The treaty-making power is still withheld from the Dominion; but since the Alaskan boundary treaty Great Britain has given more and more attention to the demands and needs of Canada when treaties have been in negotiation, and in 1907 Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mr. W. S. Fielding, Minister of Finance, and the Hon. Mr. L. P. Brodeur went to Paris to negotiate directly a commercial treaty with the French Government. During the years from 1904 to 1907 the British Government gradually withdrew all the troops and warships which had been stationed in the Dominion. Canada assumed control of the fortifications of Halifax and Esquimalt in July, 1905, and the replacing of British by Canadian soldiers was complete by February, 1906. The naval dockyard at Halifax was handed over to the Canadian Government authorities in January, 1907; and from end to end of the Dominion Canada is now in complete and undivided control of her own territory. [1] The boundaries of the new provinces were finally settled by an Act of Parliament passed in 1908--an Act which also greatly enlarged the boundaries of Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec. {434} XXIX. FRENCH CANADA. As this story commenced with a survey from the heights of Quebec of the Dominion of Canada from ocean to ocean, so now may it fitly close with a review of the condition of the French Canadian people who still inhabit the valley of the St. Lawrence, and whose history is contemporaneous with that of the ancient city whose picturesque walls and buildings recall the designs of French ambition on this continent. [Illustration: Quebec in 1896.]