[Illustration: THE NEW AND THE OLD C.P.R. STATIONS IN WINNIPEG.]
But a city must have other interests than commerce and transportation if it is to be a real city. Education is of paramount importance. Now that there is a Manitoba University and a number of colleges given to higher education along all accepted modern lines, representing an expenditure of millions, it is in order to recall that the first Manitoba college was established through the single-minded purpose and almost single-handed efforts of Rev. Dr. Bryce, of the Presbyterian Church, who still occupies a high place amongst the educationists of the West. Manitoba College was begun, like almost all else in those early ’70’s, on faith in the future and a determination to be ready for it when it came. The chief trade of the city was in buffalo robes from the plains; production from the farms, limited as it was at best, had been paralyzed for several successive seasons by the grasshopper plague. The immigrants, who were arriving, needed almost everything more than they did education. And yet Dr. Bryce, having the future in mind, worked on. It is a long road from the Manitoba College of 1873 to the University and College of 1921. But Dr. Bryce has been pushing the cause through every change and has the satisfaction of seeing to-day the realization of the hopes with which he entered on the work.
Lord Strathcona and “Jim” Hill have passed from the scene of their efforts and triumphs. Messrs. Ashdown and Macdonald and Rev. Dr. Bryce are still here to answer for themselves. It is not to be supposed that these names exhaust the list of outstanding figures who held the stage in those early years. They are merely mentioned as examples that prove beyond argument the live wire character of the early population.
An instance of the rivalry of those early giants was that between Donald A. Smith and Dr. Schultz. Mr. Smith was commissioner of the Hudson’s Bay Company, by far the most powerful commercial organization in the west, which also controlled the only inlet and outlet of trade or travel by its “Kittson Line” of steamers on the Red River. He was active in civic, provincial and federal politics and was considered by the new Canadian influx to be anti-Canadian and non-progressive. Dr. Schultz was a Canadian physician from Windsor, Ontario, who had come to the Red River settlement and established himself in medical practice before the transfer of 1869. He had championed the Canadian cause both before and during the Riel rebellion, and escaped Riel’s vengeance by leaving the country in the middle of winter; but his property was confiscated by the rebels. When he returned in the wake of the first expedition he was of course in strong favor with the constantly increasing Canadian element of the population. At the same time in his practice as a physician he acquired the confidence of many of the native Red River settlers, so that he was in a strong position to contest the claims of Mr. Smith’s political support. He had some aptitude for trade as well as for medicine, politics and real estate, and there is no doubt that his vision of the future was as far reaching and on much the same lines as that of Mr. Smith, who was the first representative from Manitoba in the Canadian Parliament.