The metaphor of a marriage is often used to describe the union of the British North American provinces of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Perhaps fewer Canadians know that an actual marriage was a key factor in initiating the events which led to Confederation and to one of its essential features, federalism.
Georges Etienne Cartier believed that the new nation could overcome the ethnic, religious and sectional divisions which had plagued the former United Province of Canada. His view rested, ironically, not on the wider union with the Maritime Provinces, but on the division of the old province of Canada into the new provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
The man who set the process in motion towards this settlement was George Brown. His marriage to Anne Nelson whom he met during a trip to Scotland taken in 1862 to restore his health encouraged Brown along this path. After a whirlwind courtship, the couple married in November 1862. Their union was a happy one, and a daughter, Margaret, was born in January 1864.
Brown had led the Upper Canadian majority party, the Clear Grits, (ancestors of today’s Liberals) since 1857, but he had been a force in politics since founding the Toronto Globe in 1844. Brown’s whole career had been dedicated to freeing the Protestant majority of Upper Canada from what he perceived as the domination of the French and Catholic majority in Lower Canada.
At the time of the Upper and Lower Canada union in 1840, the majority of the population lived in Lower Canada, but both sections were given an equal number of seats in the Legislative Assembly. By the early 1850s, however, Upper Canada’s population had outstripped that of Lower Canada. By keeping most francophone Quebeckers united under his leadership and forming an alliance with John A. Macdonald’s Upper Canadian Conservatives, Georges Etienne Cartier had managed to prevent Brown and his Lower Canadian allies from forming a government throughout most of the pre-Confederation period. Cartier used his power to aid the Catholic minority in Upper Canada and to frustrate Protestant attempts to enforce a policy of the separation of church and state and the creation of a secular public education system.
Brown and his party responded by calling for “Rep by Pop” or representation by population. This step would have increased the number of members from Upper Canada at the expense of the French Canadian majority in Lower Canada.
By the early 1860s, even with equal representation from Upper and Lower Canada, the Macdonald-Cartier alliance could no longer elect enough members in Upper Canada to stay in office. But no other combination could command a stable majority in the Canadian legislature.
Following his return to Canada in early 1863, Brown was returned to the legislature in a by-election. Colleagues immediately noticed that the uncompromising zealot whom they had known before his marriage had become much more open to compromise within his own party and with his political rivals. They attributed this change to the influence of the sociable and well-educated Anne who had studied extensively in Europe and spoke both French and German fluently. Brown wrote to her daily from the Legislature about the political issues of the day, and he heeded her advice.
By early 1864, the Canadian legislature had reached deadlock. In March Brown moved to establish a select committee to undertake a non-partisan study of constitutional solutions. This motion was adopted in mid-May. On June 14, just as the latest Cartier-Macdonald ministry was about to be defeated, the committee, by a majority of 12 to 3, reported “in favour of changes in the direction of a federated system applied either to Canada alone or to the whole British North American provinces.” The Lower Canadian members from all parties supported the report, and of the Upper Canadian leaders, only the Catholic Reformer John Sandfield Macdonald and John A. Macdonald were opposed.
A new coalition government was formed to settle the constitutional issues between Upper and Lower Canada. Brown, Cartier and MacDonald all joined a new government that adopted representation by population in the federal House of Commons, equal representation for Ontario and Quebec in the Senate, guarantees for minority language and educational rights, and separate provincial governments. The new nation was to be a federal state. Each province controlled legislation dealing with education, property and civil rights, while the federal government was responsible for economic, external and military policy, the criminal code, and inter-provincial transportation and trade. The federal government had the power to disallow any provincial legislation which impinged on minority rights or its powers.
Both Cartier and Brown were taking political risks in endorsing this program. Brown had to accept a religiously-based educational system and French civil law in Quebec and educational guarantees for the Catholic minority in Upper Canada. Cartier conceded more seats for Ontario than Quebec in a federal parliament that would also include the two Maritime Provinces with Protestant and English-speaking majorities. When Brown defended his bargain in the Parliament of Canada in February 1865, he made this explicit: “This scheme can be carried, and no scheme can be that has not the support of both sections of the province.”
Unfortunately for Brown, his expectation that his party would dominate the new federal House of Commons was disappointed. Based on that assumption he had happily accepted Macdonald’s insistence on a constitution in which the federal government would be dominant and the provincial governments subordinate. However, the Ontario Liberals under Brown’s old lieutenant, Oliver Mowat, soon became the party of provincial rights, and a sympathetic British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council successfully eroded the dominant constitutional position of the federal government through a series of interpretations of the British North America Act.
So, while George Brown’s personal life worked out as happily as he could have wished, the Canadian federalism he parented took a turn neither he, Macdonald or Cartier had anticipated. As in the domestic sphere even successful political marriages have unexpected surprises.