The Archibald administration in Manitoba, 1870-1872

The Red River Insurrection was not a rebellion against Canadian or British authority but rather a reaction against the actions and words of the "Canadian" party and the failure of anyone in authority to consult with the Red River people as to their future. The Insurrection did not represent a victory for those who led it, nor did it secure the position of the Metis people in Manitoba. Rather it merely interrupted a constitutional revolution by which Manitoba entered Conferederation with its public lands appropriated "for purposes of the Dominion". The uproar in Ontario concerning the execution of Scott served effectively to divert attention from this revolution. The Red River Expeditionary Force did not bring law and order to Manitoba. The Ontario Rifles at Fort Garry became an unruly army of occupation, providing protection for the "Canadian" party and the "reign of terror" for the Metis. This army of occupation prevented Lieutenant-Governor Archibald from succeeding in his policy of conciliation and from establishing responsible government in Manitoba. Archibald managed to hold the allegiance of the Metis during the confrontation at Riviere aux Ilets de Bois by giving them certain assurances concerning the way they wished to hold the land to be granted them under the terms of the Manitoba Act. The Canadian Cabinet refused to honor these undertakings. The attacks on Archibald begun by the Liberal and repeated in the Ontario press made his position untenable. After the so-called "Fenian Raid" when Archibald accepted the Metis offer of support and shook hands with Riel, the outcry in the Ontario press forced Archibald to submit his resignation. With the passing of the British North America Act of 1871 by the British Parliament and the Dominion Lands Act of 1872 by the Canadian Parliament, the "constitutional revolution" was complete and Manitoba, its people still not amnestied, was effectively a "colony of a colony.

The Pioneer Telegraph in Western Canada

In 1874 the government of Alexander Mackenzie let four contracts for a pioneer telegraph line to be built as part of the project for a Canadian Pacific Railway. The line was to extend from Thunder Bay on Lake Superior through Selkirk on the Red River to Cache Creek in B.C., where it would connect with that province's telegraph system. The contractors for the second section of the pioneer line built a short line from Selkirk to Winnipeg giving them connections with Ottawa and their suppliers in the East. Almost immediately after awarding the contracts, the Mackenzie government stopped work on the most westerly contract, leaving the pioneer line with a terminus at a point south of Edmonton, but not before the section from Cache Creek to Kamloops had been completed. This section of the pioneer line was eventually transferred to the Canadian Pacific Railway when its railway lines were built along that route, as was the section from Thunder Bay to Selkirk. A change of policy with regard to the route the railway would follow resulted in the abandonment of the inter-lake section and a portion of the prairie section. The remainder of the prairie line functioned as a sort of branch line of the newly-built Canadian Pacific telegraph line, giving service to Battleford and Edmonton by way of the "fertile belt". A part of it continued to operate until 1923, by which time it had outlived its usefulness. This thesis examines the construction of the pioneer line and the extent to which the Mackenzie and Macdonald governments made use of it as part of national policy. Materials in the archives of the four western provinces and in the Public Archives of Canada, along with a body of material accumulated in the field, form the central core of the study