[BRIEF NOTE] The Province of Canada

[rfmcdonald]

This Canada Day marks the 141st anniversary of the passage of the British North America Act that created the modern-day Canadian state. That's an indisputable historical fact. One thing that many people don't know is that there was Province of Canada that started up 26 years before that first Dominion Day.

The origins of the Province of Canada can be traced to the Rebellions of 1837. In Lower Canada, then as now populated overwhelmingly by Francophones, the political disenfranchisement of most Francophones and many Anglophones by colonial elites angered many who were already upset with an economic structure seen as having brought many farmers to the brink of starvation. This prompted two rebellions with relatively strong roots in the general population, one in 1837 and another in 1838, both with significant support from the United States, both being repressed by the British, with the consequence of (among other things) disrupting the secular radical tradition in Lower Canadian politics. The rising in Upper Canada, now Ontario, was more of an opéra-bouffe affair, with groups of political radicals trying and failing to challenge British rule.

What was to be done with all this? Lord Durham's controversial government report Report on the Affairs of British North America (excerpted substantially here) argued that ethnic conflict was the major reason for the turbulence of the Canadas in the past decade. He recommended that the British government should try to encourage the assimilation of French Canadians into the population of British Canada even as the provinces of Lower and Upper Canada would be merged into a single, larger unit, a province with a certain amount of democratic self-government and an overwhelmingly Anglophone population, capable of--among other things--improving infrastructure throughout the St. Lawrence valley. And so, in 1841, the Province of Canada was formed.

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 underrepresented, 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.

Ethnic tensions continued throughout this early period. 1849 saw the most spectacular outbreak of violence when Anglophone mobs in Montréal, upset that a Rebellion Losses Bill would see many French Canadians--including likely rebels--compensated for their property losses in 1837-38 in the middle of an economic downtown, burned the parliament buildings in Montréal. Despite some progress in building infrastructure, the political instability continued.

[F]reshly 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.

In the end, tired of this incessant conflict, many of the major political leaders of Canada, Anglophone and Francophone, started looking for solutions. One possibility that they seized upon were the plans on Maritime confederation being held in Charlottetown in the summer of 1864, and things took off from there as soon as the Canadian delegations unexpectedly showed up. Sections 5 and 6 of the eventual British North America Act explicitly stated that the new provinces of Ontario and Québec now existed in the place of the old united Canada, with the same frontiers as before.

I read somewhere that people in Québec supported Confederation because status as an independent province was as close as full independence as they could achieve. I wouldn't be surprised if people in Ontario were of the same mind.