Smith was gradually restoring unity and order, when the act of Riel in shooting Thomas Scott, an Ontario settler and a member of the powerful Orange order, set passions flaring.Mgr.Tache, the Catholic bishop of the diocese, on his return aided in quieting the metis.Delegates were sent by the Provisional Government to Ottawa, and, though not officially recognized, they influenced the terms of settlement.An expedition under Colonel Wolseley marched through the wilderness north of Lake Superior only to find that Riel and his lieutenants had fled.By the Manitoba Act the Red River country was admitted to Confederation as a self-governing province, under the name of Manitoba, while the country west to the Rockies was given territorial status.The Indian tribes were handled with tact and justice, but though for the time the danger of armed resistance had passed, the embers of discontent were not wholly quenched.
The extension of Canadian sovereignty beyond the Rockies came about in quieter fashion.After Mackenzie had shown the way, Simon Fraser and David Thompson and other agents of the NorthWest Company took up the work of exploration and fur trading.With the union of the two rival companies in 1821, the Hudson's Bay Company became the sole authority on the Pacific coast.Settlers straggled in slowly until, in the late fifties, the discovery of rich placer gold on the Fraser and later in the Cariboo brought tens of thousands of miners from Australia and California, only to drift away again almost as quickly when the sands began to fail.
Local governments had been established both in Vancouver Island and on the mainland.They were joined in a single province in 1866.One of the first acts of the new Legislature was to seek consolidation with the Dominion.Inspired by an enthusiastic Englishman, Alfred Waddington, who had dreamed for years of a transcontinental railway, the province stipulated that within ten years Canada should complete a road from the Pacific to a junction with the railways of the East.These terms were considered presumptuous on the part of a little settlement of ten or fifteen thousand whites; but Macdonald had faith in the resources of Canada and in what the morrow would bring forth.The bargain was made; and British Columbia entered the Confederation on July 1, 1871.
East and West were now staked out.Only the Far North remained outside the bounds of the Dominion and this was soon acquired.In 1879 the British Government transferred to Canada all its rights and claims over the islands in the Arctic Archipelago and all other British territory in North America save Newfoundland and its strip of Labrador.From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the forty-ninth parallel to the North Pole, now all was Canadian soil.
Confederation brought new powers and new responsibilities and thrust Canada into the field of foreign affairs.It was with slow and groping steps that the Dominion advanced along this new path.
Then--as now--for Canada foreign relations meant first and foremost relations with her great neighbor to the south.The likelihood of war had passed.The need for closer trade relations remained.When the Reciprocity Treaty was brought to an end, on March 17, 1866, Canada at first refrained from raising her tariff walls."The provinces," as George Brown declared in 1874, "assumed that there were matters existing in 1865-66 to trouble the spirit of American statesmen for the moment, and they waited patiently for the sober second thought which was very long in coming, but in the meantime Canada played a good neighbor's part, and incidentally served her own ends, by continuing to grant the United States most of the privileges which had been given under the treaty free navigation and free goods, and, subject to a license fee, access to the fisheries."It was over these fisheries that friction first developed.*Canadian statesmen were determined to prevent poaching on the inshore fisheries, both because poaching was poaching and because they considered the fishery privileges the best makeweight in trade negotiations with the United States.At first American vessels were admitted on payment of a license fee; but when, on the increase of the fee, many vessels tried to fish inshore without permission, the license system was abolished, and in 1870a fleet of revenue cruisers began to police the coast waters.
American fishermen chafed at exclusion from waters they had come to consider almost their own, and there were many cases of seizure and of angry charge and countercharge.President Grant, in his message to Congress in 1870, denounced the policy of the Canadian authorities as arbitrary and provocative.Other issues between the two countries were outstanding as well.Canada had a claim against the United States for not preventing the Fenian Raids of 1866; and the United States had a much bigger bill against Great Britain for neglect in permitting the escape of the Alabama.Some settlement of these disputed matters was necessary;and it was largely through the activities of a Canadian banker and politician, Sir John Rose, that an agreement was reached to submit all the issues to a joint commission.
* See "The Path of Empire".
