REMARKABLE LAWSUIT

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3492, 30 October 1926, Page 13

REMARKABLE LAWSUIT

TWENTY YEAItS PREPARING. DISPUTE OVER LABRADOR. LONDON. Oct. 22. The hearing of a remarkable lawsuit between the Governments of Canada and Newfoundland has been commenced by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Twenty years have been occupied in the preparation of the records dealing with, the case, which are now reduced to 4200 pages of print and innumerable maps. The territorial ownership of largo areas in Labrador will bo decided by tho verdict, and the committee will have to decide the precise meaning of tho word “coast.” The resources of timber and water in the hinterland of Labrador, which would be of immense value alike to Quebec and Newfoundland, are the subject of the dispute. Sir John Simon, K.C., opened the ease on behalf of Newfoundland. He stated that tho problem had its beginning in 1670, when King Charles IX. conferred the charter on tho Hudson Bay Company.

The Hudson's Bay Company was founded in 1670 to engage in the fur trade. The company was given an absolute proprietorship over an undefined territory. Adventurers from the Great Lakes formed tho North-West Fur Company of Montreal. which, after long rivalry, sometimes sanguinary, united with the Hudson Bay Company in IS2I. In 1838 tho company obtained a monopoly of trading rights, but this was abolished in 1859. Finally their rights were bought out by the Canadian Government for £300,000, and every twentieth section of the land in the fertile belt was allotted them. The company still continues its fur trading. Labrador has remarkably productive shore fisheries, and almost inexhaustible supplies or timber. Tho climate is severe, the mean annual temperature being 24 deg. Fall.