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George Heny Wyatt 311 those years in Liverpool and occasionally in Winnipeg. This promotion of a connection to the far west dated from as early as the summer of 1856 when he attended the meeting of Toronto merchants leading to the formation of the North-West Transportation Company.” The meeting has been cited by a number of Canadian historians as an early example of Toronto’s elite taking an interest in securing what has become known as western Canada as a hinterland. of Toronto. Wyatt would later claim that he had been actively promoting settlement in Manitoba from 1875. His first connection was with what he called the “Lake Superior Route,” by which he more specifically meant the steamers owned by his former partner A.M. Smith and Smith’s new partner, W.W. Keighley. In 1880, these steamers were folded into the Canada Lake Superior Transit Company while continuing to run from Georgian Bay to both Canadian and American ports at the head of Lake Superior. In 1879, he was reported in Quebec recruiting laborers for construction on the Canadian Pacific Railway among recent arrivals. Later in 1879, he shifted his activities to Great Britain, travelling through England, Scotland, and Ireland promoting emigration to Manitoba. This he explained to Sir John A. Macdonald, who was also serving as Minister of the Interior (the Canadian government department whose portfolio included promoting immigration): “Then in 1879 finding from the information defused[?] in Great Britain through the Dominion Govt many settlers were coming out and the Lake route not known I came over to work it up appoint agencies give information &c.”"* The request that Macdonald facilitate a meeting with Canadian Pacific Railway officials in Britain in anticipation of yet another agency does not appear to have yielded additional work. The following year he published at least two works. The Travellers and Sportsman’ Guide to the Principal Cities Towns and Villages near the Hunting and Fishing Grounds of the Great Northern Lakes in Canada and Manitoba came in a sixpence edition featuring a woodcut of a man on horse 12 Globe, 13 August 1856. 33 J.M.§. Careless, The Union of the Canadas: The Growth of Canadian Institutions, 1851- 1857 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1867), 205-6; Doug Owram, Promise of Eden: e Canadian Idea of the West, 1856-1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 38-40, 44-5, 48; Donald Swainson, “The North-West Transportation Company: Personnel and Attitudes,” Historical and Scientific Society of Manitoba, Papers, Series II, No. 26 (1969-70): 59-77; Malcolm E. Davidson, “Changing Patterns of Great Lakes Vessel Ownership As a Factor in the Economic Development of Toronto, 1850-1860,” Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbain 16, no. 3 (February 1988): 249. fyatt was among the many names attached to a request for a public meeting regarding the monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company the following year. Globe, 15 August 1857. "4 Wyatt to Macdonald, 23 July 1881, Sir John A. Macdonald fonds, Manuscript Group (MG) 26A, vol. 164, pp. 66504-66506, reel C-1568, LAC; Globe, 24 July 1879.