Landmarks of Canada

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Excerpt from Landmarks of Canada: What Art Has Done for Canadian History In a young country, where the struggle for existence seems to be only too soon followed by the struggle for the mighty dollar, we are but little concerned with history. History is supposed to be the work of the teachers, the professors in the universities, the antiquarians and archivists. And yet, how are we to understand ourselves and our position as a nation unless there are preserved the evidences of our growth and of the struggles of our fathers to the end that a strong nation might be established? And these evidences of struggle and growth, so eagerly sought after and so carefully preserved by the older nations of the world, are not revealed in books, but in reproductions of scenes of the times. These prints tell a story, by the side of which the printed word is cold and dead, and to see the faces of the men who accomplished great things for our country, and to see the pictures of the houses in which they lived and worked, and of the villages and towns as they were in those times, gives us a thrill of "ancestor worship" which a discovery in Debrett could never produce. The Dominion Government has recognized the necessity for the conservation and preservation of historical documents by the establishment of the Archives Department, which is doing a work too little recognized. This is a great storehouse of national history, but it has the disadvantages of a storehouse in that its treasures cannot be accessible to all. Here and there in our country are persons who collect this historical material as an avocation or hobby, and among these stands pre-eminently Mr. J. Ross Robertson, whose interest in this intellectual pleasure is known to collectors the world over. Mr. Robertson believed that the value of such material lay, not in the hoarding of it, the mere possession of it, but in allowing all those who had similar interests to share in the pleasure of looking at and enjoying these illustrations of the age that has gone. The value in money expended on this collection is very considerable, as those know who are in the market for such illustrations as are treasured in this collection. These are exceedingly hard to obtain, and there are at least one hundred important exhibits in this collection which have not been on the London market in complete form for over twenty years, and dealers do not know where to look for them. The collection is impressive even to the man who thinks in dollars, it is interesting to those who find in it scenes and persons familiar to them and recalling the early days of Canada, it is illuminating to the student of our history, but, above all, it is the national character of the collection that awakens the deepest emotions - that here is the history of a young nation, the background of men and events which have brought us to this critical period in the world's history, and have made us active participators in the solution of a great world problem and crisis. To the boy and girl at school, to the young man and woman at college, whose knowledge of Canadian history is but an acquaintance with the dry details of a text-book, to the elderly man and woman, who can remember some of the people and some of the scenes depicted, and even to the people from other lands who have adopted this country as their home, and wish to know something of its history - to all these the J. Ross Robertson Historical Collection will be a means of education as well as recreation, and the name of the donor will live in everlasting remembrance for this practical, local and national gift to the city of Toronto. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com