of the necessary capital, but as this was coupled with a voice in the decision of the route, it complicated the latter question, about which a keen contest arose. The most direct and therefore commercially most promising line of construction passed near the boundary of the United States. Recent friction with that country made this route objected to by the imperial and many Canadian authorities. Ultimately the longer, more expensive, but more isolated route along the shores of the Gulf of St Lawrence was adopted. The work was taken in hand at once, and pressed steadily forward to completion. It has since been supplemented by other lines built for more distinctly commercial ends. Though not for many years a financial success, the Inter-Colonial railway, which was opened in 1876, has in a marked way fulfilled its object by binding together socially and industrially widely separated portions of the Dominion.
Within a month of the meeting of the first parliament of the Dominion a question of vast importance to the future of the country was brought forward by the Hon. W. McDougall in a series of resolutions which were adopted, and on Hudson’s Bay Company territories. which was based an address to the queen praying that Majesty would unite Rupert’s Land and the North-West Territories to Canada. A delegation consisting of Sir G. E. Cartier and the Hon. W. McDougall was in 1868 sent to England to negotiate with the Hudson’s Bay Company (q.v.) for the extinction of its claims, and to arrange with the imperial government for the transfer of the territory. After prolonged discussions the company agreed to surrender to the crown, in consideration of a payment of £300,000, the rights and interests in the north-west guaranteed by its charter, with the exception of a reservation of one-twentieth part of the fertile belt, and 45,000 acres of land adjacent to the trading posts of the company. For the purposes of this agreement the “fertile belt” was to be bounded as follows:—“On the south by the U.S. boundary, on the west by the Rocky Mountains, on the north by the northern branch of the Saskatchewan river, on the east by Lake Winnipeg, the Lake of the Woods, and the waters connecting them.” An act authorizing the change of control was passed by the imperial parliament in July 1868; the arrangement made with the Hudson’s Bay Company was accepted by the Canadian parliament in June 1869; and the deed of surrender from the Hudson’s Bay Company to Her Majesty is dated November 19th, 1869. In anticipation of the formal transfer to the Dominion an act was passed by the Canadian parliament in the same month providing for the temporary government of Rupert’s Land and the North-West Territories. On the 28th of September the Hon. W. McDougall was appointed the first governor, and left at once to assume control on the 1st of December, when it had been understood that the formal change of possession would take place.
Meanwhile a serious condition of affairs was developing in the Red river settlement, the most considerable centre of population in the newly acquired territory. The half-breeds regarded with suspicion a transfer of control concerning Red river rebellion. which they had not been consulted. They resented the presence of the Canadian surveyors sent to lay out roads and townships, and the tactless way in which some of these did their work increased the suspicion that long-established rights to the soil would not be respected. A population largely Roman Catholic in creed, and partly French in origin and language, feared that an influx of new settlers would overthrow cherished traditions. Some were afraid of increased taxation. A group of immigrants from the United States fomented disturbance in the hope that it would lead to annexation. Louis Riel, a fanatical half-breed, placed himself at the head of the movement. His followers established what they called a “provisional government” of which he was chosen president, and when the newly appointed governor reached the boundary line he was prevented from entering the territory. Several of the white settlers who resisted this rebellious movement were arrested and kept in confinement. One of these, a young man named Thomas Scott, having treated Riel with defiance, was court-martialled for treason to the provisional government, condemned, and on the 4th of March 1870, shot in cold blood under the walls of Fort Garry. This crime aroused intense excitement throughout the country, and the Orange body, particularly, to which Scott belonged, demanded the immediate punishment of his murderer and the suppression of the rebellion. An armed force, composed partly of British regulars and partly of Canadian volunteers, was made ready and placed under the command of Colonel Garnet Wolseley, afterwards Lord Wolseley. As a military force could not pass through the United States, the expedition was compelled to take the route up Lake Superior, and from the head of that lake through 500 m. of unbroken and difficult wilderness. In August 1870, the force reached Fort Garry, to find the rebels scattered and their leader, Riel, a fugitive in the neighbouring states. Meanwhile, during the progress of the expedition, an act had been passed creating Manitoba a province, with full powers of self-government, and the arrival of the military was closely followed by that of the first governor, Mr (later Sir) Adams G. Archibald, who succeeded in organizing the administration on a satisfactory basis. Fort Garry became Winnipeg, and there were soon indications that it was destined to be a great city, and the commercial doorway to the vast prairies that lay beyond. Meanwhile, till adequate means of transportation were provided, it was seen that city and prairie alike must wait for any large inflow of population.
Provision was made in the British North America Act to receive new provinces into the Dominion. Manitoba was the first to be constituted; in 1871 British Columbia, which had hitherto held aloof, determined, under the persuasion of a sympathetic governor, Mr (later Sir) Antony New provinces. Musgrave, to throw in its lot with the Dominion. Popular feeling in British Columbia itself was not strongly in favour of union, and the terms under which the new province was to be received were the subject of much negotiation with the provincial authorities, and were keenly debated in parliament before the bill in which they were embodied was finally carried. The clause on which there was the widest divergence of opinion was one providing that a trans-continental railway, connecting the Pacific province with the eastern part of the Dominion, should be begun within two, and completed within ten years. To a province which at the time contained a population of only 36,000, and but half of this white, the inducement thus held out was immense. The Opposition in parliament claimed that the contract was one impossible for the Dominion to fulfil. The government of Sir John Macdonald felt, however, that the future of the Dominion depended upon linking together the Atlantic and the Pacific, and in view of the vast unoccupied spaces lying between the Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, open to immigration from the United States, their audacity in undertaking the work was doubtless justified. The construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, thus inaugurated, became for several years the chief subject of political contention between opposing parties.
Anticipating the order of chronology slightly, it may be mentioned here that in 1873 Prince Edward Island (q.v.), which had in 1865 decisively rejected proposals of the Quebec conference and had in the following year repeated its rejection of federation by a resolution of the legislature affirming that no terms Canada could offer would be acceptable, now decided to throw in its lot with the Dominion. The island had become involved in heavy railway expenditure, and financial necessities led the electors to take a broader view of the question. In the end the federal government assumed the railway debt, arrangements were made for extinguishing certain proprietary rights which had long been a source of discontent, and on the 1st of July 1873 the Dominion was rounded off by the accession of the new province.
Finally in 1878, in order to remove all doubts about unoccupied territory, an imperial order in council was passed in response to an address of the Canadian parliament, annexing to the Dominion all British possessions in North America, except Newfoundland. That small colony, which had been represented at the Quebec conference, also rejected the proposals
