A quite extraordinary linking up of events makes it possible for us to say that, historically, the old Red River colony was not only by its demonstration of the value of the West a procuring cause of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, but that the old colony was the means of bringing into special prominence, and enthusiasm for the West, the famous engineer, Sandford Fleming, who directed all the preliminary surveys for this pioneer trans-continental road. It happened on this wise. Fleming’s interest in the problem of transportation was known to Mr. James Ross and Mr. William Coldwell, both of whom I remember as publishers of the _Nor’Wester_, the first paper in the Red River colony. These newspapermen had large influence locally, and got the colonists interested in making an application to the Imperial and Colonial Governments for a roadway from the Eastern Provinces to the Red River and on to the Rocky Mountains. The idea was to have a through route on British soil, and the plan was to begin with a wagon-road as the forerunner of a transcontinental railway. Mr. Sandford Fleming, though at that time he had not visited the Red River colony, had advocated the undertaking as far back as 1858, in a lecture which he published. So it came that when, in 1863, Mr. Fleming severed his connection with railway building in Ontario, he was asked, on behalf of the Red River colonists, to present and support a memorial to the Canadian and Imperial Governments praying them for the establishment of communication between East and West. The memorial was prepared by James Ross and William Coldwell, and bears the mark of their literary skill as well as their strong devotion to British interests. After outlining the plan which the memorial desired to see adopted, it goes on to indicate that such a road with its commerce and traffic would fill “Central British America with an industrious, loyal people. Thus both politically and commercially the opening up of this country, and the making of a national highway through it, would immensely subserve Imperial interests, and contribute to the stability and the glorious prestige of the British Empire.” This memorial was adopted by the Red River colonists at a mass meeting—a fact which suggests that despite their isolation of half a century there were men amongst them who had the vision of “a grand confederation of loyal and flourishing provinces skirting the United States’ frontier and commanding at once the Atlantic and the Pacific.” Verily, the colonization plan of the high-souled Lord Selkirk, which some men of his time called visionary and Utopian, was justifying itself in these Red River settlers, who not only laid a foundation of solid moral worth in a new land and demonstrated its great resources, but were also doing their part in welding together the links of a far-flung Empire under the British flag. This gives the noble founder of the colony, as well as the colony itself, an assured niche in