Part 2 - The Birth of the Nation
When Canada was granted responsible self-government in 1867, few saw it as the beginnings of a world power, but it was seen as a positive by many and a negative by a few. Those in Washington who remained committed to Manifest Destiny saw it as a real loss - many of these same people had been less than impressed by Canada's relationship with its native populations and the rewriting of the Oregon Treaty that had resulted from their actions - but Washington at that point had their hands full with Reconstruction, which was rapidly spiraling into a mess as the South stubbornly resisted attempts at integrating men of color into their societies as anything near equals. The American Civil War had had its effect on Canada as well, both in terms of economics and social policies, which particularly with regards to Native Canadians softened substantially in the years after Confederation. It had also enormously reduced support for the idea of a complete break from the crown, raising the 'peace, order and good government' ideals up to a prominent position among the country's national leaders. The new federation would, however, face it's first serious test of its problem-solving ability within a few years of its creation.
The fraction of Canada was shortly followed by demands to annex the land owned by the Hudson's Bay Company. Far from being troubled by this, the Company (who had been struggling to make money for decades because of the cost in maintaining such a vast landscape) cordially negotiated with Ottawa and Ottawa annexed the land in 1869, which then resulted in the appointed governor, William McDougall, to make clear that the territory was low subject to Canadian laws. This did not go over well with the local Metis inhabitants, however, leading to Louis Riel's negotiations with Ottawa to establish Manitoba as a province. During this process, however, trouble brewed. While Riel had made a very good call in having an equal number of English and Metis representatives, the Thomas Scott Affair, where the pro-Canadian Orangeman was accused, tried and convicted of plotting to kill Riel and subsequently hanged, caused a political storm. While the Metis felt they had been justified in their actions, in Ontario in particular Scott's death caused a massive uproar. Facing calls for his resignation, sporadic conflicts between some Protestants and Native communities and calls for punitive retaliation against the "half-blooded bastards", MacDonald sent a force to Winnipeg to 'restore order' but with explicit calls to not start trouble. This, however, did not go over well with other Native communities or many French, who saw the move a jackbooted attempt to fix a problem that didn't really exist in the first place. Regardless, the negotiations to make Manitoba a province were successful, and before the troops ever got there the objective of the federal troops had been changed to enforcing federal laws and regulations in the new province. Riel and his forces withdrew from Fort Garry without a shot being fired, and many of the objectives he had sought in negotiations (namely a separate French school system and respect for Catholicism) were indeed created as part of the creation of the province. MacDonald did, however, rapidly discover just how deep the divisions within the country were - while the Protestants of Ontario and many parts of the Maritimes demanded Riel's head for the death of Thomas Scott, both the French Canadian and Native Communities largely sided with the Metis, causing the first of what would be a number of deep divisions within the new country. The Metis had not only created Manitoba, but they soon made it clear that their demands for land ownership and involvement in the new province's politics were to be taken seriously, and the Native tribes of the region heavily sided with the Metis over the English settlers, which made the early governance of the province difficult. While Riel fled Canada for the United States, in the interests of not antagonizing French Canadian or Native Canadian interests any further, MacDonald and the Canadian government largely let the issue lie. They had bigger issues to deal with in any case.
MacDonald and his allies quickly came to a realization - while English-descent Canadians were a majority in Canada, they were not a massive majority and the interests of French-speaking Quebec, to say nothing of Native Canadians, were proving to be at odds. Canada needed a bigger population and a bigger economy, and the way to do that was to expand its boundaries and seek out immigrants, even those not of English-speaking nations. The 'National Policy' was developed as a result, but the implementation of said policy ended up being put on hold on account of the Pacific Scandal, where one of the chief bidders of the Transcontinental Railway project, Sir Hugh Allan, used what amounted to bribery of over 150 Conservative Party officials in an attempt to get the contract, which resulted in MacDonald's defeat in the 1874 elections. His successor, Alexander MacKenzie, quickly got to work having the government build the railroad themselves. Allan's Canadian Pacific Railway nevertheless began its own efforts at building a railway, primarily going north from Toronto and the Ottawa Valley. While the 1877 timeline for the building of the Canadian transcontinental railroad was not reached, Alexander's willingness to expand rail service from both directions proved helpful for support in British Columbia, as contractors not only began building west out of Ontario (the primary bases being the mining town of Sudbury and the Lake Huron port town of Sault Ste. Marie) but also east out of British Columbia. MacDonald's return to power in 1878 meant a return to the building of railroads, but by this time Mackenzie, who had happily supported immigration growth, had convinced investors both in Canada and abroad that there was money to be made settling the Prairies, and Canada's fantastic population growth in the 1870s and 1880s (Canada's population grew from 3,826,500 in 1861 to 5,542,300 in 1881) bore the truth of this - and with that came the reality that Canada really needed to get its new arrivals settled on the Prairies and get its connection to the Pacific built. The long-dominant Grand Trunk Railroad in Ontario quickly joined the CPR in building across the West from Northern Ontario, and while the building across the Muskeg of the north shore of Lake Superior proved arduous, both lines were operating to Winnipeg by 1880. Under the guidance of CPR manager William Van Horne, the CPR stayed closer to the US border, rejecting Sir Sanford Fleming's original transcontinental route proposal, which was promptly picked up by the Grand Trunk Pacific. The CPR was able to locate a route across the Rockies through the Kicking Horse and Rogers Passes, allowing trains to shave as much as a whole day off of transit times to the Pacific Coast. By 1883, both lines were building into the Rockies, and it was a race to see who would finish first - but despite that, both companies were by 1884 approaching insolvency, hammered by massive costs (in some cases in the Rockies, as much as $300,000 a mile) and slow growth of both traffic and settlers. But as that happened, luck turned for both of them in the form of the North-West Rebellion.
While the Red River Rebellion had largely achieved its goals with little violence, the North-West Rebellion was not so. Angered by the belief (more than a little justified) that the treaties signed by the Canadian government hadn't been worth the paper they were printed on, open rebellion broke out in Saskatchewan, led by Louis Riel, who came up from the United States to do so. Having turned the Rebellion into a fight about the place of Native Canadians within Canada, his rebellion soon rapidly grew to encompass Native Canadian tribes in Manitoba, Northern Ontario and British Columbia as well, while support for them in Native-populated locations in Ontario and Quebec was also loud and noticeable. Ottawa quickly dispatched a sizable portion of troops to Saskatchewan and Manitoba, along with detachments sent to Fort William, Kenora and Fort Frances as well as locations across Northern Ontario. This lowered the problems from the Lake Superior tribes and allowed for efficient movement of troops to the North-West territories, but it cemented plenty of problems between these tribes and Ottawa. The North-West Rebellion ended up lasting through the spring, summer and fall of 1885, with sizable portions of the Cree tribes of the Prairies siding with the Metis after the outbreak of violence. Riel's claims of God having sent him back to Canada as a prophet were widely considered to be heresy and made a major impact in the decision by many tribes to stay out of the mess. Local English-descent settlers stayed completely out of the situation on either side (fearing Metis or Native retaliation more than anything else), but the moves of the Metis turned out entirely differently than in 1869 and 1870.
The Rebellion's end in November 1885 led to the arrests of almost all of the leaders involved - and a major, major problem for MacDonald. By this point, while Ottawa and the Anglophones had carried the day in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the realities hadn't changed much. Many Cree and almost all of the Blackfoot tribes had stayed out of it, and impassioned pleas by the likes of Poundmaker and Big Bear that they had only sought better conditions for their people caught major traction among French-Canadian and Native communities, to the point that tensions grew dramatically in Quebec and southern Ontario, with many French canadians believing that Riel and the Metis were being unfairly singled out. Regardless of that, Riel, Metis allies Gabriel Dumont and Honore Jackson along with ten Native leaders (including Poundmaker and Big Bear) were all tried for treason. MacDonald ended up making a monumental mistake here - at Riel's trial in Regina, all of his jurors were English or Scottish Protestants, and his conviction was pretty much a formality. Despite months of appeals, Riel and Cree ally Wandering Spirit were hanged on November 16, 1885, sparking a firestorm - the Orangemen orders openly and proudly spoke of the action, claiming it was revenge for Thomas Scott. On November 21, an Orange Order parade in Toronto ran headlong into a collection of Natives who were none too impressed with this. Its not known who fired first, but it was known that Toronto's police forces openly sided with the Orangemen. Thirty people were killed and over a hundred and sixty injured, and the event caused multiple rounds of violence between Native communities in southern and eastern Ontario in November and December, resulting in over 150 people killed and widespread problems, particularly as it became obvious that French-Canadians weren't on Ottawa's side.
Recognizing this and fearing civil war, MacDonald commuted the death sentences of all others so sentenced for involvement in the North-West Rebellion and ordered that the Metis be treated the same as any other citizen in the Prairie Provinces. MacDonald also faced down the massive mistrust of the Catholic Quebecers that largely resulted from this, but the decision to hang Riel politically pretty much finished the Conservatives in Quebec for decades to come - a situation made worse by the Liberals, whose mistrust of Edward Blake saw him replaced during the fall of 1885. Angry Quebecers, it seemed, could be the way of the Liberal Party once again breaking the Conservatives, and in the 1887 elections, that's exactly what happened, with MacDonald soundly defeated by Wilfrid Laurier in the 1887 elections. MacDonald accepted the decision and made it clear to his more than a little irate supporters that the ideals of Canada must be upheld, even at the cost of compromises with those different from them. His statement would be a harbinger of what was to come.
The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in November 1885, followed by the Grand Trunk Pacific in August 1886, caused a vast swath of the prairies to be able to be inhabited, and MacDonald's National Policy was supported by Laurier, despite the Liberal Party's initial desires to seek north-south reciprocity that seemed more logical to many. The problem here was that Ottawa's ability to push for a national identity was seen by supporters of reciprocity in the United States as being merely a prelude of what many in America still felt as the inevitable political union between Canada and the United States. The Liberals, faced with a seething French-Canadian community, angered Native communities and the enormous investments made in the CPR and GTPR, was forced to rapidly change course, which Laurier approved of wholeheartedly. The CPR moving its terminus from inland Port Moody to coastal Vancouver in 1887 was quickly followed by the GTPR, and to the surprise of many the local Chinese populations, many of whom had been brought to Canada for the express purpose of building the railroads, stayed behind to form a nexus of people of color in Vancouver, which remained despite the racism that was often pushed in their direction. Further south along Puget Sound, the cities of Seattle and Tacoma that had been established by the Americans before the renegotiation of the Oregon Treaty also sought railroad service, and the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad to Portland in 1883 had almost immediately led to calls for lines into Canada. Ottawa had no issue with this, and the Northern Pacific began operations to Seattle, Tacoma and Vancouver by 1889. Accepting the obvious limitations of Portland's port compared with those of Puget Sound, the ports of Vancouver, Seattle and Tacoma became important, and both CPR and GTPR quickly moved right along with the NP. Thus was created the "Four Rail Barons of Canada" - James J. Hill, Donald Smith, George Stephen, Richard Angus, Duncan McIntyre and William Van Horne - who both quickly gained control of not only the CPR but also a vast railroad system in the United States.
Indeed, Laurier's election and policies would define Canada. Seeking openly to reject the divisions among populations, Laurier called for an English-French partnership for Canada that was done with the support of Canada's native tribes, and their inclusion if they sought to be part of Canadian society, accepting that many still felt their treaties were nation-to-nation agreements that should be treated as such. Laurier was an adamant supporter of individual freedom, religious tolerance and decentralized federalism, effectively creating many different communities that still pledged allegiance to Canada, which would become an autonomous country within the British Empire. He firmly believed that Canada was a superpower waiting to exist, and his first speech to Parliament in 1887 - the famed "Century of Canada" speech - reinforced this view, and the policies of the Liberal government were tuned to make that happen. Canada's vast new landscapes seemingly beckoned new immigrants from everywhere, and both the CPR and GTPR were soon slugging it over freight rates, with the two companies rapidly becoming bitter competitors for a market. The massive profitability of the railroads led to a third railroad, the Canadian Northern, beginning construction across the prairies in the 1890s. What had mere villages became real towns and eventually cities - Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle and Tacoma were already there, and the massive population growth in the prairies soon did the same for Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg, Battleford, Prince George, Thunder Bay, Lloydminster and Brandon. Massive population growth onto the prairies did indeed establish Anglophone dominance of the prairie provinces, but the Native populations and the Metis did not go quietly, and over the years more than a few of them would migrate into major cities, where they steadfastly refused to give up their identities, among other factors leading to the creation of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1892, a forerunner of the Native Brotherhood of Canada that proved to be an influential voice of Native Canadians by the 1910s. More than a few migrants also moved into the mineral-rich (if very poor farmland) regions of Northern Ontario along the National Transcontinental railroad route and the Canadian Pacific. Such was population growth that Alberta and Saskatchewan became Canada's eighth and ninth provinces in 1894.
Laurier and his decisions had opened up a new world, and even with Canada's monumental population growth after confederation, economic growth outstripped even that, and by 1900 Canada was already one of the most prosperous nations on Earth, and Canadian governments and many of its great industrialists were already hard at work turning the country's enormous resource wealth and fertile soil into a vast system of industrial companies and economic projects, sowing the seeds of truly immense growth and influence to come....