r was
accepted thankfully, and in the years from 1812 to 1815 these Selkirk
colonists came to the Red River of the North.

It is not part of this story to follow the fortunes of these famous
colonists of whom I have written more particularly in _The Romance of
Western Canada_. They encountered unaccustomed climatic obstacles, they
were persecuted and hunted by the fur-trading opponents of their
benefactor, they were tried by the disasters of floods and by plagues of
devouring locusts, but with the dogged and stern determination of their
race and creed they held on and demonstrated to the world the
possibilities of a country which is now the granary of the Empire.

And the world got to hearing of this Arcadian Colony of Scots in the new
North-West. So when the old Provinces of the East were brought together
under the name of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, the men of light and
leading at Ottawa lost no time in looking westward to secure the vast
western domain for the new Confederation. Despite the difficulty of
travel, settlers had already begun to percolate from Eastern Canada
through the States or the wilderness spaces west of the Great Lakes,
into the Red River country made famous by the Selkirk Colony. And it had
been becoming more and more apparent to the Hudson's Bay Company itself
as well as to others that the great fur-trading and mercantile
organization could no longer adequately administer an area which was
soon to overflow with the human sea of an incoming population. For many
years previous to Confederation the Hudson's Bay monopoly in trade had
been more or less of a figment of the imagination and no one knew that
better than the Company itself. It still retained its monopoly
nominally, but it made very little effort to restrain the half-breed and
other "free traders" who opened up stores and bartered for furs with the
Indians. In any case in one form or other all the trade of the country
practically came, in the last analysis, through the Hudson's Bay
Company, who controlled the money market by having their own bills in
circulation. But the wise old Company saw what was coming and began to
get ready to let go its monopolistic fur-trading charter and adjust
itself to the new conditions.

Hence it was not a difficult matter to persuade the Company to give up
its charter for a consideration. My father, who was a member of the
Council of Assiniboia, a magistrate, and a close personal friend of
Governor McTa