22 Our North Land. 



same in many ways as that of Nova Scotia touching the Inter- 

 colonial at, and subsequent to, Confederation. For that matter the 

 respective positions of the two Provinces remain unchanged, and are 

 likely to continue in the same way for years to come, unless Nova 

 Scotia finds more than her due in receiving the Atlantic terminus 

 of the Canadian Pacific, which is improbable. The parallel, how- 

 ever, is not without its disagreements. Manitoba, in 1878, had but 

 a small population, and the Province was only beginning to be 

 thought of as a field for immigration. The Canadian Pacific Rail- 

 way, undertaken to connect British Columbia, commercially, with 

 the Dominion, to which it had been united by political ties, seemed 

 to open up the vast fertile prairies of Manitoba and the North- 

 West to settlement and cultivation. 



The expenditure of large sums of public money, and the richness 

 of the soil in that region, together with the prospect of early railway 

 communication between Manitoba and the Eastern Provinces over 

 Canadian territory, caused a rush of immigration. In a short time 

 Manitoba contained a numerous and enterprising population, and 

 Winnipeg was on the road to great commercial importance. This 

 development brought new conditions, and consequently new ideas, 

 to the settlers. In 1880 the Syndicate, or Canadian Pacific Railway 

 Companj', was brought into legal existence by Parliament, and the 

 railway transferred to that Company on terms which gave consider- 

 able alarm in Manitoba, principally on account of the so-called 

 twenty years' monopoly clause. 



The people saw themselves shut out from the markets of St. 

 Paul and Chicago by the Canadian protective tariff, as also by the 

 twenty years' protection to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, 

 and looked to a long future subject to a " grinding monopoly," as 

 the more violent were inclined to characterize it. Impatient at this 

 prospect, an effort was made to secure the construction of railway 

 communication with the United States, by Provincial Legislative 

 enactment, but the veto power of the Federal authority was exer- 

 cised and the charter disallowed. Following this, the Legislature 

 placed other enactments on the statute book authorizing the con- 

 struction of lines, contrary to the provisions of the Syndicate 



