(E. H. G.)
History
Abouta.d.1000 Leif Ericsson, a Norseman, led an expedition from Greenland to the shores probably of what is now Canada, but the first effective contact of Europeans with Canada was not until the end of the 15th century. JohnDiscovery.Cabot (q.v.), sailing from Bristol, reached the shores of Canada in 1497. Soon after fishermen from Europe began to go in considerable numbers to the Newfoundland banks, and in time to the coasts of the mainland of America. In 1534 a French expedition under Jacques Cartier, a seaman of St Malo, sent out by Francis I., entered the Gulf of St Lawrence. In the following year Cartier sailed up the river as far as the Lachine Rapids, to the spot where Montreal now stands. During the next sixty years the fisheries and the fur trade received some attention, but no colonization was undertaken.
At the beginning of the 17th century we find the first great name in Canadian history. Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who had seen service under Henry IV. of France, was employed in the interests of successive fur-tradingFrench colony.monopolies and sailed up the St Lawrence in 1603. In the next year he was on the Bay of Fundy and had a share in founding the first permanent French colony in North America—that of Port Royal, now Annapolis, Nova Scotia. In 1608 he began the settlement which was named Quebec. From 1608 to his death in 1635 Champlain worked unceasingly to develop Canada as a colony, to promote the fur trade and to explore the interior. He passed southward from the St Lawrence to the beautiful lake which still bears his name and also westward, up the St Lawrence and the Ottawa, in the dim hope of reaching the shores of China. He reached Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, but not the great lakes stretching still farther west.
The era was that of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), and during that great upheaval England was sometimes fighting France. Already, in 1613, the English from Virginia had almost completely wiped out the French settlement at Port Royal, and when in 1629 a small English fleet appeared at Quebec, Champlain was forced to surrender. But in 1632 Canada was restored to France by the treaty of St Germain-en-Laye. Just at this time was formed under the aegis of Cardinal Richelieu the “Company of New France,” known popularly as “The Company of One Hundred Associates.” With 120 members it was granted the whole St Lawrence valley; for fifteen years from 1629 it was to have a complete monopoly of trade; and products from its territory were to enter Francefree of duty. In return the company was to take to New France 300 colonists a year; only French Catholics might go; and for each settlement the company was to provide three priests. Until 1663 this company controlled New France.
It was an era of missionary zeal in the Roman Catholic church, and Canada became the favourite mission. The Society of Jesus was only one of several orders—Franciscans (Recollets), Sulpicians, Ursulines, &c.—who worked in New France. The Jesuits have attracted chief attention, not merely on account of their superior zeal and numbers, but also because of the tragic fate of some of their missionaries in Canada. In the voluminousRelationsof their doings the story has been preserved. Among the Huron Indians, whose settlements bordered on the lake of that name, they secured a great influence. But there was relentless war between the Hurons and the Iroquois occupying the southern shore of Lake Ontario, and when in 1649 the Iroquois ruined and almost completely destroyed the Hurons, the Jesuit missionaries also fell victims to the conquerors’ rage. Missionaries to the Iroquois themselves met with a similar fate and the missions failed. Commercial life also languished. The company planned by Richelieu was not a success. It did little to colonize New France, and in 1660, after more than thirty years of its monopoly, there were not more than 2000 French in the whole country. In 1663 the charter of the company was revoked. No longer was a trading company to discharge the duties of a sovereign. New France now became a royal province, with governor, intendant, &c., on the model of the provinces of France.
In 1664 a new “Company of the West Indies” (Compagnie des Indes Occidentales) was organized to control French trade and colonization not only in Canada but also in West Africa, South America and the West Indies. At first it promised well. In 1665 some 2000 emigrants were sent to Canada; the European population was soon doubled, and Louis XIV. began to take a personal interest in the colony. But once more, in contrast with English experience, the great trading company proved a failure in French hands as a colonizing agent, and in 1674 its charter was summarily revoked by Louis XIV. Henceforth in name, if not in fact, monopoly is ended in Canada.
By this time French explorers were pressing forward to unravel the mystery of the interior. By 1659 two Frenchmen, Radisson and Groseillers, had penetrated beyond the great lakes to the prairies of the far West; they were probably the first Europeans to see the Mississippi. By 1666 a French mission was established on the shores of Lake Superior, and in 1673 Joliet and Marquette, explorers from Canada, reached and for some distance descended the Mississippi. Five years later Cavelier de la Salle was making his toilsome way westward from Quebec to discover the true character of the great river and to perform the feat, perilous in view of the probable hostility of the natives, of descending it to the sea. In 1682 he accomplished his task, took possession of the valley of the Mississippi in the name of Louis XIV. and called it Louisiana. Thus from Canada as her basis was France reaching out to grasp a continent.
There was a keen rivalry between church and state for dominance in this new empire. In 1659 arrived at Quebec a young prelate of noble birth, Francois Xavier de Laval-Montmorency, who had come to rule the church in Canada. An ascetic, who practised the whole cycle of medieval austerities, he was determined that Canada should be ruled by the church, and he desired for New France a Puritanism as strict as that of New England. His especial zeal was directed towards the welfare of the Indians. These people showed, to their own ruin, a reckless liking for the brandy of the white man. Laval insisted that the traders should not supply brandy to the natives. He declared excommunicate any one who did so and for a time he triumphed. More than once he drove from Canada governors who tried to thwart him. In 1663 he was actually invited to choose a governor after his own mind and did so, but with no cessation of the old disputes. In 1672 Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac (q.v.), was named governor of New France, and in him the church found her match. Yet not at once; for, after a bitter struggle, he was recalled in 1682. But Canada needed him. He knew how to control the ferocious Iroquois, who had cut off France from access to Lake Ontario; to check them he had built a fort where now stands the city of Kingston. With Frontenac gone, these savages almost strangled the colony. On a stormy August night in 1689 1500 Iroquois burst in on the village of Lachine near Montreal, butchered 200 of its people, and carried off more than 100 to be tortured to death at their leisure. Then the strong man Frontenac was recalled to face the crisis.
It was a critical era. James II. had fallen in England, and William III. was organizing Europe against French aggression. France’s plan for a great empire in America was now taking shape and there, as in Europe, a deadlyStruggles with England.struggle with England was inevitable. Frontenac planned attacks upon New England and encouraged a ruthless border warfare that involved many horrors. Him, in return, the English attacked. Sir William Phips sailed from Boston in 1690, conquered Acadia, now Nova Scotia, and then hazarded the greater task of leading a fleet up the St Lawrence against Quebec. On the 16th of October 1690 thirty-four English ships, some of them only fishing craft, appeared in its basin and demanded the surrender of the town. When Frontenac answered defiantly, Phips attacked the place; but he was repulsed and in the end sailed away unsuccessful.
Each side had now begun to see that the vital point was control of the interior, which time was to prove the most extensive fertile area in the world. La Salle’s expedition had aroused the French to the importance of the Mississippi, and they soon had a bold plan to occupy it, to close in from the rear on the English on the Atlantic coast, seize their colonies and even deport the colonists. The plan was audacious, for the English in America outnumbered the French by twenty to one. But their colonies were democracies, disunited because each was pursuing its own special interests, while the French were united under despotic leadership. Frontenac attacked the Iroquois mercilessly in 1696 and forced these proud savages to sue for peace. But in the next year was made the treaty of Ryswick, which brought a pause in the conflict, and in 1698 Frontenac died.
After Frontenac the Iroquois, though still hostile to France, are formidable no more, and the struggle for the continent is frankly between the English and the French. The peace of Ryswick proved but a truce, and when in 1701, on the death of the exiled James II., Louis XIV. flouted the claims of William III. to the throne of England by proclaiming as king James’s son, renewed war was inevitable. In Europe it saw the brilliant victories of Marlborough; in America it was less decisive, but France lost heavily. Though the English, led by Sir Hovenden Walker, made in 1711 an effort to take Quebec which proved abortive, they seized Nova Scotia; and when the treaty of Utrecht was made in 1713, France admitted defeat in America by yielding to Britain her claims to Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. But she still held the shores of the St Lawrence, and she retained, too, the island of Cape Breton to command its mouth. There she built speedily the fortress of Louisbourg, and prepared once more to challenge British supremacy in America. With a sound instinct that looked to future greatness, France still aimed, more and more, at the control of the interior of the Continent. The danger from the Iroquois on Lake Ontario had long cut her off from the most direct access to the West, and from the occupation of the Ohio valley leading to the Mississippi, but now free from this savage scourge she could go where she would. In 1701 she founded Detroit, commanding the route from Lake Erie to Lake Huron. Her missionaries and leaders were already at Sault Ste Marie commanding the approach to Lake Superior, and at Michilimackinac commanding that to Lake Michigan. They had also penetrated to what is now the Canadian West, and it was a French Canadian, La Vérendrye, who, by the route leading past the point where now stands the city of Winnipeg,pressed on into the far West until in 1743, first recorded of white men, he came in sight of the Rocky Mountains. In the south of the continent France also crowned La Salle’s work by founding early in the 18th century New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi. It was a far cry from New Orleans to Quebec. If France could link them by a chain of settlements and shut in the English to their narrow strip of Atlantic seaboard there was good promise that North America would be hers.
The project was far-reaching, but France could do little to make it effective. Louis XV. allowed her navy to decline and her people showed little inclination for emigration to the colonies. In 1744, when the war of the Austrian Succession broke out, the New England colonies planned and in 1745 effected the capture of Louisbourg, the stronghold of France in Cape Breton Island, which menaced their commerce. But to their disgust, when the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was made in 1748, this conquest was handed back to France. She continued her work of building a line of forts on the great lakes—on the river Niagara, on the Ohio, on the Mississippi; and the English colonies, with the enemy thus in their rear, grew ever more restive. In 1753 Virginia warned the French on the Ohio that they were encroaching on British territory. The next year, in circumstances curiously like those which were repeated when the French expedition under Marchand menaced Britain in Egypt by seeking to establish a post on the Upper Nile, George Washington, a young Virginian officer, was sent to drive the French from their Fort Duquesne on the Ohio river, where now stands Pittsburgh. The result was sharp fighting between English and French in a time of nominal peace. In 1755 the British took the stern step of deporting the Acadian French from Nova Scotia. Though this province had been ceded to Great Britain in 1713 many of the Acadians had refused to accept British sovereignty. In 1749 the British founded Halifax, began to colonize Nova Scotia, and, with war imminent, deemed it prudent to disperse the Acadians, chiefly along the Atlantic seaboard (seeNova Scotia:History). In 1756 the Seven Years’ War definitely began. France had no resources to cope with those of Britain in America, and the British command of the sea proved decisive. On the 13th of September 1759 Wolfe won his great victory before Quebec, which involved the fall of that place, and a year later at Montreal the French army in Canada surrendered. By the peace of Paris, 1763, the whole of New France was finally ceded to Great Britain.
With only about 60,000 French in Canada at the time of the conquest it might have seemed as if this population would soon be absorbed by the incoming British. Some thought that, under a Protestant sovereign, the CanadianEnglish possesion.Catholics would be rapidly converted to Protestantism. But the French type proved stubbornly persistent and to this day dominates the older Canada. The first English settlers in the conquered country were chiefly petty traders, not of a character to lead in social or public affairs. The result was that the government of the time co-operated rather with the leaders among the French.
After peace was concluded in 1763, Canada was governed under the authority of a royal proclamation, but sooner or later a constitution specially adapted to the needs of the country was inevitable. In 1774 this was provided by the Quebec Act passed by the Imperial parliament. Under this act the western territory which France had claimed, extending as far as the Mississippi and south to the Ohio, was included with Canada in what was called the Province of Quebec. This vast territory was to be governed despotically from Quebec; the Roman Catholic church was given its old privileges in Canada; and the French civil law was established permanently side by side with the English criminal law. The act linked the land-owning class in Canada and the church by ties of self-interest to the British cause. Thehabitant, placed again under their authority, had less reason to be content.
In 1775 began the American Revolution. Its leaders tried to make the revolt continental, and invaded Canada, hoping that the French would join them. They took Montreal and besieged Quebec during the winter of 1775-1776; but the prudent leadership of Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, saved Quebec and in 1776 the revolutionary army withdrew unsuccessful from Canada. Since that time any prospect of Canada’s union to the United States has been very remote.
But the American Revolution profoundly influenced the life of Canada. The country became the refuge of thousands of American loyalists who would not desert Great Britain. To Nova Scotia, to what are now New Brunswick (q.v.) and Ontario (q.v.) they fled in numbers not easily estimated, but probably reaching about 40,000. Until this time the present New Brunswick and Ontario had contained few European settlers; now they developed, largely under the influence of the loyalists of the Revolution. This meant that the American type of colonial life would be reproduced in Canada; but it meant also bitter hostility on the part of these colonists to the United States, which refused in any way to compensate the loyalists for their confiscated property. Great Britain did something; the loyalists received liberal grants of land and cash compensation amounting to nearly £4,000,000.
A prevailingly French type of government was now no longer adequate in Canada, and in 1791 was passed by the British parliament the Constitutional Act, separating Canada at the Ottawa river into two parts, each with its own government; Lower Canada, chiefly French, retaining the old system of laws, with representative institutions now added, and Upper Canada, on the purely British model. (For the history of Lower and Upper Canada, now Quebec and Ontario, the separate articles must be consulted.) Each province had special problems; the French in Lower Canada aimed at securing political power for their own race, while in Upper Canada there was no race problem, and the great struggle was for independence of official control and in all essential matters for government by the people. It may be doubted whether at this time it would have been safe to give these small communities complete self-government. But this a clamorous radical element demanded insistently, and the issue was the chief one in Canada for half a century.
But before this issue matured war broke out between Great Britain and the United States in 1812 from causes due chiefly to Napoleon’s continental policy. The war seemed to furnish a renewed opportunity to annex Canada to the American Union, and Canada became the chief theatre of conflict. The struggle was most vigorous on the Niagara frontier. But in the end the American invasion failed and the treaty made at Ghent in 1814 left the previous status unaltered.
In 1837 a few French Canadians in Lower Canada, led by Louis Joseph Papineau (q.v.), took up arms with the wild idea of establishing a French republic on the St Lawrence. In the same year William Lyon Mackenzie (q.v.) led a similar armed revolt in Upper Canada against the domination of the ruling officialdom called, with little reason, the “Family Compact.” Happening, as these revolts did, just at the time of Queen Victoria’s accession,Lord Durham.they attracted wide attention, and in 1838 the earl of Durham (q.v.) was sent to govern Canada and report on the affairs of British North America. Clothed as he was with large powers, he undertook in the interests of leniency and reconciliation to banish, without trial, some leaders of the rebellion in Lower Canada. For this reason he was censured at home and he promptly resigned, after spending only five months in the country. But hisReport, published in the following year, is a masterly survey of the situation and included recommendations that profoundly influenced the later history of Canada. He recommended the union of the two Canadian provinces at once, the ultimate union of all British North America and the granting to this large state of full self-government. The French element he thought a menace to Canada’s future, and partly for this reason he desired all the provinces to unite so that the British element should be dominant.
To carry out Lord Durham’s policy the British government passed in 1840 an Act of Union joining Upper and Lower Canada, and sent out as governor Charles Poulett Thompson, who was made Baron Sydenham and Toronto In the singleparliament each province was equally represented. By this time there was more than a million people in Canada, and the country was becoming important. Lord Sydenham died in 1841 before his work was completed, and he left Canada still in a troubled condition. The French were suspicious of the Union, aimed avowedly at checking their influence, and the complete self-government for which the “Reformers” in English-speaking Canada had clamoured was not yet conceded by the colonial office. But rapidly it became obvious that the provinces united had become too important to be held in leading strings. The issue was finally settled in 1849 when the earl of Elgin was governor and the Canadian legislature, sitting at Montreal, passed by a large majority the Rebellion Losses Bill, compensating citizens, some of them French, in Lower Canada, for losses incurred at the hands of the loyal party during the rebellion a decade earlier. The cry was easily raised by the Conservative minority that this was to vote reward for rebellion. They appealed to London for intervention. The mob in Montreal burned the parliament buildings and stoned Lord Elgin himself because he gave the royal assent to the bill. He did so in the face of this fierce opposition, on the ground that, in Canadian domestic affairs, the Canadian parliament must be supreme.
The union of the two provinces did not work well. Each was jealous of the other and deadlocks frequently occurred. Commercially, after 1849, Canada was prosperous. In 1854 Lord Elgin negotiated a reciprocity treaty with the United States which gave Canadian natural products free entrance to the American market. The outbreak of the Civil War in the United States in 1861 increased the demand for such products, and Canada enjoyed an extensive trade with her neighbour. But, owing largely to the unfriendly attitude of Great Britain to the northern side during the war, the United States cancelled the treaty, when its first term of ten years ended in 1865, and it has never been renewed.
Under the party system in Canada cabinets changed as often as, until recently, they did in France, and the union of the two provinces did not give political stability. The French and English were sufficiently equal in strength to make the task of government well nigh impossible. In 1864 came the opportunity for change, when New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island were considering a federal union. Canada suggested a wider plan to include herself and, in October 1864, a conference was held at Quebec. The conference outlined a plan of federation which subsequently, with slight modifications, passed the imperial parliament as “The British North America Act,” and on the 1st of July 1867, the Dominion of Canada came into existence. It was born during the era of the American Civil War, and was planned to correct defects which time had revealed in the American federation. The provinces in Canada were conceded less power than have the states in the American union; the federal government retaining the residuum of power not conceded.
(G. M. W.)
When federation was accomplished in 1867 the Dominion of Canada comprised only the four provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Lord Monck was appointed the first governor-general, and at hisCanada since federation.request the Hon. John Alexander Macdonald undertook the formation of an administration. A coalition cabinet was formed, including the foremost Liberals and Conservatives drawn from the different provinces. Under a proclamation issued from Windsor Castle by Queen Victoria on the 22nd of May the new constitution came into effect on the 1st of July. This birthday of the Dominion has been fixed by statute as a public holiday, and is annually observed under the name of “Dominion Day.” Seventy-two senators—half Conservatives and half Liberals—were appointed, and lieutenant-governors were named for the four provinces. The prime minister was created a K.C.B., and minor honours were conferred on other ministers in recognition of their services in bringing about the union.
The first general election for the Dominion House of Commons was held during the month of August, and except in the province of Nova Scotia was favourable to the administration, which entered upon its parliamentary work with aNova Scotia question.majority of thirty-two. The first session of parliament was opened on the 8th of November, but adjourned on the 21st of December till the 12th of March 1868, chiefly on account of the fact that members of the Dominion parliament were allowed, in Ontario and Quebec, to hold seats in the local legislatures, so that it was difficult for the different bodies to be in session simultaneously. It was not till 1873 that an act was passed making members of the local legislatures ineligible for seats in the House of Commons. Immediately after the completion of federation a serious agitation for repeal of the union arose in Nova Scotia, which had been brought into the federal system by a vote of the existing legislature, without any direct preliminary appeal to the people. Headed by Joseph Howe (q.v.), the advocates of repeal swept the province at the Dominion election. Out of 19 members then elected 18 were pledged to repeal, Dr Tupper, the minister responsible for carrying the Act of Union, alone among the supporters of federation securing a seat. The local assembly, in which 36 out of 38 members were committed to repeal, passed an address to Her Majesty praying her not to “reduce this free, happy and hitherto self-governed province to the degraded condition of a servile dependency of Canada,” and sent Howe with a delegation to London to lay the petition at the foot of the throne. Howe enlisted the support of John Bright and other members of parliament, but the imperial government was firm, and the duke of Buckingham, as colonial secretary, soon informed the governor-general in a despatch that consent could not be given for the withdrawal of Nova Scotia from the Dominion. Meanwhile Howe, convinced of the impossibility of effecting separation, and fearing disloyal tendencies which had manifested themselves in some of its advocates, entered into negotiations with Dr Tupper in London, and later with the Dominion government, for better financial terms than those originally arranged for Nova Scotia in the federal system. The estimated amount of provincial debt assumed by the general government was increased by $1,186,756, and a special annual subsidy of $82,698 was granted for a period of ten years. These terms having been agreed to, Howe, as a pledge of his approval and support, accepted a seat as secretary of state in the Dominion cabinet. By taking this course he sacrificed much of his remarkable popularity in his native province, but confirmed the work of consolidating the Dominion. It was many years before the bitterness of feeling aroused by the repeal agitation entirely subsided in Nova Scotia.
A gloom was cast over the first parliament of the Dominion by the assassination in 1868 of one of the most brilliant figures in the politics of the time, D’Arcy McGee (q.v.) His murderer, a Fenian acting under the instructions of the secret society to which he belonged, was discovered, and executed in 1869.
The reorganization of the various departments of state, in view of the wider interests with which they had to deal, occupied much of the attention of the first parliament of the Dominion. In 1867 the postal rates were reduced and unified. In 1868 a militia system for the whole Dominion was organized, the tariff altered and systematized, and a Civil Service Act passed. The banking system of the country was put on a sound footing by a series of acts culminating in 1871, and in the same year a uniform system of decimal currency was established for the whole Dominion. While the new machinery of state was thus being put in operation other large questions presented themselves.
The construction of the Inter-Colonial railway as a connecting link between the provinces on the seaboard and those along the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes was a part of the federation compact, a clause of the BritishInter-Colonial railway.North America Act providing that it should be begun within six months after the date of union. The guarantee of the imperial government made easy the provisionof 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 onHudson’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 concerningRed 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) AntonyNew 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 proposalsof 1865, and, in spite of various efforts to arrange satisfactory terms, has steadily held aloof, and so has proved the only obstacle to the complete political unification of British North America.
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A signal proof was soon furnished of the new standing in the empire which federation had given to the Canadian provinces. A heritage of differences and difficulties had been left to be settled between England, Canada and theDifficulties with the United States.American Union as the result of the Civil War. In retaliation for the supposed sympathy of Canadians with the South in this struggle the victorious North took steps to abrogate in 1866 the reciprocity treaty of 1854, which had conferred such great advantages on both countries. It followed that the citizens of the United States lost the right which they had received under the treaty to share in the fisheries of Canada. American fishermen, however, showed so little inclination to give up what they had enjoyed so long, that it was found necessary to take vigorous steps to protect Canadian fishing rights, and frequent causes of friction consequently arose. During the progress of the Civil War American feeling had been greatly exasperated by the losses inflicted on commerce by the cruiser “Alabama,” which, it was claimed, was allowed to leave a British port in, violation of international law. On the other hand, Canadian feeling had been equally exasperated by the Fenian raids, organized on American soil, which had cost Canada much expenditure of money and some loss of life. In, addition to these causes of difference there was an unsettled boundary dispute in British Columbia, and questions about the navigation of rivers common to the United States and Canada. In 1869 the government of Canada sent a deputation to England to press upon the imperial government the necessity of asserting Canada’s position in regard to the fisheries, and the desirability of settling other questions in dispute with the republic. The outcome of this application was the appointment of a commission to consider and if possible settle outstanding differences between the three countries. The prime minister of the Dominion, Sir John Macdonald, was asked to act as one of the imperial commissioners in carrying on these negotiations. This was the first time that a colonist had been called upon to assist in the settlement of international disputes. The commission assembled at the American capital in February 1871, and after discussions extending over several weeks signed what is known as the treaty of Washington. By the terms of this treaty the “Alabama” claims and the San Juan boundary were referred to arbitration; the free navigation of the St Lawrence was granted to the United States in return for the free use of Lake Michigan and certain Alaskan rivers; and it was settled that a further commission should decide the excess of value of the Canadian fisheries thrown open to the United States over and above the reciprocal concessions made to Canada. Much to the annoyance of the people of the Dominion the claims for the Fenian raids were withdrawn at the request of the British government, which undertook, to make good to Canada any losses she had suffered. To some of these terms the representative of Canada made a strenuous opposition, and in finally signing the treaty stated that he did so chiefly for imperial interests, although in these he believed Canadian interests to be involved. The clauses relating to the fisheries and the San Juan boundary were reserved for the approval of the Canadian parliament, which, in spite of much violent opposition, ratified them by a large majority. Under the “Alabama” arbitration Great Britain paid to the United States damages to the amount of $15,500,000, while the German Emperor decided the San Juan boundary in favour of the United States. The Fishery Commission, on the other hand, which sat in Halifax, awarded Canada $5,500,000 as the excess value of its fisheries for twelve years, and after much hesitation this sum was paid by the United States into the Canadian treasury. An imperial guarantee of a loan for the construction of railways was the only compensation Canada received for the Fenian raids.
The second general election for the Dominion took place in 1872. It was marked by the complete defeat of the Anti-Unionist party in Nova Scotia, only one member of which secured his election, thus exactly reversing theCanadian Pacific railway question.vote of 1867. While Sir John Macdonald’s administration was supported in Nova Scotia, it was weakened in Ontario on account of the clemency shown to Riel, and in Quebec by the refusal to grant a general amnesty to all who had taken part in the rebellion. Two important members of the cabinet, Sir G. Cartier and Sir F. Hincks, were defeated. Opposition to the Washington treaty and dread of the bold railway policy of the government also contributed to weaken its position. But a graver blow, ending in the complete overthrow of the administration, was soon to fall as the result of the election. In 1872 two companies had been formed and received charters to build the Canadian Pacific railway. Sir Hugh Allan of Montreal was at the head of the one, and the Hon. David Macpherson of Toronto was president of the other. The government endeavoured to bring about an amalgamation of these rival companies, believing that the united energies and financial ability of the whole country were required for so vast an undertaking. While negotiations to this end were still proceeding the election of 1872 came on with the result already mentioned. Soon after the meeting of parliament, a Liberal member of the House, Mr L.S. Huntingdon, formally charged certain members of the cabinet with having received large sums of money, for use in the election, from Sir Hugh Allan, on condition, as it was claimed, that the Canadian Pacific contract should be given to the new company, of which he became the head on the failure of the plan for amalgamation. These charges were investigated by a royal commission, which was appointed after it had been decided that the parliamentary committee named for that purpose could not legally take evidence under oath. Parliament met in October 1873, to receive the report of the commission. While members of the government were exonerated by the report from the charge of personal corruption, the payment of large sums of money by Sir Hugh Allan was fully established, and public feeling on the matter was so strong that Sir J. Macdonald, while asserting his own innocence, felt compelled to resign without waiting for the vote, of parliament. Lord Dufferin, who had succeeded Lord Lisgar as governor-general in 1872, at once sent for the leader of the Opposition, Mr Alexander Mackenzie (q.v.), who succeeded in forming a Liberal administration which, on appealing to the constituencies, was supported by an overwhelming majority, and held power for the five following years.
On the accession to power of the Liberal party, a new policy was adopted for the construction of the trans-continental railway. It was proposed to lessen the cost of construction by utilizing the water stretches along the route, while, on the ground that the contract made was impossible of fulfilment, the period of completion was postponed indefinitely. Meanwhile the surveys and construction were carried forward not by a company, but as a government work. Under this arrangement British Columbia became exceedingly restive, holding the Dominion to the engagement by which it had been induced to enter the union. A representative of the government, Mr (later Sir James) Edgar, sent out to conciliate the province by some new agreement, failed to accomplish his object, and all the influence of the governor-general, Lord Dufferin, who paid a visit at this time to the Pacific coast, was required to quiet the public excitement, which had shown itself in a resolution passed by the legislature for separation from the Dominion unless the terms of union were fulfilled.
Meanwhile a policy destined to affect profoundly the future of the Dominion had, along with that of the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, become a subject of burning political discussion and party division.Economic “national policy.”During the period of Mr Mackenzie’s administration a profound business depression affected the whole continent of America. The Dominion revenue showed a series of deficits for several years in succession. The factories ofthe United States, unduly developed by an extreme system of protection, sought in Canada a slaughter market for their surplus products, to the detriment or destruction of Canadian industries. Meanwhile the republic, which had for many years drained Canada of hundreds of thousands of artisans to work its factories, steadily declined to consider any suggestion for improving trade relations between the two countries. In these circumstances Sir J. Macdonald brought forward a proposal to adopt what was called a “national policy,” or, in other words, a system of protection for Canadian industries. Mr Mackenzie and his chief followers, whose inclinations were towards free trade, pinned their political fortunes to the maintenance of a tariff for revenue only. After some years of fierce discussion in parliament and throughout the country the question was brought to an issue in 1878, when, with a large majority of followers pledged to carry out protection, Sir John Macdonald was restored to power. The new system was laid before parliament in 1879 by the finance minister, Sir Leonard Tilley; and the tariff then agreed upon, although it received considerable modification from time to time, remained, under both Conservative and Liberal administrations, the basis of Canadian finance, and, as Canadians generally believed, the bulwark of their industry. It had almost immediately the effect of lessening the exodus of artisans to the United States, and of improving the revenue and so restoring the national credit.
In October 1878 Lord Dufferin’s term of office expired, and his place as governor-general was taken by the marquess of Lorne, whose welcome to the Dominion was accentuated by the fact that he was the son-in-law of the queen, and that his viceroyalty was shared by the princess Louise. The election of 1878 marked the beginning of a long period of Conservative rule—the premiership of Sir J. Macdonald continuing from that time without a break until his death in 1891, while his party remained in power till 1896. This long-continued Conservative supremacy was apparently due to the policy of bold and rapid development which it had adopted, and which appealed to a young and ambitious country more strongly than the more cautious proposals of the Liberal leaders. As soon as the government had redeemed its pledge to establish a system of protection a vigorousCompletion of the Canadian Pacific Railway.railway policy was inaugurated. A contract was made with a new company to complete the Canadian Pacific railway within ten years, on condition of receiving a grant of $25,000,000 and 25,000,000 acres of land, together with those parts of the line already finished under government direction. After fierce debate in parliament these terms were ratified in the session of 1881. The financial difficulties encountered by the company in carrying out their gigantic task were very great, and in 1884 they were compelled to obtain from the Dominion government a loan of $20,000,000 secured on the company’s property. This loan was repaid by 1887. Meanwhile the work was carried forward with so much energy that, five years before the stipulated period of completion, on the 7th of November 1886, the last spike was driven by Mr Donald A. Smith (Lord Strathcona), whose fortune had been largely pledged to the undertaking, along with those of other prominent Canadian business men, especially Mr George Stephen (Lord Mountstephen), Mr Duncan McIntyre, and Mr R.B. Angus. Under the energetic management of Mr (later Sir) W.C. Van Home, who was appointed president of the company in 1888, the new railway soon became the most prominent feature in the development of the country; lines of steamships were established on the great lakes and the Pacific; a stream of immigration began to flow into the prairie region; and the increasing prosperity of the railway had a poverful influence in improving the public credit.
Even before the Canadian Pacific railway was fully completed, it proved of great service in a national emergency which suddenly arose in the north-west. With the organization of Manitoba and the opening of improved communication immigrants began to move rapidly westward, and government surveyors were soon busy laying off lands in the Saskatchewan valley. The numbers of the half-breed settlers of this district had been increased by the migration of many of those who had taken part in the first uprising at Fort Garry. Influenced by somewhat similar motives,Riel’s rebellion.fearing from the advance of civilization the destruction of the buffalo, on which they chiefly depended for food, with some real grievances and others imaginary, the discontented population sent for Riel, who had been living, since his flight from Fort Garry, in the United States. He returned to put himself at the head of a second rebellion. At first he seemed inclined to act with moderation and on lines of constitutional agitation, but soon, carried away by fanaticism, ambition and vanity, he turned to armed organization against the government. To half-breed rebellion was added the imminent danger of an Indian uprising, to which Riel looked for support. The authorities at Ottawa were at first careless or sceptical in regard to the danger, the reality of which was only brought home to them when a body of mounted police, advancing to regain a small post at Duck Lake, of which the rebels had taken possession, was attacked and twelve of their number killed. Volunteers and militia were at once called out in all the old provinces of Canada, and were quickly conveyed by the newly constructed line of railway to the neighbourhood of the point of disturbance. Major-general Middleton, of the imperial army, who was then in command of the Canadian militia, led the expedition. Several minor engagements with half-breeds or Indians preceded the final struggle at Batoche, where Gabriel Dumont, Riel’s military lieutenant, had skilfully entrenched his forces. After a cautious advance the eagerness of the troops finally overcame the hesitation of the commander in exposing his men, the rifle pits were carried with a rush, and the rebellion crushed at a single stroke. Dumont succeeded in escaping across the United States boundary; Riel was captured, imprisoned, and in due course tried for treason. This second rebellion carried on under his leadership had lasted about three months, had cost the country many valuable lives, and in money about five millions of dollars. Clear as was his guilt, Riel’s trial, condemnation and execution on the 16th of November 1885, provoked a violent political storm which at one time threatened to overthrow the Conservative government. The balance of power between parties in parliament was held by the province of Quebec, and there racial and religious feeling evoked no slight sympathy for Riel. But while a section of Quebec was eager to secure the rebel’s pardon, Ontario was equally bent on the execution of justice, so that in the final vote on the question in parliament the defection of French Conservatives was compensated for by the support of Ontario Liberals. In the end 25 out of 53 French members voted in justification of Kiel’s punishment. With him were executed several Indian chiefs who had been concerned in a massacre of whites. Painful as were the circumstances connected with this rebellion, it is certain that the united action of the different provinces in suppressing it tended to consolidate Canadian sentiment, and the short military campaign had the effect of fixing public attention upon the immense fertile territory then being opened up.
The general election of 1882 turned chiefly upon endorsement of the national policy of protection; in that of 1887 the electoral test was again applied to the same issue, while Sir John Macdonald also asked for approval of the government’sMacdonald’s fiscal policy.action in exacting from Riel the full penalty of his guilt. On both issues the Conservative policy was upheld by the electors, and Macdonald was continued in power with a large parliamentary majority. From the election of 1887 the Riel agitation ceased to seriously influence politics, but the fiscal controversy continued under new forms. Between 1887 and 1891 a vigorous agitation was kept up under Liberal auspices in favour of closer trade relations with the United States, at first under the name of Commercial Union and later under that of Unrestricted Reciprocity. The object in both cases was to break down tariff barriers between the United States and Canada, even though that should be at the expense of discrimination against Great Britain. The Conservative party took the position that commercial union, involving as it would a common protective tariff against all other countries, including the motherland,would inevitably lead to political unification with the United States. The question after long and vehement discussion was brought to a final issue in the election of 1891, and Sir John Macdonald’s government was again sustained. From that time protection became the settled policy of the country. On their accession to power in 1896 it was adopted by the Liberals, who joined to it a preference for the products of the mother country. Under the protective policy thus repeatedly confirmed, Canada gradually became more independent of the American market than in earlier times, and enjoyed great commercial prosperity. Soon after the election of 1891 Sir John Macdonald (q.v.) died, after an active political career of more than forty years. Under his direction the great lines of policy which have governed the development of Canada as a confederated state within the empire were inaugurated and carried forward with great success, so that his name has become indissolubly connected with the history of the Dominion at its most critical stage.
During the years which succeeded the death of Sir John Macdonald a succession of losses weakened the position of the Conservative party which had held power so long. The Hon. J.C.C. Abbott, leader of the party in theMacdonald’s successors.Senate, became prime minister on Macdonald’s death in 1891, but in 1892 was compelled by ill-health to resign, and in 1893 he died. His successor, Sir John Thompson, after a successful leadership of about two years, died suddenly of heart disease at Windsor Castle, immediately after being sworn of the imperial privy council. Charges of corruption in the administration of the department of public works, which led to the expulsion of one member of parliament, involved also the resignation from the cabinet of Sir Hector Langevin, leader of the French Conservatives, against whom carelessness at least in administration had been established. The brief premiership of Sir Mackenzie Bowell, between 1894 and 1896, was marked by much dissension in the Conservative ranks, ending finally in a reconstruction of the government in 1896 under Sir Charles Tupper. Breaks had been made in the Liberal ranks also by the death in 1892 of the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie and the withdrawal of the Hon. Edward Blake from Canadian politics to accept a seat in the British parliament as a member of the Home Rule party. But the appeal made to the electors in 1896 resulted in a decisive victory for the Liberal party, and marked the beginning of a long period of Liberal rule.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier (q.v.) became prime minister, and strengthened the cabinet which he formed by drawing into it from provincial politics the premiers of Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The administrationLaurier.thus established underwent many changes, but after winning three general elections it was still in power in 1909. The period of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s rule was one of striking progress in material growth, and a marked development of national feeling. While the federation of the provinces favoured the growth of a strong sentiment of Canadian individuality, the result of unification had been to strengthen decidedly the ties that bind the country to the empire. This was as true under Liberal as under Conservative auspices—as Canadians understood the meaning of these party names. The outbreak of the South African war in 1899 furnished an occasion for a practical display of Canadian loyalty to imperial interests. Three contingents of troops were despatched to the seat of war and took an active part in the events which finally secured the triumph of the British arms. These forces were supplemented by a regiment of Canadian horse raised and equipped at the sole expense of Lord Strathcona, the high commissioner of the Dominion in London. The same spirit was illustrated in other ways. In bringing about a system of penny postage throughout the empire; in forwarding the construction of the Pacific cable to secure close and safe imperial telegraphic connexion; in creating rapid and efficient lines of steamship communication with the motherland and all the colonies; in granting tariff preference to British goods and in striving for preferential treatment of inter-imperial trade; in assuming responsibility for imperial defence at the two important stations of Halifax and Esquimalt,—Canada, under the guidance of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his party, took a leading part and showed a truly national spirit.
The opening years of the 20th century were marked by a prolonged period of great prosperity. A steady stream of emigrants from Europe and the United States, sometimes rising in number to 300,000 in a single year,Canadian expansion.began to occupy the vast western prairies. So considerable was the growth of this section of the Dominion that in 1905 it was found necessary to form two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, from the North-West Territories, the area of each being 275,000 sq. m. Each province has a lieutenant-governor and a single legislative chamber, with a representation of four members in the Senate and five in the House of Commons of the Dominion parliament. The control of the public lands is retained by the general government on the ground that it has been responsible for the development of the country by railway construction and emigration. With the rapid increase of population, production in Canada also greatly increased; exports, imports and revenue constantly expanded, and capital, finding abundant and profitable employment, began to flow freely into the country for further industrial development. New and great railway undertakings were a marked feature of this period. The Canadian Pacific system was extended until it included 12,000 m. of line. The Canadian Northern railway, already constructed from the Great Lakes westward to the neighbourhood of the Rockies, and with water and rail connexions reaching eastward to Quebec, began to transform itself into a complete transcontinental system, with an extension to the Hudson Bay. That this line owed its inception and construction chiefly to the joint enterprise of two private individuals, Messrs Mackenzie and Mann, was a striking proof of the industrial capacities of the country. To a still more ambitious line, the Grand Trunk Pacific, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, aiming at extensive steamship connexion on both oceans, and closely associated with the Grand Trunk system of Ontario and Quebec, the government of Canada gave liberal support as a national undertaking. The eastern section of 1875 m., extending from Winnipeg to Moncton, where connexion is secured with the winter ports of Halifax and St John, was, under the act of incorporation, to be built by the government, and then leased for fifty years, under certain conditions, to the Grand Trunk Pacific Company. The western portion, of 1480 m., from Winnipeg to the Pacific, was to be built, owned and operated by the company itself, the government guaranteeing bonds to the extent of 75% of the whole cost of construction. The discovery of large deposits of nickel at Sudbury; of extremely rich gold mines on the head-waters of the Yukon, in a region previously considered well-nigh worthless for human habitation; of extensive areas of gold, copper and silver ores in the mountain regions of British Columbia; of immense coal deposits in the Crow’s Nest Pass of the same province and on the prairies; of veins of silver and cobalt of extraordinary richness in northern Ontario—all deeply affected the industrial condition of the country and illustrated the vastness of its undeveloped resources. The use of wood-pulp in the manufacture of paper gave a greatly enhanced value to many millions of acres of northern forest country. The application of electricity to purposes of manufacture and transportation made the waterfalls and rapids in which the country abounds the source of an almost unlimited supply of energy capable of easy distribution for industrial purposes over wide areas.
Since confederation a series of attempts has been made with varying degrees of success to settle the questions in dispute between the Dominion and the United States, naturally arising from the fact that they divide between themRelations with the United States.the control of nearly the whole of a large continent and its adjoining waters. Considering the vastness of the interests involved, there is much cause for satisfaction in the fact that these differences have been settled by peaceful arbitrament rather than by that recourse to force which has so often marked the delimitation of rights and territory on other continentsThe Washington Treaty of 1871 has already been referred to. Its clauses dealing with the fisheries and trade lasted for fourteen years, and were then abrogated by the action of the United States. Various proposals on the part of Canada for a renewal of the reciprocity were not entertained. After 1885 Canada was therefore compelled to fall back upon the treaty of 1818 as the guarantee of her fishing rights. It became necessary to enforce the terms of that convention, under which the fishermen of the United States could not pursue their avocations within the three miles’ limit, tranship cargoes of fish in Canadian ports, or enter them except for shelter, water, wood or repairs. On account of infractions of the treaty many vessels were seized and some were condemned. In 1887 a special commission was appointed to deal with the question. On this commission Mr Joseph Chamberlain, Sir Sackville West and Sir Charles Tupper represented British and Canadian interests; Secretary T.F. Bayard, Mr W. le B. Putnam and Mr James B. Angell acted for the United States. The commission succeeded in agreeing to the terms of a treaty, which was recommended to Congress by President Cleveland as supplying “a satisfactory, practical and final adjustment, upon a basis honourable and just to both parties, of the difficult and vexed questions to which it relates.” This agreement, known as the Chamberlain-Bayard treaty, was rejected by the Senate, and as a consequence it became necessary to carry on the fisheries under amodus vivendirenewed annually.
In 1886 a difference about international rights on the high seas arose on the Pacific coast in connexion with the seal fisheries of Bering Sea. In that year several schooners, fitted out in British Columbia for the capture of seals in the North Pacific, were seized by a United States cutter at a distance of 60 m. from the nearest land, the officers were imprisoned and fined, and the vessels themselves subjected to forfeiture. The British government at once protested against this infraction of international right, and through long and troublesome negotiations firmly upheld Canada’s claims in the matter. The dispute was finally referred to a court of arbitration, on which Sir John Thompson, premier of the Dominion, sat as one of the British arbitrators. It was decided that the United States had no jurisdiction in the Bering Sea beyond the three miles’ limit, but the court also made regulations to prevent the wholesale slaughter of fur-bearing seals. The sum of $463,454 was finally awarded as compensation to the Canadian sealers who had been unlawfully seized and punished. This sum was paid by the United States in 1898.
As the result of communications during 1897 between Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Secretary Sherman, the governments of Great Britain and the United States agreed to the appointment of a joint high commission, with a view of settling all outstanding differences between the United States and Canada. The commission, which included three members of the Canadian cabinet and a representative of Newfoundland, and of which Lord Herschell was appointed chairman, met at Quebec on the 23rd of August 1898. The sessions continued in Quebec at intervals until the 10th of October, when the commission adjourned to meet in Washington on the 1st of November, where the discussions were renewed for some weeks. Mr Nelson Dingley, an American member of the commission, died during the month of January, as did the chairman, Lord Herschell, in March, as the result of an accident, soon after the close of the sittings of the commission. The Alaskan boundary, the Atlantic and inland fisheries, the alien labour law, the bonding privilege, the seal fishery in the Bering Sea and reciprocity of trade in certain products were among the subjects considered by the commission. On several of these points much progress was made towards a settlement, but a divergence of opinion as to the methods by which the Alaskan boundary should be determined put an end for the time to the negotiations.
In 1903 an agreement was reached by which the question of this boundary, which depended on the interpretation put upon the treaty of 1825 between Russia and England, should be submitted to a commission consisting of “six impartial jurists of repute,” three British and three American. The British commissioners appointed were: Lord Alverstone, lord chief justice of England; Sir Louis Jette, K.C., of Quebec; and A.B. Aylesworth, K.C., of Toronto. On the American side were appointed: the Hon. Henry C. Lodge, senator for Massachusetts; the Hon. Elihu Root, secretary of war for the United States government; and Senator George Turner. Canadians could not be persuaded that the American members fulfilled the condition of being “impartial jurists,” and protest was made, but, though the imperial government also expressed surprise, no change in the appointments was effected. The commission met in London, and announced its decision in October. This was distinctly unfavourable to Canada’s claims, since it excluded Canadians from all ocean inlets as far south as the Portland Channel, and in that channel gave to Canada only two of the four islands claimed. A statement made by the Canadian commissioners, who refused to sign the report, of an unexplained change of opinion on the part of Lord Alverstone, produced a widespread impression for a time that his decision in favour of American claims was diplomatic rather than judicial. Later Canadian opinion, however, came to regard the decision of the commission as a reasonable compromise. The irritation caused by the decision gradually subsided, but at the moment it led to strong expressions on the part of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and others in favour of securing for Canada a fuller power of making her own treaties. While the power of making treaties must rest ultimately in the hands that can enforce them, the tendency to give the colonies chiefly interested a larger voice in international arrangements had become inevitable. The mission of a Canadian cabinet minister, the Hon. R. Lemieux, to Japan in 1907, to settle Canadian difficulties with that country, illustrated the change of diplomatic system in progress.
Under the British North American Act the control of education was reserved for the provincial governments, with a stipulation that all rights enjoyed by denominational schools at the time of confederation should be respected. ProvincialEducation.control has caused some diversity of management; the interpretation of the denominational agreement has led to acute differences of opinion which have invaded the field of politics. In all the provinces elementary, and in some cases secondary, education is free, the funds for its support being derived from local taxation and from government grants. The highly organized school system of Ontario is directed by a minister of education, who is a member of the provincial cabinet. The other provinces have boards of education, and superintendents who act under the direction of the provincial legislatures. In Quebec the Roman Catholic schools, which constitute the majority, are chiefly controlled by the local clergy of that church. The Protestant schools are managed by a separate board. In Ontario as well as in Quebec separate schools are allowed to Roman Catholics. In Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and British Columbia the public schools are strictly undenominational. This position was only established in New Brunswick and Manitoba after violent political struggles, and frequent appeals to the highest courts of the empire for decisions on questions of federal or provincial jurisdiction. The right of having separate schools has been extended to the newly constituted provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Secondary education is provided for by high schools and collegiate institutes in all towns and cities, and by large residential institutions at various centres, conducted on the principle of the English public schools. The largest of these is Upper Canada College at Toronto. Each province has a number of normal and model schools for the training of teachers. For higher education there are also abundant facilities. M‘Gill University at Montreal has been enlarged and splendidly endowed by the munificence of a few private individuals, Toronto University by the provincial legislature of Ontario; Queen’s University at Kingston largely by the support of its own graduates and friends. University work in the maritime provinces, instead of being concentrated, as it might well be, in one powerful institution, is distributed among five small, but within their range efficient universities. The agricultural college at Guelph andthe experimental farms maintained by the federal government give excellent training and scientific assistance to farmers. Sir William Macdonald in 1908 built and endowed, at an expenditure of at least £700,000, an agricultural college and normal school at St Anne’s, near Montreal. While the older universities have increased greatly in influence and efficiency, the following new foundations have been made since confederation:—University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, 1877; Presbyterian College, Winnipeg, 1870; Methodist College, Winnipeg, 1888; Wesleyan College, Montreal, 1873; Presbyterian College, Montreal, 1868; School of Practical Science, Toronto, 1877; Royal Military College, Kingston, 1875; M‘Master University, Toronto, 1888. All the larger universities have schools of medicine in affiliation, and have the power of conferring medical degrees. Since 1877 Canadian degrees have been recognized by the Medical Council of Great Britain.
In her treatment of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country (numbering 93,318 in 1901) Canada has met with conspicuous success. Since the advance of civilization and indiscriminate slaughter have deprived them of the bison,Indian tribes.so long their natural means of subsistence, the north-west tribes have been maintained chiefly at the expense of the country. As a result of the great care now used in watching over them there has been a small but steady increase in their numbers. Industrial and boarding schools, established in several of the provinces, by separating the children from the degrading influences of their home life, have proved more effectual than day schools for training them in the habits and ideas of a higher civilization. (SeeIndians, North American.)
The constitution of the Dominion embodies the first attempt made to adapt British principles and methods of government to a federal system. The chief executive authority is vested in the sovereign, as is the supreme commandConstitution.of the military and naval forces. The governor-general represents, and fulfils the functions of, the crown, which appoints him. He holds office for five years, and his powers are strictly limited, as in the case of the sovereign, all executive acts being done on the advice of his cabinet, the members of which hold office only so long as they retain the confidence of the people as expressed by their representatives in parliament. The governor-general has, however, the independent right to withhold his assent to any bill which he considers in conflict with imperial interests. The following governors-general have represented the crown since the federation of the provinces, with the year of their appointment: Viscount Monck, 1867; Sir John Young (afterwards Baron Lisgar), 1868; the earl of Dufferin, 1872; the marquess of Lome (afterwards duke of Argyll), 1878; the marquess of Lansdowne, 1883; Lord Stanley of Preston (afterwards earl of Derby), 1888; the earl of Aberdeen, 1893; the earl of Minto, 1898; Earl Grey, 1904. The upper house, or Senate, is composed of members who hold office for life and are nominated by the governor-general in council. It originally consisted of 72 members, 24 from Quebec, 24 from Ontario, and 24 from the maritime provinces, but this number has been from time to time slightly increased as new provinces have been added. The House of Commons consists of representatives elected directly by the people. The number of members, originally 196, is subject to change after each decennial census. The basis adopted in the British North America Act is that Quebec shall always have 65 representatives, and each of the other provinces such a number as will give the same proportion of members to its population as the number 65 bears to the population of Quebec at each census. In 1908 the number of members was 218.
Members of the Senate and of the House of Commons receive an annual indemnity of $2500, with a travelling allowance. Legislation brought forward in 1906 introduced an innovation in assigning a salary of $7000 to the recognized leader of the Opposition, and pensions amounting to half their official income to ex-cabinet ministers who have occupied their posts for five consecutive years. This pension clause has since been repealed. One principal object of the framers of the Canadian constitution was to establish a strong central government. An opposite plan was therefore adopted to that employed in the system of the United States, where the federal government enjoys only the powers granted to it by the sovereign states. The British North America Act assigns to the different provinces, as to the central parliament, their spheres of control, but all residuary powers are given to the general government. Within these limitations the provincial assemblies have a wide range of legislative power. In Nova Scotia and Quebec the bicameral system of an upper and lower house is retained; in the other provinces legislation is left to a single representative assembly. For purely local matters municipal institutions are organized to cover counties and townships, cities and towns, all based on an exceedingly democratic franchise.
The creation of a supreme court engaged the attention of Sir John Macdonald in the early years after federation, but was only finally accomplished in 1876, during the premiership of Alexander Mackenzie. This court is presided over by a chief justice, with five puisne judges, and has appellate civil and criminal jurisdiction for the Dominion. By an act passed in 1891 the government has power to refer to the supreme court any important question of law affecting the public interest. The right of appeal from the supreme court, thus constituted, to the judicial committee of the privy council marks, in questions judicial, Canada’s place as a part of the British empire.