Quotes by John W. Dawson

Canada has two emblems-the beaver and the maple.

It is a common popular statement that the languages of the American continent are innumerable and mutually unintelligible.

Now multitudes of root words are identical in the American languages over vast areas some of them with precisely the same senses, and others with various shades of analogical meaning.

Some of our artists have the bad taste to represent the beaver as perched on the maple bough, a most unpleasant position for the poor animal, and suggestive of the thought, that he is in the act of gnawing through the trunk of our national tree (the maple).

The beaver in his sagacity, his industry, his ingenuity, and his perseverance, is a most respectable animal: a much better emblem for our country than the rapacious eagle or even the lordly lion; but he is also a type of unvarying instincts and Old World traditions.