vish, who was in charge at Fort Garry on the Red River
where settlement had begun, always used to say that the Hudson's Bay
Company was glad to find a reasonable way of getting the responsibility
for the government of the growing country off its hands.

Accordingly, when the Canadian Government deemed the time was ripe, two
members of that Government, the Hon. Sir George E. Cartier and the Hon.
William McDougall, were sent to London to negotiate with the Imperial
authorities for the transfer of the North-West to Canada. In view of the
attitude taken by the Hudson's Bay Company, as stated above, the matter
was not difficult to arrange. And after a brief discussion in London,
the famous old fur-trading organization, which had held charter rights
since the days of Charles II, relinquished those rights to the Imperial
Government for L300,000 sterling, certain reservations around their
trading posts, along with one-twentieth of the land in the fertile belt.
Then, as previously understood, the Imperial Government was to transfer
the vast North-West to Canada, which in turn undertook to respect and
conserve the rights of the people in the area thus added to the
Dominion. This arrangement was concluded in the spring of 1869, and it
was then expected that the purchase money would be paid on the 1st of
October following, and that probably on the 1st of December the Queen's
Proclamation would issue, setting forth these facts and fixing the date
of the actual transfer to Canada.

So far all was well. The ideas leading up to the acquisition of this
great domain were in every sense statesmanlike, and, if carefully
carried out, were calculated to be of the greatest benefit to the people
in the new territory and the Dominion as well. We should pay unstinted
tribute to the men whose ideals were for an ever-widening horizon, and
who felt that "no pent-up Utica should confine the powers" of the young
nation just beginning to stretch out and exercise its potentially giant
limbs. Once the older Provinces in the East were brought into
Confederation it was wise to look forward to a Canada stretching from
ocean to ocean, and to take the necessary legal steps to secure the
broad acres of the West as part of the Dominion. But just when
everything seemed to be going well a cog in the diplomatic equipment of
the Canadian Government power-house slipped and taking advantage of the
occasion, one Louis Riel, the son of the old hot-headed agitator on t