
certain change in the character of a people.

It is probable that Ontarians are less English now than they were, just as
Quebeckers are less French. Which have the right to be held more
essentially Canadian may be questioned, but I repeat that when we in
England talk of Canadians we have in mind a type of men to which the
Ontarians correspond more than any others. It would be absurd, no doubt, to
look for the English type in a metropolis like London, and perhaps it is
absurd to look for the Ontarian type in a metropolis like Toronto. But it is
less absurd, I think, and anyhow I did look for it there. What did I find?
Well, I hope elsewhere to go cautiously and delicately into this matter of
what a typical Canadian is like. Here I will only say that if you can imagine
a Lowland Scot, cautious and self-possessed, outwardly resisting American
exuberance and extravagance, but inwardly by slow degrees absorbing—
and thereby moderating—that hustling spirit of which these things are
manifestations, you have something not unlike the Canadian of Toronto.
Remember that Toronto is the southern gateway of Canada. It fronts on the
States. It deals with the States. Between it and the States there is constant
intercourse. It pursues the same industries, following in many cases the
same methods. Many American managers of men are to be found in
Toronto. It is not unnatural that some of the American spirit should dwell
there also, and even tend to breed there.

Now for the Fair. Fairing is a pretty old thing, and I have done a good
deal of it, but fairing at Toronto struck me as being somehow new. I do not
mean in the way of the exhibits one saw. They were nothing out of the way
to any one who has seen the more famous exhibitions of the Old World, and
the arrangements struck me as poor. The grounds by the lake are fairly
extensive, but the buildings are second-rate. I thought when I saw the fruit
exhibit in one of them that the whole display was little better than at a little
English village flower show. But the keenness of the crowd visiting the
ground! There was the novelty. They did not glimpse at things in our blasé
European way, and then sink into seats to listen to the band. They did listen
to the band, but that was because the band was part of the show; and they
wanted to do the show, every inch of it. Whole families camped for the day
on the grounds. They brought meals with them in paper bags and boxes to
fortify themselves lest they should drop before they had seen everything.
Not that there was any lack of smartness either. The ladies had on their best
hats and frocks, and the Canadian best in these respects is very fine. But
one did not suspect them, as one would have suspected ladies at the White
City or the Brussels Exhibition, of being there merely to show themselves
off. Their frocks were in honour of the Fair. The Fair was the thing. It was a
scene of the greatest enthusiasm under a tolerably hot sun. I had been asked
to note if any English firms had taken the trouble to exhibit, and I am bound
to say that I saw very few. It seems a pity when one considers the sort of
people who visit the Fair—not merely a crowd amusing itself for an hour or
two with glancing at the exhibits, but a crowd trying to find out what there
was to buy—a crowd with dollars in its pockets and plenty of dollars in its
banks. I dare say there are difficulties in the way. There was not, for
example, indefinite room for more exhibits, nor are Canadian
manufacturers, with rumours of reduced tariffs going about, to be presumed
eager to encourage competitors. Still, it seemed a pity.

I clove my way to bed that night on the top landing through a horde of
keen commercial travellers joyfully discussing all the business the
exhibition would bring them. Next day I went to Niagara, by steamer,
across the great lake. Toronto owes at least half its greatness to the Falls,
and there should be, but I do not think there is, a really big monument to
their discoverer, Father Louis Hennepin. Very likely, though, the discovery
of Niagara was its own reward, especially for so inquisitive a man as that
friar. He has himself confessed how, in the old days, when he was only a
begging friar, sent by the Superior of his Order to beg for alms at the
seaport of Calais, he used, in his curiosity, to hide himself behind tavern
doors and listen to the sailors within telling of their voyages, while their
tobacco smoke was wafted out and made him 'very sick at the stomach.' In
the end he was the first white man to see the Falls, in the winter of 1687....
 They were framed in a most gorgeous sunset when I saw them on an
August day. The green and white foam swooped from a mountain of clouds
all grey and gold—clouds piled fantastically into the furthest sky. No one
seeing them in such a light could be disappointed with them, but I would
forbid any more writers to write about them. Every man should be his own
poet where the greater sights of the world are concerned. On second
thoughts it is permissible to read Mr. Howells on the subject, and even
Dickens, provided one is never likely to see them with one's own eyes. I
saw the Falls at sunset, by starlight, and in the sunrise, and I can commend
them at all these times. The river that drowned Captain Webb and was
crossed by Blondin on the tight-rope, though extraordinary in its way,
seemed to me comparatively unbeautiful and uninteresting. Any big sea on
the Atlantic or Pacific is a finer sight and grips a man harder. I like a river
quiet myself. Moreover, the villas above Niagara River give the landscape a
domestic air in which its mad swirl seems only like an attempt to show off
malignantly.

One of my pleasantest recollections of Niagara is a conversation I had

with the porter at the hotel where I stopped on the Canadian side. He was an
American negro, extremely urbane and chatty. He told me that he guessed I
was an Englishman. It was pretty easy, he said, to tell that. I did not feel
sure whether to feel flattered or not, but I felt sure later, when he introduced
me to the lift-boy—a typical little stunted anæmic street arab from one of
our northern cities—with a wave of the hand and the remark, 'Thar's one of
your fellow-countrymen.' Afterwards, in self-defence, I steered the
conversation towards Canada, and the porter, who regarded himself as an
American citizen only, told me that the Canadians were a slow, stupid
people, who could not be trusted of themselves to do anything but cultivate
a little land badly.

'Look at Toronto,' he said; 'do you think there'd be any hustle in that
place if the Canadians had been left to themselves? No, sah. But we came
along and lent them our brains and our enterprise, and I guess now it's a big
fine city.'