28 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



THE NEW ONTARIO. 



A Paper read before the Hamilton Association, January 16th, 1896. 

 BY ARCHIBALD BLUE, ESQ. 



The New Ontario is a title which in the common use describes 

 all that part of the Province lying beyond the Mattawan and French 

 rivers and the Nipissing, Huron and Superior lakes, to the north and 

 west boundaries. These boundaries, now clearly defined and estab- 

 lished by an Imperial statute, were for nearly twenty years a subject 

 of keenly waged dispute between the Governments of Ontario and 

 the Dominion ; and at one time, after Manitoba had been projected 

 into the quarrel, feeling ran so high that recourse to arms was im- 

 minent. The extent of country involved in this dispute, while very 

 much larger, is perhaps not less valuable in its resources of timber 

 and minerals than the region in dispute between Guiana and 

 Venezuela, over which the two great Anglo-Saxon nations were just 

 now talking of war. In one important particular, too, there is a close 

 parallel in the conduct of the negotiations. The President of the 

 United States has named commissioners to determine what is the 

 true divisional line between British Guiana and Venezuela ; and this 

 work being done, he declares it will be " the duty of the United 

 States to resist by every means in its power, as a wilful aggression 

 upon its rights and interests, the appropriation by Great Britain of 

 any lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any terri- 

 tory which, after investigation, we have determined of right belong 

 to Venezuela." The Government of Canada also, at an early stage 

 in the negotiations with Ontario, and before any limits were proposed 

 or discussed, appointed a commissioner and authorized him to pro- 

 ceed and trace out, survey and mark the boundaries on the west and 

 north of the Province according to the specific and definite instruc- 

 tions given to him. The same arbitrariness appears in both cases ; 

 but in the action of the Government of Canada in 1872 there was a 



