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<h1>Chapter One</h1>

Background to a New Nation

Between 1840 and 1880, Canadians were fortunate enough to live relatively unhindered by much of the turmoil that characterized the rest of the world. Canada had no external security vulnerabilities. The country had few conflicting venomous ideologies, or religious or ethnic tensions that threatened to tear it apart. There were no debilitating class conflicts, and such regional rivalries as existed were mild and certainly not violent. However, as we will see in later chapters, Canada had its share of bigotry, intolerance, and foolishness.
By 1840, Canada was well on its way to establishing the cultural and political foundations of a modern nation. But before examining particular aspects of mid-nineteenth-century Canadian society in detail, and at the risk of oversimplifying history, we should briefly examine the situation in which Canadians found themselves in the years leading to Confederation.
The circumstances of First Nations and other aboriginal peoples will be examined later with each of the country’s regions, but in broad terms, aboriginal Canadians, Canada’s first inhabitants, were largely ignored in the years prior to Confederation. That wasn’t always the case. Up until the War of 1812, in the web of alliances negotiated between the French, the British, and the Americans, First Nations were militarily useful to the various colonists and, as a result, were treated as a more influential partner. But with political stability and the increasing industrialization that followed the war, the status of aboriginal peoples began to decline. By the outset of the Confederation decades, First Nations peoples found themselves completely marginalized.
This change in status marked a sudden shift from the status quo that existed in North America before the arrival of European colonists. Aboriginal Canadians are believed to have arrived from Asia ten thousand years ago. Anthropologists believe that the ancestors of the aboriginal population of North America migrated across the Bering Strait that separates Siberia from Alaska during the last ice age and established societies in the traditional regions that Europeans found them in prior to and after the fifteenth century.

Nineteenth-century Inuit seal hunting party.
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Canada’s first peoples have been classified according to geography, into seven very broad major groupings.<a class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-252-1" id="footnote-252-1-backlink">*</a> The Inuit were in the Arctic region and right across the Canadian North. In the Sub-Arctic were First Nations such as the Innu and the Dene, the Cree, the Ojibwa, the Atikamekw, and the Beothuk. Out on the Pacific Coast were a highly differentiated mix of linguistic and cultural bands that lived in what is now coastal British Columbia. In the high plateau areas and adjoining regions of the interior of British Columbia lived the Southern Dene and the numerous branches of the Athabaskan peoples. On the Prairies lived diverse bands of Plains First Nations, which included groups such as the Blackfoot, the Plains Cree, the Ojibwa, and the Assiniboine peoples. Further east, in a region thousands of kilometres wide and consisting of numerous tribal and linguistic groups, were the highly varied First Nations of the Eastern Woodlands. This last group consisted of a very broad range of peoples and cultures that included many different tribes of the Algonquian peoples, the Huron, the Iroquois, the Woodland Cree, and Ojibwa tribes, as well as the Maliseet and Mi’kmaq nations. The Métis, a mixed society that grew from the merging of First Nations peoples and European fur traders, lived primarily on the Prairies, and had rapidly established themselves as a unique and distinct culture in the late eighteenth century.
Although population estimates vary, it is widely accepted that at the time of the first European settlements there were approximately half a million aboriginals living in several hundred tribal groupings in what is now Canada. Aboriginal populations were subject to their own dynamic changes and there were several major ongoing migrations amongst indigenous peoples prior to and just after the arrival of Europeans, but these changes were minor in comparison with what was to follow: the lifestyles, the locations, the health and security, and the cultures of all the aboriginal peoples were to change even more drastically over the next three hundred years.
The second group of founding peoples, the French, began to arrive in the early seventeenth century. French migration started with an annual journey of fishing boats to the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland. Shortly thereafter, the lure of the fur trade and the beginnings of European imperial expansion soon saw thriving settlements established at Quebec, along the St. Lawrence, and in the Maritimes.
During the period of French colonization in Canada, the British established colonies south of the area controlled by the French, in what is the present-day eastern United States. The settlement of this area by the British was not accomplished without significant resistance from the resident aboriginal populations, and the period was characterized by a ragged and seemingly interminable succession of wars between the British and First Nations.
French expansion in North America stopped abruptly with the British seizure of Quebec in 1759 and the subsequent Treaty of Paris in 1763. With the Treaty of Paris, most merchants, civil administrators, and the military garrison chose to return to France, leaving behind habitant<a class="footnote-link" href="#footnote-252-2" id="footnote-252-2-backlink">**</a> farmers and their Catholic clergy.
It was a migration that was to have a defining effect on the nature of French-Canadian society for almost two hundred years. From 1763 until well into the very late nineteenth century, the French-speaking peoples of Canada led a generally quiet life under British rule. Allowed to keep their language, laws and religion, the remaining 70,000 French inhabitants of Quebec and the Maritimes lived a peaceful existence in a unique and predominantly rural culture.
English-speaking Canadians had somewhat more diverse origins. One of the first handful of such immigrants to the Canadas were discharged British soldiers — mostly from the Fraser Highlanders, one of the units that participated in the Battle for Quebec. These men stayed on as a part of the first British garrison, and after their regiment was disbanded, many of its soldiers moved to the area near Rivière-du-Loup. They married local women and were almost all assimilated into the larger French culture. It wasn’t until the American Revolution that large numbers of English-speaking immigrants began to settle in Canada. In a series of waves, 100,000 United Empire Loyalists emigrated to Canada. Loyal to the British Crown, they settled in the Maritimes, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, and on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Amongst the many legacies left by these people, one of the most evident and enduring ones was that, ever since, Canadian English has had a North American accent rather than a British one.
With the British division of Quebec in 1791 into Upper and Lower Canada, English-speaking immigrants were allowed to live under British institutions and laws in Upper Canada, while Lower Canadians could maintain their French civil code with protections given in law to their Catholic religion. At a time characterized by intense and often violent religious intolerance, it was a remarkably broad-minded proposal, but as a solution to the colonial management of these two regions, it soon proved to be inadequate.
Shortly after the establishment of Upper Canada, which roughly covered what is now southern Ontario, there was an immediate increase in British immigration. At the same time, the population of Upper Canada and Lower Canada’s Eastern Townships continued to swell with a continuous stream of land-hungry settlers from the United States. At the same time as this massive English-speaking migration was taking place, the French-speaking population of Lower Canada grew steadily as a result of high birth rates and falling mortality rates. Canada’s total population by 1840 had grown to just under 1.2 million people.
Despite the economic growth that accompanied this rapid increase in population, critical political grievances festered. Colonial governance in Upper and Lower Canada was not harsh, but it was burdensome, discriminatory, and irritatingly autocratic. The appointed executive branches of government in both provinces operated as self-serving oligarchies that frequently chose to ignore their elected legislative assemblies. Insurrections demanding reform in the two provinces in 1837 and 1838 were almost inevitable.
These rebellions were indifferently supported by much of the population, and the rebels in both provinces were badly organized and poorly led. The government handily defeated the rebels. By comparison with contemporary uprisings elsewhere, particularly in Europe, Canada’s troubles were relatively minor. But these insurrections were not entirely bloodless. In Lower Canada, over three hundred men died in various skirmishes, and in total more than one hundred leaders were subsequently transported to Australia. A handful were executed. It was a tense and unstable time that could have spiraled into much broader and more violent civil war.

Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette, one of Lower Canada’s Patriote rebels, in prison in 1838. Bouchette was eventually exiled to Bermuda. He returned to Canada in 1845 and went on to have a distinguished career in the Canadian civil service. 
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Not wanting to repeat the mistakes of the American Revolution, the British sent Lord Durham out to assess the situation. He travelled to the two colonies, listened to the locals, and drafted his conclusions for bringing peace and prosperity to the region. His famous report became the basis for the “Act of Union,” which established a kind of lopsided, semi-responsible government in a newly united Canada. In addition to governing these two colonies as a single entity, Durham’s plan was also designed to assimilate the French Canadians. Lower Canada became Canada East, and, although it had a substantially larger population, it was given the same number of seats in the legislature as Upper Canada, which became Canada West.
It is worthwhile putting the geographic context of the Act of Union into perspective. If you look at a modern map of Canada, Durham’s newly united Canada only occupied a tiny fraction of Canada’s current land mass. It consisted of what is now southern Ontario and southern Quebec. The remainder of Britain’s North American colonies were all distinct and separate entities. These other British possessions consisted of “Rupert’s Land,” which was a massive tract consisting of all the lands that drained into Hudson’s Bay, all of which were administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company. To the west was the largely unexplored “New Caledonia,” which equated roughly to what is now British Columbia and northern Oregon. To the east were the separate British colonies of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia.
In demographic terms, the Act of Union was clearly unfair. It was designed with the impractical and potentially explosive aim of assimilating the larger and culturally vigorous French-Canadian population. Surprisingly though, for a period, the new “self-governing colony” functioned reasonably well.
This skewed governmental arrangement worked because, despite what other prejudices and shortcomings the legislators of the time might have had, the elected leaders of the two colonies understood that the two communities were bound together as if in a three-legged race. In both Canada East and Canada West there were sensible political leaders who appreciated that the path to peace, prosperity, and growth lay in co-operation with one another.
There was also another element at play. The key legislators had a practical sense of fairness. As a matter of common sense, the majority of Canadians in both camps realized that the more populated Canada East was unlikely to be assimilated by Canada West, and that given the violence of the recent past, it would ultimately be foolhardy to attempt such an undertaking.
There were other indications of a shared and progressive public spirit. Although it was bitterly resented by many, the rebels from the uprisings of 1837 and 1838 were eventually pardoned and reparations were made for losses incurred in the fighting. This decision was the result of a sensible desire to get the violence behind them, but it was also a clear indication that the temper of the times was changing. The period’s demands for increased political rights, public education, electoral changes, the beginnings of social welfare, and increased agitation for the abolition of the slave trade had their own distinct echoes in the Canadian context. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, French-Canadian politicians wisely saw this arrangement as a temporary one, and were shrewd and patient enough to work peacefully for an equitable solution that would provide them the best chance for their culture’s survival.
Despite all this, it would be wrong to assume that Confederation in 1867 was driven exclusively by influences that were uniquely Canadian. There were several critical, externally imposed issues that pushed Canada to the larger federated union. Not the least of these was that Britain, which was also changing, was changing its attitudes to its colonies.
As loyal as Anglo-Canadians were to the mother country, that affection was not always reciprocated in the same measure. British economic thinking was evolving, and in its northern cities a school of economic thought called “Manchesterism” emerged. Free trade was one of the key elements of this doctrine; and amongst other tenets was the belief that artificial trade barriers, such as duties, were impediments to wealth creation, and so restrictive trade laws had to be liberalized. Amongst other things, those advocating for Manchesterism called for the repeal of the preferential rates given to wheat grown in the colonies. Up until this time, Canadian farmers had reaped a handsome profit by offsetting the costs of trans-Atlantic shipping and selling their wheat tariff-free in Britain. That profitable relationship ended abruptly in 1846 when the British government repealed the “Corn Laws.” At the same time, due to poor crop yields in Ontario, Quebec, and the United States, the Canadian economy went into a recession. Popular Canadian opinion blamed the economic troubles squarely on the repeal of the Corn Laws.
If the repeal of the Corn Laws resulted in economic difficulty for those in British North America, the considerable benefits of industrialization also began to transform Canadian society. Mass-produced consumer goods, along with steam ships and railways, stimulated trade and vastly improved standards of living.
One of the immediate consequences of these changes was that politicians and businessmen realized they needed larger domestic markets to ensure prosperity. Many believed that continued growth and economic security could only be brought about through the political union of all of Britain’s North American colonies.
Any such political union, however, made absolutely no sense within the existing structure of a unified Canada East and Canada West. Political union, if it was to have sufficient mass to be effective, had to include Britain’s North Atlantic colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. And because the St. Lawrence River froze in the winter, effectively bringing trade to a halt for several months each year, commercial ties between Canada and the Maritimes only made sense if there were railway linkages, and in the case of Newfoundland, improved oceangoing communications. It was all a wonderful prescription for internally generated economic growth, and a tremendous opportunity to fix the lopsided and highly centrist form of governance that Lord Durham had devised during his brief tenure in the colony.
Another unanticipated consequence of Britain repealing the Corn Laws was that it eroded the loyalty and commitment that preferential market access had promoted. By distancing itself economically from its colonies, Britain now exercised considerably less influence in its overseas possessions. In Canada, smarting from a trade rebuff, there was a new spirit of determination and self-confidence. With the collapse of overseas markets, colonial leaders became more self-reliant by necessity. It was a heady feeling, and many Canadian politicians savoured this new-found sensation of independence.
Although in English Canada popular sentiment at the time was brashly imperial and patriotic, astute Canadian business and political leaders were in no doubt about the true nature of the British Empire. In economic and emotional terms, India was unquestionably the coveted jewel in the British Empire’s crown. By comparison, all Britain’s North American colonies were only slightly larger in population than the city of London. And in terms of trade, the southern United States was viewed as a much more important and indispensable link to the booming textile industries that lay at the heart of Britain’s economy.
Like neglected suitors, it began to gradually dawn on the established colonies that in the mid-nineteenth century, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were more valuable to Britain as convenient destinations to ship large numbers of its restive and unemployable populations. It was an arrangement that served Canada’s purposes brilliantly, but it wasn’t flattering. The “self-governing colonies” were a ready-made pressure release for starving Irish families, for Scotland’s evicted tenants, and those with limited prospects in England’s teeming industrial cities. And like a wistful suitor, Canadians gradually came to the conclusion that life could be better with a new and more stable arrangement that more suited her needs.
The evolving colonial relationship with Britain was important, but it wasn’t the only factor prompting change. The American Civil War had a profound effect on Canada. By 1861, America was larger and more powerful than Britain. And by the war’s end in 1865, no one could possibly dispute that a truly awe-inspiring military and industrial power had emerged on Canada’s southern border. America possessed the most modern, well-trained, well-equipped, and battle hardened army in the world. During the Civil War, Britain had antagonized the North, and America was in an expansionist mood. It was an uncomfortable time to be a British colony next to the U.S.A.

Confederation-era Canadians took their politics seriously. A typical election speech, in 1860s Quebec.
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Even when that military threat abated, the United States was still seen as dangerous by many Canadians because of the potential influence it possessed as a result of its economic might and cultural prominence. Still, Canada’s relationship with the United States was much more complex than superficial appearances would indicate. Despite America’s proximity, size, and the large numbers of American immigrants in Canada, U.S. influence in the Confederation decades was substantially less than it is today. Canada was still largely British in outlook and had not developed any true sense of Canadian identity, which is not to say Canadians were not concerned by American influence. For example, in 1850 authorities in Upper Canada were worried that 40 percent of the school texts used in Canada West were American in origin. There were a host of similar issues looming on the horizon.
It was clear that by mid-century, America was emerging as one of the most dynamic societies on the globe. During Canada’s Confederation decades, the United States was in the throes of three wrenching, nation-altering events: America was dealing with the effects of the abolition of slavery and the Civil War; the country was in the midst of an unprecedented industrial and population boom; and throughout the period, the United States was aggressively expanding her territory. Each of these issues had profound effects on Canada.
For Canada, the Civil War was the most important of these events. While most Canadians were overwhelmingly opposed to slavery, the country was not unanimously pro-Northern in its outlook. As a British colony, Canada was officially neutral, but the views of many Canadians reflected attitudes in the mother country. The British textile industry was dependent on Southern cotton, which greatly influenced British leanings and led to several diplomatic and non-violent naval confrontations. In Quebec many identified with the South as an underdog that was ruled by a larger and more powerful majority. In the other English-speaking colonies, more than a few were hostile to the North as a result of truculent annexationists like William Seward, who openly promoted the forcible seizure of Canada. In Saint John, New Brunswick, a city that boasted of being the home and temporary wartime refuge of wealthy Southern families, parades were held to celebrate Confederate military victories. In several other locations, active pro-Confederate organizations operated freely out of Canada. The Copperhead Movement, which consisted of prominent Northerners who advocated Southern succession and an immediate end to the war, overtly ran their headquarters from Windsor, Ontario. In Toronto, it was an open secret that Southern subversives plotting acts of sabotage across the North operated out of the city’s hotels. And, most famously, in 1864 Confederate soldiers launched the St. Alban’s Raid, robbing Vermont banks and then retreating back into Quebec where they were arrested, and to the outrage of the North, freed on a legal technicality.
On the other hand, the vast majority of Canadians found slavery completely repugnant and supported the Union efforts. Canadian attitudes to American slavery had deep roots. Assisted by Northern abolitionists, upward of sixty thousand fugitive black slaves found a safe haven in Canada via the Underground Railroad. Support for the abolition of slavery also had a practical and unofficial military dimension. More than forty thousand English- and French-speaking Canadians served voluntarily in the Union Army. This was a truly astounding number for such a small country, especially one that was neutral. At the war’s outset it equated to just over 5 percent of the available fighting-age male population.
Nonetheless, when the American Civil War ended, Canadians were justifiably anxious about the military threat posed by a powerful, million-man army to the south of them. Lurking beneath America’s new military might was the recurrent but hazy threat of continentalism. For some Americans, the occupation of the entire North American continent was viewed as a sanctified obligation; for many of them, it was a dream that had never really died. John L. O’Sullivan, an influential journalist and typically ardent advocate of continentalism, had once proclaimed America’s “manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”1 
This hallowed and mystical belief in continental domination was profoundly disturbing for Canadians. Many remembered the Mexican-American War that had taken place only eighteen years previously. Since that time, Texas, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Washington, and Oregon had been annexed by the United States. In the years following the Civil War, there were influential voices in the northern states who were openly advocating occupying Canada.
The threat of annexation by the United States was a persistent theme in American political discourse. As early as 1818, the Anglo-American Convention established the border between the United States and British North America. It was agreed that the border would run from the 49th parallel between Lake of the Woods and the Pacific Ocean with a temporary joint claim established over the Oregon territory. However, in 1844, James Polk ran his election campaign with the belligerent slogan of “54° 40’ or Fight.” It never came to war, and in 1846 the boundary was once again settled at the 49th parallel. Nonetheless the renewed threat of the seizure of Britain’s “empty” territory beyond Canada West remained a further stimulus for Confederation. 
Throughout the war, William Seward, the North’s fiery secretary of state, often spoke rapturously of American territory running from Manitoba to British Columbia and up into Alaska. In Canada, Seward’s outbursts triggered alarm, but perhaps even more disturbing to Canadians were the periodic editorials that cropped up in major British newspapers that proposed Britain placate the Americans by acquiescing to Seward’s schemes. 
One of the reasons that the notion of continental domination had never died was that for many Americans, despite international treaties, the border with Canada was not viewed as the same kind of institutional barrier as it is today. This was largely a result of the porous nature of the border. Throughout the Confederation decades, the border posed no real impediment to movement, and Americans and Canadians migrated back and forth across it freely. Americans for the most part sought free farmland, while Canadians were lured south in large numbers by the possibility of employment in the rapidly industrializing northern states. Records itemizing the precise numbers of Canadian migrants to America are unreliable, but the numbers involved were substantial. 
However much Canadians feared annexation by the United States, to the point that it became a key factor driving Confederation, in truth, in the post-Civil War United States, it never reached a serious planning phase. And fortunately, President Andrew Johnson, the man who succeeded Lincoln, had no intention of going to war with Britain. Like Johnson, most Americans focused their attentions on the issues of post-war reconstruction and westward expansion. 
Yet while the conventional military threat from America’s army subsided, the Fenian Brotherhood, a paramilitary organization made up of Irish veterans from the Union Army, posed a more realistic problem. The Fenians, with several thousand volunteers, hoped to seize Canada and barter the country for Irish independence. The Fenians were never strong enough to occupy Canada, but they posed a menace to peace and threatened to destabilize international relations. In total, the Fenians made five largely chaotic and unsuccessful incursions into Canada. Thirty-two Canadian militiamen died repelling them. Although the raids never materialized as a major military threat, they proved to be a powerful stimulus for Confederation, for they underscored the need for a co-ordinated colonial defence plan.
The end of the Civil War also had major implications for British North America in terms of trade. Trade with the United States has always been a critical issue for Canadians, and fluctuating American demand for Canadian products accentuated the boom and bust nature of Canada’s economic circumstances. For many Canadians, the Civil War represented a time of economic opportunity. Canada prospered during the Civil War, selling ships, agricultural produce, and manufactured goods primarily to the North. For many Canadians, the Civil War meant newly invigorated markets for shipments of everything from grain, timber, leather products, cavalry horses, coal, and iron ore. It was a boom time that wasn’t bound to last. Resentful of Britain and fuelled by nationalist feeling, a year after the Civil War ended the Americans cancelled the free trade arrangements that had existed since the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. It was a devastating blow, and Canadians were forced to find internal markets for their goods.

M. Chamberlain, a Canadian militia soldier from the 60th Battalion, who fought in the Fenian Raids.
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Politically, the war also exerted a strong influence on Britain’s North American colonies. From a constitutional perspective, the divisive issue of American states’ rights overshadowed the tone of Confederation. And the Fathers of Confederation, anxious to avoid the American example and the possibility of civil war, were in agreement that the new country should be a carefully defined federation that was to be built upon the principles of peace, order, and good government.
While America was certainly the strongest external influence in the development of the Canadian state, to get a sense of who Canadians were in the Confederation decades, it is equally important to understand Canada’s situation in relation to its place in the larger global setting. 
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<a class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-252-1-backlink" id="footnote-252-1">*</a> Among Canada’s aboriginal communities there are over 600 identifiable tribal, linguistic, and cultural groupings. Reducing these to seven major categories is a necessary but regrettable distortion.
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<a class="footnote-anchor" href="#footnote-252-2-backlink" id="footnote-252-2">**</a> The term habitant was of seventeenth-century origin and referred to the class of francophone Quebecers who made their living doing agricultural work in seigneuries. Over the years, it has evolved into an affectionate term for rural French-speaking Quebecers and is symbolic of the hardy and spirited lifestyle of early Quebec.
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