It shall be lawful for the Legislature of Canada ... to alter the manner of composing the Legislative Council ... and to make it consist of such number of members appointed or to be appointed or elected by such persons and in such manner as to the said Legislature may seem fit....
(In accordance with this enabling Act of Parliament, a Canadian Act for making the Council elective was passed in 1856.)
[ 40. EDMONTON IN 1841.]
Source.—Narrative of a Journey round the World, by Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson Bay Company's Territories in North America. London, 1847.
Next morning, being the 22nd of July, we had a sharp frost before sunrise, and afterwards a heavy dew. The whole country was so parched up, that no water could be found for breakfast till eleven o'clock; and again in the afternoon we passed over a perfectly arid plain of about twenty-five miles in length, encamping for the night at the commencement of the Chaine des Lacs, a succession of small lakes stretching over a distance of twenty or thirty miles. During the afternoon we saw our first raspberries; they proved to be of large size and fine flavour. Two days previously we had feasted on the service-berry ... a sort of cross between the cranberry and the black currant; and, before leaving Red River, we had found wild strawberries ripe....
Next afternoon we passed over a space of about four miles in length, where the grass was thoroughly beaten down, apparently the work of hail. Such storms, which are almost always partial in their operation, are often remarkably furious in this country. While travelling from Red River to Canada in the fall of 1837, I was overtaken near Lac la Pluie by a violent tempest of the kind, which, if we had not gained the fort in time, might have proved fatal. As the angular masses of ice rattled on the roof, we entertained fears for the safety of the building; and, in point of fact, the lodges of the Indians were thrown down and their canoes shattered; while their luckless dogs, tumbling about like drunken men, scrambled away howling in quest of shelter. Some of the pieces ... we found to be fully five inches and a half in circumference.
Throughout this country everything is in extremes—unparalleled cold and excessive heat; long droughts, balanced by drenching rain and destructive hail. But it is not in climate only that these contrarieties prevail; at some seasons both whites and natives are living, in wasteful abundance, on venison, buffalo, fish, and game of all kinds; while at other times they are reduced to the last degree of hunger, often passing several days without food.
In the year 1820, when wintering at Athabasca Lake, our provisions fell short at the establishment, and on two or three occasions I went for three whole days and nights without having a single morsel to swallow; but then again I was one of a party of eleven men and one woman, which discussed three ducks and twenty-two geese at a sitting....
The nights were getting chilly; and, whenever the sky was clear, a heavy dew fell from sunset to sunrise on particular spots, so as to look, when morning dawned, like large lakes in the distance. As the power of the sun increased, these mists gradually resolved themselves into streaks of various shapes and sizes, which, rising from the ground in the form of clouds, finally disappeared....