Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan

 

7

 

 

 

August, 1877, the seat of Government was removed from Fort Pelly to Battleford, the territorial Capital, where a second session of the Council was held In July, 1878, when Mr. Pascal Breland took his seat in the Council as the fifth appointee under the Act. At this session fourteen Ordinances were passed, one of which repealed the Buffalo Ordinance. This retrograde legislation pleased the Half-breeds and Indians, but it sealed the fate of the buffalo. In a very few years all that remained of the noble herds which once blackened the prairies, were their bleaching skeletons. These skeletons were scattered so numerously that the collecting and shipping of the bones became an important industry, in after years, the prices ranging from $80 to $100 per car.

 

 

A third session of the council was held at Battleford In September, 1879, when ten Ordinances w e passed, dealing, among other matters, with lunatics, master and servants, licensing billiard tables, prevention of gambling, exemption of property from seizure.

 

As indicating that even in those early days the people of the North-west Territories felt no hesitation in pressing their claims on the Government at Ottawa, we quote from the Battleford Herald, commenting on the Session just closed: "The Council was unable to legislate respecting schools for want of sufficient powers, and for roads and bridges for want of funds. It is about time that the people of the Territories, who contribute largely to the revenues of the Dominion should at least have the allowance of eighty cents per head- of the population, which is granted to the Provinces for local purposes. Besides paying the full customs and excise duties exacted in other portions of the Dominion, the people of the Territories have also to pay heavy freight rates on all the goods they import. Would it not, therefore, be common justice to allow them some expenditure on roads and bridges, In order to lessen the expense of freighting, in return

 

7

 

Pioneers and Prominent People of Saskatchewan