exceeded its rights? The dispute was non-religious at first, but
finally developed into a bitter Catholic versus Protestant controversy.
Not all Protestants wanted non-religious schools; but when Catholic
Quebec said that Protestant Manitoba should not have non-religious
schools, a furious little tempest waxed in a furious little teapot.
The entrenched government of Sir John Macdonald, who had died some few
years previously, went down in defeat before Laurier, the Liberal, the
champion of Quebec and at the same time the defender of Manitoba
rights. Cardinal Merry del Val came from Rome, and the dispute was
literally squelched. It was never settled and comes up again to this
day; but the point was the champion of Manitoba, Clifford Sifton,
entered the Dominion Cabinet just as the Klondike boom broke.

He saw the backwash of disappointed gold seekers. He realized the
enormous possibilities of free advertising for Canada, and he launched
such a campaign of colonization for Canada as the most daring optimist
hardly dreamed. Agents were appointed in every hamlet and city and
town in the western states--especially those states like Iowa and
Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, where land was becoming high
priced. The personal testimony of successful farmers was bill-posted
from station platform to remotest barb-wire fence. The country was
literally combed by Sifton agents. Big land companies which had
already exploited colonization schemes in the western states pricked up
their ears and sent agents to spy out the land. Those agents may have
deluded themselves that they went to Canada secretly; it is a safe
wager that Sifton's agents prodded them to activity at one end and
Sifton's agents caught and piloted and plied them with facts at the
other end. I know of land that English colonization companies had
failed to sell at fifty cents an acre that was sold at this time to
these American companies at five dollars and resold by them at fourteen