The French element in the Red River settlement

Abstract

The Province of Manitoba was born amidst the disorders of an Insurrection in 1870. The Constitution provided for the new member of the Canadian Confederation appeared to have all the permancence of a Federal Statute confirmed by an enactment of the Imperial Parliament: yet before twenty years had passed every important clause it embodied (with one exception - the Public Lands clause which is as yet a standing subject for negotiations) was either radically changed or totally repealed. English speaking Protestants dwelt upon the lands reserved for the children of the French Metis, the Legislative Council was gone, the English language was supreme in the Legislature and the Courts, and the separate school system had received its death blow. It is the aim of the writer to indicate the circumstances under which the Manitoba Act came to be - the conditions which led to its enactment -- allowing its antecedents to account for its futility.