No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Students of the national institutions of government in Canada are safe in taking a great deal for granted; the phrase in the British North America Act “a constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom” is perhaps as important as all the rest of the act put together. It assumed a transfer of parliamentary institutions of the British type to Canada and, in fact, the transfer had taken place in eastern Canada well before 1867. The main change that has come about since is the adaptation of parliamentary government to the federal system. An assumption that provincial governments follow the parliamentary system and observe the conventions and usages associated with it may or may not be justified. In many cases provincial characteristics and habits of mind have moulded the institutions of government so as to make the features of the British ancestor barely discernible. Manitoba is a first-class example of this process of adaptation at work. The great forces that have operated are the fur trade, the premature creation of the province, and its primarily agrarian outlook. This paper is an attempt to describe and assess their influence on parliamentary government in the province.
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Montreal, June 6, 1956.
1 Canada, House of Commons Debates, 05 2, 1870, p. 1287.Google Scholar
2 Manitoban, Dec. 31, 1870.
3 Public Archives of Canada, Macdonald Papers, vol. 187, letter of Jan. 16, 1871.
4 Ibid., letter of Nov. 3, 1871.
5 Public Archives of Manitoba, Morris Letter Book H.
6 Journals of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, 05 1, 1885, 89.Google Scholar
7 Free Press, May 4, 1885.
8 Grain Growers' Guide, April 6, 1910.
9 Ibid.
10 Article by Lambert, Norman in Grain Growers' Guide, 07 7, 1920.Google Scholar
11 Jefferson, Thomas, Works (New York, 1904–1905), IV, 85–6.Google Scholar
12 Presidential Address of Henders, R. C., Annual Report of the U.F.M., 1914, 12.Google Scholar
13 United Farmers of Manitoba, Year Book, 1920, 67.Google Scholar
14 P.A.M., Crerar Papers, T. A. Crerar to E. C. Drury, Sept. 9, 1920.
15 Ibid., Crerar to J. J. Morrison, Sept. 7, 1920.
16 P.A.C, Dafoe Papers, J. W. Dafoe to Clifford Sifton, July 21, 1919.
17 Ibid., J. W. Dafoe to Clifford Sifton, July 25, 1922.
18 Ibid., Dafoe to King, Jan. 10, 1929.
19 Ibid., Dafoe to Sifton, March 5, 1929.
20 Free Press, Sept. 8, 1945.
21 From a speech by Eric F. Willis broadcast over C.B.W., Oct. 11, 1949.