Free The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 by Pierre Berton Page A

“no matter in what climate, or under what circumstances.” The Red River uprising saved him from an irksome choice. The news of the expeditionary force had scarcely reached England before Butler was off to the nearest telegraph office, dashing off the cheapest possible cable, consistent with politeness, to the expedition’s commander, Colonel Wolseley: “Please remember me.” Then, without waiting for an answer, he caught the first boat for North America.
    When Butler reached Canada he found to his chagrin that there was no job for him. Butler suggested one: that of an intelligence officer who, by travelling through the United States, might possibly enter Riel’s stronghold from the south. Wolseley liked the idea and Butler leaped into his assignment with enthusiasm. He slipped past Riel and his men at the Red River, returned to the rebels’ headquarters where he interviewed Riel himself and then, following the old voyageur route, paddled his way east to the Lake of the Woods where he made his report to Wolseley.
    When the troops entered Fort Garry, Butler was with them; but he found the subsequent anti-climactic weeks irksome. One night during a dinner at the home of Donald A. Smith, he suddenly announced that he was returning to Europe to resign his commission and join the French forces at that time embroiled in the Franco-Prussian war.
    Smith had a better idea. Out along the North Saskatchewan there had been continuing disorders, which the local Hudson’s Bay Company factors had been powerless to prevent. The Indians were being ravaged by smallpox and cheap whiskey, to what extent no one knew.Something in the way of troops might be needed. Why not send Butler to make a thorough report?
    Shortly thereafter, the Lieutenant-Governor, Adams Archibald, sent for Butler, outlined Smith’s plan and suggested he think it over.
    “There is no necessity, sir, to consider the matter,” responded the impetuous officer. “I have already made up my mind and, if necessary, will start in half an hour.”
    It was typical of Butler that he made his mind up on the instant, regardless of the circumstances. He would not wait for the summer, when the trails were dry, the grouse plentiful, the shadberries plump and juicy, and the plains perfumed with briar rose. It was October 10 “and winter was already sending his breath over the yellowed grass of the prairies.” With a single Métis guide, Butler set off on a cold and moonless night, the sky shafted by a brilliant aurora, prepared to travel by foot, horseback and dog sled across four thousand miles of uninhabited wilderness.
    “Behind me lay friends and news of friends, civilization, tidings of a terrible war, firesides, and houses; before me lay unknown savage tribes, long days of saddle-travel, long nights of chilling bivouac, silence, separation and space!” Butler loved every minute of it.
    He acquitted himself handsomely. It was his recommendation to the government, following his return, that led to the formation of the North West Mounted Police. But it was his subsequent book, The Great Lone Land , with its haunting descriptions of “that great, boundless, solitary waste of verdure” that caught the public’s imagination. The title went into the language of the day. For the next fifteen years, until the railway made the land lone no longer, no description, no reference, no journalistic report about the North West seemed complete without some mention of Butler’s poetic title. It was as well that the CPR was built when it was; long before the phrase was rendered obsolete, it had become a cliché.
    But Butler’s description of what he saw and felt on that chill, solitary trek across the white face of the new Canada will never be hackneyed:
    “The great ocean itself does not present more infinite variety than does this prairie ocean of which we speak. In winter, a dazzling surface of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of grass and pale pink roses; in autumn,