Of all the original Fathers of Confederation Charles Tupper of Nova Scotia was its most tenacious champion in one of its most inhospitable environments. It is therefore fitting that he was also the last surviving original Father of Confederation, dying in 1915 at age 94. Tupper remained active in politics until his eighties, leading the federal Conservative Party in the elections of 1896 and 1900.
Tupper was in his early forties and Premier of Nova Scotia at the time of the 1864 Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences. Donald Creighton described him at that time as “radiating some of the physical exuberance of a successful prize-fighter…ready to take on all comers.” He needed all that determination and staying power to bring a reluctant Nova Scotia into the union and keep it there. Public opinion in Nova Scotia turned radically against Confederation shortly after the 1864 Quebec Conference and remained opposed to union through the provincial and federal elections following the passage of the British North America Act in 1867. This, despite support for Confederation both from Tupper’s Conservatives and the leaders of the provincial Liberal party in the Legislature.
In large part the opposition to Confederation in Nova Scotia was economic. In the mid 1860’s Nova Scotia was enjoying buoyant prosperity. Its merchants and bankers feared that union with the Province of Canada would mean high tariffs on imports which would reduce their trade and shipping with the United Kingdom and the United States. Even worse, they argued, loss of tariff revenues to the central government would be inadequately compensated for by the proposed per capita provincial subsidy from Ottawa of eighty cents a head.
As in New Brunswick, the spring 1866 combination of the threat of invasion by the American Irish nationalist Fenians, the consequent support for Confederation by the province’s Catholic bishops and pressure from the British Colonial Office enabled Tupper to pass Confederation through the Nova Scotia legislature by a vote of 31-19 on April 18, 1866. Tupper also benefited from the collapse of the anti-Confederate government in New Brunswick which paved the way for Tilley’s successful pro-Confederation election victory a few weeks later.
The anti-Confederates in Nova Scotia got their revenge in the first federal election in 1867 winning every one of the province’s twenty-one seats except for Tupper’s in Cumberland which he carried by a narrow 97 votes. In 1869 Tupper engineered better financial terms for Nova Scotia from the Macdonald government and the entry of anti-Confederate leader, Joseph Howe, into the federal cabinet. The anti-Confederate movement collapsed and supporters of Tupper and Macdonald won half the province’s seats in the 1872 election.
Nova Scotia’s separatists revived in the 1880’s in the face of economic stagnation in the province. William Fielding’s provincial Liberal party won a smashing victory in June 1886 on a platform of repeal of Confederation. Tupper, who had overseen the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway as a member of Macdonald’s cabinet in 1885, was recalled from his post of Canadian High Commissioner to London to combat the new anti-Confederate movement. He successfully led the federal Conservatives to victory in 14 of Nova Scotia’s 21 seats in 1887, silencing the agitation for repeal.
Three of the next six Prime Ministers of Canada – Sir John Thompson, Tupper himself and Robert Borden came from Nova Scotia, cementing Tupper’s legacy and the province’s commitment to Canada. Tupper, the pugilist of the Confederation had taken on all comers over a quarter of a century on its behalf and emerged a triumphant champion of his cause.