In a speech at Montreal on Thursday Lord Grey, the
Governor-General of Canada, announced a subscription of a hundred guineas from the King, and set forth a scheme for the celebration of the three-hundredth birthday of Canada by the erection of a colossal statue of the Angel of Peace on the Point of Quebec. The monument, typifying the reconciliation between the French and British races in Canada, would greet immigrants as they sailed up the St. Lawrence to their new home. Lord Grey, in one of those !speeches in which he so happily combines the dignity required by his great position with the enthusiasm and vigour appropriate to the young nation over whose destinies he presides, added a further suggestion that the battlefields just outside Quebec, famous for so many gallant actions, should be laid out as a kind of national park. This would embrace not only the Heights of Abraham, where Montcalm and Wolfe fought and fell, but also the battlefield of Ste. Foy, where the French in 1760 defeated General Murray after a desperate and bloody battle, an action which would in all probability have led to the recapture of Quebec if the British fleet had not arrived in the nick of time. Subscriptions from the public will be required to supplement the money voted by the Federal and provincial appropriations, said Lord Grey. May we be allowed to add the confident hope that the King's example will be largely followed in this country, and indeed throughout the Empire ? The project is a truly Imperial one, and Canada must be asked to allow the whole of the Empire to share with her the honour of commemorating Wolfe, Montcalm, and their gallant followers.
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