III.

Beginning of the Project

Governing the two Canadian peoples through a single legislature was difficult because there were important matters on which British and French Canadians had fundamentally different ideas. Education and church-state relations were major examples. Yet the economies of the two sections were so closely linked that they did not want to break up the union altogether. Federalism seemed to offer a solution to this dilemma. Under a federal system, both sections could have their own government responsible for those matters on which the French and British disagreed; a federal government could take charge of the areas in which they had common interests.

The work of transforming Canada into a federation began in 1864 at the initiative of George Brown, the leader of the Reform Party in Upper Canada. Brown persuaded the majority leader in Lower Canada, George-Étienne Cartier, and the leader of the Conservative Party in Upper Canada, John A. Macdonald, to work with him to achieve it.

Cartier and Macdonald, however, wanted the new federation to include not just Canada, but other colonies in British North America as well. They hoped, no doubt, that including the Atlantic region—the colonies of Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island—would weaken the influence of the Reform Party, whose strength was in Upper Canada. But they had economic and military reasons as well.

A.

Economic Incentives

If the four Atlantic colonies were included, it would be easier to build railroads and develop economic relations between them and Canada. That seemed particularly important in the mid-1860s because all these colonies were about to lose markets for their products in the United States. In 1865 the U.S. government had announced that it would cancel a treaty that had provided for limited free trade with British North America. In addition, cancellation would increase the costs of shipping goods by way of U.S. ports to Canada’s other major market, Britain. Canadian businesses therefore wanted a railroad that would carry their products to the Atlantic colonies, giving them access to a seaport in British North American territory.

These considerations were certainly important to Cartier. He was the lawyer for Canada’s largest railroad company and represented the city of Montréal in the legislative assembly. That city was already the center of Canada’s railroad system, and its budding industries hoped to benefit from that position to conquer new markets.

B.

Self-Defense Incentives

But a railroad between Canada and the Atlantic colonies was also important for military defense. That had become clear in the winter of 1861-1862 when Britain and the United States had come close to war in the dispute known as the Trent Affair. When the American Civil War began in 1861, the United States was angered by Britain’s friendliness toward the rebel government in the South, the Confederate States of America. In the fall of 1861 an American naval vessel stopped a British mail ship, the Trent, in international waters and seized two Confederate agents who were aboard. The British government protested furiously, demanding the release of the men, and in the war scare that followed, it sent 14,000 troops to North America to defend Canada. But the St. Lawrence River was frozen for the winter, and the soldiers had to land in the seaside colony of New Brunswick and make their way slowly and painfully by sleigh from there.

Had war actually broken out, the delay could have been disastrous for the defense of Canada. Thus, a federation of all of British North America seemed desirable to promote economic development and military defense. So, in June of 1864, Brown, Cartier, and Macdonald formed a coalition to govern Canada and to obtain such a federation if possible. They agreed that if the other colonies could not be persuaded to join them, they would turn Canada alone into a two-province federation.