s we would have stood to lose our Canadian West. It was a
settlement nearly a hundred years ago of families of men and women, and
children that gave us the firm claim to what is now the three great
provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Was it not worth while?
Was it not worth ten, yes, worth a hundred times more suffering and
discouragement than even the first settlers of Red River endured to
preserve our British connection which the Hudson's Bay Company, loyal as
it was, with its Union Jack floating on every fort, could not have
preserved to us any more than it did in Oregon and Washington. It was
the Red River Settlement that held it for us.

We are beginning to see to-day that Canada could not have become a great
and powerful sister nation in the Empire had the West not been saved to
her. The line of possible settlement has been moving steadily northward
in Canada since the days when the French King showed his contempt for it
by calling it "a few arpents of snow." The St. Lawrence route was
regarded as a doubtful line for steamships, Rupert's Land was called a
Siberia, but all this is changing with our Transcontinental and Hudson's
Bay railways in prospect. In territory, resources, and influence the
opening up of the West is making Canada complete. And, if so, we owe it
to Lord Selkirk and to Selkirk Settlers, who stood true to their flag
and nationality. Very willingly will we observe the Selkirk Centennial
in 1912. "Many a time and oft" it looked in their case to be one long,
continued and alarming drama, but on the 30th day of August, the day of
their landing on the banks of the Red River, shall we recite the epic of
Lord Selkirk's Colonists, and it will be of the temper of Browning's
couplet:

God's in His Heaven,
All's right with the world.

* * * * *

APPENDIX

The author notes the fact that the agents sent out by Lord
Selkirk engaged (1) Labourers for the Company, (2) Settlers for the Red
River Settlement. On this account in the lists given in the archives and
other official documents, the labourers were often sent to the Posts of
the Company, and after serving several years often became settlers.
(List given in Manitoba Historical Society Transactions, 33.)

A.

List of men who arrived at Hudson Bay in 1811 and left York Factory for
the interior in July, 1812:

Names. Age. Whence.

1 Colin Campbell 21 Argyle