The general election in 1904 resulted in a parliamentary majority of 64 for the Liberals, thus firmly reseating the Laurier Ministry. The Conservatives carried Ontario, but were beaten heavily in the Maritime Provinces, in Quebec, and in the West. The general prosperity of the country gave a backing to the Liberals which no political criticism could overcome. The Earl of Minto was succeeded as Governor-General, in 1904, by Earl Grey, grandson of the Earl Grey who, as Prime Minister of England in 1832, carried through the first Reform of Parliament, extinguishing the "rotten boroughs," transferring political power from the land-owning aristocracy to the middle class of English people, and beginning the democratizing of government, which two later reforms have made nearly complete. "There can be no doubt," said a Canadian correspondent of one of the London journals lately, "that the present Governor-General is more widely popular in Canada than any of his predecessors in that high office were, or could have been. Happy in his personality, happier still in his opportunities, he is known and liked by all sorts and conditions of Canadians in every part of the country; whereas more than one of those who have represented the Sovereign there since the creation of the Canadian Confederacy were regarded as august functionaries forming the ‘dignified part’ of the constitutional mechanism (to use Bagehot’s phrase), and as sedulously avoiding close contact with the people at large." Within the past year it has been announced officially from Ottawa that Lord Grey will fill out his full period of six years in the office of Governor-General, expiring in December, 1910. CANADA: A. D. 1904. Creation of the Board of Railway Commissioners. Its large regulative powers. See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: CANADA. CANADA: A. D. 1904-1909. Race problems. Restriction of Chinese Immigration. Labor hostility. Riotous attacks on Japanese, Chinese, and Hindu laborers. See (in this Volume) RACE PROBLEMS: CANADA. {68} CANADA: A. D. 1905. New Provinces created. Alberta and Saskatchewan. Revival of the Separate School controversy. The compromise settlement. By Bills brought into the Dominion Parliament by the Premier, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, on the 21st of February, 1905, and subsequently passed, the four Northwest Territories ceded to the Dominion by Great Britain in 1870 were reorganized as two provinces, and admitted to membership in the Canadian Federal Union, bearing the names of Alberta and Saskatchewan, with Edmonton for the capital of the former and Regina for the latter. See, in Volume IV. of this work, NORTHWEST TERRITORIES OF CANADA.