MANITOBA IN THE MAKING.
Close in the wake of Wolseley's Expedition, there arrived on the 2nd of
September, Adams G. Archibald, the newly-appointed Governor of the new
Province of Manitoba. His arrival was greeted with joy, for he was a man
of high character, and of much experience in his native Province of Nova
Scotia. The two volunteer regiments, the Quebec and Ontario battalions,
were quartered for the winter, the former in Lower Fort Garry, the
latter in Fort Garry. The new Governor took up his abode in Fort Garry,
in the residence with which our story is so familiar. The organization
of his government began at once. The first Government Building stood
back from the street in Winnipeg on the corner of Main Street and
McDermott Avenue East, of the present-day. The Legislative Council--a
miniature House of Lords--of seven members, was appointed, and electoral
divisions for the election of members to the Legislative Assembly were
made to the number of twenty-four--twelve French and twelve English. The
time for the opening of Parliament was the spring of 1871. It was a
notable day, for the citizens were much interested in scrutinizing those
who were to be their future rulers. The opening passed off with eclat.
During the first session certain elementary legislation was passed
including a short school act. There was yet no division of parties, and
a sufficient cabinet was chosen by the Governor. Thus, institutions
after the model of the mother of Parliaments at Westminster were evolved
and Manitoba--the successor of our Red River Settlement--had conceded to
it the right of local self-government.
In the year of the first parliament of Manitoba it was the fortune of
the writer to take up his abode here. Winnipeg, a village of less than
three hundred inhabitants was in that year, still four hundred miles
distant from a railway. From the railway terminus in Minnesota, the
stage coach drawn by four horses with relays every twenty miles, sped
rapidly over prairies, smooth as a lawn to the site of the future city
of the plains.
Since that time well-nigh forty years has passed away. The stage coach,
the Red River cart, and the shaganappi pony are things of the past, and
several railways with richly furnished trains connect St. Paul and
Minneapolis with the City of Winnipeg. More important, the skill of the
engineer has surpassed what we then even dreamt of in his blasting of
rock cuttings and tunnels through the Archæan rocks to Fort William, and
this has been done by three main trunk lines of railway. The old
amphibious route of the fur traders and of Wolseley's Expedition has
been superseded, the tremendous cliffs of the north shore of Lake
Superior have been levelled and the chasm bridged. To the west the whole
wide prairie land has been gridironed by railways all tributary to
Winnipeg, the enormous ascent of the four Rocky Mountain ranges, rising
a mile above the sea, have been crossed by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The giddy heights of the Fraser River Canyon are traversed, and this is
but the beginning, for three other great corporations are bending their
strength to pierce the passes of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific
Ocean. We see to-day scenes more after the manner of the Arabian Nights
Entertainments than of the humble dream that Lord Selkirk dreamt one
hundred years ago.
[Illustration: HON. JOHN NORQUAY A native of Red River Settlement.
Became Cabinet Minister in 1871, afterward Premier of Manitoba.]
The towns and cities of Manitoba have sprung up on every hand where the
railway has gone and these are but the centres of business of twenty
thousand farms whose owners have come to this land, many of them
empty-handed, and are now blessed with competence and in many cases
wealth. What a vindication of Lord Selkirk's prospectus of a hundred
years ago when he said: "The soil on the Red River and the Assiniboine
is generally a good soil, susceptible of culture and capable of bearing
rich crops." Lord Selkirk's dream is fulfilled, for his land is fast
becoming the grainary of the world. As the traveller of to-day passes
along the railways in the last days of August or early in September, he
beholds the sight of a life-time, in the rattling reapers, each drawn by
four great horses, turning off the golden sheaves of wheat and other
cereals. A little later the giant threshers, driven by steam power, pour
forth the precious grain, which is hurried off to the high elevators for
storage, till the railways can carry it to the markets of the world to
feed earth's hungry millions. When the historian recalls the statement
that the few cattle of the early settlers had degenerated in size on
account of the climatic conditions, that the shaganappi pony could never
do the work of the stalwart Clydesdale, and that nothing could result
from the straggling flock of foot-sore and dying sheep, driven by Burke
and Campbell from far-distant Missouri, we look with astonishment at the
horses now taken away by hundreds to supply with chargers the crack
cavalry regiments of the Empire, at the vast consignments of cattle
passing through Winnipeg every day to feed the hungry, and flocks of
sheep supplying wool for Eastern manufacturers to clothe the naked.
One of the greatest trials of the early Selkirk Settlers was to get
schools sufficient to give the children scattered along the river belt,
even the three R's of education. Kildonan parish manfully raised by
subscription the means, unaided by Government help, to give some
opportunity to their children. It is a notable fact which emerged in the
great School Contention of twenty years ago in Manitoba, that not a
dollar had been given to schools as aid by the old Government of
Assiniboia. To-day the glory of Manitoba is its school system. For
school buildings, school organization, attainments of the teachers, and
efficient school management, the schools of Winnipeg are probably
unsurpassed in any country, and the same is true of many other places in
the Province. Two Winnipeg schools bear the names of Selkirk and
Isbister. The University of Manitoba, with its seven affiliated colleges
and twelve hundred and forty candidates in 1909 for its several
examinations has its seat at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine
Rivers, and one of the colleges is on the very lot where Lord Selkirk
stood and divided up their lands to the Colonists.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER ISBISTER, LL.B. Red River
Patriot and Benefactor of University of Manitoba.]
One of the most continued and aggressive struggles which Lord Selkirk's
Colonists maintained was seen in the efforts put forth to worship God
according to the dictates of their own consciences, and after the manner
of their fathers. Their perseverance which showed itself in the erection
of old Kildonan Church in the year immediately after the destructive
flood of 1852, bore fruit in succeeding years. They were always a
religious people. No one can even estimate what their religious
disposition did in a miscellaneous gathering of people who had, being
scattered over the posts of the fur traders, been in most cases, without
any religious opportunities whatever, before their coming to settle on
Red River. The sturdy stand for principle which the Selkirk Colonists
made created an atmosphere which has remained until this day. The
well-nigh forty years of religious life of Manitoba has been marked by a
good understanding among the several churches, by an energetic zeal in
carrying church services in the very first year of their settlement to
hundreds of new communities. The generosity of the people in erecting
churches for themselves in maintaining among themselves their cherished
beliefs, is in striking contrast to the new settlements of the United
States. In the new Western States the religious movements fell behind
the Western march of the immigrant. In the Canadian West from the very
day that old Verandrye took his priest with him, from the time when the
first Colonists brought a devout layman as their religious teacher with
them, from the hour when the stalwart Provencher came, from the era when
the self-denying West visited the Indian camps and Settlers' camp alike,
from the time when the saintly Black came as the natural leader of the
Selkirk Colonists, and during the forty years of the development of
Manitoba, the foundations have been laid in that righteousness which
exalteth a nation.
[Illustration]