Sir Charles Tupper

I

Introduction

Sir Charles Tupper (1821-1915), sixth prime minister of Canada, (1896), became prime minister through the efforts of the cabinet ministers who resigned from the cabinet of Sir Mackenzie Bowell in 1896. No more successful than Bowell had been, Tupper was defeated by the Liberals under Wilfrid Laurier after only ten weeks in office. Despite the shortness of his tenure as prime minister, Tupper is considered one of the great Canadian statesmen. It was through his efforts that Nova Scotia became part of the Dominion of Canada and that the dominion became a strong union.

II

Early Life

Tupper was born in 1821, in Amherst, Nova Scotia, son of the Reverend Charles Tupper, a Baptist minister, and Miriam Lowe Lockhart Tupper. He attended Horton Academy (now Acadia University) in Wolfville, and while there he studied medicine. He completed his medical education at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, graduating in 1843. After successfully practicing medicine in Amherst for several years, he entered politics at the age of 34.

In his first try for election to the Nova Scotia legislature in 1855, he ran from Cumberland County as a Conservative and defeated the Liberal leader, Joseph Howe. It was an astonishing victory, for Howe was one of the most powerful men in Nova Scotia. However, when Tupper took his place in the Conservative opposition, he found his own party sadly behind the times. He himself favored most of the Liberal Party's positions, including democratic government and a railway to connect the British colonies in North America. Tupper worked hard to make his party adopt a more constructive policy and to broaden its appeal. The Conservatives made a profitable alliance with the Roman Catholic clergy, and in 1856, Tupper became provincial secretary in the new Conservative government. Defeated in the election of 1860, the Conservatives returned to power in 1864, and Tupper became premier.

III

Premier of Nova Scotia

The next three years were the most important in Tupper's life. In 1864, he arranged a conference at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to discuss a federation of the three Maritime colonies, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. There was no great enthusiasm for union among the Maritimers, but the conference became important through the intervention of delegates from Canada East (now Québec) and Canada West (now Ontario). The Canadians asked permission to address the conference and did so at length. They persuaded he Maritimers to consider a larger union of all the British North American colonies. Tupper gave this idea of federation his full support.

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If Tupper favored union, Howe opposed it. He detested the upstart doctor who had defeated him years before and refused to be subordinate to him. He could not prevent Tupper from attending a second conference in Québec where the details of federation were worked out. However, through his Anti-Confederation League, Howe raised popular opinion against the Québec resolutions.

Opposition to union was widespread in all the Maritime colonies. When Samuel Tilley, premier of New Brunswick, called a new election over the federation issue, he was thrown out of office. Tupper was too shrewd to repeat his ally's mistake. He remained in power by refusing to call an election. He even managed to pass a free school act in 1865, which called for a provincial tax to pay for public schools. He was successful in this despite the opposition of Roman Catholics, who had had separate Church schools since the 1850s, and didn't want to give them up, and of illiterate farmers, who saw no advantage in paying a school tax. In 1866, Tupper attended the London conference on confederation. There he settled the terms under which Nova Scotia would join the dominion.

IV

Dominion Statesman

The British North America Act of 1867 made federation a reality, and Sir John Alexander Macdonald became Canada's first prime minister. However, he had great difficulty in forming his first cabinet because there were not enough posts to permit representation for each province and each faction in Canada. Tupper was the obvious representative for Nova Scotia, and Thomas D'Arcy McGee of Québec for the Irish Catholics. Both generously stood aside in favor of a Nova Scotian Catholic, Edward Kenny. In spite of not being in the cabinet, Tupper was considered one of the fathers of confederation and was made a Commander of the Bath. However, his troubles in Nova Scotia were not over. In the first federal election he alone, out of 19 members of Parliament elected from Nova Scotia, supported federation. In the elections for the provincial legislature, the opponents of federation won all but two seats. The fight had exhausted Tupper's finances, and his career seemed at an end. Nevertheless, he took his seat in Parliament.

Joseph Howe went to London in 1868 to take Nova Scotia out of the dominion. Tupper followed as Macdonald's agent and, with the added support of the British government, succeeded in defeating Howe's mission. When Howe returned, Macdonald offered him a post in the cabinet and a larger subsidy for Nova Scotia. Howe accepted the post and, with it, federation. Eventually the province itself agreed, although secession remained an issue for years.

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