Publications of the Canadian Archives, No. 9. THE CANADIAN NORTH-WEST ITS EARLY DEVELOPMENT AND LEGISLATIVE RECORDS MINUTES OF THE COUNCILS OF THE RED RIVER (IN TWO VOLUMES.) VOL. I. EDITED BY PROF. E. H. OLIVER, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN, Published by authority of the Secretary of State 28159-1 OTTAWA GOVERNMENT PRINTING BUREAU 1914 117561 In the following pages the aim has been twofold, to give a complete picture of Pioneer Legislation and a survey of Constitutional Development in the Prairie Provinces. The documents relating to the former have been hitherto unpublished. The material for the latter has been gleaned chiefly, though not entirely, from Imperial Blue Books, Dominion Sessional Papers, Journals of the Council and Legislative Assembly of the North West Territories, Parliamentary Returns and Departmental Files. The inhabitants of the Prairies are so lately come to the West, and the care taken of official documents has, in general, been so unsystematic and inadequate, that ready access to these documents has been impossible. The section entitled the Period of Transition is avowedly incomplete. Only so much has been extracted from the Sessional Papers as would make the story of development continuous. The starting point is the Royal Charter of the Hudson's Bay Company. The conclusion is to be found in the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta Acts. The aim has been to bridge for the student and the citizen the great gulf that lies between. Towards this result we believe that no slight contribution will have been made by the publication of the Minutes, in only six or seven cases incomplete, of no less than 147 meetings of the Council of Assiniboia. Of these only three have hitherto been printed. These are followed by those of the Northern Department of Rupert's Land from 1830-1843. A formal commencement of political government was made in Western Canada exactly one century ago this very day. It was just one hundred years ago to-day, September 4, 1812, that Miles Macdonell, in the name of Lord Selkirk, took peaceable and quiet possession of the District of Assiniboia. It may be noted also that it has required just a hundred years from the time the first settlers came to the Red River from Hudson Bay in 1812 to effect the extension of the political boundaries of the District of Assiniboia and its constitutional successor and heir, the Province of Manitoba, from the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers to the coasts of Hudson Bay. |