CHAPTER VI

THE DOMINION OF CANADA

́ING GEORGE II, who was on the throne of Great

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Britain and Ireland when the French régime in Canada ended, died on the 25th of October, 1760, and was succeeded by his son, George III. The latter issued a proclamation on the 7th of October, 1763, which was intended to give vitality to the terms of the Treaty of Paris, February 10th of that year. In this document he constituted "within the countries and islands, ceded and confirmed to Us by the said treaty, four distinct and separate governments, styled and called by the names of Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada." We have to do only with the first of these; yet it may interest the reader to know that "the government of Grenada was in the West Indies, and the governments of East and West Florida, excluding a debatable strip of territory which was annexed to the State of Georgia, were co-extensive with the new province which had been acquired from Spain." *

The student who thinks of Canada as the great dominion which it now is, will be surprised when he looks at a map of the Government of Quebec for which that proclamation provided. Towards Labrador, it

* A History of Canada 1763-1812. Sir C. P. Lucas, K.C.M.G., C.B. 1909.

was bounded by the river St. John, a small stream which empties into the St. Lawrence opposite the western end of Anticosti Island. From the headwaters of the St. John a straight line was drawn to the southern end of Lake Nipissing, passing through Lake St. John, whence issues the Saguenay River. It may be remarked that as a geographical or surveyor's feat, this is impossible. It was manifestly the intention to have this line approximately parallel to the St. Lawrence River. From Nipissing, the line turned sharply to the southeast and crossed the St. Lawrence some distance above Montreal, at about the present town of Cornwall. Then it followed the 45th parallel of North Latitude, across the outlet of Lake Champlain, across Lake Memphremagog and the headwaters of the St. Thomas River to "The Land's Height;" that is the watershed between the lower St. Lawrence and the Atlantic basins, to the Restigouche River, which is followed to the head of Chaleur Bay, and along its north shore to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The government included Gaspé Peninsula; but excluded Anticosti Island, which, together with all the Labrador country east of the St. John River and northward to Hudson Strait, was placed under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland. Practically, then, this government was about the same as the province of Quebec until greatly enlarged two years ago.

The territory which subsequently for a short time came to be known as British America, was not an acquisition to the British Empire that was gained without a struggle. British Canada was not born without severe pains of parturition, and the Dominion did not

attain maturity without ills in childhood and adolescence. Nor was its development into what it is, geographically, to-day an absolutely peaceful progress of events. Probably the record of ills and struggles which mark its history from 1763 to 1867 and again from that latter year until the present time, have had much to do with moulding the character of the people.

It must not be understood that this Government of Quebec is all there was of Canada in 1763. Cape Breton Island, St. John's Island (now Prince Edward's), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were already in a separate government styled the Government of Nova Scotia. The northern limit of the province of Canada marched with the boundary of Rupert's Land, under the administration of the Hudson's Bay Company, yet reckoned a part of the imperial domain.

Canada did not, therefore, in 1763 really extend west of the western boundary of this Government of Quebec; for no provision had been made for administering the great territory which included the whole basin of the Great Lakes and reached thence down to the Mississippi River.

Although issued in October, 1763, the proclamation did not reach America and become operative until August 10, 1764. Inasmuch as the document made no mention of the great country west of the Alleghany Mountains, which Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other colonies claimed with practically no western limits until the shores of the Pacific were reached, the proclamation was far from being satisfactory to the Atlantic coast colonies; that is New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.