What Is Our Idea of a University? 119
comforting to their minds and hearts. It is the duty and
happiness of French-Canadian universities to spread over
the people of our Province and all over the country the bene-
fits of so humane and urgent a doctrine.
* * *
Universities are the brains of a nation; they cannot there-
fore remain indifferent to national problems.
In a country like ours, officially bilingual, whose history
comprises two distinct parts—the French regime and the
English regime—where two different traditions of religion,
education, intellectual ideals meet together in all circum-
stances, I must say that the national sense is still in the mak-
ing. Our national status has been defined only recently, dur-
ing the Westminster Conference. Long ago, we were a col-
ony—nobody remembers that nor cares to remember—we
were a dominion from 1867 to 1926; now, we are a realm,
an autonomous realm, with the King of England on the
throne; a virtually independent realm which is a part of the
British Commonwealth of nations. This new status involves
certain privileges with which our people as a whole are not
yet familiar—and it is no wonder, for old-fashioned impe-
rialists have endeavored for years to minimize the reach of
the Westminster agreement.
Besides, we French-Canadians who were in this new land
one hundred and fifty years before the coming of the Eng-
lish, we who have built our homes on the shores of the St.
Lawrence and all over Canada without any hope or tempta-
tion of ever returning to France, we hold that our culture,
our laws and traditions, have the same rights as the English
throughout the country, which rights have been officially
recognized by the Act of British North America.