The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin
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fifty of the seventy-two Quebec resolutions. On October 3, Howe released a statement “charitably” attributing the “incoherent” nature of the Confederation project to alcoholic excess, and asking why Maritimers should be ruled by Canadian politicians who “cannot govern themselves.” Alarm bells rang at the highest levels of the Empire. The Globe had specifically charged that Macdonald had been drunk during the Fenian raid, and Lord Monck had privately confirmed that the minister of militia had been “incapable of all official business for days on end.” London bureaucrats were aghast at Macdonald’s behaviour. One argued that they should “endeavour to get the Offender ousted.” Senior civil servant Frederic Rogers hoped “the Canadians will have the good sense to keep Mr. John A. Macdonald on the other side of the Atlantic.” There were urgent consultations among British Cabinet ministers. The colonial secretary, Lord Carnarvon, concluded that “in spite of his notorious vice,” Macdonald was “the ablest politician in Upper Canada.” Losing Macdonald “would absolutely destroy Confederation”; without Confederation, Canada would eventually join the United States. In a carefully worded letter to Monck, sent on October 19, Carnarvon avoided naming the offender but stressed that “undoubted ability” was no excuse for drunkenness. By the time he sailed for England in mid-November, Macdonald would have known how close his career had come to disaster. Had he been excluded from the final Confederation talks in London in 1866–67, he would hardly have become the Dominion’s first prime minister.
Preparation of the new British American constitution fell into two parts, a debate on the blueprint among the colonial delegates themselves before Christmas, and negotiations with the British in the New Year to shape an act of Parliament. Thirteen delegates representing Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia began talks at London’s Westminster Palace Hotel on December 4, 1866, concluding their deliberations on Christmas Eve. The politician who had so nearly been banned from taking part became, in the tribute of fellow delegate Hector Langevin, the key figure, “l’homme de la conférence.” Indeed, his primacy was recognized at the outset, when the Maritimers proposed him as chairman. Maritime delegates also quietly accepted the Quebec scheme as the basis for discussion — there was no alternative blueprint. Delegates began with an outline survey of the seventy-two resolutions, deleting those that applied only to Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, which had dropped out of the movement, and highlighting others for reconsideration. Then they started over again, working through the scheme in detail. In all, they sat for around sixty hours, allowing about fifty minutes to examine each resolution. The Maritimers were “excessively fond of talking” but few changes were made. Much of the credit went to the chairman, “un fin renard,” Langevin called him, the elegant fox — well-informed, persuasive, capable, and popular. Macdonald’s contribution was remarkable since, for much of the conference, he was in pain, having badly burned himself in a hotel-room fire.
After Christmas there was a lull, while the Colonial Office considered the delegates’ work. Even Macdonald managed to take a short break in Paris. Then, as the February 1867 meeting of the Westminster Parliament approached, the pace quickened and the pressure intensified, with some disagreements between the delegates and British policy-makers. There were problems in turning the fuzzy edges of the “London Resolutions” into the sharp language of an act of Parliament, while British concerns, for instance about the role of the Senate, opened regional divisions and strained the harmony of December.
By January 13, 1867, Macdonald feared “a good deal of difficulty” with his francophone colleagues, Cartier and Langevin, over “the proposed change as to Property and Civil rights.” It seems that the British were probing an overlap in the delegates’ London Resolutions, which allocated responsibility for “Marriage and Divorce” to the central Parliament, but gave the provinces control over “Property and civil rights (including the solemnization of marriages).” As devout Catholics, French Canadians rejected divorce but they recognized that British North America’s Protestant majority permitted the dissolution of failed marriages. Hence, in a very Canadian compromise, the central Parliament could grant divorces, but Lower Canada’s legislature would have power to prevent Catholic divorcees from remarrying within the province.
If there was a row over marriage laws, it was soon settled, but it triggered a nasty conspiracy theory. When Cartier died in 1873, a Quebec journalist, Elzéar Gérin, claimed that the anglophone delegates in London tried to bully their two French colleagues into accepting a centralized union. But, said Gérin, Cartier outwitted them, by mobilizing the figurehead premier, Narcisse Belleau, who had been left behind in Canada. Belleau was warned to stand by for a telegram telling him to submit the Great Coalition’s resignation, a nuclear option that would halt Confederation. Gérin had been sent to London to cover the talks, after serving a prison sentence in Ottawa for punching a politician. Since the delegates had agreed on complete secrecy, he relied on oblique briefings from Langevin. Gérin was not a reliable witness, and he likely exaggerated rumours of a brief row over marriage policy. The story surfaced again in 1886, after the hanging of Louis Riel. This time there was just one villain, who had allegedly conducted an insidious campaign to re-write the scheme. The slander still echoes: John A. Macdonald, the devious enemy of French Canada, allegedly plotted to twist Canada’s constitution into a centralizing document that would destroy Quebec. The evidence proves this to be nonsense. Five drafts of the proposed constitution written between Christmas 1866 and February 9, 1867 survive. All are based on the London Resolutions, and there is no trace of the extensive restructuring required to impose centralized control.
These documents formed the basis for tense negotiations between the delegates and the British. Whitehall deputy minister Frederic Rogers, who had wanted Macdonald to dry out in Canada, now hailed him as “the ruling genius and spokesman” among the visitors. “I was very greatly struck by his power of management and adroitness.” The French Canadians and the Maritimers were on guard against any damaging concession, “as eager dogs watch a rat hole,” Rogers thought. Macdonald argued controversial points “with cool, ready fluency,” determined to avoid “the slightest divergence from the narrow line already agreed” by his colleagues; “every word was measured … while he was making for a point ahead, he was never for a moment unconscious of any of the rocks among which he had to steer.” The British had found their strong man to lead the new Canada, but they did not tear up the agreed Confederation blueprint, nor did he ask them to do so.
Indeed, the British vetoed one of Macdonald’s most fervent wishes, that the Confederation should be styled the “Kingdom of Canada.” Fearful of upsetting the Americans, they preferred the term “Dominion.” “A great opportunity was lost,” Macdonald complained two decades later, but perhaps he won one minor victory in the naming stakes. British officials had assumed that Lower Canada would resume its historic name, Quebec, inferring from this that Upper Canada would become the province of Toronto. Macdonald’s Kingston voters resented the upstart rival city, and he probably chose the unexpected name of “Ontario” for the revived province.
The finalized bill was introduced into Westminster on February 19 and passed into law, as the British North America Act, on March 29. The new Dominion would be launched on July 1, 1867. To Macdonald’s admirers, he was “the artificer in chief,” the vital craftsman without whom Confederation could not have happened. Others resented his primacy. Cartier had run huge risks managing “the fears, prejudices and jealousies of a proud and sensitive population” to bring French Canada into Confederation. Alexander Mackenzie, Canada’s second prime minister, gave the credit for securing Upper Canadian support to his idol, George Brown. Just as John A. Macdonald had hijacked the clergy reserves issue, so he stole Confederation too. “Having no great work of his own to boast about, he bravely plucks the laurel from the brows of the actual combatants and real victors, and fastens it on his own head.” This was unfair: Macdonald believed in Confederation, even if he was not starry-eyed about the challenge of joining Canada to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with their small populations and sluggish economies. When a supporter rejoiced that Confederation would free Upper Canadians from the “financial millstone” of French Canada, Macdonald sharply retorted: “Do you think you will be better off with three mill-stones around your neck instead of one?”
As leader of the British North American delegations creating a new nation, John A. Macdonald was working “from morning till night” in London through the winter of 1866–67. Yet,