This union of the former provinces of UPPER CANADA and LOWER CANADA stemmed from the DURHAM REPORT of 1839, after an imperial mission to investigate REBELLIONS OF 1837 in both Canadas. Lord DURHAM proposed a united province to develop a common commercial system, and particularly to complete canals on the St Lawrence. No less important, a combined Canada would have an overall English-speaking majority, thereby controlling the divisive forces Durham saw in largely French LC, and making it safe to grant the RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT he also advocated. Britain agreed to union, though not to the principle of responsible government.
In 1840 the British Parliament passed the ACT OF UNION, which went into force 10 February 1841, establishing a single government and legislature. But whereas Durham advocated basing representation on population, counting on British immigration steadily to increase an existing Anglo-Canadian majority, the Act of Union provided equal representation for each of the Canadas in the new parliament, even though British UC then had a considerably smaller population: some 480 000, compared to 670 000 in LC, of whom about 510 000 were French Canadians. The French element would thus be under represented, and safely submerged from the start. Yet the device of equal representation had an unforeseen result. The old Canadas, each with its separate history, society and culture, virtually remained equal, distinct sections inside one political framework. They were now Canada West and Canada East geographically, but even the names Upper and Lower Canada survived in popular and some official use. The Union Act had embedded dualism in the very constitution, resulting in dual parties, double ministries and sectional politics.
As the Union began, French Canadians well realized its purpose was to submerge them. But a rising liberal leader, Louis LAFONTAINE, saw the advantage of an alliance with Canada West Reformers to seek responsible government. French Canadians would then share in ruling the United Province, maintaining themselves as a people, while co-operating with Anglo-Canadian allies. Hence LaFontaine readily responded to overtures from leading Canada West Reformers Francis HINCKS and Robert BALDWIN.
Hincks, a Toronto journalist and shrewd strategist, was already backing Baldwin's campaign for responsible rule, centered on the British principle of responsible government. Its adoption in Canada would mean that governments would depend on elected parliamentary majorities. Baldwin and LaFontaine built up a powerful Reform alliance behind this principle.
In September 1842 they won admission to the government, essentially compelling Gov Gen Sir Charles BAGOT to reconstruct his ministry because of the weight of parliamentary support behind them. On 26 November 1843 they and other party colleagues resigned, claiming they could not take responsibility for appointments by a new governor, METCALFE, that they had not advised. But in a succeeding Tory-Conservative ministry, William DRAPER, acting virtually as a party premier, freely managed patronage himself to help stay in power. In fact, he held on until May 1847, thus furthering responsible government in practice even before its full acceptance.
A shift in imperial policy finally brought full acceptance. In 1846, Britain's repeal of the CORN LAWS signalled a movement towards FREE TRADE, ending a centuries-old pattern of imperial trade controls and protective duties. It no longer saw much need to withhold internal self-government from its more politically advanced colonies. Lord ELGIN came to Canada as governor general in 1847, instructed to implement responsible rule. Early in 1848, after Reformers swept elections in both Canadas, Henry Sherwood's Tory-Conservative ministry resigned, and Elgin at once called on Reformers to form a government. Responsible rule was plainly confirmed when in March an all-Reform Cabinet took office under LaFontaine as premier (he had the larger following) with Baldwin as co-premier.
There was still a severe testing to come. Trade was at a low ebb, the newly completed St Lawrence canals half used. Tory English merchants of Montréal blamed the problem on the loss of imperial tariff protection, although world depression spreading since 1847 was a deeper cause. In the thriving earlier 1840s, moreover, expanding farm and lumber frontiers, canal building, and rising towns had readily absorbed a surge in British immigration; but now, when times were hard and frontier expansion was halting against the margins of the rugged Shield, a new tide of Irish immigrants poured in - destitute and typhus-infected, fleeing famine in their homeland. Amid these strains, the Reform ministry brought in the 1849 REBELLION LOSSES BILL.
Meant to compensate damages suffered in the LC Rebellion of 1837-38 (Upper Canadians had already settled their claims), the bill seemed vital social justice to French Canadians - proof also that responsible government could work for them. Canada East's British Tories, however, saw it as a blatant rewarding of rebels. The Reform-dominated legislature, meeting in Montréal, passed the bill over heated protests; but Tory-Conservatives still looked to a British governor to refuse his assent. Elgin did not: the measure had been recommended by a responsible ministry with support of the parliamentary majority.
All the strains in Montréal burst forth in the MONTRÉAL RIOTS. Yet Elgin and his ministers rode out the storm, which subsided after a few wild days in April. Then in October the ANNEXATION manifesto appeared in the city, urging union with the US. It proved only a bitter, passing gesture. Most French Canadians saw colonial self-rule to be working; eastern Tories drew back; while in Canada West, apart from a few radicals, Reformers and Conservatives held firm to British connections. Responsible government survived its first test.
By 1850, depression had given way to an era of rapidly expanding world trade. Grain and timber production rose. The St Lawrence canals were bustling; Montréal merchants soon forgot annexationism. And with increasing British and American capital available, Canadian entrepreneurs took eagerly to railway building. Tracks linked Montréal to ice-free Portland, Maine, on the Atlantic, and Toronto to the Upper Great Lakes at Collingwood. A line from Niagara Falls to Windsor, via Hamilton, tied in with rails to New York at one end and Chicago at the other, and soon extended to Toronto as well.
Above all, the GRAND TRUNK, incorporated 1852, built a transprovincial route connecting the lower St Lawrence by way of Québec, Montréal and Toronto to Sarnia, Ontario. This first great railway boom subsided after 1857 in another world depression. The Grand Trunk in particular, overpromoted and extravagantly built, was left deep in debt, blighted with political deals and scandals. Nevertheless, rail lines had remade Canada, breaking inland winter isolation, vastly improving long-range transport, and focusing development on major towns. Railway-connected factory industries grew, notably in Montréal, Toronto and Hamilton, which rapidly advanced in urban size, wealth and complexity.
The 1854 RECIPROCITY Treaty with the US stimulated growth by giving Canadian grain and lumber free access to American markets. It also tied Canada far more closely to the American economy; the US Congress decision in 1865 not to renew reciprocity would thus spur Canadian efforts to seek economic integration with other BNA provinces. Yet the fifties also brought a Canadian protective tariff, promoted by the very rise in provincial industry. In 1858 and 1859 duties were raised enough to shelter manufactures effectively, though this was "incidental" protection - incidental to needs for revenue made pressing by the heavy public debt incurred from lavish railway grants. Duties were lowered again in 1866. Still, the tariff of 1858-59 was a foretaste of the later high-tariff NATIONAL POLICY, and signified the increasingly close ties between government and business in an era of advancing capitalism.
Meanwhile, since the early 1850s, other factors had been steadily disrupting the union's political life. Around 1850, left-wing Reform elements had emerged, the PARTI ROUGE in Canada East, the CLEAR GRITS in Canada West, advocating fully elective democracy and an American-style written constitution. In 1851 Baldwin and LaFontaine gave up combating radicalism in their own ranks and left politics. Their chief lieutenants, Francis Hincks and Augustin Morin, took over the ministry, which at first looked more secure as radical ardour waned in an atmosphere of widespread enthusiasm for railway promotion.
But soon freshly divisive issues loomed, chiefly concerning public education and church-and-state relations. Predominantly Protestant Canada West widely believed in nondenominational public schools and rejected state-connected and state-supported religion. Largely Catholic Canada East, where mainstream French Liberals had made increasing links with the Catholic hierarchy, widely upheld denominational schools and church-state ties. More specifically, French Canadian votes backed bills in Parliament to enlarge the rights of state-aided Catholic schools in Canada West.
Many Upper Canadians came to feel that their own interests were being thwarted by unchecked French Catholic power. Moreover, the census of 1851-52 revealed that the western section now had the greater population, and so was underrepresented, while paying the larger share of taxes.
The strenuous editor of the powerful Toronto Globe, George BROWN, entered the Legislative Assembly as a Reform independent to battle for "justice" for Canada West. In 1853 he proposed representation by population to give the western section its full weight in seats. His initial attempt got nowhere; but it began a sharpening sectional struggle over REP BY POP: sought by Upper Canadians to overcome "French domination," fought by French Canadians to prevent their being submerged in the Union anew.
On 22 June 1854 the Hincks-Morin ministry fell. The old Reform alliance had crumbled under sectional strains. In its stead, a new ruling Liberal-Conservative COALITION appeared, which combined the moderate Liberals of Hincks and Morin with Tory-Conservative forces, among whom a Canada West politician from Kingston, John A. MACDONALD, was rapidly gaining stature. This broad coalition managed to abolish both the old CLERGY RESERVES and the SEIGNEURIAL SYSTEM. Brownites, Clear Grits and Rouges, left in the cold, called the Conservative-oriented combination "unprincipled."
Actually, it rested on essential agreement between the major parties: on railway and business development, maintenance of the Union, and defence of the French Canadian place within it. Furthermore, the coalition shortly came under the command of another outstanding Canadian partnership: that of John A. Macdonald, easygoing but brilliantly resourceful, and George-Étienne CARTIER, a formidable party manager and Montréal Grand Trunk lawyer. Under them, the CONSERVATIVE PARTY of the future gradually took shape.
On the other side, Brown and the Clear Grits, earlier adversaries, moved together. On 8 January 1857 a party convention at Toronto hailed a rebirth of UC Reform, as Brownites, Grits and some returning moderate Liberals adopted a platform calling for rep by pop, nonsectarian education and acquisition of RUPERT'S LAND, which had lately attracted attention both from Toronto's businessmen, keen to expand their city's trade domain westward, and from agrarians eager for new land frontiers. The resulting Brownite-Grit party powerfully consolidated Canada West sectionalism, while its stress on farmers' rights and its hostility to big railway interests and expensive government also had a long political future.
There followed an incessant struggle between Macdonald-Cartier conservatism and Brownite liberalism, loosely allied with the limited Rouge eastern group under A.A. DORION. In August 1858 a Brown-Dorion government lasted just 2 days. The returning Conservatives now took up BNA federal union to answer Canada's troubles, urged on by Alexander GALT, a leading Montréal financier, who joined the ministry. Yet the other provinces proved uninterested, and general federation was soon laid aside. In Nov 1859 at another Reform convention, Brown moved his Grits behind a dual federation of the Canadas (already suggested by Dorion), which as quickly failed in Parliament. While both sides had now adopted the federal principle as a way out of sectional disruption, neither was actually ready for it, and rows over rep by pop returned.
In May 1862, the Macdonald-Cartier forces were defeated on a costly Militia Bill, a response to border tensions roused by the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. A moderate Reformer, Sandfield MACDONALD, tried to keep the union running by double majority, requiring majorities for government measures from both halves of the province. Sandfield's principle failed, though he hung on until early 1864, when John A. Macdonald returned, to be defeated in 3 months. Elections and government shifts had achieved nothing in the equal balance of sectional forces. By June 1864, with the United Province plainly deadlocked, Brown made a crucial offer to back a government willing to remake the Union.
Negotiations between Macdonald, Cartier, Galt and Brown led quickly to an agreement to seek general federation and include the North-West, or a federation of the Canadas if that failed. The first aim did not fail. Brown and 2 Liberal colleagues joined the ministry, and the GREAT COALITION took up the federation cause with the other BNA colonies. The outcome was the scheme for CONFEDERATION and the BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT of 1867.
Throughout the shaping of the confederation plan Canadian representatives had played commanding roles, especially John A. Macdonald. When it went into force on 1 July 1867, the day of the old Canadian union was over, scarcely mourned amid bright aspirations for the future. Before the union ended, its Parliament endorsed the federal scheme with both English and French majorities in 1865, and in 1866 drafted constitutions for the successor provinces of Québec and Ontario. The United Province had gone through much and achieved much. But its final achievement lay in Confederation itself.
AUTHOR: J.M.S. CARELESS
READING: J.M.S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas (1967) and Brown of the Globe (1959); D.G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald: the Young Politician (1952); W.L. Morton, The Critical Years (1964).
