Upon the completion of the great Act of the Confederation
of the British North American Provinces in 1867, the
attention of Canadian statesmen was turned to this distant
colony, and negotiations were opened for the transfer of
the Territory to the Dominion. The back of great monopolies
had now been broken. In 1858, England had resumed its
great Indian empire and extinguished John Company; and
this act had paved the way for a similar resumption of
the vast prairie domain granted by King Charles to "the
Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading
into Hudson Bay." The transfer was to be effected, as
one writer puts it, by a triangular sort of arrangement.
All territorial rights claimed by the Hudson Bay Company
--and Red River lay within the Company's dominions--were
to be annulled on payment of 300,000 pounds by Canada,
and the country would then be handed over by Royal
proclamation to the Dominion Government, the Company
being allowed to retain only certain parcels of land in
the vicinity of its trading posts. I may as well go upon
the authority of the same writer. [Footnote: Captain G.
L. Huyshe.] The transfer was dated for the 1st of December,
1869; but the Dominion Cabinet, eager to secure the rich
prize, appointed its Minister of Public Works, the Honourable
William McDougall, C.B., to be Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-West Territories, and sent him off in the month
of September, with instructions to proceed to Fort Garry
"with all convenient speed" there to assist in the formal
transfer of the Territories, and to "be ready to assume
the Government" as soon as the transfer was completed.
So far so well, but let us pause just here.