(Samuel Joseph) Mckee of Brandon College‪.‬

Introduction The termination of Hudson's Bay Company hegemony over the British North American territory extending from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean, taken together with the new nation of Canada's pledge to build a steel-rail bridge connecting east to west, brought an interest on the part of the Eastern establishment in the economic possibilities of lands hitherto regarded as unproductive (save for furs) and uninhabitable. In a comparatively short time the surge of westward migration was on and settlement was pushed out of the Red River Valley, moving ever farther on to the plains. Some enthusiasts saw the promise of a new day for the infant nation. At the same time, some saw the realization of any such promise to be contingent upon the energy expended by those of the established provinces in providing for the conditions under which the developing territory, as a de facto colony, might best be influenced to mirror the moral, social and political norms of the earlier Canada. Such considerations prompted the influential Baptist churchman, Dr. Robert Alexander Fyfe, president both of the denomination's Canadian Literary Institute and its Foreign Mission Society, to strongly urge his brethren "to bestir themselves" and meet both the evangelical and educational challenges the new order had opened to them.