[1] _Lord Strathcona; The Story of His Life_. Beckles Willson. Methuen and Company. London, 1902.
About the middle of the nineteenth century a man who has been termed "an uncrowned king" by some of the more enthusiastic, if not more discriminating of his followers; a man who was, at all events, an influential political leader and who especially espoused the cause of Upper Canada, opened a crusade for the acquisition on the part of the government of all the territorial rights of the Hudson's Bay Company. This man was George Brown, the founder and at that time the editor of the Toronto _Globe_. He was a member of Parliament, and he was also one of the band of great editors in which the journalism of that period found its most potent expression. This order of editorial influence was represented in the United States by Horace Greeley of the New York _Tribune_; Charles A. Dana of the New York _Sun_; and Samuel Bowles of the Springfield (Massachusetts) _Republican_, whose spirit and influence continue to manifest themselves in the high quality of that journal to-day. This dominant editorial influence still survives in the States, in the { 24} personality of the brilliant and splendidly-endowed Colonel Henry Watterson, the proprietor and editor of the Louisville (Kentucky) _Courier-Journal_, and it was evident in the New York _Evening Post_, under the conduct of Horace White, whose death (in September, 1916) was a signal loss to the American press.
There is ample authority for the assertion that George Brown's newspaper "had an influence on the populace such as no other had in Canada." It was under his administration of the Toronto _Globe_ that this journal issued its first bugle call regarding the desirability that Canada should possess herself of all the wide sweep of the Hudson Bay territory of the west. This demand aroused from the Company a storm of emphatic declarations that the "Great Lone Land" was not worth the acquisition of the state; that its climate and its conditions rendered it forever useless to the interests of civilisation. Through nearly two decades had this agitation continued; but in 1869 the Government purchased the vast holdings of the Company at the price of three hundred thousand pounds and the further grant of one-twentieth of the fertile belt of land, and of forty-five thousand acres in addition adjoining various trading-posts. This transaction threw all the North-West into an excited state and Governor MacDougall was sent out to Fort Garry to still the commotion. Then came on the Rebellion incited and led by Louis Riel, the story of which is so familiar { 25} to all readers of Canadian history. The conditions became disastrous and alarming, and Governor MacDougall was not permitted to move on to his appointed post. Under these circumstances Donald A. Smith decided to go immediately to the Red River country. He was not the man to hesitate when he heard the call of duty. He was at once invested with the authority of Commissioner by the Dominion Government, and the story of his success, and of the end of the first rebellion under Louis Riel, is too well known to require extended allusion. Soon after this Mr. Smith was elected to Parliament as the first representative from Manitoba. It was to his astute knowledge, his skill as a tactician, the great confidence that he inspired, and to his ability as a Parliamentarian that the successful settlement of the affairs between the Government and the Hudson's Bay Company was primarily due. Meantime the problem of the consolidation of the Provinces became more evident as one that focussed the interest of the time. The epoch-making solution of this problem came in 1867 when the Dominion was formed.