2110-19-1-4

[Lord Tweedsmuir on Arriving in Canada]

In reply to an address from the Prime Minister of Canada.

Mr. Prime Minister, I would offer you my warmest thanks for the cordial words of welcome you have spoken. I recognise that the welcome is given to me as the personal representative of our beloved King, and it will be my duty and my pleasure to convey to His Majesty your expression of devotion to his Person and his Throne. In this year of Silver Jubilee the Empire has recognised more than ever before the supreme value of that great Office which is its principal bond of union, and the supreme qualities of Him who now fills it. I am proud to be chosen in this year of years, by the advice of His Majesty's Canadian Ministers, to represent such a King in such a Dominion.

You have welcomed not only His Majesty's representative, but my wife and myself, in words so kind that I find it hard to make adequate reply. We are looking forward to five years of duties, and also of happiness. For we have come to a land which we already know and love, a land in which we have many friends, among whom, Mr. Prime Minister, one of the oldest and most valued is yourself. By virtue of Canada's adoption we can now proudly call ourselves Canadians.

A Governor-General, coming from Britain to this Dominion, brings a message from one part of the Empire to another. Mine is a message of admiration and confidence, admiration for what the people of Canada have done, and confidence in what they will still do.

The Empire in all its parts has come nobly out of the recent testing years. We have been ready for discipline and

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sacrifice, and in a time of confusion we have kept our heads. I have left behind me in the Old World an atmosphere of strain and turmoil, an anxious and critical situation for all men of peace and goodwill. Of these dangers, here in Canada, you cannot be insensible, both as a part of the British Empire and as a great world State, for today all the peoples of the earth are intimately bound together. Yet, crossing the Atlantic, I feel that I have entered into a calmer world. But it is still a difficult world. When I left England it was in a gale, and the stormy weather did not cease until we were close on the Canadian shores. There the wind fell but it was replaced by a certain amount of fog. Perhaps that is a parable of our situation today. Canada is out of the hurricane area, but the visibility is still not good, and the future is a little misty. She has still before her intricate and incalculable problems which, in their settlement, will need all her sagacity and resolution. But far greater than any difficulties that may confront her are her possibilities and powers. She has immense assets and of these the chief, now as ever, is the spirit of her people.

Mr. Prime Minister, it will be my duty to watch at close quarters, with profound interest and sympathy, the steps of this country's advance to security and prosperity and that leading position among the nations which is her due. I shall be proud indeed if, at the end of my sojourn here, I can think that I have contributed my mite of effort to the fulfilment of Canada's destiny.