CHAPTER XXIX.

Manitoba in the making.

Close in the wake of Wolseley’s Expedition, there arrived on the 2nd of September, Adams G. Archibald, the newly-appointed Governor of the new Province of Manitoba.  His arrival was greeted with joy, for he was a man of high character, and of much experience in his native Province of Nova Scotia.  The two volunteer regiments, the Quebec and Ontario battalions, were quartered for the winter, the former in Lower Fort Garry, the latter in Fort Garry.  The new Governor took up his abode in Fort Garry, in the residence with which our story is so familiar.  The organization of his government began at once.  The first Government Building stood back from the street in Winnipeg on the corner of Main Street and McDermott Avenue East, of the present-day.  The Legislative Council—­a miniature House of Lords—­of seven members, was appointed, and electoral divisions for the election of members to the Legislative Assembly were made to the number of twenty-four—­twelve French and twelve English.  The time for the opening of Parliament was the spring of 1871.  It was a notable day, for the citizens were much interested in scrutinizing those who were to be their future rulers.  The opening passed off with eclat.  During the first session certain elementary legislation was passed including a short school act.  There was yet no division of parties, and a sufficient cabinet was chosen by the Governor.  Thus, institutions after the model of the mother of Parliaments at Westminster were evolved and Manitoba—­the successor of our Red River Settlement—­had conceded to it the right of local self-government.

In the year of the first parliament of Manitoba it was the fortune of the writer to take up his abode here.  Winnipeg, a village of less than three hundred inhabitants was in that year, still four hundred miles distant from a railway.  From the railway terminus in Minnesota, the stage coach drawn by four horses with relays every twenty miles, sped rapidly over prairies, smooth as a lawn to the site of the future city of the plains.

Since that time well-nigh forty years has passed away.  The stage coach, the Red River cart, and the shaganappi pony are things of the past, and several railways with richly furnished trains connect St. Paul and Minneapolis with the City of Winnipeg.  More important, the skill of the engineer has surpassed what we then even dreamt of in his blasting of rock cuttings and tunnels through the Archaean rocks to Fort William, and this has been done by three main trunk lines of railway.  The old amphibious route of the fur traders and of Wolseley’s Expedition has been superseded, the tremendous cliffs of the north shore of Lake Superior have been levelled and the chasm bridged.  To the west the whole wide prairie land has been gridironed by railways all tributary to Winnipeg, the enormous ascent of the four Rocky Mountain ranges,