In 2002, The Department of Justice, Government of Canada commissioned a historical report on the intentions of the British government regarding the transfer of the Red River to the Dominion of Canada in 1869-71. The report focused on an argument associated with the case of the Manitoba Metis Federation et al. versus the Attorneys-General of Manitoba and Canada. The argument was that, by passing the British North America Act of 1871, the imperial parliament at Westminster had incorporated the terms of the Dominion's 1870 Manitoba Act as a fundamental part of Canada's constitution. With the able help of the London-based historical researcher Judy Collingwood, this interesting question permitted a re-examination of the British role in the founding of Manitoba.

This paper is based on a keynote address delivered as part of a conference dedicated to the eighteenth-century Yorkshire settlers in New Brunswick, held at Mount Allison University, Sackville, in August 2000. It revised for inclusion in a proposed publication: hence the enigmatic allusions to other contributions. In the event, no publication emerged.

This keynote lecture was delivered at the joint conference of the British Association for Canadian Studies and the New Zealand Studies Association at Canterbury, Kent in April 2005.

This is the text delivered as the seventh in the series of Standard Life Lectures in Canadian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, in October 2004.