USQUE AD MARE
A History of the Canadian Coast Guard and Marine Services
by Thomas E. Appleton

The Old Provinces

Looking back on nineteenth century progress from the plateau of our century, shaded too much perhaps by nuclear foreboding and national introspectiveness, it is tempting to think that life in the old days flowed evenly in a spirit of compassionate optimism, and that the foundations of industrial Canada were laid, except for the ripples of early wars, in the placid reaches of history. To those living at the time, this was not the case. One observer, Richard John Uniacke, the Solicitor General of Nova Scotia, prefaced the statutes of his province in 1805 with a phrase which might have been applied on many subsequent occasions:

"it has been our lot to see these venerable principles which our forefathers considered fixed as firmly as the pillars of the earth, shaken to their basis, and the fundamental rules of human happiness scoffed at and ridiculed . . . To give the name of Revolution to the events which have sprung from these novel doctrines, would be applying a term too feeble to comprehend."

He was referring to the train of events set off by the French Revolution which, remote as it was from affairs in Canada, had already changed the face of Europe and was to set the stage for the westwards exodus which characterized the main stream of nineteenth century development and brought people and industry to the woods and cities of North America. In the world of shipping, as elsewhere, the century would bring profound change, and revolution might well have been too feeble a word, for the changes were to be many and basic.