Winnipeg was at a peculiar stage of its growth at the time of my transfer there from Portage la Prairie when, in 1893, the Manitoba North Western went into a receivership, because it couldn’t pay its fixed charges and the Allan interests became tired of finding them from private sources. Probably not many of the well-known men of the city appreciated that they were participants in a phase of North American history which would soon become almost as extinct as the dodo, and would be clothed, for those who had eyes to see, with a certain glamour of the age of chivalry. The knighthood that flowered among the Indians, fur traders, and original farmers of the Great Lone Land, has not yet been accorded the idealism of the Crusades, or the picturesqueness of Robin Hood. The country had few ladyes fayre. The dusky maidens who became the queens of many mixed unions were attractive enough in their way, though they were never protected by moats and drawbridges; nor were their favours courted with armour and lance. But there were other elements in a unique style of living to which, one day, the touch of some wizard of romance will be applied. The buffalo was to be replaced by the plowman, the Indian to be superseded by a more industrious relative, and the ironless Red River cart to be run off the trail by the iron horse. Some of our daily friends in the early nineties, who still remain, dwindling to a small, reclusive band, had known the sovereignty of “The Company”, had seen the Queen’s uncamouflaged Government assume sway over the immeasurable territory. They had passed through the first Riel rebellion of 1869, with its execution of Scott, and the administration of affairs during the subsequent winter with Riel as President of the Provisional Government of Rupert’s Land. Lawful authority was beleaguered, a thousand miles from the nearest centre of British power, and could only be restored by a military expedition which must travel over inland seas, through uncleared forests, and upon streams unfamiliar to military men--a wilderness unpopulated save for a few barbarians and isolated traders. Caesar in Gaul, and the Crusaders bound for Jerusalem had no such resistance of primeval nature to overcome as was involved in the Wolseley relief of 1870, in which the Duke of Connaught shared, and which gave his name to Prince Arthur’s Landing, later to be changed by Van Horne to Port Arthur. In the Red River Expedition of 1870 was Charlie Bell, a drummer boy of sixteen, son of the registrar of South Lanark. When the artillery was brought up against Fort Garry, the gate was open, Riel had fled from the breakfast table; and the crusade’s object was accomplished without an angry shot being fired. Charlie Bell did not return to Ontario, but became as much a Westerner as if he had been so born.