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The friendly provincial Government in Quebec had been overthrown in October 1886, and in the following December Oliver Mowat, in the hope of strengthening the hands of Blake, then leading the Ottawa Opposition, suddenly dissolved the Ontario legislature. Mowat was successful in his own appeal. But, strange to say, the local triumph probably injured rather than aided Blake.
It had been Champlain's purpose to spend the winter at Quebec, and when the Hurons were about to leave the east end of Lake Ontario for their own country he asked them for a canoe and an escort. Four Indians volunteered for this service, but no canoe could be had, and in consequence Champlain was forced reluctantly to accompany the Hurons.
He sighed heavily, and drew his hand across his brow, and looked sadly and dreamily into the blue distance of Ontario. The madman's thoughts were far away with his young sons, or, perhaps, had ranged back to the rugged heathery hills of his own glorious mountain land!
Three days after the council, the Iroquois set out on their return; and, as the palisades of the fort were now finished, and the barracks nearly so, Frontenac began to send his party homeward by detachments. He himself was detained, for a time, by the arrival of another band of Iroquois, from the villages on the north side of Lake Ontario.
Sir James Yeo and Commodore Chauncey, commanding the British and American vessels respectively on Lake Ontario, were each unwilling to risk a battle without a decisive superiority; and the result was that no serious engagement occurred.
I will not enumerate further the trials I had to undergo day after day, but will pass rapidly on until the gladsome note was sounded by our hostess Mrs. Pritchard the "police are here." God delivered us again. It is unnecessary to itemize in detail what passed from that time until I reached Ontario.
She had not quite approved of the manner in which Ontario had disclosed his love, though there had been something of the eloquence of passion even in that; and now she was hardly satisfied with Ralph Newton.
In December of the same year the Government in Ontario led by Sandfield Macdonald was defeated in the legislature and compelled to resign. An Administration, determinedly hostile to the Ottawa Government, was formed at Toronto under Edward Blake.
Longstreet held his friend's hand and stared in silence at the white ceiling upon which the sunbeams painted myriads of quivering lines and circles. At one o'clock the Ontario came in sight of the Golden Gate, where the white banner with its crimson sun was seen to be waving above all the fortifications.
This proved only a temporary diversion, however, and the decision of the Dominion government in 1874 to change the gauge of the Intercolonial to four feet eight and a half inches, and the adoption of the same standard by the Ontario government, ended the controversy. Memory is short and hope eternal. Soon after Confederation another burst of activity began in all the provinces of the new Dominion.
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