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PREFACE
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been hitherto unpublished.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 Prairiea 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.
E. H. O. September 4, 1912.
University of Saskatchewan,
Saskatoon.
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