Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

200

Indian Affairs with appointed agents who endeavored to promote

“Canadianization” by suppressing such traditional practices as the

Plains Indians’ sun dance or the Paciﬁ c Coast Indians’ potlatch. The

department’s chief vehicle for assimilation was enfranchisement, a legal

process by which a person of good character, free of debt, and ﬂ uent in

English or French agreed to relinquish Indian status and the right to

live in the reserve community in return for full British citizenship,

including the right to vote. Under this policy, Indian women who mar-

ried non-Indians (whites, Métis, or Indians not governed by the Indian

Act) automatically lost their Indian status under the Indian Act. In the

ﬁ nal analysis, the aboriginal rights movement would gain momentum

as the 20th century progressed because relatively few Indian men vol-

untarily chose to leave behind their reserves and be absorbed into the

general society.

The concerted efforts by the federal government and the CPR to

promote western settlement, which included an active campaign to

recruit European immigrants as well as American homesteaders, fell

short of expectations (Eagle 1989). The inﬂ ux of young farmers from

Ontario helped to increase the population of Manitoba from 25,000 in

1871 to 152,000 in 1891, while the remainder of the prairies attracted

approximately 50,000 settlers during the same period. But these results

paled by comparison to the millions of settlers who continued to pour

into the American West where land was considered to be more desir-

able in terms of location and climate, even if more expensive to acquire.

Furthermore, the recurring periods of depressions that afﬂ icted the

Western world from 1873 to 1896 were highlighted by declining com-

modity prices, which limited interest in the great prairie wheatlands of

Canada.

The slow progress of western settlement seriously undermined the

effectiveness of Macdonald’s National Policy. Although the transconti-

nental railway was built, the east-west trafﬁ c was insufﬁ cient to warrant

the huge public investment. While tariffs stimulated some industrial

development in central Canada, the anticipated interprovincial trade

did not materialize. Instead of promoting unity, the National Policy

tended to provoke the divisive forces that were rising up to challenge

Macdonald’s concept of nationhood.

201

THE CLASH OF

NATIONALISMS AND

THE RESURGENCE OF

REGIONALISM (1867–1896)

espite Prime Minister Macdonald’s formidable nation-building

accomplishments, disappointment over the unfulﬁ lled promises

of Confederation was pervasive by the mid-1880s. Slow or uneven eco-

nomic growth inspired alternative strategies to Macdonald’s National

Policy that urged closer ties with either Britain or the United States. But

imperial federation and continental union proved to be expressions of

nationalism that failed to capture the public imagination because they

offered the prospect of a return to a form of colonialism or they could

not accommodate Canada’s regional or cultural diversities. Moreover,

in the wake of growing resentment toward apparently inadequate or

restrictive federal government policies, new allegiances to the ﬂ edgling

nation could readily be subverted by enduring loyalties to the longer-

established provinces or regions. The Maritimes and the West protested

the domination of central Canada; Ontario challenged federal efforts to

limit provincial power; and Quebec resorted to assertions of provincial

autonomy in defense of a renewed cultural nationalism.

The Imperialist and Continentalist Alternatives

The Canadian economy after Confederation continued to be dependent

on the export market for natural resources, particularly grain, timber,

and ﬁ sh. Recurring slumps in world trade from 1873 to 1896 led to

falling prices and contracting markets for these staple exports, which

could not be offset by new agricultural prospects in the West and the

growth of domestic industry in central Canada stimulated by the

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

202

National Policy. Compounding the sense of economic failure was the

more dynamic pace of development in the United States, where mil-

lions of European immigrants poured in to take advantage of a greater

range of opportunity than Canada could offer. Likewise, discontented

Canadians could not resist the lure of the southern republic as

Maritimers joined the New England ﬁ shing ﬂ eets, French Canadians

found employment in the mill towns of New England, Ontario farmers

sought homesteads in the American West, and generally skilled indus-

trial and railway workers found a demand for their services in cities

along the Atlantic seaboard. While an estimated 1.2 million immigrants

arrived in Canada from 1871 to 1891, over 1.5 million people left the

country for the United States. During this period, a high rate of natural

increase allowed the population of Canada to grow from 3.7 million to

4.8 million. Minuscule by American standards, this rate of population

growth also lagged behind pre-Confederation levels.

In response to these troubling circumstances, some prominent

English-speaking Protestants, fondly recalling the blessings of imperial

trade preferences in the ﬁ rst half of the 19th century, contended that

Canadian nationhood could be best served by reinforcement of the Brit-

ish connection that had loosened during the free trade era. The advo-

cates of this perspective did not want to return to colonialism, but

rather they were dedicated to securing Canadian political independence

from the United States through economic, cultural, and military inte-

gration with the world’s mightiest empire. This nationalist spirit was

expressed as early as 1868 by the Canada First movement, which could

have been more appropriately known as English Canada First or Ontario

First. Its adherents envisaged a Canadian nationality invigorated not

only by the struggle to overcome the northern climate and rugged land-

scape but also by a belief in the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon

race. Indeed, Canada Firsters supported the agitation against the Métis

during the Red River uprising of 1869–70 and helped to provoke the

reaction against French Catholics in Quebec that swept Ontario in the

aftermath of Riel’s execution of Thomas Scott. Although Canada First

had disintegrated as a political movement by 1875, its divisive brand of

nationalism, which pitted English-speaking Canadians against French-

speaking Canadians and Natives against whites, would continue to

ﬂ ourish within the imperial unity movement of the 1880s.

Canadian interest in imperial unity corresponded with Britain’s

renewed commitment to its overseas empire in the last quarter of the

19th-century. The “little Englandism” of the mid-Victorian era, which

had provided the impetus for Canadian nationhood, gave way to a new

203

imperialism in response to the rise of Germany and the United States as

viable challengers to Britain’s economic and military supremacy (Berger

1970). After British imperialists founded the Imperial Federation

League in 1884, Canadian supporters of the movement formed a branch

within three years. Imperialists on both sides of the Atlantic hoped that

this consolidation of the British Empire on the basis of a centralized

federation would open the way for mutual trade opportunities and

military assistance, in addition to spreading the virtues of Anglo-Saxon

civilization—the “white man’s burden,” according to Rudyard

Kipling—to the “backward” societies of Asia, Africa, and the Paciﬁ c

Islands. Pillars of the English-speaking Protestant community, like

Colonel George Taylor Denison, a former Canada Firster who had

fought against the Fenians and Louis Riel; Principal George Munro

Grant of Queen’s University in Kingston; George Parkin, who would

serve as principal of Upper Canada College in Toronto; and Stephen

Leacock, the renowned humorist, believed that the unity of the Anglo-

Saxon race would enable Canada not only to enjoy economic prosper-

ity and a greater sense of power in the world but also to overcome

persistent ethnic tensions, provincialism, and the threat of American

domination. While little of the imperialist agenda actually found its

way into the realm of public policy, this nationalist sentiment would

remain pervasive and inﬂ uential, particularly in Ontario and the Mari-

times, well into the 20th century.

That Britain would abandon free trade for a restored system of colo-

nial preferences was never more than a dream of the more ardent impe-

rialists in the late 19th century. A more realistic possibility was the

renewal of reciprocity with the United States. After the United States

cancelled the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866, the Canadian government

made periodic overtures to revive the free trade agreement. The ﬁ rst

opportunity came with the meeting of a Joint High Commission in

Washington, D.C., convened in 1871 to settle outstanding disputes

between the United States and Britain arising mainly out of the Ameri-

can Civil War. The United States demanded compensation for damage

inﬂ icted by southern ships, notably the Alabama, that were built in Brit-

ish ports. Moreover, the Americans wanted a restoration of the rights

that they had lost with the end of the Reciprocity Treaty to ﬁ sh in the

territorial waters of the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland and to

use their ports freely. Britain and the United States were also engaged

in a boundary dispute involving the possession of San Juan Island in

the Portland Channel separating Vancouver Island from the mainland.

Canada not only sought compensation for damages caused by the

THE CLASH OF NATIONALISMS AND THE RESURGENCE OF REGIONALISM

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

204

Fenian raids launched from American soil but also hoped to exchange

the ﬁ shing rights for reciprocity.

Although Macdonald was appointed one of the British commission-

ers to represent Canadian interests, the other members of the imperial

delegation were more concerned with restoring Britain’s diplomatic

relations with the United States. The resulting Treaty of Washington

referred the Alabama claims and the San Juan Island dispute to interna-

tional arbitration, which eventually settled both issues in favor of the

United States. When the United States refused to deal with the Fenian

claims, Britain decided to leave the matter out of the treaty and to com-

pensate Canada instead. The treaty also gave the Americans the right to

navigate freely on the St. Lawrence River in perpetuity and to ﬁ sh in

Canadian territorial waters for 10 years in return for a cash payment,

which turned out to be $5.5 million. While Canada also received the

right to navigate freely on Lake Michigan and three remote rivers in

Alaska as well as free entry of Maritime ﬁ sh into the American market,

the much desired reciprocity agreement never materialized. Northern

protectionist sentiment in the United States proved to be too strong,

and the British negotiators did not want to risk the whole diplomatic

accord by pressing further for reciprocity. Disappointed at Britain’s

willingness to sacriﬁ ce Canadian interests for the sake of American

friendship, Macdonald reluctantly signed the treaty (Waite 1971).

Nevertheless, the signing of the Treaty of Washington was an

important moment in Canadian history in two respects. First, it marked

the beginning of a series of events over the next six decades that would

strengthen Canada’s resolve to wrest control of its foreign policy from

Britain. The appointment of the ﬁ rst Dominion high commissioner in

1880 to give Canada a greater voice in imperial policy was an outcome

of the Treaty of Washington. Second, and of more immediate signiﬁ -

cance, Macdonald’s signature on the treaty represented American dip-

lomatic recognition of Canada as a distinct transcontinental nation in

North America. Besides easing the tensions between Canada and the

United States, the treaty established the principle of arbitration as a

means of resolving international conﬂ icts. This more cordial atmo-

sphere enabled Britain to complete its military withdrawal from North

America and rendered this prospect less perilous for Canada. For its

part, the United States had to foresake its ambition to conquer Canada

by force, but Britain’s withdrawal from the continent increased Ameri-

can conﬁ dence in the prospect that its northern neighbor would even-

tually abandon its dubious experiment in nationhood and accept the

natural triumph of American manifest destiny.

205

After they came close to securing reciprocity while in power in 1874,

the Liberals in opposition continued their free trade crusade as an alter-

native to the National Policy, which was failing to stimulate external

markets for staple producers—farmers, loggers, and ﬁ shermen—while

the protective tariff on manufactured goods added to their costs of pro-

duction. The majority of Liberals led by Edward Blake (who succeeded

Mackenzie in 1880) favored a return to the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854,

which was restricted to natural products. Even Macdonald’s Conserva-

tives agreed that such a policy of restricted reciprocity with the United

States could be complementary to the National Policy. In 1887 Mac-

donald tried unsuccessfully to use the renegotiation of the ﬁ sheries

clauses of the Treaty of Washington as an opportunity to renew reci-

procity on the same basis as the treaty of 1854. However, if they were

interested at all, the Americans preferred either unrestricted reciproc-

ity, which involved the free exchange of manufactured goods in addi-

tion to natural products, or continental union, which would include

not only the removal of all tariff barriers but also a sharing of internal

revenue taxes and a common tariff policy against other countries. Rich-

ard Cartwright, former minister of ﬁ nance in the Mackenzie adminis-

tration during the 1870s, was the leading proponent of continental

union within the Liberal Party. In Canada and the Canadian Question, a

political tract for the election campaign of 1891, Goldwin Smith

mounted an eloquent argument in support of continental union as the

means to open up the natural north-south trade directions, to foster the

unity of North America’s Anglo-Saxon community, and to assimilate

French Canadians. Macdonald, Blake, and other opponents countered

that continental union was a prelude to political union and the loss of

national independence.

In the general election of 1891, Wilfrid Laurier, who had succeeded

Blake as Liberal leader four years earlier, campaigned for unrestricted

reciprocity as a compromise to the positions of Blake and Cartwright.

In leading the Conservative defense of the National Policy, Macdonald

attempted to equate unrestricted reciprocity with annexation and the

breakup of the British Empire. He appealed to imperialist sentiment

with his popular campaign slogans: “The Old Flag, The Old Policy, The

Old Leader” and “A British subject I was born, and a British subject I

will die.” Among the voters, the key issue of the election pitted staple

producers, who supported the various manifestations of reciprocity,

against the manufacturers, who favored continued industrial protec-

tionism. The result was a Conservative victory by a narrow margin that

reﬂ ected the divisions and uncertainties within the country. Three

THE CLASH OF NATIONALISMS AND THE RESURGENCE OF REGIONALISM

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

206

months after the election, Macdonald died at 76 years of age, leaving

the nation that he was so instrumental in building over the previous

quarter of a century to continue to debate whether its destiny lay in an

imperialist, a continentalist, or an autonomous direction.

Regional Protest and Provincial Rights

Macdonald also left behind a nation mired in the regional and cultural

conﬂ icts that had troubled his administration from the outset. The

Maritime Provinces, which had been so reluctant to be part of

Confederation, continually lamented the limited and inequitable ben-

eﬁ ts that political union conferred upon them. On July 1, 1867, many

Maritime communities marked Confederation and the beginning of

Canadian nationhood by ﬂ ying ﬂ ags at half-mast. Nova Scotians in par-

ticular resented the high-handed and undemocratic methods that had

been used to impose Confederation on them (Forbes 1983). Accordingly,

in the inaugural Dominion elections of 1867, Nova Scotia’s voters

seized the opportunity to elect opponents of Confederation to 18 of the

19 seats in the federal Parliament and 36 of the 38 seats in the provin-

cial legislature. A resolution to repeal the union was subsequently

introduced in the Nova Scotia legislature, and Joseph Howe led a del-

egation to London to appeal to the imperial authority to release the

province from the “bondage” of Confederation. Since Britain wanted to

reduce rather than increase its North American commitments, the

Colonial Ofﬁ ce refused even to meet with Howe, let alone consider his

request to reintegrate Nova Scotia into the empire. While other anti-

Confederation supporters favored either independence or annexation

to the United States, Howe preferred to negotiate better terms for Nova

Scotia within the federal union. In 1869, he agreed to Prime Minister

Macdonald’s offer of a position in the federal Cabinet and a larger

annual subsidy for Nova Scotia. Some Nova Scotians were dismayed by

Howe’s conversion to Canadian federalism, and although the opposi-

tion to Confederation soon subsided, a legacy of resentment remained

in the province. By yielding to Nova Scotia’s demands, the federal gov-

ernment also set a precedent for the renegotiation of its future ﬁ scal

relations with the provinces.

By the 1880s anti-Confederation sentiment in Nova Scotia was inten-

siﬁ ed by the perception that the National Policy served the interests of

central Canada at the expense of the Maritime Provinces. In reality, the

Maritime economy was undergoing major structural changes that were

unrelated to government policy. Maritime commerce, shipping, and

207

shipbuilding suffered as the wooden sailing vessels gave way to iron-

hulled steamships and as the West Indies trade declined in global

importance. But because the adverse consequences of these changes

became more evident in the wake of the recessions that recurred from

1873 to 1896, Maritimers tended to blame Confederation and the

National Policy for their economic woes. They could point to the fact

that the building of the Intercolonial Railway did not open up the mar-

kets of central Canada or bring western trafﬁ c to Atlantic ports. Fur-

thermore, the protective tariffs of the National Policy not only failed to

stimulate Maritime industry by comparison to central Canada but also

incited Americans to retaliate by imposing higher duties on Maritime

ﬁ sh, leading to a devastating decline in the export market. When the

ruling Conservative Party of Nova Scotia appealed to its federal coun-

terpart in Ottawa for ﬁ nancial assistance in the early 1880s, Prime

Minister Macdonald was too preoccupied with building the Canadian

Paciﬁ c Railway.

In 1886 the Liberal administration of W. S. Fielding, which had

come to power two years earlier on a wave of anti-Confederation senti-

ment, responded to further federal government refusal to negotiate

better ﬁ nancial terms by introducing a resolution in the Nova Scotia

legislature favoring the province’s withdrawal from Confederation.

Fielding also appealed to the other Maritime Provinces to secede in

order to form an independent Maritime nation. If such a union proved

to be unsuccessful, then Nova Scotia favored a return to its original

status as a British colony. Both New Brunswick and Prince Edward

Island doubted the feasibility of Maritime union, and Nova Scotia’s

secession threats subsided when the federal government agreed to

lower freight rates and to provide generous ﬁ nancial assistance for rail-

way building in the province.

Meanwhile, Newfoundland stubbornly resisted union with the rest

of Canada, despite a generous ﬁ nancial offer from the Dominion gov-

ernment and an active campaign waged by the supporters of Confed-

eration in the province from 1865 to 1869. The provincial outlook was

oriented toward the north Atlantic world, particularly Britain, and the

island had little communication or economic connection with main-

land Canada. Bolstered by the repeal movement in Nova Scotia, oppo-

nents of Confederation successfully argued during the provincial

election of 1869 that union with Canada offered no tangible advantage

to the island’s ﬁ shing economy. Recurring slumps in the cod-ﬁ shing

and seal-hunting industries in the 1870s and 1880s prompted New-

foundland to consider union with Canada and reciprocity with the

THE CLASH OF NATIONALISMS AND THE RESURGENCE OF REGIONALISM

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

208

United States as viable alternatives to British colonialism. Confedera-

tion prospects were further undermined when the Canadian govern-

ment intervened to persuade the British government to veto a reciprocal

trade agreement that the Newfoundland government had successfully

negotiated with the United States in 1890. Even when Newfoundland

reluctantly made overtures to join the Confederation in 1895, the

Canadian government remained uncertain about the feasibility of

assuming responsibility for such a ﬁ nancially hard-pressed province.

Accordingly, talks broke down, and it would take more than half a

century before Newfoundland and Canada would reach an agreement

on Confederation.

Resentment toward Confederation as a manifestation of central

Canadian imperialism was even stronger in the West. The Red River

uprising led by Louis Riel represented not only the native Métis resolve

to preserve their seminomadic way of life based on the buffalo hunt in

the face of the advancing agricultural settlement frontier but also

incipient western protest against eastern domination. After the Riel

uprising and the creation of Manitoba, the federal government offered

Louis Riel (1844–85), seated, surrounded by his Métis associates at Red River ca. 1869. Riel

epitomized Canadian cultural division inasmuch as he was branded as a traitor and murderer

in English Protestant Ontario but was celebrated as a patriot and martyr in French Catholic

Quebec.

(Glenbow Archives, Calgary NA-1039-1)

209

the Métis of the Red River region land grants of 240 acres in recognition

of their status as descendants of the original inhabitants. Rather than

contend with the growing number of agricultural settlers, mostly from

Ontario, many of the Métis sold their land in Manitoba during the

1870s and moved northwest to the Saskatchewan River region, where

they joined other compatriots who enjoyed the traditional way of life

based on the river lot and the buffalo hunt. By the mid-1880s, however,

both the Métis who departed for Saskatchewan and the agrarian settlers

of Manitoba would have reason to be dissatisﬁ ed with the development

policies of the federal government (Stanley 1960, 1974).

In Manitoba, discontent arose primarily over the CPR monopoly,

which prohibited competitive railway lines from being built in the West

until at least 1905. After the CPR established its freight rate schedule in

1883, western producers complained about having to pay shipping

costs that were over three times more than those incurred by their

counterparts in central or eastern Canada. To overcome the lack of

transportation competition, which enabled the CPR to charge whatever

the market would bear on the prairies, the Manitoba government char-

tered new railways that would link up with American lines. When the

federal government repeatedly disallowed these provincial charters,

Manitoba threatened to secure American ﬁ nancial and military support

to build a railway from Winnipeg to the border. Accordingly, the fed-

eral government bought out the CPR monopoly in 1888 and decided

not to block the construction of a new railway line operated by the

American Northern Paciﬁ c Company. While the new railway line did

not signiﬁ cantly lower freight rates, the incident did rally western sup-

port against the federal government.

The provision within the Manitoba Act that assigned ownership of

provincial public lands to the Dominion government would also

become a chronic source of federal-provincial conﬂ ict. Not only did

Manitoba object to being deprived of the revenue derived from the sale

or lease of its public land, but also ownership of these lands involved

the federal government in a boundary dispute with Ontario. Prior to

Confederation, neither the Hudson’s Bay Company nor the province of

Upper Canada had much interest in establishing the precise boundary

between their respective holdings. But after the purchase of Rupert’s

Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1870, the governments of

Canada and Ontario had two reasons to concern themselves with own-

ership of the 144,000 square miles of territory northwest of Lake Supe-

rior. Valuable timber and mineral rights were not only at stake but also

opposing concepts of federal-provincial relations.

THE CLASH OF NATIONALISMS AND THE RESURGENCE OF REGIONALISM