“We are neighbours and neighbours means more today among nations than it did 50 or 25 years-ago,” Taft, who had left the White House earlier in the year after  his defeat at the hands of Woodrow Wilson, said. “We know the Canadian people, the English and the French, and in my country the profoundest admiration of this great monument of states who have common loyalty to the mother country on the one hand and France on the other.”

“He is happily Indebted who finds his work to do and that permanently; but greater is he who sees the opportunities others do not and over all obstacles by his own energy and ability completes the work that will be remembered for centuries,” Taft continued. “And that is what Cartier did. Cartier, Macdonald, Brown – they struggled against the smaller and often intenser feelings of localities, and with foresight coming from God, carried their country to victory.”

“And not the least of his (Cartier’s) qualities was his courage in standing against his own people. ‘I know better than you,’ he said, ‘and will do that which is for your greatest good and for the good of mankind.’

“Hence I seize the opportunity,” Taft said as his tribute continued, “and am grateful for the occasion to recognize, the debt we owe in progress. I congratulate Canada that here with two mighty races she is composed, with the Mother Country, and stilled all racial differences. I am glad to lay a wreath to the memory of this great statesman."

Thousands cheered President Taft, the US Chief Executive who perhaps knew Canada best, at the conclusion of his generous remarks about Canada, and the role of Cartier and his colleague Fathers of Confederation, in particular.