Reconsidering Confederation: Canada's Founding Debates, 1864-1999

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2018-10 Reconsidering Confederation: Canada's Founding Debates, 1864-1999 University of Calgary Press Heidt, D. (Ed.). (2018). "Reconsidering Confederation: Canada's Founding Debates, 1864-1999". Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/108896 book https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca RECONSIDERING CONFEDERATION: Canada’s Founding Debates, 1864–1999 Edited by Daniel Heidt ISBN 978-1-77385-016-0 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. It is an electronic version of a book that can be purchased in physical form through any bookseller or on-line retailer, or from our distributors. 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Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the wording around open access used by Australian publisher, re.press, and thank them for giving us permission to adapt their wording to our policy http://www.re-press.org 1 Introduction: Reconsidering Confederation Daniel Heidt July 1, 1867, was a beginning only, not an end. Nova Scotia had to be reconciled. Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland must be wooed, if there were to be unity in handling the fisheries. The Northwest had to be annexed if it were to be saved for Canada. Beyond the Rockies was British Columbia, which must be won to union to give Canada [an] outlet to the Pacific. These things, rather than the integration of the new governments, were still the main work of Confederation: union, to be union, had to include expansion.1 W.L. Morton, 1964 Anticipating Canada’s centennial year, historian W.L. Morton wrote that the date of 1 July 1867 “was a beginning only, not an end.” Canada, as we know it today, remained only a dream. On its first day, the new “dominion” was a fledgling amalgam of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, and Ontario constituting something more than a colony, but still less than an independent country. Even then, the move had been unpopular in the Atlantic colonies, and Nova Scotian voters would soon elect an- ti-Confederate MPs to all but one of their federal ridings. Prince Edward 1 Island and Newfoundland, meanwhile, had rejected the project, and the residents of Rupert’s Land and British Columbia had yet to be consulted about membership. Canada’s motto “A Mari usque ad Mare” (Latin for “from sea to sea”), instilling the image of a country spanning northern North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, remained an unfulfilled aspiration. Confederation, to be successful, had to accommodate the in- terests and cultures of these diverse regions and Peoples. The formation of a country, separate from the United States and bor- dering three oceans, ultimately required decades to achieve and over one hundred and thirty years to reach its current complement of three territories and ten provinces. While Canada grew to encompass much of its present-day geographical extent during the two decades after it was created, the political boundaries we recognize today were far from certain. Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Yukon, and Nunavut all took shape during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—repeatedly and dra- matically reshaping the Northwest Territories in the process. Voters in Newfoundland and Labrador remained wary of Confederation and the colony/dominion did not ultimately become a part of Canada until 1949. Treaty negotiations between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples also came in fits and starts, creating misunderstandings that still plague the country today. A twenty-first century understanding of Confederation must also include these foundational additions to the Canadian political framework. Each proposed addition or change spawned debates in colonial, ter- ritorial, and federal legislatures as well as negotiations at meeting places on traditional territories. At these assemblies, leaders weighed the merits of deals that would bring their constituents into the Canadian fold. Their opinions, historian Peter B. Waite would later note when writing about the 1860s debates, “were held with stubbornness and expounded with convic- tion.”2 Very few of the participants, it is true, engaged in deep philosophical debates as American founders Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton did,3 but, as Janet Ajzenstat and her co-editors point out in their collec- tion of Canada’s early debates, the so-called pragmatism of our country’s founders has been misunderstood as a dearth of “strong commitment to political values” or a lack of “interest in political ideas.”4 Whether they convened during the 1860s or the late 1990s, these founding assemblies were opportunities to expand, reaffirm, or shift Canada’s ideals and de- velopment. Participants from different parts of the country or cultural 2 DANIEL HEIDT backgrounds repeatedly contested how Canada would navigate timeless concerns like local autonomy, minority rights, majority rule, national- ism, liberty, and equality. Their successes and failures at balancing these often-conflicting values created legacies that we live with today. During these discussions, the participants regularly recalled past precedents to justify their positions, creating a chain of interconnected dialogues that reveal the roots and evolution of Canadian attempts to balance inclusion and autonomy. The Stakes Political reputations were won and lost during these founding discussions and historians have expended considerable energy debating which poli- ticians deserve the credit—or the blame—for Canada’s past and present successes and failures. Sir John A. Macdonald, for example, has been por- trayed as The Man Who Made Us (to borrow journalist Richard Gwyn’s recent description) in dozens of biographies and books over the years.5 Other authors emphasize the contributions of other political leaders who shaped Canada. The biographers of George Brown, George-Étienne Cartier, and Thomas D’Arcy McGee all point out the critical roles that these individu- als played in convincing the Province of Canada and two initial Maritime provinces to join Confederation in 1867.6 Books on Nova Scotia’s Charles Tupper and Newfoundland’s Joey Smallwood, make a similar case for the important contributions of these key founders.7 In recent decades, Louis Riel’s leadership of the opposition to the unilateral imposition of central Canadian designs on the Prairies has attracted nearly as much attention as Macdonald’s attempts to create a country spanning the continent— and perhaps even more sympathy than Macdonald’s expansionism.8 In British Columbia, Amor de Cosmos’ campaign to bring that colony into Confederation has also received some attention.9 Those who opposed union, such as Albert Smith, William Annand, Antoine-Aimé Dorion, John Helmcken, and Kenneth Brown have not received as much attention despite their critical contributions to the debates and, consequently, the form of the subsequent union. “While the Antis lost the battle,” historian Ged Martin notes, “they won at least some of the arguments” and their critiques of the Confederation deal often proved to be prophetic.10 1 | Introduction: Reconsidering Confederation 3 John A. Macdonald Attorney General West, Province of Canada, Ont. and Future PM 6 FEBRUARY 1865 “. if we wish to be a great people . commanding the respect of the world, able to hold our own against all opponents . [with] one system of government, and…a commercial union . obeying the same Sovereign . and being, for Confederation Quote 1.1 Quotation from Province of Canada, the most part, of the same blood Legislative Assembly, 6 February, 1865 .

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