Characteristics and Identity
If Canadian society of the Confederation decades had a major, identifiable failing, it was its belief in Darwinian ecology, survival of the fittest and the resulting treatment of aboriginal peoples. There was much that was right and good about the society, but Canada, then as now, has always had a tendency to overlook the desperate situation of our aboriginal peoples. They were the most vulnerable segment of society, one that was shattered by disease, and then deliberately and steadily marginalized and ostracized. While Canadian aboriginal peoples may not have been treated nearly as savagely as aboriginal societies in other lands colonized by Europeans, their circumstances during the period leave no room for self-congratulation.
Notwithstanding this one obvious contention, assessing the shortcomings and strengths of the past using the standards of the present is a risky undertaking. Casting judgment usually means that one views history through the lens of modern values and sensibilities, which is unfair. Surely the best test for accountability is whether or not an individual or group could have known or acted differently at the time. And in this respect, Canadians knew that their treatment of First Nations consistently left aboriginal peoples disconnected, forgotten, and in reduced circumstances — yet at the same time took no sustained or effective measures to fix the situation. This is not just a modern perspective; there were several written accounts of the unease that many felt regarding the treatment of aboriginal peoples.1
Apart from this one inescapable judgment, evaluating a society can be a wildly inexact undertaking. This is often because we tend to assess a period by trying to define its values in hindsight. It has recently become popular for politicians and the media to talk at considerable length about Canadian values. But as an overview of the Confederation decades shows, our values have never been constant — nor unanimously held. Values are important, but they change, sometimes quickly, and they are often hard to nail down as people frequently disagree as to what they mean. We have had very different perspectives on such basic concepts as family, religion, race, community, and country. And, no doubt, our attitudes will continue to evolve, probably driven by the same kinds of things that prompted change throughout the Confederation decades. Changes in science, technology, economics, and our understanding of the natural world will almost certainly leave our descendants as amused and puzzled by some of our current notions as we have been by our forebears. So, instead of trying to view the Confederation decades in terms of their values, their situation comes into sharper focus if one looks at their characteristics.
Significantly, the critical characteristics of the period were all highly inter-related. The predominant feature of the Confederation decades was that Canada was a secure country. In relation to the rest of the world, Canada was relatively peaceful, an advantage conferred on the country by geography and circumstances rather than temperament or achievement. Yet, such good fortune had its own associated downstream benefits. Prolonged peace meant that the society was also a relatively stable one. Canada certainly had its share of internal conflicts, but they were insignificant by comparison with most other nations of the period.
Stability, in turn, was reinforced by a respect for the rule of law. Secure, stable societies are more likely to organize themselves around reliable legal institutions than authoritarian or anarchical systems. And Canadians of all backgrounds were, for the most part, people who respected the law. This respect for laws in turn helped generate a climate of relative prosperity. Pioneers and farmers could cultivate their land comfortable in the knowledge that they had rights and protection from arbitrary arrest, property seizure, and theft.
Prosperity was also closely related to other characteristics. Confederation-era Canada was an agrarian society with a pioneer spirit. With good luck, courage, persistence, and hard work, Canadians could become independent and self-sufficient, which in turn contributed to the country being largely egalitarian in its outlook. Land was virtually free, and there was no landed aristocracy or hereditary governing class. Even though there were economic, religious, and regional divisions, sturdy, self-employed farmers and shopkeepers saw themselves as socially mobile as well as being the political and social equals of one another.
Again, because it was mainly an egalitarian society, Confederation-era Canada was, in its own idiosyncratic, and often contradictory way, fair-minded. With the notable and shameful exceptions of how First Nations were treated, the informal segregation of blacks, and discriminatory practices against Chinese, Canadians were as fair as any other society of the time. Even with the shortcomings that have been noted, there were other signs of progressive and broad-minded behaviour. The number of altruistic volunteers who chose to fight in America’s Union Army, the Underground Railroad, and the desire to provide education for First Nations all indicate a leavening of belief across Canadian society that people should be treated with decency and respect. The beginnings of this attitude probably had its origins in the variety of pluralism that the French and English adopted after 1759. Neither side was subservient to the other, and, despite the cultural gap between the two groups, there was a genuine understanding that co-operation, collaboration, and generosity of spirit would result in mutual prosperity.
The very nature of prosperity and the lifestyles of Confederation-era Canadians was also a characteristic feature of the period. People like Walter Ferguson in P.E.I. at the time of the Charlottetown Conference were quite typical. Proud, self-reliant, optimistic, and successful, they lived a frugal life that was close to the land, but relatively free from want. They were literate, and more often than not well read, but not highly educated. They lived within their means in a less technologically sophisticated era and in a pre-consumerist society. In many ways it was also an insular society. Long before the era of mass communications, people relied on speeches, sermons, conversations, and the occasional newspaper or magazine for their information. It was a time that had nothing remotely like our incessant barrage of social media, gossipy information, advertisements, and unceasing political messaging. It was a much simpler era with a happy, uncomplicated outlook that modern, urban Canadians can only envy.
The downside to this lifestyle was the amount of work required to survive. Work‒life balance was given short shrift during the period. There were certainly times of levity and recreation, but they were not nearly as frequent as what Canadians would later come to enjoy. Confederation-era Canadians had, of necessity, an unsparing and exacting work ethic.
While the people of the period worked extraordinarily hard, they displayed inconsistent and contradictory attitudes to risk. Canada’s explorers in the Arctic and the West during this period, surprisingly, had a high percentage of foreign-born men. Yet paradoxically, this was also a generation that invested heavily in and began building a transcontinental railway before they were even certain that there was a pass through the Rocky Mountains. Today, the most reckless and uninhibited investment banker would probably be punished severely for so much as suggesting such an action.
Because it was a newer, agrarian society, one without large accumulations of capital and wealth, investment in business and industry was also slower and on a proportionately smaller scale than it was in Britain or the United States. And, for similar reasons, with a tiny population made up of an over-worked rural middle class, there were few professional artists of any sort.
Despite all of the common characteristics listed above, most Canadians of the period were not intensely patriotic. Most were proud of their new country, and they were anxious to see it succeed. But strong national identities are normally built over time on such commonalities as ethnicity, language, culture, and religious beliefs. Canada was building a new country, which had none of these as a shared overriding feature. Of the major ethnic groups in the period, the English, the Protestant Irish, and most of the Scots had strong loyalties to Britain and the Empire. French Canadians had steadfast regional and ethnic allegiances to Quebec and Acadia. The Catholic Irish harboured a range of hostile feelings to the very idea of being an independent British colony. And the aboriginal peoples, who were never consulted in the process of making a new country, were generally indifferent to any new administrative arrangements that at the time made no discernable changes to their situation.
Yet, even though the nation’s common lifestyles and customs were not apparent at the time, traditions of tolerance, respect, shared hardships, egalitarianism, and collaboration steadily and imperceptibly began to define aspects of the Canadian identity. Not unnaturally, patriotic Canadian feeling took some time to gain traction. While there was enthusiasm virtually everywhere to making the new country work, a vigorous, pervasive, and confident sense of national identity would not emerge for another four decades.
It wasn’t until the First World War, when ordinary citizens went abroad in very large numbers, in a common cause, facing horrific perils, that Canadians realized that they already possessed a distinctive and common identity. And while there is no question that the nature of that identity was first revealed on Europe’s battlefields, the core of that identity had been forged in the Confederation decades.