The population was mainly of Metis and Indians. The white farmers who came in were few indeed. John McLean, the first, was a good deal like Nehemiah, for, so to say, he cut his hay with one hand and held his rifle with the other, on account of the somewhat summary quality of Indian manners. In the seventies, after Riel’s rebellion had ended, and the province of Manitoba was set up within the Canadian Confederation, there was a fairly steady influx of farmers, largely from Ontario. Until 1869 the whole country belonged to the Hudson’s Bay Company which, under the charter of Charles the Second, exercised sovereign rights over the people. “The Company” built its Portage store at the extreme west of the settlement, and refused, as commerce developed, to sell land any distance east to other traders. The east and west rivalry that was long a feature of the town life thus began; but the company was defeated by events, and later had to move east. A prominent man in the town when I arrived there was an Englishman, E. H. G. G. Hay, familiarly known as Alphabetical Hay. He ran a machine shop at the east end of the town. He had been the leader of the Opposition in the infant Legislature of Manitoba and had shared in presenting to the world Portage la Prairie’s unique contribution to the evolution of constitutional government under the British crown. He was one of the participants in the loyal republic of Manitoba, from which the province of Manitoba takes its name. There had come to Fort Garry in 1866 a Mr. Spence, who called himself a land surveyor, and said he had been an officer in the British army. He was a born disturber of the political peace. In a little while he called a meeting at the Court House to consider the future of the settlement. With four others he held the meeting an hour before the appointed time, and passed resolutions in favour of joining the Canadian Confederation, then about to be consummated. An hour later a very indignant meeting rescinded these proceedings, but they were, after all, the real beginning of the annexation of Rupert’s Land to Canada. The next year--1867--Spence moved to Portage. Fort Garry was in the district of Assiniboia, which was administered by a governor and council, whose jurisdiction did not extend to the Portage. The place and the very sparsely settled country round about had no administration of the law locally, because there was no law to be administered. Spence procured co-operators, who formally constituted the Republic of Caledonia with very indefinite boundaries. Afterwards the name was changed to Manitoba.