A country born amid controversy

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/06/2017 (3026 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Given his penchant to portray Canadian history as a glorious fusion of brazen courage, underdog determination, generosity of spirit and the march of progress, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau definitely would have been in his element had he been in Toronto 150 years ago.

The new province of Ontario had the most to gain from Confederation. By virtue of its large population, Ontario’s politicians were to dominate the new federal or central government and the province’s economic potential was seemingly unlimited. (It is not by accident that the western boundary of Ontario set in the early 1880s extends as far as Kenora, 1,900 kilometres from Toronto.)

Thus, on July 1, 1867, there was great optimism among Toronto’s 50,000 citizens. The ringing of the bells at St. James Cathedral at midnight on June 30 had signified that the Dominion of Canada was now a reality.

The publisher of the Toronto Globe, George Brown, a key player who, along with John A. Macdonald and George-Étienne Cartier, had made Confederation a reality, had stayed up most of the night composing a 9,000-word article about the meaning of Confederation that took up the entire front page of the Globe on July 1. “We hail the birthday of a new nationality,” he wrote. “A United British America, with its four millions of people, takes its place this day among the nations of the world.”

That’s one “feel-good” version of what transpired a century and half ago. The truth was somewhat more complicated.

Outside of Ontario and parts of Quebec, Confederation was, in fact, unpopular. For one thing, this wholesale geographic and political change had been imposed on Canadians and Maritimers without their consent. As 19th-century statesmen, the Fathers of Confederation believed that the “people” (white male property owners) chose them to make decisions and felt no obligation to ask their constituents for permission to proceed. Brown, for example, declared that the idea of having a referendum on Confederation was “one of those dreadful American heresies.”

Even merchants and financiers in Ontario and Quebec were not all that enthusiastic about Confederation. As the late historian Michael Bliss explained, these businessmen felt that “the plan to make a new nation out of squabbling, debt-ridden colonies injected major new notes of instability into British North America’s economic climate.” Confederation, it was predicted, would bring “more government, more debt, more taxes, more friction with the United States and more wildly visionary schemes by impractical politicians.”

Only the owners and shareholders of the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR), drowning in debt, anticipated that the expansion of British North America east and west offered them commercial salvation. So desperate were the railwaymen that Charles Brydges of the GTR funnelled large amounts of “needful” cash to New Brunswick political leader Samuel Tilley to ensure that the pro-Confederation side was victorious in the 1866 provincial election. A.A. Dorion, the nationalist Quebec leader of the Parti Rouge, who was also no fan of Confederation, denounced it as “another haul at the public purse for the Grand Trunk.”

Brydges and Tilley were right to be concerned. From the moment Confederation was proposed in Charlottetown in 1864, opposition among a large segment of the populations of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland to a union with the Province of Canada (Ontario and Quebec) was loud and impassioned. The anti-Confederationists feared, with good reason, that they would be subjugated to the political and economic control of Ontario and Quebec. They took little comfort in arguments that their local needs would be protected by their representatives in a federal Senate and by their provincial governments.

In the end, P.E.I. refused to join Confederation in 1867 and held out until 1873 — which explains why such a tiny territory was given provincial status. Newfoundland also turned its back on Confederation and would not become part of Canada until 1949.

In New Brunswick in 1865, the anti-Confederation faction defeated Tilley and his followers by a small margin in the first of two elections in which Confederation was the main issue. But it was a short-lived victory. In April 1866, members of the Fenian Brotherhood — anti-British Irish republicans who were based in the United States — began a series of attacks on New Brunswick and Canada. Months later, in another election, New Brunswick voters, who were now persuaded about the advantages Confederation would have for military defence, put Tilley back in power. The British government, which supported Confederation, was delighted with the result and Confederation was approved by the New Brunswick legislature.

Charles Tupper, the leading Nova Scotia politician, Father of Confederation (and future prime minister) had kept the anti-Confederationists at bay. Yet in the first federal and provincial elections held in the summer and early fall of 1867, anti-Confederationists led by the veteran journalist Joseph Howe crushed Tupper and the pro-Confederation group. In the federal contest, anti-Confederationists won 18 of Nova Scotia’s 19 seats in the inaugural House of Commons.

John A. Macdonald was forced to negotiate with Howe for “better terms”— which included an additional $80,000 annual subsidy for the province and a cabinet appointment for Howe.

Many years were to pass before Confederation was not perceived to be a “forced creation” primarily to benefit the interests of central Canada.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context.