Canada

by John George Bourinot

(1670-1885.)

In 1867 the Dominion of Canada comprised only the four provinces, formerly contained in the ancient historical divisions of Acadia and Canada, and it became the immediate duty of its public men to complete the union by the admission of Prince Edward Island and British Columbia, and by the acquisition of the vast region which had been so long under the rule of a company of fur-traders. In the language of the eloquent Irishman, Lord Dufferin, when governor-general, "the historical territories of the Canadas—the eastern sea-boards of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Labrador—the Laurentian lakes and valleys, corn lands and pastures, though themselves more extensive than half a dozen European kingdoms, were but the vestibules and antechambers to that, till then, undreamt of dominion whose illimitable dimensions alike confound the arithmetic of the surveyor and the verification of the explorer."

The history of this northwest, whose rolling prairies now constitute so large a proportion of the wealth of Canada was, until 1867, entirely the history of the fur trade. Two centuries and a half ago a company of traders, known as the "honourable company of adventurers from England trading into Hudson's Bay," received from Charles II. a royal licence in what was long known as Rupert's Land, and first raised its forts on the inhospitable shores of the great bay, only accessible to European vessels during the summer months. Among the prominent members of this company was the cousin of the King, Prince Rupert, that gallant cavalier. The French in the valley of the St. Lawrence looked with jealousy on these efforts of the English to establish themselves at the north, and Le Moyne d'Iberville, that daring Canadian, had destroyed their trading-posts. Still the Hudson's Bay Company persevered in their enterprise, and rebuilt their forts where they carried on a very lucrative trade with the Indians who came from all parts of that northern region to barter their rich furs for the excellent goods which the company always supplied to the natives. In the meantime, while the English were established at the north, French adventurers, the Sieur de La Vérendrye, a native of Three Rivers, and his two sons, reached the interior of the northwest by the way of Lake Superior and that chain of lakes and rivers which extends from Thunder Bay to Lake Winnipeg. These adventurous Frenchmen raised rude posts by the lakes and rivers of this region, and Vérendrye's sons are said to have extended their explorations in January, 1743, to what was probably the Bighorn Range, an outlying buttress of the Rocky Mountains, running athwart the sources of the Yellowstone. The wars between France and England, however, stopped French trade in that northwestern region, and the Hudson's Bay Company's posts at the north were the only signs of European occupation when Wolfe and Montcalm fell on the Plains of Abraham, and the fleur-de-lis was struck on the old fort of the Canadian capital.

Towards the latter part of the eighteenth century, the merchants of Canada, who were individually dealing in furs, formed an association which, under the title of the Northwest Company, was long the rival of the Hudson's Bay adventurers. Both these companies were composed of Englishmen and Scotchmen, but they were nevertheless bitter enemies, engaged as they were in the same business in the wilderness. The employés of the Hudson's Bay Company were chiefly Scotch, while the Canadian Company found in the French Canadian population that class of men whom it believed to be most suitable to a forest life. The differences in the nationality and religion of the servants of the companies only tended to intensify the bitterness of the competition, and at last led to scenes of tumult and bloodshed. The Northwest Company found their way to the interior of Rupert's Land by the Ottawa River and the Great Lakes. Their posts were seen by the Assiniboine and Red rivers, even in the Saskatchewan and Athabascan districts, and in the valley of the Columbia among the mountains of the great province which bears the name of that noble stream. The Mackenzie River was discovered and followed to the Arctic Sea by one of the members of the Northwest Company, whose name it has always borne. At a later time a trader, Simon Fraser, first ventured on the river whose name now recalls his famous journey, and David Thompson, a surveyor of the Northwest Company, discovered the river of the same name. Previous, however, to these perilous voyages, the Hudson's Bay Company had been forced by the enterprise of its rival to reach the interior and compete for the fur traffic which was being so largely controlled by the Canadian Company. In 1771, Samuel Hearne, one of the Hudson's Bay Company's employés, discovered the Coppermine River, and three years later established a fort on the Saskatchewan, still known as Cumberland House. In later years, Sir John Franklin, George Back, and Thomas Simpson added largely to the geographical knowledge of the northern parts of the great region watered by the Coppermine, the Great Fish—also called the Back,—and other streams which fall into the Arctic Seas. As we glance at the map of this vast region, we still see the names of the numerous posts where the servants of the fur companies passed their solitary lives, only relieved by the periodical visits of Indian trappers, and the arrival of the "trains" of dogs with supplies from Hudson's Bay. Forts Enterprise, Providence, Good Hope, and Resolution are among the names of posts which tell in eloquent terms the story of the courage, endurance, and hope that first planted them throughout that solitary land.

It was on the banks of Red River, where it forms a junction with the Assiniboine, that civilisation made the first effort to establish itself in the illimitable domain of fur-traders, always jealous of settlement which might interfere with their lucrative gains. The first person to erect a post on the Red River was the elder Vérendrye, who built Fort Rouge about 1735 on the site of the present city of Winnipeg. The same adventurer also built Fort La Reine at Portage La Prairie. In 1811 an enterprising Scotch nobleman, the Earl of Selkirk, who had previously made a settlement in Prince Edward Island, became a large proprietor of Hudson's Bay stock, and purchased from the company over a hundred thousand square miles of territory, which he named Assiniboia. In 1812 he made on the banks of the Red River a settlement of Highland Scotch and a few Irishmen. The Northwest Company looked with suspicion on this movement of Lord Selkirk, especially as he had such large influence in the rival company. In 1816, the employés of the former, chiefly half-breeds, destroyed Fort Douglas and murdered Governor Semple, who was in charge of the new Scotch settlement. As soon as the news of this outrage reached Lord Selkirk, he hastened to the succour of his settlement, and by the aid of some disbanded soldiers, whom he hired in Canada, he restored order. Subsequently he succeeded in bringing to a trial at York several partners and persons in the service of the Northwest Company on the charges of "high treason, murder, robbery, and conspiracy," but in all cases the accused were acquitted. The Northwest Company had great influence at this time throughout Canada, and by their instigation actions were brought against Lord Selkirk for false imprisonment, and for conspiring to ruin the trade of the company, and he was mulcted in heavy damages. Two years later Lord Selkirk died in France, and then the two companies, which had received great injury through their rivalry, were amalgamated, and the old Hudson's Bay Company reigned supreme in this region until 1870. The Red River settlement became the headquarters of the company, who established in 1835 a system of local government—a president and council and a court of law—and built Fort Garry on the site of a fort also bearing the same name—that of a director of the company. The new fort was a stone structure, having walls from ten to twelve feet high, and flanked by bastions defended by cannon and musketry. In 1867 the houses of the settlers occupied the banks of the Red River at short intervals for twenty-four miles. Many evidences of prosperity and thrift were seen throughout the settlement; the churches and school-houses proved that religion and education were highly valued by the people. The most conspicuous structure was the Roman Catholic Church of St. Boniface, whose bells at matins and vespers were so often a welcome sound to the wanderers on the plains.

"Is it the clang of wild-geese,
Is it the Indians' yell
That lends to the voice of the North wind
The tone of a far-off bell?

"The voyageur smiles as he listens
To the sound that grows apace:
Well he knows the vesper ringing
Of the bells of Saint Boniface.

"The bells of the Roman mission
That call from their turrets twain,
To the boatmen on the river,
To the hunters on the plain."

On all sides there were evidences of comfort in this little oasis of civilisation amid the prairies. The descendants of the two nationalities dwelt apart in French and British parishes, each of which had their separate schools and churches. The houses and plantations of the British settlers, and of a few French Canadians, indicated thrift, but the majority of the French half-breeds, or Métis, the descendants of French Canadian fathers and Indian mothers, continued to live almost entirely on the fur trade, as voyageurs, trappers, and hunters. They exhibited all the characteristics of those hardy and adventurous men who were the pioneers of the west. Skilful hunters but poor cultivators of the soil, fond of amusement, rash and passionate, spending their gains as soon as made, too often in dissipation, many of them were true representatives of the coureurs de bois of the days of Frontenac. This class was numerous in 1869 when the government of Canada first presented itself to claim the territory of the Northwest as a part of the Dominion. After years of negotiation the Hudson's Bay Company had recognised the necessity of allowing the army of civilisation to advance into the region which it had so long kept as a fur preserve. The British Government obtained favourable terms for the Dominion, and the whole country from line 49 degrees to the Arctic region, and from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains became a portion of the Canadian domain, with the exception of small tracts of land in the vicinity of the company's posts, which they still continue to maintain wherever the fur trade can be profitably carried on. In 1869 the Canadian ministry, of which Sir John Macdonald was premier, took measures to assume possession of the country, where they proposed to establish a provisional government. Mr. William McDougall, a prominent Canadian Liberal, one of the founders of confederation, always an earnest advocate of the acquisition of the Northwest, was appointed to act as lieutenant-governor as soon as the formal transfer was made. This transfer, however, was not completed until a few months later than it was at first expected, and the government of Canada appears to have acted with some precipitancy in sending surveyors into the country, and in allowing Mr. McDougall to proceed at once to the scene of his proposed government. It would have been wise had the Canadian authorities taken measures to ascertain the wishes of the small but independent population with respect to the future government of their own country. The British as well as French settlers resented the hasty action of the Canadian authorities. The halfbreeds, little acquainted with questions of government, saw in the appearance of surveying parties an insidious attempt to dispossess them eventually of their lands, to which many of them had not a sound title. The British settlers, the best educated and most intelligent portion of the population, believed that a popular form of government should have been immediately established in the old limits of Assiniboia, as soon as it became a part of Canada. Some of the Hudson's Bay Company's employés were not in their hearts pleased at the transfer, and the probable change in their position in a country where they had been so long masters. Although these men stood aloof from the insurrection, yet their influence was not exercised at the commencement of the troubles, in favour of peace and order, or in exposing the plans of the insurgents, of which some of them must have had an idea. The appearance of Mr. McDougall on the frontier of the settlement, was the signal for an outbreak which has been dignified by the name of rebellion. The insurgents seized Fort Garry, and established a provisional government with Mr. John Bruce, a Scotch settler, as nominal president, and Mr. Louis Riel, the actual leader, as secretary of state. The latter was a French half-breed, who had been superficially educated in French Canada. His temperament was that of a race not inclined to steady occupation, loving the life of the river and plain, ready to put law at defiance when their rights and privileges were in danger. This restless man and his half-breed associates soon found themselves at the head and front of the whole rebellious movement, as the British settlers, while disapproving of the action of the Canadian Government, were not prepared to support the seditious designs of the French Canadian Métis. Riel became president, and made prisoners of Dr. Schultz, in later times a lieutenant-governor of the new province, and of a number of other British settlers who were now anxious to restore order and come to terms with the Canadian Government, who were showing every disposition to arrange the difficulty. In the meantime Mr. McDougall issued a proclamation which was a mere brutum fulmen, and then went back to Ottawa, where he detailed his grievances and soon afterwards disappeared from public life. The Canadian authorities by this time recognised their mistake and entered into negotiations with Red River delegates, representing both the loyal and rebellious elements, and the result was most favourable for the immediate settlement of the difficulties. At this critical juncture the Canadian Government had the advantage of the sage counsels of Sir Donald Smith, then a prominent official of the Hudson's Bay Company, who at a later time became a prominent figure in Canadian public life. Chiefly through the instrumentality of Archbishop Taché, whose services to the land and race he loved can never be forgotten by its people, an amnesty was promised to those who had taken part in the insurrection, and the troubles would have come to an end had not Riel, in a moment of recklessness, characteristic of his real nature, tried one Thomas Scott by the veriest mockery of a court-martial on account of some severe words he had uttered against the rebels' government, and had him mercilessly shot outside the fort. As Scott was a native of Ontario, and an Orangeman, his murder aroused a widespread feeling of indignation throughout his native province. The amnesty which was promised to Archbishop Taché, it is now quite clear, never contemplated the pardon of a crime like this, which was committed subsequently. The Canadian Government were then fully alive to the sense of their responsibilities, and at once decided to act with resolution. In the spring of 1870 an expedition was organised, and sent to the North-west under the command of Colonel Garnet Wolseley, later a peer, and commander-in-chief of the British army. This expedition consisted of five hundred regulars and seven hundred Canadian volunteers, who reached Winnipeg after a most wearisome journey of nearly three months, by the old fur-traders' route from Thunder Bay, through an entirely unsettled and rough country, where the portages were very numerous and laborious. Towards the end of August the expedition reached their destination, but found that Riel had fled to the United States, and that they had won a bloodless victory. Law and order henceforth prevailed in the new territory, whose formal transfer to the Canadian Government had been completed some months before, and it was now formed into a new province, called Manitoba, with a complete system of local government, and including guaranties with respect to education, as in the case of the old provinces. The first lieutenant-governor was Mr. Adams Archibald, a Nova Scotian lawyer, who was one of the members of the Quebec conference, and a statesman of much discretion. Representation was also given immediately in the two houses of the Dominion parliament. Subsequently the vast territory outside of the new prairie province was divided into six districts for purposes of government: Alberta, Assiniboia, Athabasca, Keewatin, and Saskatchewan. Out of these districts in 1905 were erected the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, which were then given responsible government. In 1908, when the boundaries of the provinces were again defined, Keewatin was incorporated in the Province of Manitoba. In 1896 four new provisional districts were, marked out in the great northern unsettled district under the names of Franklin, Mackenzie, Yukon, and Ungava.