The Canadian Dominion [51]
were fiercely denounced by the Opposition, now under the leadership of Edward Blake. But the people were too eager for railway expansion to criticize the terms. The Government was returned to power in 1882 and the contract held.
* See "The Railroad Builders", by John Moody (in "The Chronicles of America").
The new company was rich in potential resources but weak in available cash. Neither in New York nor in London could purse strings be loosened for the purpose of building a road through what the world considered a barren and Arctic wilderness. But in the faith and vision of the president, George Stephen, and the ruthless energy of the general manager, William Van Horne, American born and trained, the Canadian Pacific had priceless assets. Aided in critical times by further government loans, they carried the project through, and by 1886, five years before the time fixed by their contract, trains were running from Montreal to Port Moody, opposite Vancouver.
A sudden burst of prosperity followed the building of the road. Settlers poured into the West by tens of thousands, eastern investors promoted colonization companies, land values soared, and speculation gave a fillip to every line of trade. The middle eighties were years of achievement, of prosperity, and of confident hope. Then prosperity fled as quickly as it had come. The West failed to hold its settlers. Farm and factory found neither markets nor profits. The country was bled white by emigration. Parliamentary contest and racial feud threatened the hard-won unity. Canada was passing through its darkest hours.
During this period, political friction was incessant. Canada was striving to solve in the eighties the difficult question which besets all federations--the limits between federal and provincial power. Ontario was the chief champion of provincial rights. The struggle was intensified by the fact that a Liberal Government reigned at Toronto and a Conservative Government at Ottawa, as well as by the keen personal rivalry between Mowat and Macdonald. In nearly every constitutional duel Mowat triumphed. The accepted range of the legislative power of the provinces was widened by the decisions of the courts, particularly of the highest court of appeal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England. The successful resistance of Ontario and Manitoba to Macdonald's attempt to disallow provincial laws proved this power, though conferred by the Constitution, to be an unwieldy weapon. By the middle nineties the veto had been virtually abandoned.
More serious than these political differences was the racial feud that followed the second Riel Rebellion. For a second time the Canadian Government failed to show the foresight and the sympathy required in dealing with an isolated and backward people. The valley of the Saskatchewan, far northwest of the Red River, was the scene of the new difficulty. Here thousands of metis, or French half-breeds, had settled. The passing of the buffalo, which had been their chief subsistence, and the arrival of settlers from the East caused them intense alarm. They pressed the Government for certain grants of land and for the retention of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river front in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the chessboard pattern taken over by Canada from the United States. Red tape, indifference, procrastination, rather than any illwill, delayed the redress of the grievances of the half-breeds. In despair they called Louis Riel back from his exile in Montana. With his arrival the agitation acquired a new and dangerous force. Claiming to be the prophet of a new religion, he put himself at the head of his people and, in the spring of 1885, raised the flag of revolt. His military adviser, Gabriel Dumont, an old buffalo hunter, was a natural-born general, and the half-breeds were good shots and brave fighters. An expedition of Canadian volunteers was rushed west, and the rebellion was put down quickly, but not without some hard fighting and gallant strokes and counterstrokes.
The
* See "The Railroad Builders", by John Moody (in "The Chronicles of America").
The new company was rich in potential resources but weak in available cash. Neither in New York nor in London could purse strings be loosened for the purpose of building a road through what the world considered a barren and Arctic wilderness. But in the faith and vision of the president, George Stephen, and the ruthless energy of the general manager, William Van Horne, American born and trained, the Canadian Pacific had priceless assets. Aided in critical times by further government loans, they carried the project through, and by 1886, five years before the time fixed by their contract, trains were running from Montreal to Port Moody, opposite Vancouver.
A sudden burst of prosperity followed the building of the road. Settlers poured into the West by tens of thousands, eastern investors promoted colonization companies, land values soared, and speculation gave a fillip to every line of trade. The middle eighties were years of achievement, of prosperity, and of confident hope. Then prosperity fled as quickly as it had come. The West failed to hold its settlers. Farm and factory found neither markets nor profits. The country was bled white by emigration. Parliamentary contest and racial feud threatened the hard-won unity. Canada was passing through its darkest hours.
During this period, political friction was incessant. Canada was striving to solve in the eighties the difficult question which besets all federations--the limits between federal and provincial power. Ontario was the chief champion of provincial rights. The struggle was intensified by the fact that a Liberal Government reigned at Toronto and a Conservative Government at Ottawa, as well as by the keen personal rivalry between Mowat and Macdonald. In nearly every constitutional duel Mowat triumphed. The accepted range of the legislative power of the provinces was widened by the decisions of the courts, particularly of the highest court of appeal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England. The successful resistance of Ontario and Manitoba to Macdonald's attempt to disallow provincial laws proved this power, though conferred by the Constitution, to be an unwieldy weapon. By the middle nineties the veto had been virtually abandoned.
More serious than these political differences was the racial feud that followed the second Riel Rebellion. For a second time the Canadian Government failed to show the foresight and the sympathy required in dealing with an isolated and backward people. The valley of the Saskatchewan, far northwest of the Red River, was the scene of the new difficulty. Here thousands of metis, or French half-breeds, had settled. The passing of the buffalo, which had been their chief subsistence, and the arrival of settlers from the East caused them intense alarm. They pressed the Government for certain grants of land and for the retention of the old French custom of surveying the land along the river front in deep narrow strips, rather than according to the chessboard pattern taken over by Canada from the United States. Red tape, indifference, procrastination, rather than any illwill, delayed the redress of the grievances of the half-breeds. In despair they called Louis Riel back from his exile in Montana. With his arrival the agitation acquired a new and dangerous force. Claiming to be the prophet of a new religion, he put himself at the head of his people and, in the spring of 1885, raised the flag of revolt. His military adviser, Gabriel Dumont, an old buffalo hunter, was a natural-born general, and the half-breeds were good shots and brave fighters. An expedition of Canadian volunteers was rushed west, and the rebellion was put down quickly, but not without some hard fighting and gallant strokes and counterstrokes.
The