Five thousand people waited in the rain on a damp December night. It was Boxing Day 1862. But the miserable winter weather didn’t stop them from crowding around the train station. They came in droves to the city’s first Union Station, a modest collection of wooden buildings on Front Street — a block west of where the impressive modern transportation hub stands today. It was well after dark by the time the train chugged its way along the waterfront and slowed to a stop. It had been hired to make this single special trip, bringing one of Toronto’s leading citizens home after months away — something of a belated Christmas gift for the city. As the crowd erupted into cheers, one of Canada’s most beloved politicians stepped down onto the platform. George Brown was back. And he wasn’t alone.
Since the 1840s, when Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine had won their battle for responsible government, a new generation of political leaders had taken over. Younger, more radical Reformers wanted to push change even further: they demanded that more people be given the right to vote, that inheritance laws be overhauled, and that copyright be abolished, among many other things. They drove Baldwin into retirement and formed a powerful faction within the Reform Party: the Clear Grits. Eventually, they would evolve into the Liberal Party. And George Brown was their leader.
By then, he was already a successful public figure. He was the founder of the Globe newspaper — the forerunner of today’s Globe and Mail — owned a cattle farm near Brantford, and was a leader in the fight against slavery. As the co-founder of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, he was one of the Blackburns’ most powerful and dedicated white allies.
But as he basked in the crowd’s warm welcome on that cold December night, some deeply challenging years laid ahead.
The 1860s were a nervous time for the Canadian colonies. Half a century after the War of 1812, the United States still posed a monumental threat. The American Civil War was proving just how much terror it could unleash. And as if to drive the point home, Irish-American armies would invade the Canadian colonies once the war was over; Fenian revolutionaries hoped their attacks would pressure the British into leaving Ireland. Meanwhile, Canada’s own political system was grinding to a halt. United together as the “Province of Canada,” the old territories of Upper and Lower Canada were now mired in political deadlock. Laws couldn’t get passed. Nothing could get done.
In response, a new idea emerged. They called it Confederation. If the Province of Canada joined with the Maritime provinces, the deadlock would be broken and they would be united against any threat coming from south of the border. The Dominion of Canada would still be part of the British Empire, but it would be an independent country — bigger, stronger, and more resilient.
Still, making Confederation a reality was going to be a monumental challenge. In order for Canada to become a country, its most powerful politicians would need to work together. They’d have to put aside a lifetime of rivalry and deeply conflicting views.
That might be a problem for George Brown. He wasn’t exactly known for his collaborative charms. His whole life, he’d been direct and dogmatic, sometimes even authoritarian. As the owner of the Globe, he could be something of a tyrant. In a few years, when his printers went on strike demanding safer working conditions and a nine-hour day, he would crack down hard, throwing the organizers in jail and forcing his employees back to work even though ten thousand people — 10 percent of the city’s entire population — marched on Queen’s Park in solidarity. He broke the strike, but in response, unions were legalized in Canada. And the march inspired the Labour Day holiday still celebrated across North America every September. Years later, Brown would meet his end by being murdered by one of his own disgruntled employees. He might have been a respected champion for reform, but he wasn’t always easy to work with.
And when he’d left Toronto for a trip to Britain, things hadn’t been going well for the curmudgeonly politician. He’d lost his seat after a decade in Parliament. He was in his forties now and his health was failing him; he’d just been forced to spend two months in bed. His trip was meant to be refreshing and restorative. And that’s exactly what it was, thanks to a woman he met in Scotland.
Anne Nelson was the sister of an old friend. She was about ten years younger than Brown, more worldly, and better educated than he was. She’d travelled across Europe, studied in Germany, and lived in Paris as a young woman. She spoke three languages. And she was charming, too: lively, good-natured, and loving. Brown was transformed in her presence. His stern facade melted. It was five weeks later, during an evening walk along the River Clyde, that Brown proposed. They were married just two months after they met.
It must have seemed as if the whole city of Toronto had come out to welcome the newlyweds when they pulled into Union Station on that Boxing Day. For at least one evening, the city’s divisions were forgotten. The crowd of five thousand well-wishers included Tories, Reformers, Clear Grits, Catholics, and Orangemen alike. As a carriage bore the beloved politician and his new bride through the streets of Toronto, the crowd followed. Bands played. Fireworks lit up the night. People leaned out of their windows along their route, waving handkerchiefs and cheering them on.
“I feel more than ever,” Brown had told the crowd at the train station, “the necessity for Upper Canadians of all shades of political opinion to unite heartily in advancing the great interests of our country — to forget the minor differences which have so long separated us.” And as he prepared to pass through the front door of his home on Church Street and begin his new life with Anne, he turned back to them once again. “I trust … that whenever the great interests of Canada are at risk, we will forget our merely political partisanship and rally round the cause of our country.” That, he promised, would be his new motto.
And indeed, by all accounts, he was a new man. Happy and in love, with Anne at his side giving him valuable political advice, he was now warmer, more patient, and more conciliatory. Another leading figure in Confederation, Sir Oliver Mowat, once congratulated her on the transformation she’d inspired in her husband. “Since you became his wife,” he wrote, “the softer side of his nature has been developed under your loving influence — himself becoming an increasingly gentle, kind and considerate person.”
Now that George Brown was in love, compromise didn’t seem so terrible after all. Suddenly, he was willing to join forces with his political foes. Together, they formed “The Great Coalition.”
It was an unlikely crew. There was Conservative leader John A. Macdonald (Brown’s greatest enemy), former Irish revolutionary Thomas D’Arcy McGee (who once proudly called himself “A Traitor to the British Government”), and Quebecois champion George-Étienne Cartier (whose influence Brown had spent years trying to diminish). George Brown might have been anti-conservative, anti-Catholic, and anti-French, but now he was allied with them all, building an alliance of thirty-six Canadian politicians who would be remembered as the Fathers of Confederation.
Together, they would establish a new country stretching from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean — with a little help from the $13,000 worth of champagne they brought with them to the first round of talks. The negotiations would take three years, but it wasn’t all business. Balls and dinners played a vital role building trust and camaraderie, wives and daughters helping to cement the new bonds being forged between the Canadian leaders.
Anne supported her husband the whole way through, even when they were apart, guiding him and offering him advice. As the politicians hammered out the framework for a new nation, the Browns sent countless letters back and forth to each other. The couple’s correspondence would provide a valuable historical record of the negotiations. Anne’s influence on her husband was so strong that one historian has suggested, “Perhaps the real father of Confederation was Mrs. Brown.” Indeed, some remember her as the Mother of Confederation.
In the end, all the effort was worth it: New Brunswick and Nova Scotia agreed to join with the Province of Canada. On July 1, 1867, the Dominion of Canada officially came into being. There were celebrations all across the newly formed country of four million people. The festivities in Toronto began at midnight as church bells rang with joy, led by the singing spire of St. James Cathedral. Bonfires lit up King Street while fireworks burst into the night air. Drunken revellers belted out patriotic songs. People kept the party going all through the next day, woken by a twenty-one-gun salute from Fort York. An entire ox was roasted at dawn, and there were more light shows and fireworks to come.
George Brown spent that night writing, hard at work in his sweltering office on King Street while the party raged outside. Hour after hour, he wrote, well past dawn, penning a gargantuan celebratory article that would cover the entire front page of the Globe. And then, his work done, he finally headed home through the exuberant city. The Mother of Confederation would be waiting for him.