The Sarnia Observer and Western Advertiser
February 9,1854
Annexation of Canada
The finest portion of the British Provinces in North America is the
Peninsula lying west and south Of Lake Ontario, and between the
Niagara and Detroit River. It is projected into our territory like a
bastion, separating the States of New York and Michigan, and lying
across the most direct line of communication between ports which
receive the great mass of European emigration and the fields of the
Northwest which they come to cultivate. It has been heretofore
isolated by the want of harbors on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie,
and on the interior routes.
On the 17th inst., the completion of the railroad running
through this terriotory from the Suspension Bridge at Niagra Falls to
Detroit was celebrated at the latter city, and but a few days before
the opening of the branch railroad intersecting the main line at
Brantford and connecting it with Buffalo, was the occasion of similar
festivities. The course of travel henceforth, from Detroit to
seaboard, will be over the Canada Road, across the Suspension bridge,
and the Niagara branch of the Central Railroad to Rochester and thence
to Eastern cities, and the stream of emigration will pursue the same
route in the opposite direction. Canada West is thus annexed by iron
bands to our Union, and is to be the highway for hundreds of thousands
of our citizens every year on their journeys to and from their Western
homes.
Beating swords into plow shares was a striking and forcible
figure in its day, but compare it with the fact stated in an extract
from a Western paper to the effect that ” Bennett Marshall & Co., of
Pittsburg, have bought a large quantity of large iron cannons in
Canada which they will convert into railroad iron. The cannon were
used against the United States through out the war in 1812, and it is
said made havoc among our troops at Malden and Lundy’s Lane ” Ponder
the signifiance of this fact, and then consider how long it is likely
to be, after the boundry between them is but a scratch on a rail on
the Suspension Bridge over the Niagara River; across which trains
freighted with citizens of both Governments shall cross a dozen times
a day, before the people of the two countries will take security that
the rails will never be converted into cannon, by obliterating the
political divisions and taking down the two flags that now float at
opposite ends of the bridge to replace them by another with an extra
star on its field. The precise occasion and the mode in which this
consummation will be reached are not now apparent, but it is none the
less certain because neither party is at present disposed to take any
steps in order to hasten it.
At the Brantford celebration Mr. Wadsworth of Buffalo referred
to the fact that wheat which obtained the premium at the World’s
Exhibition was grown in that town while the line of that road is yet
skirted by forests covering land capable of growing such wheat. These
circumstances will be apt to attract Yankee settlers throughout this
portion of the peninsula adjoining the new avenues to market, and
every one of the them will find fresh arguments for a political union,
with his mother country. It is unnecessary to refer to the obvious
considerations showing that these Railroads are potent agents of
annexation. If things are well let alone it will come soon enough. -
N.Y. Tribune February 9, 1854