decided, after eighteen years' use of the provincial lists and six
half-hearted attempts to change this situation, that the Dominion
should set up its own standard, in order both to secure uniformity and
to preserve the property qualifications which Ontario and the other
provinces were throwing overboard. The Opposition contended that this
was an attack upon provincial rights. The argument was weak; there
could be no doubt of the constitutional power of the Dominion in this
matter. Better founded were the attacks of the Opposition upon
specific clauses of the measure, such as the proposal to enfranchise
Indians living upon government reserves and under government control,
and the proposal to put the revision of the lists in the hands of
partisan revising barristers rather than of judges. The
'Conservatives' proposed, but did not press the point, to give single
women the franchise, and the 'Liberals' opposed it. After months of
obstruction the proposal to enfranchise the western Indians was
dropped,[2] an appeal to {72} judges was provided for the revision of
the lists, and the income and property standards were reduced.
Inconsistently, in some provinces a variation from the general
standards was permitted. The Franchise Act of 1885 remained in force
until after the coming of the Liberals to power in 1896, when it was
repealed without regret on either side.

Suddenly the scene shifted, and, instead of the dry and bloodless court
battles of constitutional lawyers, the fire and passion of armed
rebellion and bitter racial feud held the Canadian stage. The
rebellion itself was an {73} affair of but a few brief weeks, but the
fires lighted on the Saskatchewan swept through the whole Dominion, and
for years the smoke of Duck Lake and Batoche disturbed the public life
of Canada.

Long years before the Great West was more than a name to any but a
handful in older Canada, hardy French voyageurs and Scottish
adventurers had pushed their canoes or driven their Red River carts to
the foot of the Rockies and beyond. They had mated with Indian women,
and when in 1870 the Dominion came into possession of the great hunting
preserve of the Hudson's Bay Company, many of their half-breed children
dwelt on the plains. The coming of the railway, the flocking in of
settlers, and the rapid dwindling of the vast herds of buffalo which
had provided the chief support of the half-breeds, made their nomadic
life no longer possible.