[AH] On a different Canada
Jul. 26th, 2016 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI did go to Charlottetown's Province House on my recent visit, but I did not go inside.
I could not. The entire building has been closed down indefinitely for much needed repairs, the provincial legislature adjourning for the duration to the Coles Building to the east, and a recreation of the chambers where the Fathers of Confederation met to discuss Canadian unification appearing to the west in a foyer in the Confederation Centre of the Arts.
Being in the birthplace of Confederation got me thinking. It's likely that there would have been some general reform of British North America, one leading in the direction of greater unity, simply because the existing colonial polities were just not working. The smaller colonies in the east were fast approaching limits to growth in an increasingly competitive North Atlantic and North American economy, while the western colonies will afterthoughts, and, as I noted back in July 2008, the Province of Canada had become a deadlocked mess riven by ethnopolitical conflict. The different colonies had come to a dead-end politically, and the most obvious way out of this involved the partial fusion of these colonies into a larger entity. Since union with the United States was a non-starter, this would seem to require the colonies to unite with each other.
Is this actually the case, though? If the 1864 discussions had failed, would there have been impetus anywhere to start things up again? Might we have seen, instead of a general union, more partial reforms, perhaps a federalization of the Province of Canada, perhaps a Maritime union? I wonder. How differently could the map of Canada ended up given a point of divergence in the 1860s?
I could not. The entire building has been closed down indefinitely for much needed repairs, the provincial legislature adjourning for the duration to the Coles Building to the east, and a recreation of the chambers where the Fathers of Confederation met to discuss Canadian unification appearing to the west in a foyer in the Confederation Centre of the Arts.
Being in the birthplace of Confederation got me thinking. It's likely that there would have been some general reform of British North America, one leading in the direction of greater unity, simply because the existing colonial polities were just not working. The smaller colonies in the east were fast approaching limits to growth in an increasingly competitive North Atlantic and North American economy, while the western colonies will afterthoughts, and, as I noted back in July 2008, the Province of Canada had become a deadlocked mess riven by ethnopolitical conflict. The different colonies had come to a dead-end politically, and the most obvious way out of this involved the partial fusion of these colonies into a larger entity. Since union with the United States was a non-starter, this would seem to require the colonies to unite with each other.
Is this actually the case, though? If the 1864 discussions had failed, would there have been impetus anywhere to start things up again? Might we have seen, instead of a general union, more partial reforms, perhaps a federalization of the Province of Canada, perhaps a Maritime union? I wonder. How differently could the map of Canada ended up given a point of divergence in the 1860s?
