Manitoba is unique in that it was the first province to join the confederation of Canada after 1867. In 1870, only three years later, Manitoba became the fifth keystone province, the gateway to the northwest. ‘Keystone’, because it comprised only a small territory around the heart of Fort Garry at the conjunction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, which later expanded many times to its present size. It was the ‘gateway’ to the northwest, because fifteen years later, when the railway came to Winnipeg in 1885, it became the link for eastern entrepreneurs who warehoused their products at Fort Garry (Winnipeg, 1874), and distributed these manufactured goods westward to the prairies and beyond.

LANGUAGE POLICIES

For hundreds of years the aboriginals had the flat lowlands, where Winnipeg is now located, as a camping ground, using the Assiniboine river as a waterway from the west, and the Red river as a route from the south and the north. So it is not surprising that both the French Northwest Fur Trading Company, working out of Montreal from the east, and the British Hudson's Bay Company coming down from the north, began to build trading posts at the forks. Thus, Fort Garry also became the first natural meeting place of the aboriginals, the French and the British.