642	SASKATCHEWAN AND ITS PEOPLE

wards Doctor) Goggin, Principal of the Manitoba Normal School, was
appointed Superintendent of Education for the Northwest Territories
and the teaching profession was placed upon a more or less scientific basis.
When we look at our present University at Saskatoon which has attained
such a high standing under its distinguished Principal Dr. Murray, our
normal and collegiate schools, our consolidated school districts and the
whole splendid scholastic organisation of the present day, it is interesting
and instructive to look back and realise the "day of small things" from
which such magnificent results have been achieved. Some years ago, when
the province was progressing by leaps and bounds new schools were or-
ganised at the rate of one a day. For ten years Dr. Goggin carried on
the good work and was ably succeeded by Mr. McColl, who became the
first Deputy Minister of Education for the province, being succeeded by
the present Deputy, Mr. Augustus H. Ball, M. A. We have been fortu-
nate in our Ministers of Education, viz: Sir Frederick Haultain in the
old Territorial days; Premier Walter Scott; Hon. J. A. Calder and now
Mr. S. J. Latta, during the provincial era.

DUAL LANGUAGE AND SCHOOL QUESTION.

	The reader would not thank us very much for going into controver-
sial matters in any great detail, and we shall be content with a broad and
necessarily incomplete statement.  A sharp line of division in opinion
arises at the very outset. The French, broadly speaking, claim that they
should have the same right to their language, religious education and
school control in the west as in Quebec.  On the other side there is a
strong body of opinion which denies that they have any special rights
in the west at all. The prairie country was not part of Canada when
the treaty guaranteeing French rights, privileges and customs was signed,
or even at Confederation; how then can the French have any rights other
than those conferred by the common citizenship, shared by all? On the
face of it this seems somewhat conclusive; and it naturally is so to those
who are unsympathetic to French claims. But there is another side. The
French very early disputed the Hudson's Bay charter, and at one time
held the Bay. They also claimed priority in the west through their voy-
ageurs, traders, explorers and missionaries, and it is difficult with fair-
ness to dismiss the claim as a mere crafty afterthought made when the
value of the Territory involved became apparent. It will come as news
to many that nearly all of what is now Saskatchewan was once a portion
of the Province of Quebec; and tile authority for this will not be dis-
puted when we say that we base it on a statement made in the House
of Commons by the Hon. David Mills, whose sympathy with Quebec was
not as a rule very conspicuous. In 1875 in the debate on the Northwest
Territories Act then under consideration, Mr. Mills is recorded in Hansard
as informing the House of Commons that "under the Quebec Act of 1774
the western limit of what is now (1875) the Province of Quebec was fixed
at the forks of the Saskatchewan and the head waters of the Mississippi.