TIAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. ii 



Inaugural Address 



^y G, L* Johnston, B,A,, President, 



November, 1906. 



After acknowledgments for the honor of re-election to the 

 Presidenc}', the motive of the paper was given as a trip across the 

 continent — through tlie sea of rocks in Northern Ontario and 

 the sixty miles of extremely picturesque scenery about Schrieber 

 and Jackfish bay ; on to Fort William with its elevators and its in- 

 terest as a distributing point for the great West now, as it was a 

 centre for the fur-traders of the past ; on to Keenora (Rat Portage) 

 and the beautiful Lake of the Woods district ; past Keewatin, with 

 jts wonderful water-power ; and on into the prairie region of Man- 

 itoba and the West. 



Winnipeg is a city of abounding interest at the present as in 

 the past. It has everything that an up to-date city could wish for 

 in streets, public buildings, churches, schools, business houses, and 

 even a Carnegie Library. Its parks are beautiful, its streets are 

 clean and well paved, and its growth most rapid — whole streets of 

 houses springing up, as it were, in a night. Then, its past, centres 

 your interest around the Red River, Old Fort Garry, St. Boniface, 

 Kildonan, and the monument of Seven Oaks, which commemorates 

 the blood shed in settling the strife between the Hudson Bay 

 and North West companies. 



The church at Kildonan contains the memorial tablet of " Rev. 

 Jno. Black, D.D., first Presbyterian minister to Rupert's Land, 

 Sep. 18, 1851, and first pastor of this parish, to whose spiritual 

 wants he ministered for more than 30 years. Died Feb. 11, 1882, 

 at age of 64 years. He being dead yet speaketh." Kildonan 

 cemetery contains such inscriptions as these: "Alex. Ross, for 

 many }^ears sheriff in this colon}', also elder and leader of the 

 Presbyterian colonists. Died Oct. 23, 1856." " In memoriam. 



