he greatest trials of the early Selkirk Settlers was to get
schools sufficient to give the children scattered along the river belt,
even the three R's of education. Kildonan parish manfully raised by
subscription the means, unaided by Government help, to give some
opportunity to their children. It is a notable fact which emerged in the
great School Contention of twenty years ago in Manitoba, that not a
dollar had been given to schools as aid by the old Government of
Assiniboia. To-day the glory of Manitoba is its school system. For
school buildings, school organization, attainments of the teachers, and
efficient school management, the schools of Winnipeg are probably
unsurpassed in any country, and the same is true of many other places in
the Province. Two Winnipeg schools bear the names of Selkirk and
Isbister. The University of Manitoba, with its seven affiliated colleges
and twelve hundred and forty candidates in 1909 for its several
examinations has its seat at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine
Rivers, and one of the colleges is on the very lot where Lord Selkirk
stood and divided up their lands to the Colonists.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER ISBISTER, LL.B. Red River
Patriot and Benefactor of University of Manitoba.]

One of the most continued and aggressive struggles which Lord Selkirk's
Colonists maintained was seen in the efforts put forth to worship God
according to the dictates of their own consciences, and after the manner
of their fathers. Their perseverance which showed itself in the erection
of old Kildonan Church in the year immediately after the destructive
flood of 1852, bore fruit in succeeding years. They were always a
religious people. No one can even estimate what their religious
disposition did in a miscellaneous gathering of people who had, being
scattered over the posts of the fur traders, been in most cases, without
any religious opportunities whatever, before their coming to settle on
Red River. The sturdy stand for principle which the Selkirk Colonists
made created an atmosphere which has remained until this day. The
well-nigh forty years of religious life of Manitoba has been marked by a
good understanding among the several churches, by an energetic zeal in
carrying church services in the very first year of their settlement to
hundreds of new communities. The generosity of the people in erecting
churches for themselves in maintaining among themselves their cherished
beliefs, is in striking co