CHAPTER IV. THE DAYS OF TRIAL
The federation of the four provinces was an excellent achievement, but it was only a beginning on the long, hard road to nationhood. The Fathers of Confederation had set their goal and had proclaimed their faith. It remained for the next generation to seek to make their vision a reality. It was still necessary to make the Dominion actual by bringing in all the lands from sea to sea. And when, on paper, Canada covered half a continent, union had yet to be given body and substance by railway building and continuous settlement. The task of welding two races and many scattered provinces into a single people would call for all the statesmanship and prudence the country had to give. To chart the relations between the federal and the provincial authorities, which had so nearly brought to shipwreck the federal experiment of Canada's great neighbor, was like navigating an unknown sea. And what was to be the attitude of the new Dominion, half nation, half colony, to the mother country and to the republic to the south, no one could yet foretell.
The first problem which faced the Dominion was the organization of the new machinery of government. It was necessary to choose a federal Administration to guide the Parliament which was soon to meet at Ottawa, the capital of the old Canada since 1858 and now accepted as the capital of the larger Canada. It was necessary also to establish provincial Governments in Canada West, henceforth known as Ontario and in Canada East, or Quebec. The provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were to retain their existing provincial Governments.
There was no doubt as to whom the Governor General, Lord Monck, should call to form the first federal Administration. Macdonald had proved himself easily the greatest leader of men the four provinces had produced. The entrance of two new provinces into the union, with all the possibilities of new party groupings and new personal alliances it involved, created a situation in which he had no rival. His great antagonist, Brown, passed off the parliamentary stage. When he proposed a coalition to carry through federation, Brown had recognized that he was sacrificing his chief political asset, the discontent of Canada West. But he was too true a patriot to hesitate a moment on that score, and in any case he was sufficiently confident of his own abilities to believe that he could hold his own in a fresh field. In this expectation he was deceived. No man among his contemporaries surpassed him in sheer ability, in fearless honesty, in vigor of debate, but he lacked Macdonald's genial and supple art of managing men. And with broad questions of state policy for the moment out of the way, it was capacity in managing men that was to count in determining success. Never afterward did Brown take an active part in parliamentary life, though still a power in the land through his newspaper, the Toronto "Globe", which was regarded as the Scotch Presbyterian's second Bible. Of the other leaders of old Canada, Cartier with failing health was losing his vigor and losing also the prestige with his party which his solid Canada East majority had given him; Galt soon retired to private business, with occasional incursions into diplomacy; and McGee fell a victim in 1868 to a Fenian assassin. From the Maritime Provinces the ablest recruit was Tupper, the most dogged fighter in Canadian parliamentary annals and a lifelong sworn ally of Macdonald.
It was at first uncertain what the grouping of parties would be. Macdonald naturally wished to retain the coalition which assured him unquestioned mastery, and the popular desire to give Confederation a good start also favored such a course. In his first Cabinet, formed with infinite difficulty, with provinces, parties, religions, races, all to consider in filling a limited number of posts, Macdonald included six Liberal ministers out of thirteen, three from Ontario, and three from the Maritime Provinces. Yet if an Opposition had not existed, it would have been necessary to create one in order to work the parliamentary machine. The attempt to keep the coalition together did not long succeed. On the eve of the first federal election the Ontario Reformers in convention decided to oppose the Government, even though it contained three of their former leaders. In the contest, held in August and September, 1867, Macdonald triumphed in every province except Nova Scotia but faced a growing Opposition party. Under the virtual leadership of Alexander Mackenzie, fragments of parties from the four provinces were united into a single Liberal group. In a few years the majority of the Liberal rank and file were back in the fold, and the Liberal members in the Cabinet had become frankly Conservative. Coalition had faded away.
Within six years after Confederation the whole northern half of the continent had been absorbed by Canada. The four original provinces comprised only one-tenth of the area of the present Dominion, some 377,000 square miles as against 3,730,000 today. The most easterly of the provinces, little Prince Edward Island, had drawn back in 1865, content in isolation. Eight years later this province entered the fold. Hard times and a glimpse of the financial strength of the new federation had wrought a change of heart. The solution of the century-old problem of the island, absentee landlordism, threatened to strain the finances of the province; and men began to look to Ottawa for relief. A railway crisis turned their thoughts in the same direction. The provincial authorities had recently arranged for the building of a narrow-gauge road from one end of the island to the other. It was agreed that the contractors should be paid 5000 pounds a mile in provincial debentures, but without any stipulation as to the total length, so that the builders caused the railway to meander and zigzag freely in search of lower grades or long paying stretches. In 1873, which was everywhere a year of black depression, it was found that these debentures, which were pledged by the contractors to a local bank for advances, could not be sold except at a heavy loss. The directors of the bank were influential in the Government of the province. It was not surprising, therefore, that the government soon opened negotiations with Ottawa. The Dominion authorities offered generous terms, financing the land purchase scheme, and taking over the railway. Some of the islanders made bitter charges, but the Legislature confirmed the agreement, and on July 1, 1873, Prince Edward Island entered Confederation.
While Prince Edward Island was deciding to come in, Nova Scotia was straining every nerve to get out. There was no question that Nova Scotia had been brought into the union against its will. The provincial Legislature in 1866, it is true, backed Tupper. But the people backed Howe, who thereupon went to London to protest against the inclusion of Nova Scotia without consulting the electors, but he was not heeded. The passing of the Act only redoubled the agitation. In the provincial election of 1867, the anti-Confederates carried thirty-six out of thirty-eight seats. In the federal election Tupper was the only union candidate returned in nineteen seats contested. A second delegation was sent to London to demand repeal. Tupper crossed the ocean to counter this effort and was successful. Then he sought out Howe, urged that further agitation was useless and could only bring anarchy or, what both counted worse, a movement for annexation to the United States, and pressed him to use his influence to allay the storm. Howe gave way; unfortunately for his own fame, he went further and accepted a seat in the federal Cabinet. Many of his old followers kept up the fight, but others decided to make a bargain with necessity. Macdonald agreed to give the province "better terms," and the Dominion assumed a larger part of its debt. The bitterness aroused by Tupper's high-handed procedure lingered for many a day; but before the first Parliament was over, repeal had ceased to be a practical issue.
Union could never be real so long as leagues of barren, unbroken wilderness separated the maritime from the central provinces. Free intercourse, ties of trade, knowledge which would sweep away prejudice, could not come until a railway had spanned this wilderness. In the fifties plans had been made for a main trunk line to run from Halifax to the Detroit River. This ambitious scheme proved too great for the resources of the separate provinces, but sections of the road were built in each province. As a condition of Confederation, the Dominion Government undertook to fill in the long gaps. Surveys were begun immediately; and by 1876, under the direction of Sandford Fleming, an engineer of eminence, the Intercolonial Railway was completed. It never succeeded in making ends meet financially, but it did make ends meet politically. In great measure it achieved the purpose of national solidification for which it was mainly designed.
Meanwhile the bounds of the Dominion were being pushed westward to the Pacific. The old province of Canada, as the heir of New France, had vague claims to the western plains, but the Hudson's Bay Company was in possession. The Dominion decided to buy out its rights and agreed, in 1869, to pay the Company 300,000 pounds for the transfer of its lands and exclusive privileges, the Company to retain its trading posts and two sections in every township. So far all went well. But the Canadian Government, new to the tasks of empire and not as efficient in administration as it should have been, overlooked the necessity of consulting the wishes and the prejudices of the men on the spot. It was not merely land and buffalo herds which were being transferred but also sovereignty over a people.