Guest Blogger: Tales from the First Century
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay My great uncle Loring Christie was a Canadian delegate to the ParisPeace Conference of 1919 . In those days, Canada’s presence was as part of the entity of the British Empire, rather than as its own country. When Loring says “our people”, he’s really talking about that entity. The Peace Conference was the beginning of a change in that status . This is an excerpt from a February 1919 letter that Loring wrote to his parents: “The Preliminary Peace Conference -- that is the proper name of what is going on now -- is getting some things done, but very slowly -- too slowly to suit my feelings about the matter. The world outside is in too precarious a condition to trifle with. Of course the task is almost staggering. And if the time seems long, one has to remember the great difficulties of reaching agreement among so many Governments, so many peoples, with differences of language, custom, outlook and fundamental beliefs. Even whe