The Canadian Dominion: A Chronicle of Our Northern Neighbor

by Oscar D. Skelton

At first all had gone well with the Union of 1841. It did not take the politicians long to learn how to use the power that responsible government put into their hands. After Elgin's day the Governor General fell back into the role of constitutional monarch which cabinet control made easy for him. In the forties, men had spoken of Sydenham and Bagot, Metcalfe and Elgin; in the fifties, they spoke of Baldwin and La Fontaine, Hincks and Macdonald and Cartier and Brown, and less and less of the Governors in whose name these men ruled. Politics then attracted more of the country's ablest men than it does now, and the party leaders included many who would have made their mark in any parliament in the world. Baldwin and La Fontaine, united to the end, resigned office in 1851, believing that they had played their part in establishing responsible government and feeling out of touch with the radical elements of their following who were demanding further change. Their place was taken in Canada West by Hincks, an adroit tactician and a skilled financier, intent on railway building and trade development; and in Canada East by Morin, a somewhat colorless lieutenant of La Fontaine.

But these leaders in turn soon gave way to new men; and the political parties gradually fell into a state of flux. In Canada West there were still a few Tories, survivors of the Family Compact and last-ditch defenders of privilege in Church and State, a growing number of moderate Conservatives, a larger group of moderate Liberals, and a small but aggressive extreme left wing of "Clear Grits," mainly Scotch Presbyterians, foes of any claim to undue power on the part of class or clergy. In Canada East the English members from the Townships, under A. T. Galt, were ceasing to vote as a unit, and the main body of French-Canadian members were breaking up into a moderate Liberal party, and a smaller group of Rouges, fiery young men under the leadership of Papineau, now returned from exile, were crusading against clerical pretensions and all the established order.

The situation was one made to the hand of a master tactician. The time brought forth the man. John A. Macdonald, a young Kingston lawyer of Tory upbringing, or "John A.", as generation after generation affectionately called him, was to prove the greatest leader of men in Canada's annals. Shrewd, tactful, and genial, never forgetting a face or a favor, as popular for his human frailties as for his strength, Macdonald saw that the old party lines drawn in the days of the struggle for responsible government were breaking down and that the future lay with a union of the moderate elements in both parties and both sections. He succeeded in 1854 in bringing together in Canada West a strong Liberal-Conservative group and in effecting a permanent alliance with the main body of French-Canadian Liberals, now under the leadership of Cartier, a vigorous fighter and an easy-going opportunist. With the addition of Galt as the financial expert, these allies held power throughout the greater part of the next dozen years. Their position was not unchallenged. The Clear Grits had found a leader after their own heart in George Brown, a Scotchman of great ability, a hard hitter and a good hater—especially of slavery, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and "John A." Through his newspaper, the Toronto "Globe", he wielded a power unique in Canadian journalism. The Rouges, now led by A. A. Dorion, a man of stainless honor and essentially moderate temper, withdrew from. their extreme anticlerical position but could not live down their youth or make head against the forces of conservatism in their province. They did not command many votes in the House, but every man of them was an orator, and they remained through all vicissitudes a power to reckon with.

Step by step, under Liberal and under Liberal Conservative Governments, the programme of Canadian Liberalism was carried into effect. Self-government, at least in domestic affairs, had been attained. An effective system of municipal government and a good beginning in popular education followed. The last link between Church and State was severed in 1854 when the Clergy Reserves were turned over to the municipalities for secular purposes, with life annuities for clergymen who had been receiving stipends from the Reserves. In Lower Canada the remnants of the old feudal system, the rights of the seigneurs, were abolished in the same year with full compensation from the state. An elective upper Chamber took the place of the appointed Legislative Council a year later. The Reformers, as the Clear Grits preferred to call themselves officially, should perhaps have been content with so much progress. They insisted, however, that a new and more intolerable privilege had arisen—the privilege which Canada East held of equal representation in the Legislative Assembly long after its population had fallen behind that of Canada West.

The political union of the two Canadas in fact had never been complete. Throughout the Union period there were two leaders in each Cabinet, two Attorney Generals, and two distinct judicial systems. Every session laws were passed applying to one section alone. This continued separation had its beginning in a clause of the Union Act itself, which provided that each section should have equal representation in the Assembly, even though Lower Canada then had a much larger population than Upper Canada. When the tide of overseas immigration put Canada West well in the lead, it in its turn was denied the full representation its greater population warranted. First the Conservatives, and later the Clear Grits, took up the cry of "Representation by Population." It was not difficult to convince the average Canada West elector that it was an outrage that three French-Canadian voters should count as much as four English-speaking voters. Macdonald, relying for power on his alliance with Cartier, could not accept the demand, and saw seat after seat in Canada West fall to Brown and his "Rep. by Pop." crusaders. Brown's success only solidified Canada East against him, until, in the early sixties, party lines coincided almost with sectional lines. Parties were so closely matched that the life of a Ministry was short. In the three years ending in 1864 there were two general elections and four Ministries. Political controversy became bitterly personal, and corruption was spreading fast.

Constant efforts were made to avert the threatened deadlock. Macdonald, who always trusted more to personal management than to constitutional expedients, won over one after another of the opponents who troubled him, and thus postponed the day of reckoning. Rival plans of constitutional reform were brought forward. The simplest remedy was the repeal of the union, leaving each province to go its own way. But this solution was felt to be a backward step and one which would create more problems than it would solve. More support was given the double majority principle, a provision that no measure affecting one section should be passed unless a majority from that section favored it, but this method broke down when put to a practical test. The Rouges, and later Brown, put forward a plan for the abolition of legislative union in favor of a federal union of the two Canadas. This lacked the wide vision of the fourth suggestion, which was destined to be adopted as the solution, namely, the federation of all British North America.

Federal union, it was urged, would solve party and sectional deadlock by removing to local legislatures the questions which created the greatest divergence of opinion. The federal union of the Canadas alone or the federal union of all British North America would either achieve this end. But there were other ends in view which only the wider plan could serve. The needs of defense demanded a single control for all the colonies. The probable loss of the open market of the United States made it imperative to unite all the provinces in a single free trade area. The first faint stirrings of national ambition, prompting the younger men to throw off the leading strings of colonial dependence, were stimulated by the vision of a country which would stretch from sea to sea. The westward growth of the United States and the reports of travelers were opening men's eyes to the possibilities of the vast lands under the control of the Hudson's Bay Company and the need of asserting authority over these northern regions if they were to be held for the Crown. Eastward, also, men were awaking to their isolation. There was not, in the Maritime Provinces, any popular desire for union with the Canadas or any political crisis compelling drastic remedy, but the need of union for defense was felt in some quarters, and ambitious politicians who had mastered their local fields were beginning to sigh for larger worlds to conquer.

It took the patient and courageous striving of many men to make this vision of a united country a reality. The roll of the Fathers of Confederation is a long and honored one. Yet on that roll there are some outstanding names, the names of men whose services were not merely devoted but indispensable. The first to bring the question within the field of practical politics was A. T. Galt, but when attempt after attempt in 1864 to organize a Ministry with a safe working majority had failed, it was George Brown who proposed that the party leaders should join hands in devising some form of federation. Macdonald had hitherto been a stout opponent of all change but, once converted, he threw himself into the struggle, with energy. He never appeared to better advantage than in the negotiations of the next few years, steering the ship of Confederation through the perilous shoals of personal and sectional jealousies. Few had a harder or a more important task than Cartier's-reconciling Canada East to a project under which it would be swamped, in the proposed federal House, by the representatives of four or five English-speaking provinces. McDougall, a Canada West Reformer, shared with Brown the credit for awakening Canadians to the value of the Far West and to the need of including it in their plans of expansion. D'Arcy McGee, more than any other, fired the imagination of the people with glowing pictures of the greatness and the limitless possibilities of the new nation. Charles Tupper, the head of a Nova Scotia Conservative Ministry which had overthrown the old tribune, Joseph Howe, had the hardest and seemingly most hopeless task of all; for his province appeared to be content with its separate existence and was inflamed against union by Howe's eloquent opposition; but to Tupper a hard fight was as the breath of his nostrils. In New Brunswick, Leonard Tilley, a man of less vigor but equal determination, led the struggle until Confederation was achieved.

It was in June, 1864, that the leaders of the Parliament of Canada became convinced that federation was the only way out. A coalition Cabinet was formed, with Sir Etienne Tache as nominal Premier, and with Macdonald, Brown, Cartier, and Galt all included. An opening for discussing the wider federation was offered by a meeting which was to be held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, of delegates from the three Maritime Provinces to consider the formation of a local union. There, in September, 1864, went eight of the Canadian Ministers. Their proposals met with favor. A series of banquets brought the plans before the public, seemingly with good results. The conference was resumed a month later at Quebec. Here, in sixteen working days, delegates from Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and also from Newfoundland, thirty-three in all, after frank and full deliberation behind closed doors, agreed upon the terms of union. Macdonald's insistence upon a legislative union, wiping out all provincial boundaries, was overridden; but the lesson of the conflict between the federal and state jurisdiction in the United States was seen in provisions to strengthen the central authority. The general government was empowered to appoint the lieutenant governors of the various provinces and to veto any provincial law; to it were assigned all legislative powers not specifically granted to the provinces; and a subsidy granted by the general government in lieu of the customs revenues resigned by the provinces still further increased their dependence upon the central authority.

It had taken less than three weeks to draw up the plan of union. It took nearly three years to secure its adoption. So far as Canada was concerned, little trouble was encountered. British traditions of parliamentary supremacy prevented any direct submission of the question to the people; but their support was clearly manifested in the press and on the platform, and the legislature ratified the project with emphatic majorities from both sections of the province. Though it did not pass without opposition, particularly from the Rouges under Dorion and from steadfast supporters of old ways like Christopher Dunkin and Sandfield Macdonald, the fight was only halfhearted. Not so, however, in the provinces by the sea. The delegates who returned from the Quebec Conference were astounded to meet a storm of criticism. Local pride and local prejudice were aroused. The thrifty maritime population feared Canadian extravagance and Canadian high tariffs. They were content to remain as they were and fearful of the unknown. Here and there advocates of annexation to the United States swelled the chorus. Merchants in Halifax and St. John feared that trade would be drawn away to Montreal. Above all, Howe, whether because of personal pique or of intense local patriotism, had put himself at the head of the agitation against union, and his eloquence could still play upon the prejudices of the people. The Tilley Government in New Brunswick was swept out of power early in 1865. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland both drew back, the one for eight years, the other to remain outside the fold to the present day. In Nova Scotia a similar fate was averted only by Tupper's Fabian tactics. Then the tide turned. In New Brunswick the Fenian Raids, pressure from the Colonial Office, and the blunders of the anti-Confederate Government brought Tilley back to power on a Confederation platform a year later. Tupper seized the occasion and carried his motion through the Nova Scotia House. Without seeking further warrant the delegates from Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick met in London late in 1866, and there in consultation with the Colonial Office drew up the final resolutions. They were embodied in the British North America Act which went through the Imperial Parliament not only without raising questions but even without exciting interest. On July 1, 1867, the Dominion of Canada, as the new federation was to be known, came into being. It is a curious coincidence that the same date witnessed the establishment of the North German Bund, which in less than three years was to expand into the German Empire.