Frederick Haultain: Frontier Statesman of the Canadian Northwest

Stafford Johnston was a freelance reviewer living in Mitchell, Ontario.

Many people who know something of Canadian history know nothing about Frederick Haultain. The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography gives Haultain 2 ½ inches of space. The Canadian Encyclopedia has no entry for Frederick Haultain, even though its publisher, Mel Hurtig, is and Haultain was an Albertan. Disregard of Haultain’s place in the history of Western Canada angers Grant MacEwan, who does a good job of filling the gap.

From 1887 to 1905, Haultain was a member of the council of the Northwest Territories, then a vast area that included the present territory of Alberta, Saskatchewan, northern Manitoba and, until 1898, the Yukon. For the last eight of those years he was president of the territorial council, and in this capacity he led the agitation and lobbying for provincial status. When that status came, with the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Haultain was ignored and snubbed. MacEwan’s reading of the facts is that because he was a Conservative, Haultain was deliberately ignored by a Liberal government in Ottawa. Significantly, when the Liberal Laurier government was replaced in 1911 by the Conservative government of Robert Borden, Haultain was almost immediately brought from obscurity to be appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan.

Grant MacEwan portrays well the rough style of politics at the turn of the century. The book needs, and lacks, an explanatory map.