Canada must have a strong central government with distinctive social, economic and cultural policies appropriate to an independent country.
From the book Big Ideas: The Social Crusades of Joseph Atkinson, edited by Michael Pieri:
Joseph Atkinson was an unremitting Canadian nationalist. Why shouldn't Canada rise above its "colony" status? Why shouldn't Canada have its own flag? Why shouldn't Canada negotiate her own treaties? Why should Britain feel it can "call" upon Canadian soldiers to fight in Britain's wars, without Ottawa having a say in the matter? Why should the Privy Council in London have power to decide Canadian legal matters? Canadian judges were not "ignoramuses" and unable to deal with appeals in criminal or civil cases, argued the Star. And Canada's Parliament was not incompetent to run its own affairs, the paper said many times.
The Telegram branded the Star publisher and others who sought independence as "separatists." But the Star bitingly replied: "The fact is that 'separatist' is just another name the Telegram likes to call people who refuse to shut their eyes to the world of progress . . . and who declined to transport themselves back in outlook and manner of thought to the colonial Muddy York which the Telegram persists in inhabiting."
From the early 1900s, the Star ran a torrent of words that argued for greater autonomy, seeking to cut the ties that bound the "dominion of Canada" to Britain. Editorials questioned, reproached, chastised, pushed - and unceasingly promoted equality with the Motherland. Canadians had an inalienable right to shape the political and social development of their young country, said the paper.
But the Star publisher always insisted that an independent Canada should remain a member of the family of nations within the Empire. Why? Two 1904 editorials amplify the Star's reasoning in the early days of the paper's long campaign for Canadian independence, when the publisher still fumed over the decision in the Alaska boundary dispute that favoured the United States and caused shock and anger in Canada.
"The strongest influence operating in Canada in favor of consolidating the Empire is the self-revelation that Uncle Sam is affording us. He bought Hawaii from her corrupt legislators. He bought the Filipinos at so much per head, and values them at their invoice price. He set Cuba as free as any cat did a mouse. He stole Panama from little Colombia, and his excuse is that he needed the isthmus in his business. It is no time for unprepared nations to venture forth unattended in this hemisphere." - January 1904
"At the present time we are sheltered by our membership in the Empire which also commands the seas, and by our friendship with the only people who could attack us on land. But let either the British flee (fall) to peices, or American ambition look upon us as it has recently upon Panama, and we may learn that we have as much freedom as our rifles can protect . . . our surest, strongest and cheapest guarantee of safety at this moment lies in the prestige of the British Empire, and it behooves us to do what we can to maintain that prestige and preserve our claim to a place within its shadow." - February 1904
Editorials became more pointed, and by 1928, the Star was to declare:
"We believe in the British connection as much as anybody does but on a self-respecting basis of equality, of citizenship, and not on the old basis of one country belonging to the other. That is over and done with and no political respirator can pump life into it again."
The future of Canada was a hot topic in Toronto, and the American press carried stories about possible annexation. The future of Canada was anything but clear.