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Chronicles of Canada Volume 28 - The Fathers of Confederation: A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion

<h3> CHAPTER XIII </h3> <h4> FROM SEA TO SEA </h4> The extension of the Dominion to the Pacific ocean had been discussed at the Quebec Conference. Some of the maritime delegates, however, thought they had no authority to discuss the acquisition of territory beyond the boundaries of the provinces; and George Brown, one of the strongest advocates of western extension, conceded that the inclusion of British Columbia and Vancouver Island in the scheme of union was 'rather an extreme proposition.' But the Canadian leaders never lost sight of the intervening regions of Rupert's Land and the North-West Territory. They foresaw the danger of the rich prairie lands falling under foreign control, and entertained no doubts as to the necessity of terminating in favour of Canada the hold of the Hudson's Bay Company over these regions. In 1857 the select committee of the Imperial House of Commons, mentioned in a preceding {159} chapter, had believed it 'essential to meet the just and reasonable wishes of Canada to be enabled to annex to her territory such portion of the land in her neighbourhood as may be available to her for the purposes of settlement.' The districts on the Red River and on the Saskatchewan were considered as likely to be desired; and, as a condition of occupation, Canada should open up and maintain communication and provide for local administration. The committee thought that if Canada were unwilling to take over the Red River country at an early date some temporary means of government might be devised. Nothing, however, had come of the suggestion. Had it been carried out, and a crown colony created, comprising the territory which is now the province of Manitoba, the Dominion would have been saved a disagreeable and humiliating episode, as well as political complications which shook the young state to its foundations. This was the trouble known to history as the Red River Rebellion. As an armed insurrection it was only a flash in the pan. But it awoke passions in Ontario and Quebec, and revived all those dissensions, racial and religious, which the union had lulled into a semblance of harmony. {160} One of the first steps taken by parliament in the autumn of 1867 was the adoption of an address to the Queen, moved by William McDougall, asking that Rupert's Land and the North-West Territory be united with Canada. Two members of the government, Cartier and McDougall, went to England to negotiate for the extinction of the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company. After months of delay, caused partly by the serious illness of McDougall, it was agreed that the company should receive £300,000, one-twentieth of the lands lying within the Fertile Belt, and 45,000 acres adjacent to its trading-posts. The Canadian parliament formally accepted the bargain, and the deed of surrender provided that the change of rule should come into force on December 1, 1869. It was no mean ambition of William McDougall to be the first Canadian administrator of this vast region with its illimitable prospects; a man of talent, experience, and breadth of view, such as McDougall was, might reasonably hope there to carve out a great career for himself and do the state some service. He was appointed on September 26, 1869, lieutenant-governor of the 'North-West Territory'—an indefinite term meant {161} apparently to cover the whole western country—and left at once for his post. He appears to have been quite in the dark concerning the perilous nature of the mission. At any rate, he could not foresee that, far from bringing him distinction, the task would shortly end, as Sir John Macdonald described it, in an inglorious fiasco. At this time, it should be remembered, the actual conditions in the West were but vaguely known in Canada. Efforts towards communication and exploration, it is true, had begun as early as 1857, when Simon Dawson made surveys for a road from Fort William and Professor Henry Youle Hind undertook his famous journey to the plains for scientific and general observation. A number of adventurous Canadians had gone out to settle on the plains. There was a newspaper at Fort Garry—the Nor'Wester—the pioneer newspaper of the country—which had been started by Mr William Buckingham and a colleague in 1859. But even in official circles the community to which Governor McDougall went to introduce authority was very imperfectly understood. The Red River Settlement in 1869 contained about twelve thousand inhabitants. The English-speaking portion of the population {162} consisted of heterogeneous groups without unity among them for any public purpose. Some were descendants or survivors of Lord Selkirk's settlers who had come out half a century before; others were servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, both retired and active; a third group were the Canadians; while a fourth was made up of a small though noisy body of Americans. Outnumbering the English, and united under leaders of their own race, the French and French half-breeds dwelt chiefly on the east bank of the Red River, south of Fort Garry. These half-breeds, or Métis, were a hardy race, who subsisted by hunting rather than by farming, and who were trained to the use of arms. They regarded with suspicion the threatened introduction of new political institutions, and were quite content under the paternal sway of the Hudson's Bay Company and under the leadership of their spiritual advisers, Bishop Taché and the priests of the Métis parishes. The Canadian population numbered about three hundred, with perhaps a hundred adults, and they, conscious that they represented the coming régime, were not disposed to conciliate either the company or the native settlers. It was mooted among the half-breeds that they {163} were to be swamped by the incoming Canadians, and much resentment was aroused among them against the assumption of authority by the Dominion government. To make matters worse, a Canadian surveying party, led by Colonel J. Stoughton Dennis, had begun in the summer of 1869 to make surveys in the Province. This created alarm among the half-breed settlers, whose titles did not rest in any secure legal authority, and who were fearful that they were about to lose their possessions. Thus it came about that they resolved upon making a determined attempt to resist the transfer of the country to Canada. Underrating the difficulty and impatient of delay, McDougall took the unwise step of issuing a proclamation, from his temporary headquarters at Pembina, assuming control of the territory and calling upon the inhabitants to recognize his authority. He supposed, of course, that the transfer would be made, according to agreement, on December 1, and did not know that the Canadian government had declined to accept it or pay over the purchase-money until assured that peace and good order prevailed. The advices from Ottawa to McDougall were delayed, and he felt himself {164} obliged to act without definite knowledge of the position of affairs. After months of agitation the Métis under Louis Riel took command of the situation, armed their fighting men, seized Fort Garry, put a number of prominent white residents under arrest, and formed a provisional government. They sent word to the new governor not to enter the country; and when he advanced, with his official party, a short distance over the frontier, he was forcibly compelled by the insurgents to retreat into the United States. The rebels at Fort Garry became extremely menacing. Louis Riel, the central figure in this drama, was a young French half-breed, vain, ambitious, with some ability and the qualities of a demagogue. He had received his education in Lower Canada, and was on intimate terms with the French priests of the settlement. His conduct fifteen years later, when he returned to head another Métis rebellion farther west and paid the penalty on the scaffold, indicates that once embarked on a dangerous course he would be restrained by no one. That he was half, or wholly, insane on either occasion is not credible. Efforts were now made to negotiate with {165} the rebels and quiet the disturbance. Delegates went to the West from Canada consisting of Grand Vicar Thibault, Colonel de Salaberry, and Donald A. Smith (afterwards Lord Strathcona). There were exciting scenes; but the negotiations bore no immediate fruit. It was the depth of winter. The delegates had not come to threaten because they had no force to employ. The rebels had the game in their own hands. Bishop Taché, who was unhappily absent in Rome, was summoned home to arrange a peace on terms which might have left Riel and his associates some of the high stakes for which they were playing, had they not spoiled their own chances by a cruel, vindictive murder. After the departure of the Canadian delegates and the announcement of Bishop Taché's return, Riel felt his power ebbing away. His provisional government became a thing of shreds and patches, in spite of its large assumptions and its temporary control during the winter when the country was inaccessible. Among the imprisoned whites was Thomas Scott, a young man from Ontario who had been employed in surveying work and who was prominent in resistance to the usurpers. Riel is credited with a threat to shed some {166} blood to prove the reality of his power and to quell opposition. He rearrested a number of whites who had been released under promise of safety. One of them was Scott, charged with insubordination and breaking his parole. He was brought before a revolutionary tribunal resembling a court-martial, and was sentenced to be shot. Even if Riel's lawless tribunal had possessed judicial authority, Scott's conduct in no respect justified a death sentence. He had not been under arms when captured, and he was given no fair opportunity of defending himself. Efforts were made to save him, but Riel refused to show mercy. On March 4, a few days before Bishop Taché arrived at the settlement, Scott was shot by six men, several of them intoxicated, one refusing to prime his rifle, and one discharging a pistol at the victim as he lay moaning on the ground. <center> <ANTIMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-166.jpg" ALT="Alexandre Antonin Taché. From a photograph lent by Rev. L. Messier, St. Boniface." BORDER="2" WIDTH="368" HEIGHT="511"> <H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 400px"> Alexandre Antonin Taché. From a photograph lent by Rev. L. Messier, St. Boniface. </h4> </center> When the news of this barbarous murder reached the East, a political crisis was imminent. Scott was an Orangeman; and Catholic priests, it was said, had been closely identified with the rising. This was enough to start an agitation and to give it the character of a race and creed struggle. There existed also a suspicion that a miniature Quebec was to {167} be set up on the Red River, thus creating a sort of buffer French state between Ontario and the plains. Another cause of discontent was the belief that the government proposed to connive at the assassination of Scott and to allow his murderers to escape punishment. McDougall returned home, mortified by his want of success, and soon resigned his position. He blamed the government for what had occurred, and associated himself with the agitation in Ontario. The organization known as the Canada First party took a hand in the fray. It was composed of a few patriotic and able young men, including W. A. Foster, a Toronto barrister; Charles Mair, the well-known poet; John Schultz, who many years later, as Sir John Schultz, became governor of Manitoba, and who with Mair had been imprisoned by Riel and threatened with death; and Colonel George T. Denison, whose distinguished career as the promoter of Imperial unity has since made him famous in Canada and far beyond it. The circumstances of the time, the distrust between the races and the vacillation of a sorely pressed government, combined to make an awkward situation. The evidence does not show that the Ontario agitators let slip any {168} of their opportunities. The government was compelled to send under Colonel Wolseley an expeditionary force of Imperial troops and Canadian volunteers to nip in the bud the supposed attempt to establish French ascendancy on the Red River. This expedition was completely successful without the firing of a shot. Riel, at the sight of the troops, fled to the United States, and the British flag was raised over Fort Garry. So, in 1870, Manitoba entered the Dominion as a new province, and the adjacent territories were organized under a lieutenant-governor and council directly under federal jurisdiction. Out of them, thirty-five years later, came the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. But the fruits of the rebellion were evident for years. One result was the defeat in Ontario of Sandfield Macdonald's ministry in 1871. 'I find the country in a sound state,' wrote Sir John Macdonald during the general elections of 1872, 'the only rock ahead being that infernal Scott murder case, about which the Orangemen have quite lost their heads.'[1] When order was restored the clever miscreant Riel returned to the settlement. By raising a force to aid in quelling a threatened Fenian {169} invasion, he gulled Bishop Taché and the new governor, Adams G. Archibald, and had himself elected to the Dominion parliament. But Riel's crimes were too recent and too gross to be overlooked. His effrontery in taking the oath as a member was followed by his expulsion from the House; and once more he fled the country, only to reappear in the rôle of a rebel on the Saskatchewan in 1884, and, in the following year, to expiate his crimes on the scaffold. Having carried the Dominion to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, the next step for the government was the acquisition of British Columbia. After the Oregon Treaty of 1846 the British possessions on the Pacific coast lay in three divisions, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the Stikeen Territory, all in the domains of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1863, after the inrush of gold-seekers, the two latter had been united under one government and granted a Legislative Council, partly elective. Vancouver Island already had a legislature with two chambers, one elective. In 1865 Amor DeCosmos, one of the members of the Assembly for Victoria, began the union movement by proposing that Vancouver Island should be joined to British Columbia. There {170} was friction between the two colonies, largely on commercial grounds. A tariff enacted by the colony on the mainland proved injurious to the island merchants who flourished under a free port. So in 1866 the Imperial parliament passed an Act uniting the two colonies. Despite the isolation of the Pacific coast settlements from the British colonies across the continent on the Atlantic, the Confederation movement had not passed unnoticed in the Far West; and in March 1867 the Legislative Council of British Columbia adopted a resolution requesting Governor Seymour to take measures to secure the admission of British Columbia into the Dominion 'on fair and equitable terms.' In transmitting the resolution to the home authorities the governor candidly pointed out the difficulties. He was not strongly in favour of the policy. The country east of the Rocky Mountains, it should be kept in mind, was still in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company. An alien population from the United States was increasing in number. Enormous obstacles stood in the way of communication eastward. 'The resolution,' wrote Seymour, 'was the expression of a despondent community longing for change.' However, a public meeting in Victoria held on January {171} 29, 1868, urgently recommended union. A memorial to the Canadian government declared that the people generally were enthusiastic for the change. The leading newspapers endorsed it. The popularly elected councils of Victoria and New Westminster were of the same mind. Opposed to this body of opinion were the official class and a small party who desired annexation to the United States. The terms demanded were the assumption by Canada of a debt of about $1,500,000, a fixed annual subsidy, a wagon-road between Lake Superior and the head of navigation on the Fraser within two years, local representative institutions, and representation in the Canadian parliament. The legislature, despite the alluring prospect set forth in an address to the Queen moved by DeCosmos, cautiously adopted an amendment declaring that, while it adhered to its previous action in endorsing the principle of union 'to accomplish the consolidation of British interests and institutions in North America,' it lacked the knowledge necessary to define advantageous terms of union. A convention of delegates met at Yale to express dissatisfaction with local conditions in British Columbia and to frame the terms on which {172} union would be desirable. The Legislative Council, still unconvinced, again declared for delay; but a dispatch from Lord Granville in August 1869, addressed to the new governor, Anthony Musgrave, who, on the recommendation of Sir John Macdonald, had succeeded Seymour, emphatically endorsed Confederation, leaving open only the question of the terms. The Confederation debate took place in the Legislative Council in 1870. In concluding his speech in favour of the policy, Joseph Trutch, one of the three delegates who afterwards went to Canada to perfect the bargain, said: I advocate Confederation because it will secure the continuance of this colony under the British flag and strengthen British interests on this continent, and because it will benefit this community—by lessening taxation and giving increased revenue for local expenditure; by advancing the political status of the colony; by securing the practical aid of the Dominion Government...; and by affording, through a railway, the only means of acquiring a permanent population which must come from the east of the Rocky Mountains. {173} The arrangement made by Canada was a generous one. It included a promise to begin within two years and to complete within ten a railway to the Pacific, thus connecting British Columbia with the eastern provinces. The terms were ratified by the people of British Columbia in the general election of 1870, and the union went into force on July 20, 1871. The Dominion now stretched from sea to sea. Prince Edward Island had fought stoutly in resistance to the union. For six years it remained aloof. The fears of a small community, proud of its local rights and conscious that its place in a federal system could never be a commanding one, are not to be despised. At first federation had found eloquent advocates. There could not be, it was pointed out, any career for men of distinction in a small sea-girt province cut off completely from the life and interests of the larger area. But these arguments failed, as also did proposals of a more substantial kind. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick desired greatly to augment the maritime importance and influence in the Dominion by the inclusion of the little island province. During the summer of 1866, while the delegates from the two maritime provinces {174} were waiting in London for the arrival of their Canadian colleagues, they made an offer to James C. Pope, prime minister of the Island, who happened to be in London, that the sum of $800,000 should be allowed the Island, in order to extinguish the rights of the absentee land-owners, an incubus that had long caused discontent. The Canadian delegates, at first reluctant, were brought to agree to this proposal. But it was declined, and the same fate overtook better financial terms which Tilley offered in 1869. The Island went its way, but soon found that the capital necessary for internal development was hard to secure and harder still to repay if once obtained. A railway debt was incurred, and financial difficulties arose. This situation came to the knowledge of Sir John Rose, the first finance minister of Canada, who had gone to reside in London as a partner in the great banking house of Morton, Rose and Co. There is a touch of romance both in the career of Rose and in the fact that it was through his agency that the little province entered the federation. Rose was a Scottish lad who had come to Canada to make his fortune. When a practising barrister in Montreal he had lost his silk gown as Queen's Counsel {175} for signing the Annexation Manifesto in 1849. His abilities were of the first order, but his tastes inclined to law rather than to politics. The Dominion was in its infancy when his talents for finance attracted attention abroad and secured him the handsome offer which drew him away from Canada and led to his remarkable success in the money centre of the world. But he never lost interest in the Dominion. He maintained a close and intimate correspondence with Sir John Macdonald, and, learning of Prince Edward Island's difficulties, communicated with the Canadian prime minister. Thus was the way opened for negotiations. Finally a basis of union was arranged by which the Dominion assumed the provincial burden and made the Island railway part of the state system of railways. Prince Edward Island joined the union on July 1, 1873, and has contributed its full quota of brain and energy to the upbuilding of Canada. Newfoundland definitely rejected union in the general election of 1869, and only once since has it shown an inclination to join the Dominion. During the financial crisis of 1893 delegates from Newfoundland visited Ottawa and sought to reach a satisfactory {176} arrangement. But the opportunity was allowed to pass, and the ancient colony has ever since turned a deaf ear to all suggestions of federation. But it is still the hope of many that the 'Oldest Colony' will one day acknowledge the hegemony of Canada. [1] Memoirs, vol. ii, p. 150. {177} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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