"And I say it to our glory that the struggles of race are ended on Canadian soil. There is here now no other family than the human family, whatever the language they speak or the altars at which they kneel. There is glory in this fraternal union of which Canadians can never be sufficiently proud. Mighty nations, indeed, might well come to us to seek a lesson in justice and humanity."
Laurier delivered this speech in French as the valedictory address to his class of graduating lawyers at McGill University in 1864. The 24 year old Laurier cut an impressive figure, as described by historian Joseph Schull:
The head was striking, with the broad front swept by a mass of chestnut hair, thick and inclined to curl. The nose was aquiline and strong. The mouth was a curious, almost conflicting compound of masculine strength and feminine beauty. It had not yet settled into the repose of maturity, the romantic was still at war with the realist, but already the long, dominant upper lip was imposing its control on the gentle sensuousness of the lower.
About the eyes, concentrated though they were at the moment on the effort to deliver carefully prepared phrases, there was a hint of something melancholy and detached. They were the eyes of an observer as well as an actor, of a man who would play out the game of life never quite obsessed with its prizes because they would never be bathed for him in the glow of exuberant health. He coughed once or twice as he turned the pages before him, and stopped occasionally to sip at a glass of water. The breaks were more than oratorical pauses. The voice was liquid with an attractive, slurring emphasis, pleasantly modulated for so young a man, but it came quite evidently from a weak chest.
Read by: Laurier LaPierre.
Joseph Schull, Laurier: The First Canadian (Macmillan: 1965).
