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2.

is said and done, it is as the chief guardian of those ties that he is sent
out to Canada.

(In parenthesis, it may be pointed out that the work of any Englishman
who is interested in the preservation of those ties does not cease on his
return to England. He can then usefully devote himself to the other side
of the medal - namely, to making Englishmen appreciate Canadians; always
provided that he has himself learnt to understan and like them.)

English people who come to live in Canada for the first time, or without
having had the opportunity of seeing the cou try through the eyes of some
friend who has real knowledge of it, often experience a series of shocks
in the early stages of their stay that warps their whole outlook; they
become bewildered, bored, or comtemptuous, according to their individual
temperaments.

Whatever the cause, the effect is to make them appear aloof; to the
Canadian mind, obsessed as it is by the national "inferiority-complex",
aloofness is indistinguishable from a sense of superiority; the Englishman,
or Englishwoman, is written off as one more "high-hatted Britisher", and
one more little rift is made in the imperial lute.

Such unfortunate impressions on either side can, of course, be lived down.
Many Englishmen, having been completely miserable, and correspondingly
unpopular for the first year or so of their Canadian life, find, when
the time comes to go home, that they leave with real regret and are themselves
regretted by a host of friends, whom they have made after becoming socially,
and indeed physically, acclimatised.

Some, on the other hand, never overcome the first impressions they got and
gave. In wither case, it would clearly be better if the mutual first
impressions could be favourable, or, at any rate, neutral. There is no
reason why they shou d not be so, if only newcomers approach the country
in the right frame of mind.

The first thing any such new arrival should do is to rid himself both of
pre-conceptions of Canada (e.g., the "great open spaces" legend; more of
one's life in Canada is spent in stuffy trains and houses than it is in
England.) and of standards of comparison with his English past. He should
get into his head that he is going to live, not in an outpost of the British
Isles, but in a totally different country, and, what is more, in a social
environment and in a social period that area totally different from those