Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan

 

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Approaching the Isle a la Crosse school building, on a summer afternoon, he found the door open, but no one on duty to receive visitors, presumably few and far between. Entering he followed the lead of a voice and presently came face to face with a girls school in session in charge of a Sister of Charity. At the blackboard stood an Indian girl, chalk in hand, explaining - and successfully so - for the benefit of the class the solution of a problem in Algebra, involving an equation of two unknown quantities--a mute testimony to the care and patience of those devoted women who "far from the busy marts of trade," discharge their duties as thoroughly and as conscientiously as if their task had fallen in the very centres of culture and civilization. The several executive sessions held by the Council were for the purpose, chiefly, of making representations and recommendations to the dominion Government and Parliament. Two legislative sessions of the Council were convened, one in August, 1874; the other in March, 1875. Concerning these Council meetings the Free Press, of Winnipeg, had this to say: "The task which is assigned to the Lieutenant-Governor and Council of the Territories is an important and difficult one. What they have to do, in point of fact, is to bring order out of chaos, in a territory larger than half of the continent of Europe."

 

 

The North-west Territories Act had been in force only three years when it was repealed. A serious defect in the Act had been that it made no provision for elective representation in the Council. In the 1875 session of the Dominion Parliament Premier Mackenzie apparently realizing the necessity for more advanced legislation in the Territories, introduced a new North-west Territories Act; providing for the appointment of a resident Lieutenant-Governor who was empowered to appoint a Council of not more than five persons to aid him: in the administration of the North-west Territories, of which number the sti-

 

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Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan