There's a great myth in the Northwest Territories that consensus government is something uniquely Northern, a child of democracy born as the bad old commissioner days finally gave way to a fully elected territorial council in the mid-1970s.

We all know the official definition: Take one part British parliamentary tradition; add some Dene hunters sitting around a fire deciding among themselves which way they should go in the morning to follow the caribou herd, and presto, you have consensus government.

But after reading through the legislative assembly's guiding principles on consensus government, which promises some yet-to-be-scheduled public meetings on the topic on its website, it struck me that it's true origins have been artfully neglected.

The official version certainly does have its charm, and I can see why MLAs are so keen to point to it as an excuse to travel to all those Commonwealth Parliamentary Association vacation conferences in Fiji, Malaysia, or anywhere else in this big, wide world where people remain uneducated in the understandings of our particular brand of democracy. After all, who best to teach the world about consensus government than our uniquely established MLAs?

Unfortunately, the history of consensus government in the Northwest Territories is actually not really that unique, or all that Northern, and not entirely inspiring either. Its birth didn't come as a bold response to the Berger Inquiry, as some assertion of aboriginal rights over lands and resources followed by a desire for co-operation with those who had settled here from southern Canada, although that did factor in its re-emergence.

Consensus government as we know it today was actually invented by a bunch of tossers from England, and some border crossers from the United States. The legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories was born in 1870, and the first elected MLAs were non-partisans who formed a consensus government in just about every way it exists today minus the buckskin jackets.

Stuffy old Sir Frederick Haultin, formerly of the London suburb of Woolwich, England, was the first premier of the NWT, back when it covered an area that included most of Canada, and was called the "North-West Territories." He was appointed to the job by the lieutenant-governor in 1897 after serving 10 years as an MLA for Fort McLeod, in what today is southern Alberta.

Like George Washington, the much more famous first president of the United States, Haultin was not a big fan of party politics and had advocated for a continued consensus style of government.

But of course, like most of the Western World has discovered, including the United States during its infancy, it's very hard to govern by consensus over a wide reach of land, and it wasn't long before party politics began to creep its way into Haultin's government.

By the time Alberta and Saskatchewan were carved out of the NWT to became full provinces in 1905, partisan politics was the only game in town while the remaining rump of the NWT reverted to the protection of its commissioner overlord in Ottawa, who didn't allow for the election of MLAs for another 46 years.

When Commissioner John Parker finally handed over the keys to a fully-elected legislative assembly in 1980, the rule of consensus government was renewed, and has continued more or less the same ever since. It was the last form of elected government on the books, and the easiest one to install.

So there you have it, consensus government is an old relic, a largely defunct prototype preferred by rich, foreign landowners, lording over of a dwindling piece of real estate.

Next time we hear Premier Floyd Roland say he is "consensus to the core," we should ask him if that means he hopes one day to be knighted as well?

- Mike W. Bryant is assignment editor for Yellowknifer. Contact him at 766-8236 or by e-mail at minder@nnsl.com