APPENDIX A XLI 
BRITISH PATERNALISM. 
But the Canadian sentiment of western Canada has been from the 
first of a decidedly British flavour. And this is not surprising. 
The Hudson’s Bay Company, whatever may be said of it as a 
governing body, for a century and a half, since it carried its trade into 
the interior of North America, has been a steadfast British influence. 
At every fort the Indian was taught to reverence the British ensign, 
with the cabalistic H.B.C. upon it. The Indian of the far west gloried 
in his great silver medal with King George’s head upon it, and spoke of 
the Britisher as a “ Kingchautshman,” 7.e., a King George man. The 
officers and men of the Hudson’s Bay Company were chiefly British. 
They for many years traded exclusively with British goods brought in 
by way of Hudson Bay, and many of the Chief Factors and Traders and 
other officers retired to Britain to spend their last days. 
When the writer went to Manitoba in 1871, the post office in Winni- 
peg was still Fort Garry. There was no bank except the Hudson’s Bay 
Company. Accounts were still kept in sterling pounds, shillings and 
pence, and the writer remembers well Lord Strathcona, then Donald A. 
Smith, in heading a subscription, saying “Always put it in pounds; you 
know it does not look so big as in dollars.” Hudson’s Bay blankets, 
t.e., pound and even shilling notes, were still in circulation. Everything 
was British, except a troublesome little knot of Americans in Winnipeg, 
and even they, by obverse, emphasized everything British as good. 
The tradition and recollection of the superior and reliable men of 
the Company still live. Winnipeg has to-day more real British senti- 
ment than the good City of Toronto. 
This British aroma of western Canadianism was strengthened by 
the great interest taken in the west by British explorers, hunters, and 
writers. Franklin, Back, Richardson, Thomas Simpson, Lefroy, 
Palliser, Hector, Milton, Cheadle, Butler, Southesk and many others 
were filled with the glamour of the vast prairies and kept us in touch 
with the Mother Country. 
One author—Ballantyne—by his books of travel, so universally 
read, has made fur-hunting, trapping and sledging known to all British 
boys and created a vision for them of that British land from Fort Garry 
to ice-bound Ungava. 
British capitalists for the last generation have paid great attention 
to western Canada, and have bound the west with golden chains to the 
motherland. 
But perhaps more than any other British influence, apart from the 
large influx of British settlers, has been the paternal care shown to 
western Canada by the splendid men who have filled the office of Gov- 
