A history of Canada, 1763-1812Lucas, Charles Prestwood, Sir
History
A history of Canada, 1763-1812
Lucas, Charles Prestwood, Sir
Canada -- History -- 1763-1867
Here was a further ground of dispute, touching the ownership of
the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay. Geographically they would belong
to the United States, unless they could be shown to have been
within the limits of Nova Scotia. The Convention of 1803, which
has already been mentioned as never having been ratified, in the
First Article prescribed the boundary; and the Treaty of Ghent
in the Fourth Article referred the matter to two Commissioners
on precisely the same terms as were adopted by the next Article
of the Treaty in the case of the North-West angle controversy,
i.e., each nation was to appoint an arbitrator, and, if the two
arbitrators failed to agree, separate reports were to be made to
the two governments, and the final decision was to be left to some
friendly sovereign or state. Fortunately the two arbitrators came
to an agreement, delivering their award on the 24th of November,
1817. Three little islands in the Bay of Passamaquoddy, named
Moose Island, Dudley Island, and Frederick Island, were allotted
to the United States, and the rest of the islands in the bay,
together with the island of Grand Manan, lying further out in the
Bay of Fundy, were assigned to Great Britain. The actual channel,
however, was not delimited; and though many years afterwards, under
a Convention of 1892, Commissioners were appointed for the purpose,
they failed to come to a complete agreement; this small question
therefore between the two nations is still awaiting settlement
under the Treaty for the delimitation of International Boundaries
between Canada and the United States which was signed on 11th
April, 1908.[236]
[Sidenote: The line from the North-Westernmost head of the
Connecticut river to the St. Lawrence.]
From the point where the boundary line struck the North-Westernmost
head of the Connecticut River, the Treaty of 1783 provided that it
should be carried
‘down along the middle of that river to the forty-fifth
degree of North latitude, from thence by a line due West
on said latitude until it strikes the river Iroquois or
Cataraquy’.
Iroquois or Cataraquy was the name given to the St. Lawrence
between Montreal and Lake Ontario, and the First Article of Lord
Ashburton’s Treaty, identifying the North-Westernmost head of the
Connecticut River with a river called Hall’s Stream, re-affirmed
in somewhat different words the provision of the older Treaty as
to this section of the boundary. Here there was no dispute. The
line had already been laid down in the Proclamation of 1763 and the
Quebec Act of 1774. In the words of the Ashburton Treaty it was the
line
‘which has been known and understood to be the line of actual
division between the States of New York and Vermont on one
side and the British province of Canada on the other’.
[Sidenote: The line up the St. Lawrence and the lakes.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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