Counsellor and Guide

Restrictions continue, but so does the celebration of the Church’s liturgy in this Easter season. Today is St George’s Day, an observance that always falls in Eastertide, and appropriately so since it teaches us that even in the moment of martyrdom, the final victory - for us, as it was for St George - is assured. I am, of course, naturally disappointed that St George does not possess the rank of a feast in Canada, especially given the long association of the saint and his cross with this dominion. John Cabot planted the English flag on Canadian soil in 1497, and that flag remains a constitutive part of Canadian heraldry and her national and provincial flags to this day (red and white are Canada’s colours for this reason) - an emblematic reminder of the English roots of this nation.

Which is a useful segue into my sharing, again, the following poem, so expressive of those English settlers who arrived to make a new life in this nation, but never forgot their heavenly patron, that great ‘Soul of England’.

St George that savest England,
Save us who still must go
Where leads thy cross of scarlet
Upon its field of snow.
 
Beyond the life of cities,
Distractions and dismays,
Where mountain shadows measure
The passing of the days.
 
Among the lonely snow-peaks
Where golden morning shines,
Stands thy undaunted outpost
Among the lodge-pole pines–
 
A little stone-built chapel
As modest as can be,
Touched with a loving glory,
To house thy God and thee.
 
Here, where majestic beauty
And inspiration bide,
Be thou, to make us worthy,
Our counsellor and guide.
 
Be with us, Soul of England,
Where the last trail puts forth,
To keep unsoiled forever
The honour of the North.
 
St George’s in the Pines
Bliss Carman FRSC, 1861-1929