No

Canada. The cry Manitoba First" or British Columbia First" is a dangerous and troublesome one. one doubts that Western Canadians are as thoroughly loyal to the British Crown, the British Constitution and the British Empire, as Eastern Canadians are. Well nigh forty years of Confederation has, it is to be hoped, led the West beyond most of the dangers of young communities. The prosperity of the West and the spread of a Canadian spirit has been largely brought out by a few causes worthy of mention. The interests of Western Canada have been strong in the imagination of the two great statesmen Premiers of the Dominion-Sir John A. Macdonald (1878-1896) and Sir Wilfrid Laurier (18961909). They have both been enthusiastic for the West, both have made their policy national and not local, both have laboured and planned for the greater Canada. The systems of public school and University education brought to the Western provinces have been thoroughly Canadian. Besides, the flow of population from the East formerly going to the United States because new fields of activity were needed, has been turned to our Western provinces, and the proportion of young Canadian University graduates who have come to us has been very large. These as educated men have given a character to our provincial life in its legislative and educational aspects. Religious organizations have also done their share. The great self-supporting churches of the Dominion Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Methodist-have lavished men and money from Canadian sources to mould the West. In this the Canadian Western movement has greatly exceeded that of the United States, for in the United States the movement of the churches fell behind that of the people. In Western Canada the Canadian missionaries of the different churches have kept abreast of the forward line of settlement. The national, educational and religious movements of Canada have thus been strong and uninter

rupted, and now the Canadian spirit takes hold of the newcomer, who, if he come from the continent of Europe, is at once ambitious to learn the English tongue and to embrace Canadian customs. These considerations constitute an adequate reply to ardent Imperialists, who fear the results of the admission into the country of such a large foreign element. There is nothing in the immediate outlook to warrant anxiety, and Canada need have no fear for the future.

THE CITY OF WINNIPEG

Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, is situated at the junction of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers, in the middle of a wide plain. The Red River valley being of exceptional richness, early attracted the traders, and so, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, gained the attention of Lord Selkirk, a benevolent Scottish nobleman, who sent out in 1811-15 several hundreds of Highland settlers. On the site at the junction of the two rivers where, as before said, Verandrye-the first white explorer to visit. the Red River- had three quarters of a century before this time erected Fort Rouge, and where, a decade before, the Nor'-Westers of Montreal had built Fort Gibraltar, the Hudson's Bay Company added Fort Douglas, so named after the family name of Lord Selkirk. After bloodshed between the rival fur companies and their union in 1821, Fort Garry (1) was built as a trading post and settlers' depot. Afterward with a more elaborate structure, stone walls, bastions and port holes, Fort Garry (2) was constructed at a considerable cost in 1853. A short distance north of this fort, about the year 1860, the first house on the plain was erected, and to the hamlet rising there was given the name of the Lake, 45 miles north, Winnipeg (Cree: Win, murky; nipiy, water). The name referred to the contrast between its water and that of the transparent

lakes to the East. For ten years the hamlet, grew, though very slowly, since it was more than four hundred miles from St. Paul, the nearest town in Minnesota, to the south. The fur traders did not seek to increase its size. When the transfer of Rupert's Land to Canada took place in 1870 the Governor of Assiniboia had his residence at Fort Garry, and here was the centre of Government for the settlers in the surrounding area. The acquisition of Manitoba by Canada, and the influx of settlers from Eastern Canada led to the greater importance of Winnipeg, as the new town was now generally called. The establishment of Dominion Government agencies, the formation of a Local Government and the machinery required for the Government of the province, the influx of a small army of surveyors, who mapped out and surveyed many districts of the country, and the taking up of free lands in all directions by Canadian settlers, all helped to build up the village of Winnipeg into a considerable town.

THE CITY OF WINNIPEG

By C. F. ROLAND, Esq., Winnipeg.

HATEVER may have been Lord Selkirk's ori

Wginal intention when he bought a controlling

interest in the then depreciated stock of the Hudson's Bay Company, the outcome, so far as the early settlers were concerned, was that these people had exceedingly hard times in Western Canada. In these early days what was known as Canada lay hundreds of miles to the eastward, and the great Northwest was a wilderness of value only to trappers who sought the pelts of fur-bearing animals for the two great corporations, the Hudson's Bay and the Northwest Companies. The rigours of a climate far more severe than they had been accustomed to, assailed the pioneers from Scotland and Ireland who made up the first Selkirk parties. They had few tools suitable for tilling the tough prairie sod, and most of them lacked the agricultural lore necessary to attain success. They were unskilled in hunting and had no suitable weapons for the killing of game, nor any horses for chasing the buffalo that roamed the plains in thousands during the summer until the fierce storms of winter drove them southward. The chief business of the country was the gathering of furs, and between the upper and nether millstones of the two companies that engaged in this business in sharp, bitter and even deadly rivalry, the colonists were caught and ground so severely that they were fairly at a loss to know what to do to maintain a position which should enable them to keep the good will of one party without incurring the enmity of the other. Six years after the arrival of the first contingent of Selkirk settlers, a plague of grasshoppers for several successive years, devoured the grain crops which the colonists had been able to grow with infinite toil.