ald and his one-time law-student at
Kingston, Oliver Mowat, for many years premier of Ontario.

First came a struggle as to the western boundary of Ontario. The
dividing line between the old province of Canada and the territories
purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company had never been determined
After ten years of negotiations a commission, consisting of one
representative of the Dominion and one of Ontario together with the
British ambassador at Washington, gave a unanimous award in 1878, an
award which the Dominion refused to carry into effect. Other provinces
were involved. The Dominion had presented Manitoba with much of the
territory in dispute, and the conflict as to jurisdiction between that
province and Ontario nearly led to bloodshed; while Quebec was stirred
up to protest against the enlargement of Ontario, which would make
Ontario, it was said, the preponderant power in the Dominion. Mr
Laurier inveighed against what he termed the dishonourable course of
the Dominion Government. When negotiating with the Hudson's Bay
Company for its lands, it had contended that the old province of Canada
extended far west and north, but now it took {68} precisely the
opposite stand. As for Quebec's interest, he continued: 'I do not fear
the appeal that will be made against me in my own province. This award
is binding on both parties and should be carried out in good faith.
The consideration that the great province of Ontario may be made
greater, I altogether lay aside as unfair, unfriendly, and unjust.'
The Government, however, persisted in rejecting the award, and forced
an appeal to the Privy Council, only to have Ontario's claim fully
substantiated, and the total area of the province confirmed as more
than double what Sir John Macdonald would have allowed it.

The next issue put to the test the power of the Dominion to veto
provincial laws. It was, in form, merely a dispute between two
lumbermen, M'Laren and Caldwell, as to whether the one higher up on the
stream could use, upon paying tolls, timber-slides built by the other
lower down. But, as Edward Blake declared in 1886, this was 'of all
the controversies between the Dominion and the provinces, by far the
most important from the constitutional point of view, for it involved
the principle which must regulate the use by the Dominion Government of
the power of disallowing provincial legislation.' When in 1881 a court
of {69} justice in Ontario held that the lumb