Canada

by John George Bourinot

Sir Louis H. Lafontaine.

Then occurred an event which had its origin in the rebellion, and in the racial antagonism which was still slumbering in the bosom of the State. In the first session of the Union Parliament, compensation was granted to those loyalists of Upper Canada, whose property had been unnecessarily or wantonly destroyed during the outbreak. The claim was then raised on behalf of persons similarly situated in Lower Canada. The Conservative Draper government of 1845 agreed to pay a small amount of rebellion losses as a sequence of a report made by commissioners appointed to inquire into the subject. At a later time, when Lord Elgin was governor-general, the Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry brought down a measure to indemnify all those persons who had not taken part in the rebellion, but were justly entitled to compensation for actual losses. The Tory opposition raised the cry, "No pay to rebels," and some of them in their anger even issued a manifesto in favour of annexation. The parliament house at Montreal was burned down, a great number of books and records destroyed, and Lord Elgin grossly insulted for having assented to the bill. This very discreditable episode in the political history of Canada proved the extremes to which even men, professing extreme loyalty, can be carried at times of political passion and racial difficulty.

L. A. Wilmot.

The union of 1841 did its work, and the political conditions of Canada again demanded another radical change commensurate with the material and political development of the country, and capable of removing the difficulties that had arisen in the operation of the act of 1840. The claims of Upper Canada to larger representation, equal to its increased population since 1840, owing to the great immigration which had naturally sought a rich and fertile province, were steadily resisted by the French Canadians as an unwarrantable interference with the security guaranteed to them under the act. This resistance gave rise to great irritation in Upper Canada, where a powerful party made representation by population their platform, and government at last became practically impossible on account of the close political divisions for years in the assembly. At the head of the party demanding increased representation was Mr. George Brown, an able man of Scotch birth, who became the conductor of a most influential organ of public opinion, The Toronto Globe, and the leader of the "Grits," or extreme wing of the Reformers or Liberals. In opposition to him were allied Mr. George Etienne Cartier, once a follower of Papineau, but now a loyal leader of his race, and Mr. John Alexander Macdonald, who had occupied a prominent position for years as a Conservative leader.

The time had come for the accomplishment of a great change foreshadowed by Lord Durham, Chief-Justice Sewell, Mr. Howe, Sir Alexander Gait, and other public men of Canada: the union of the provinces of British North America. The leaders of the different governments in Canada, and the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island combined with the leaders of the opposition with the object of carrying out this great measure. A convention of thirty-three representative men[1] was held in the autumn of 1864 in the historic city of Quebec, and after a deliberation of several weeks the result was the unanimous adoption of a set of seventy-two resolutions embodying the terms and conditions on which the provinces through their delegates agreed to a federal union. These resolutions had to be laid before the various legislatures and adopted in the shape of addresses to the Queen, whose sanction was necessary to embody the wishes of the provinces in an imperial statute.

The consent of the legislature was considered sufficient by the governments of all the provinces except one, though the question had never been discussed at the polls. In New Brunswick alone was the legislature dissolved on the issue, and it was only after a second general election that the legislature agreed to the union. In Nova Scotia, after much discussion and feeling, the legislature passed a resolution in favour of the measure, though a popular sentiment continued to exist against the union for several years. In the December of 1866 a second conference of delegates from the governments of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, was held at the Westminster Palace Hotel in London, and some modifications were made in the Quebec resolutions, chiefly with a view of meeting objections from the maritime provinces. In the early part of 1867 the imperial parliament, without a division, passed the statute known as the "British North America Act, 1867," which united in the first instance the province of Canada, now divided into Ontario and Quebec, with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and made provisions for the coming in of the other provinces of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, British Columbia, and the admission of Rupert's Land and the great Northwest.

From 1840 to 1867 the relations of Canada and the United States became much closer, and more than once assumed a dangerous phase. In 1840 the authorities of New York arrested one Macleod on the charge of having murdered a man employed in the Caroline, when she was seized by the loyalists during the outbreak of 1837. The matter gave rise to much correspondence between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, and to a great deal of irritation in Canada, but happily for the peace of the two countries the courts acquitted Macleod, as the evidence was clear he had nothing to do with the seizure of the vessel. In 1842 the question of the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick was settled by what is generally known in Canada as "the Ashburton Capitulation." As a result of the settlement made by Mr. Daniel Webster on the part of the United States, and of Mr. Alexander Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, on behalf of Great Britain, the State of Maine now presses like a huge wedge into the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec, and a Canadian railway is obliged to pass over American territory, which many Canadians still believe ought to be a part of the Canadian Dominion. In 1846 Great Britain yielded to the persistency of American statesmen, and agreed to accept the line 49 degrees to the Pacific coast, and the whole of Vancouver Island, which, for a while, seemed on the point of following the fate of Oregon, and becoming exclusively American territory. But the question of boundary was not even then settled, as the Island of San Juan, which lies in the channel between Vancouver and the mainland, and is mainly valuable as a base of offensive and defensive operations in times of war, was, in later years, handed over to the Republic as a result of its successful diplomacy.

During this period the fishery question again assumed considerable importance. American vessels were shut out from the waters of certain colonial bays, in accordance with the convention of 1818, and a number of them captured from time to time for the infringement of the law. The United States Government attempted to raise issues which would limit Canadian rights, but all these questions were placed in abeyance for twelve years by the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which opened up the provincial fisheries to the people of the United States, on condition of free trade between the provinces and that country in certain natural products of the mines, fisheries, and farms of the two peoples. This measure was in itself an acknowledgment of the growing importance of the provinces, and of the larger measure of self-government now accorded them. The treaty only became law with the consent of the provincial legislatures; and, although the Canadian governments were not directly represented by any of their members, the governor-general, Lord Elgin, who personally conducted the negotiations on the part of England at Washington, in this, as in all other matters touching colonial interests, was assisted by the advice of his responsible ministers. The treaty lasted until 1866, when it was repealed by the action of the United States in accordance with the provision bringing it to a conclusion after one year's notice from one of the parties interested.