Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

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and they made for a bumpy ride at best. As late as 1837, an English-

woman remarked that it took her stagecoach well over three hours to

travel a stretch of seven miles on the “highway” from Hamilton to Lon-

don. In fact, London was the only signiﬁ cant inland center, boasting a

population of about 10,000 when it was incorporated as a city in 1855.

The poor state or absence of roads added to the arduousness and lone-

liness of life in the backcountry of Upper Canada until the dawning of

the railway age in the 1850s.

Despite the completion of the St. Lawrence canal system and the

growth of the Upper Canadian settlement frontier, Montreal’s aspira-

tion to become the continent’s dominant commercial metropolis ulti-

mately rested on a precarious foundation of public policy that was

beyond its control. In particular, a combination of free trade in the

United States and a protected market in Britain permitted British man-

ufactured goods imported by way of Montreal to ﬂ ow into the markets

of the American Midwest, while American grain and other products

entering Canada shared in the preferences that Britain extended to

colonial products, and thus had the advantage over exports from Amer-

ican ports. Although the American government was moving in a pro-

tectionist direction after 1815, substantial tariff increases were checked

by the opposition of the southern states. An even more ominous sign of

pending trouble for the Montreal merchants was the ongoing debate in

Britain from the 1820s to the mid-1840s between the defenders of mer-

Artist Charles William Jeffreys (1869–1951) represents the slow and treacherous pace of

inland transportation in the ﬁ rst half of the 19th century as a result of the appalling state of

roads, which were often impassable after heavy rains.

(Library and Archives Canada C-069849)

131

cantilism and the advocates of free trade. The restrictions of the old

colonial system, which had fostered the growth of British commerce,

now appeared as obstacles to industrial expansion. As the world’s lead-

ing producers, British manufacturers demanded the removal of all bar-

riers to trade. Canadian commercial interests were worried when the

preferential duty on timber was lowered in 1842, but they were relieved

in the following year when the imperial Parliament passed the Canada

Corn Act, which increased the British preference on ﬂ our imported

from Canada. As a result, the act encouraged wheat from the American

West to be milled in Canada for shipment to Britain.

However, the hopes of the Montreal merchants were dashed in 1846

when the impact of the disastrous Irish famine caused by the spread of

potato blight brought the imperial government to the decisive step of

repealing the Corn Laws (McCalla 1993). Ending the preference on

colonial grain was justiﬁ ed on the grounds that quantities of cheap food

were immediately needed to avert the threat of mass starvation in Ire-

land. But the subsequent reductions in the timber preference and the

end of the Navigation Laws in 1849 signaled the systematic dismantling

of the old colonial system. As the world’s unchallenged industrial

power, Britain could extend its imperial dominance, in effect, to most

of the Western world, which eagerly demanded manufactured goods

and willingly offered raw materials in return. Under these circum-

stances, Britain no longer needed to bear the expensive burden of

defending and administering distant colonies that were already clamor-

ing for self-government (Careless 1967).

The loss of imperial grain preference was a serious blow to milling

and transportation interests along the St. Lawrence route. Their plight

was compounded by the Drawback Acts of 1845–46, which allowed free

passage of Canadian exports and imports through American ports.

Thus, while the British shift to free trade reduced the incentive for

Americans to use the St. Lawrence route, the American legislation was

luring Canadian trade from Montreal to New York. In their shock at this

apparent abandonment by Britain, conﬁ rmed politically by the granting

of responsible (self-) government to Nova Scotia and the Province of

Canada, some prominent Montreal merchants, such as William Molson

and John Redpath, signed the Annexation Manifesto of 1849. This

document advocated the severance of all ties with Britain and the annex-

ation of Canada by the United States. The Annexation Manifesto was

overwhelmingly rejected by popular opinion, and the Montreal busi-

nessmen who signed it soon regretted that they had acted so rashly. The

ambitions of the old St. Lawrence commercial empire were no longer

THE EXPANDING COLONIAL ECONOMY

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

132

feasible, but new opportunities for transcontinental economic expan-

sion were already emerging for the second half of the 19th century

(Creighton 2002).

Commercial Development in the Atlantic Provinces

Meanwhile, the Atlantic Provinces were developing in relative isolation

and in a different direction from their western colonial neighbors. With

a limited amount of fertile land to offer, the Atlantic Provinces relied on

the sea and the forest for their economic development (MacNutt 1965).

Newfoundland grew slowly, continuing to depend on its cod ﬁ shery

supplemented by salmon ﬁ shing and seal hunting. As Britain gradually

came to treat Newfoundland as a colony rather than as a large ﬁ shing

station for summer ﬁ shermen, St. John’s emerged as the main adminis-

trative center on the island. The town’s excellent harbor, sheltered

behind a line of rocky hills that protected it from the open Atlantic,

enabled the town to become a strategic base of defense as well as a lead-

ing Atlantic ﬁ shing entrepôt with a population exceeding 8,000 by the

early 1820s. The importance of St. John’s continued to grow as it ofﬁ -

cially became the provincial capital when Newfoundland was granted

representative government in 1832. The merchants and shipowners of

St. John’s ﬁ nanced the island’s ﬁ shing trade and acted as suppliers of

capital and manufactured goods to the outports (Rothney 1964).

In the immediate post–American Revolution era, Nova Scotia hoped

to capitalize on the departure of the New England colonies from the

empire by replacing them as a supplier of codﬁ sh and lumber for the

sugar islands of the British West Indies. The British Navigation Acts,

which decreed that imperial commerce should be reserved for imperial

ships, initially protected maritime shipping from American competition

in the British West Indies. Nova Scotia shipping also beneﬁ ted from the

bad relations between Britain and the United States leading up to the

War of 1812, which further cut down American competition in the

protected imperial markets. However, when relations between Britain

and the United States improved after 1815, Nova Scotia could not sus-

tain its strategic advantage in the West Indian trade because it was

unable to supply foodstuffs other than ﬁ sh.

The forests of New Brunswick, however, supplied the timber for the

development of the Nova Scotia shipbuilding industry to complement its

inshore ﬁ sheries. The “Bluenose” shipbuilders of Nova Scotia became

world renowned for their splendid clipper ships, which sailed throughout

the globe and formed the backbone of one of the world’s leading merchant

133

ﬂ eets. As the wooden sailing vessel gave way to iron-hulled steamships,

Nova Scotia led the way. The Royal William built by Samuel Cunard, the

most famous of the Nova Scotia shipowners and a leading West Indian

trader, was the ﬁ rst mainly steam-powered ship to cross the Atlantic

Ocean in 1833. In 1840 Cunard inaugurated the ﬁ rst regular steamship

service across the Atlantic. By reducing the transatlantic crossing to less

than four weeks, steamship travel encouraged immigration and commer-

cial development and reinforced imperial economic integration.

Nova Scotia’s economic growth continued to focus on Halifax, which

was incorporated as a city in 1841. The provincial capital and imperial

garrison base developed into a major shipping center, particularly for

the West Indian trade, largely because of its substantial and secure ice-

free harbor, which was situated close to the major North Atlantic ship-

ping lanes. Halifax also became a regional ﬁ nancial center when a group

of local merchants founded the Halifax Banking Company in 1825 and

the more enduring Bank of Nova Scotia in 1832. Although its popula-

tion grew from 11,000 in 1817 to 20,000 in 1851, Halifax’s lack of an

economic hinterland would restrict its rise as a commercial metropolis.

Besides contributing to Nova Scotia’s shipping and shipbuilding

industry, the forests of New Brunswick, covering nearly 90 percent of

its landscape, were the catalyst for that province’s economic develop-

ment during the ﬁ rst half of the 19th century. Boosted by imperial

preference, New Brunswick’s rich white pine timber stands produced

vital ship masts for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.

Closely integrated with the timber trade was a shipbuilding industry

that by mid-century was turning out over 100 wooden sailing vessels

per year. The most famous New Brunswick ship was the Marco Polo,

launched from the building yard of James Smith in 1851. It earned the

title fastest ship in the world for cutting a week off the previous record

for the round trip from England to Australia, completing the run in less

than six months (Sagar and Fischer 1986).

Saint John emerged as the principal timber port and shipbuilding

center of the Maritimes because of its strategic location at the mouth of

the Saint John River. Extending more than 400 miles into the interior

of New Brunswick, the Saint John River gave the city access to and

control over a substantial resource frontier. As a result, Saint John, with

a population of 22,000 in 1851, was edging ahead of Halifax in the race

to become the commercial metropolis of the Maritimes.

A dispute over timber rights in a 12,000 square mile area on the New

Brunswick–Maine frontier precipitated a settlement of the eastern

boundary between the United States and British North America, which

THE EXPANDING COLONIAL ECONOMY

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

134

had been only vaguely drawn north of the St. Croix River at the end of

the American Revolution. In 1839 an armed clash nearly erupted

between New Brunswick and Maine loggers over the right to cut in

disputed territory at the mouth of the Aroostook River. Although the

terms of the treaty that British envoy Lord Ashburton and American

secretary of state Daniel Webster negotiated in 1842 were unsatisfac-

tory to both sides, they succeeded in establishing an enduring bound-

ary between New Brunswick and Maine.

The reduction of the imperial preference on colonial timber during

the 1840s raised serious concerns among Maritime traders, particularly

in New Brunswick, where forest products accounted for more than 80

percent of exports by mid-century. But while the timber trade to Britain

began to decline in relative terms, new markets for sawn lumber were

already opening up in the growing cities of the United States. This loos-

ening of the imperial tie and reorientation to the North American mar-

ket was helping to set the stage for eventual Maritime participation in

a transcontinental economy.

The middle of the 19th century turned out to be the high tide of

Maritime economic development. The dismantling of the British mer-

cantile system and the impending replacement of the wooden sailing

vessel with iron and steel steamships on the world’s oceans were seri-

ous blows to Maritime economic fortunes. But the Achilles’ heel of the

Atlantic economy continued to be its limited agricultural potential.

Only in Prince Edward Island did agriculture thrive, while Nova Sco-

tia’s Annapolis valley and New Brunswick’s Saint John River valley,

although rich in farmland, could not sufﬁ ciently fulﬁ ll regional agricul-

tural needs. In the ﬁ nal analysis, excessive reliance on highly volatile

staples like ﬁ sh and timber would leave the Atlantic Provinces vulner-

able to extreme boom and slump cycles.

As the colonies of British North America emerged out of their pioneer

stage of development by the middle of the 19th century, it was becoming

evident that their commercial life could not continue to depend upon

the production of staples for export to an imperial market. The rise of

free trade in Britain induced the colonies to pursue continental markets.

The growing prospects of a north-south ﬂ ow of trade with the United

States was pointing the way toward reciprocity. Moreover, the British

North American provinces were beginning to realize that their contin-

ued growth would depend on the breakdown of isolation and a conver-

gence of their diverse interests. But the achievement of east-west

transcontinental economic integration would require new political

structures oriented toward nationalism rather than colonialism.

135

FROM OLIGARCHIC RULE TO

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

(1815–1850)

he economic and population growth that the British North American

colonies experienced after 1815 was accompanied by challenges

to the system of government established in reaction to the American

Revolution. To restrict the rise of democracy, the excess of which

supposedly had induced the thirteen colonies to rebel, the imperial

authority encouraged a form of representative government that allowed

political control to rest in the hands of an elite group of appointed colo-

nial ofﬁ cials. The movements for political reform that arose in opposi-

tion to oligarchic rule were strongest in the larger provinces of Upper

and Lower Canada where the outbreak of rebellion in 1837 forced a

reconsideration of imperial policy toward colonial governance. The

union of the Canadas and responsible government advocated in Lord

Durham’s Report and achieved during the 1840s would prove to be a

prelude for further colonial unity and political independence leading

eventually to nationhood.

The Emergence of Colonial Governing Elites

Colonial oligarchies in British North America were a product of both

pioneer conditions and imperial design. In a society in which relatively

few men had the education, means, and leisure needed to hold the lead-

ing positions of government, it was inevitable that a small core of

executive and judicial ofﬁ cers should form around the governor to offer

advice and to conduct the day-to-day responsibilities of public admin-

istration. While the governor was generally a capable and devoted ser-

vant of the Crown, he was almost always a short-term visitor who

seldom came to know the province well enough to be a commanding

or effective leader. Under such ﬂ eeting circumstances, the lifetime

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

136

appointees to the Executive and Legislative Councils invariably became

the force of stability and permanence within the colony upon whom the

governor could depend.

For their part, the members of the colonial ruling elite were usually

able and public-spirited citizens who came from a small number of

well-established families, often of Loyalist origin, and who sincerely

believed in the duty of the better class of people to rule. The core of the

ruling elite, the Executive and Legislative Councillors, were able to

consolidate their power by ﬁ lling government ofﬁ ces with and distrib-

uting political patronage to like-minded men. A large class of govern-

ment ofﬁ cials such as judges, justices of the peace, customs collectors,

and postmasters owed their appointments to their direct or indirect

connections with the provincial governing elite. The ruling elite also

cultivated close relations with business and professional leaders as well

as the higher clergy of the Church of England.

Oligarchic power was further extended by conscious imperial efforts

to limit the elected assembly’s control over lawmaking and public

ﬁ nances. Laws passed by the Legislative Assembly could be revised by

the Executive or Legislative Councils and vetoed by the governor or the

Crown. Some of the main sources of government revenue, notably

Crown and clergy reserves as well as customs duties, were not placed

under the control of the Assembly, which meant that the appointed

ofﬁ cials could function independently of the taxation power of the

elected representatives of the people. In effect, early 19th-century colo-

nial government was democratic to the extent that it was representative

of, but certainly not responsible to, the popular will (Craig, Upper

Canada, 1963; Buckner 1985).

The most powerful and wealthiest of the colonial oligarchies was the

Chateau Clique of Lower Canada. While an elite group of merchants

and seigneurs had served on the council to advise the British governor

in the three decades after the fall of New France, the ruling oligarchy

that evolved into the Chateau Clique received its impetus from the

Constitutional Act of 1791. By granting representative institutions, the

act gave the French Catholic population, previously indifferent to

democracy, a forum within which to develop its political power and

sense of nationalism. In the ﬁ rst session of the newly created Assembly

in 1792, the French majority demonstrated its ability and willingness

to ﬂ ex its legislative muscle by engineering not only the election of a

French-speaking member as the ofﬁ cial speaker but also the equal rec-

ognition of French and English as the ofﬁ cial languages of the legisla-

ture. In a sharp reversal of roles, the once-democratic English-speaking

137

merchants allied themselves with their former arch rival, the governor,

by accepting appointments to the Legislative and Executive Councils.

In this way, they were able to protect the interests of the St. Lawrence

commercial empire against a predominantly agrarian French majority

elected to the Legislative Assembly. Although a few leading French-

speaking seigneurs and merchants were invited into the ruling elite,

just as some English-speaking businessmen and farmers opposed oli-

garchic rule, the basic political division in Lower Canada remained

along ethnic and religious lines (Ouellet 1980).

The ruling oligarchy of Upper Canada, the Family Compact, was

grounded in the tensions between Great Britain and the United States.

Compact members were usually second-generation Loyalists or British

immigrants who had arrived in the province prior to the end of the 18th

century. Most of them had fought in defense of the province during the

War of 1812 because of an unswerving devotion to the British Crown

and a strong anti-American sentiment. To members of the Compact

and their associates, the United States was a source of unsound ideas

and institutions in the realm of government and religion, in addition to

being a powerful economic competitor and military threat. Upper

Canada could never realize its destiny unless its predominantly Ameri-

can population was constantly kept aware of the dangers arising out of

the close proximity of the United States. Besides embracing the late-

18th-century concept of a balanced constitution, Compact members

also believed that the lack of loyalty among certain segments of the

population during the War of 1812 could be attributed to the lack of an

established church. Accordingly, Bishop John Strachan devised a plan

for a provincial system of education under the direction of the Church

of England of which the British Crown was the head. Although freedom

of worship still prevailed, the Anglican tradition was publicly sup-

ported as the pillar of a stable society, as it was in Britain. While the

Family Compact’s vision for Upper Canada may have been responsive

to late 18th- and early 19th-century realities, its undemocratic approach

to colonial rule and its inadequate response to the social and economic

changes in the wake of massive British immigration in the 1820s and

1830s would raise serious challenges to oligarchic power (Craig, Upper

Canada, 1963).

The oligarchies of the Maritime Provinces were not as strongly

entrenched as those of Upper and Lower Canada, with the result that

the political conﬂ icts of the 1820s and 1830s were not as sustained or

intense. Oligarchic rule in the Maritimes was not complicated by

Lower Canada’s ethnic division between English and French, nor was

FROM OLIGARCHIC RULE TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

138

a privileged governing class aroused to defend against dangerous

American inﬂ uences, since the Loyalists outnumbered the original

New Englanders and the War of 1812 had only marginally affected

the Atlantic region. Furthermore, the slower rate of growth compared

to the Canadas raised fewer contentious issues relating to social and

economic change prior to the 1840s (MacNutt 1965).

In Nova Scotia, as in the other Maritime Provinces, the same group

of ofﬁ cials sat in both the Executive and Legislative Councils. The rul-

ing elite, known as the Council of Twelve, consisted mostly of Halifax

merchants and bankers who dominated the economic and political life

of the province. Opposition to the council arose over control of public

revenues, particularly relating to the endowment of non-Anglican edu-

cational institutions. Beginning in the late 1820s, Joseph Howe used his

newspaper to attack the eco-

nomic and political power of the

oligarchy and to expose the

undue privileges that the Church

of England enjoyed in religion

and education. After being

elected to the Assembly in 1836,

he assumed the leadership of the

reform movement, and in the

following year, he succeeded in

securing the separation of the

Legislative and Executive Coun-

cils as well as the inclusion on

the latter body of four members

from the Assembly. For the next

decade, he would continue his

struggle to have the entire Exec-

utive Council selected from the

Assembly (Beck 1965).

The governing elite of New

Brunswick originated from the

group of Loyalist military ofﬁ -

cials and bureaucrats who had

served Sir Guy Carleton during

the evacuation of New York at

the end of the American Revolu-

tion. While the colonial oligarchy

consisted of wealthy landowners

Pictured here later in life, Joseph Howe (1803–

73) was the reform leader of Nova Scotia and

the chief architect of responsible government,

but he would ultimately have misgivings about

Confederation for the Atlantic region.

(Library

and Archives Canada C-021463)

139

who presided over vast timber stands, the Assembly was dominated by

rival timber merchants. Since members of both the appointed and

elected bodies had common economic interests and an Anglican Loy-

alist background, provincial politics remained relatively stable. The

separation of the Executive and Legislative Councils was achieved

with little controversy in 1832. However, the following year, the oli-

garchy and the Assembly clashed over control of the revenue from

timber duties imposed on the heavily forested Crown lands or from

the sale thereof. With mediation from the Colonial Ofﬁ ce, the issue

was resolved in 1837 when control of Crown lands and their revenue

was transferred to the Assembly in return for a permanent civil list—

that is, payment of colonial administration, including the salaries of

civil servants.

Land was also the major issue on Prince Edward Island, but political

discontent was directed toward the absentee landlords living in Eng-

land who withheld their large holdings from settlement. The local oli-

garchy actually supported the Assembly’s petition to the imperial

authorities to have these absentee holdings revert to Crown lands in

1838. Although this effort was unsuccessful, the separation of the

Executive and Legislative Councils was achieved in 1839.

Newfoundland remained at a rudimentary stage of political develop-

ment until 1825, when rule by naval admirals ended and Britain

appointed the ﬁ rst civil governor, Sir Thomas Cochrane. British recog-

nition of the island as a colony rather than merely a ﬁ shing base was

further conﬁ rmed with the granting of representative government in

1832. Predictably, the Assembly immediately clashed with the recently

formed Legislative Council over the control of public ﬁ nances. Con-

stant internal dissension—between English and Irish, between Protes-

tants and Catholics, between merchants and ﬁ shermen, and between St.

John’s and the outports—forced the British government to suspend the

provincial constitution in 1842. An integrated legislature consisting of

11 elected members and 10 Crown appointees assisted the governor in

ruling the province until the two-chamber system was restored in 1848

(Rothney 1964).

The Rise of French-Canadian Nationalism

In sharp contrast to the orderly and peaceful opposition to oligarchy in

the Maritimes, the accumulation of political grievances in Lower and

Upper Canada culminated in armed insurrection, which only served to

stall the rising reform movements. In Lower Canada, political conﬂ ict

FROM OLIGARCHIC RULE TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT