738 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [PART Iv 
in the Gazette, and was not considered to be in force in the 
province. 
Under Sir John Macdonald’s régime we find a vigorous 
policy of interference with provincial laws. The facts in 
McLaren’s case were as follows: he had constructed on 
a non-floatable stream in Ontario certain works of which 
he claimed to be seised in fee-simple, for carrying logs to 
their destination. One Caldwell, who carried on the same 
business higher up than McLaren, claimed to be entitled to 
use the stream for the purpose defined in chapter 115 of 
the Revised Statutes, which provided that all persons might, 
during the spring, summer, and autumn freshets, float sawn 
logs and other lumber rafts and craft down all streams. 
McLaren obtained an injunction from the Court of Chancery * 
against Caldwell on the grounds that the expression ‘all 
streams ’ in the Revised Statutes merely referred to streams 
which were naturally floatable, not to those made float- 
able by artificial means. The decision was wrong, as was 
decided by the Privy Council in 1884.2 but in the meantime, 
while the question was moving slowly through the Courts, 
as the Court of Appeal® of Ontario reversed the decision of 
the Court of Chancery, and the Supreme Court of the 
Dominion * restored it, to be reversed finally by the Privy 
Council, the Ontario Legislature passed an Act in 1881 in 
which it compelled the owner of such improvements as those 
erected by McLaren to permit their use by others on payment 
of a reasonable toll to be fixed by the Lieutenant-Governor 
in Council. Besides, the Act declared that the provisions of 
the Act in the Revised Statutes extended to all streams and 
not merely to floatable streams. The Act was petitioned 
against, and it was disallowed on the grounds that, in the 
first place, it deprived an owner of his property without 
adequate compensation, by making him a mere toll-keeper 
if he wished to get anything for the use of it by others, and 
secondly, that it reversed the decision of a competent: Court. 
! Bourinot, Constitution of Canada, pp. 144 seq. ; Biggar, Sir Oliver 
Mowat, 1, 338-45, 2 9 App. Cas. 392, 
60. A. R. 456. +88. CR. 435.