union, and the
terms under which the new province was to be received were the subject
of much negotiation with the provincial authorities, and were keenly
debated in parliament before the bill in which they were embodied was
finally carried. The clause on which there was the widest divergence of
opinion was one providing that a trans-continental railway, connecting
the Pacific province with the eastern part of the Dominion, should be
begun within two, and completed within ten years. To a province which at
the time contained a population of only 36,000, and but half of this
white, the inducement thus held out was immense. The Opposition in
parliament claimed that the contract was one impossible for the Dominion
to fulfil. The government of Sir John Macdonald felt, however, that the
future of the Dominion depended upon linking together the Atlantic and
the Pacific, and in view of the vast unoccupied spaces lying between the
Great Lakes and the Rocky Mountains, open to immigration from the United
States, their audacity in undertaking the work was doubtless justified.
The construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, thus inaugurated,
became for several years the chief subject of political contention
between opposing parties.

Anticipating the order of chronology slightly, it may be mentioned here
that in 1873 Prince Edward Island (q.v.), which had in 1865 decisively
rejected proposals of the Quebec conference and had in the following
year repeated its rejection of federation by a resolution of the
legislature affirming that no terms Canada could offer would be
acceptable, now decided to throw in its lot with the Dominion. The
island had become involved in heavy railway expenditure, and financial
necessities led the electors to take a broader view of the question. In
the end the federal government assumed the railway debt, arrangements
were made for extinguishing certain proprietary rights which had long
been a source of discontent, and on the 1st of July 1873 the Dominion
was rounded off by the accession of the new province.

Finally in 1878, in order to remove all doubts about unoccupied
territory, an imperial order in council was passed in response to an
address of the Canadian parliament, annexing to the Dominion all British
possessions in North America, except Newfoundland. That small colony,
which had been represented at the Quebec conference, also rejected the
proposals of 1865, and, in spite of various efforts to