congress agitations which were later factors in solidifying Ontario
against him. In Quebec it gave Mr. Bourassa, whose hostility to
Laurier was beginning to take an active form, an opportunity to
represent Laurier as the betrayer of French Catholic interests and
to put himself forward as their true champion. "Our friend,
Bourassa," wrote Sir Wilfrid to a friend in April, 1905, "has begun
in Quebec a campaign that may well cause us trouble." From this
moment the Nationalist movement grew apace until six years later it
looked as though Bourassa was destined to displace Laurier as the
accepted leader of the French Canadians. It was only the
developments of the war that restored Laurier to his position of
unchallenged supremacy.

In Manitoba also there were evidences of Sir Wilfrid's preoccupation
with the business of never getting himself out of touch with Quebec
public opinion. For years he sought by private and semi-public
negotiations to get the Winnipeg school board to come to a modus
vivendi with the church by which Catholic children would be
segregated in their own schools within the orbit of the public
school system, but failed, partly owing to the non possumus attitude
of Archbishop Langevin, who was not prepared to be deprived of a
grievance which enabled him to mix in Quebec and Manitoba politics.
The Liberal policy of accepting provincial electoral lists for
Dominion purposes resulted in the Manitoba lists being compiled
under conditions to which the Liberals of this province strongly
objected, and they fought for years to secure a right to final
revision under Dominion auspices. Twice they pressed their case with
such vigor that the government undertook to pass the requested
legislation but on both occasions resistance in the house by the
Conservatives led to the prompt withdrawal of the measure by Sir