French-Canadian attitudes toward the North-West and North-West settlement, 1870-1890.

In 1870 Canada completed the acquisition of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company, and Manitoba entered Confederation as the fifth province. The Manitoba Act -- a law of the federal government, and the constitution of the new province -- established the official status of the French language in the Northwest, and continued the practice, begun by the Hudson's Bay Company's old Council of Assiniboia, of supporting from public funds separate Roman Catholic and protestant school systems. [...