Interpretación de resultados

John A. Macdonald surprised the country by selecting John Sandfield Macdonald to take his place as leader of the Coalition at Toronto and become Ontario’s first premier. Sandfield was a moderate Reformer who had often challenged Macdonald’s rule in the past. He also lacked an extensive Ontarian following and he had opposed Confederation during the

5 _{Creighton, John A. Macdonald: The Old Chieftain, chapters 1-4; Morrison, “Oliver Mowat and the}

Development of Provincial Rights in Ontario; Gwyn, Nation Maker, chapters 1-14; Morton, The Critical Years, chapters 12-14; Romney, Getting it Wrong, Part Two; Armstrong, The Politics of Federalism, chapter 1.

1865 debates. Macdonald, however, selected Sandfield because he valued the Cornwall MP’s desire for dominion-provincial harmony. Sandfield, the prime minister hoped, could construct a moderate Conservative-Liberal coalition that would cooperate with a similar coalition in Ottawa. Both men hoped that this alliance would keep Brownites from controlling the provincial government in Toronto, or Parliament Hill in Ottawa.6

The concurrent Canadian and provincial election campaigns that ended in September 1867 established the political battle lines for the next five years.7 As J. Murray Beck argues, the dominion election was hardly a national election: “it was, in fact, four separate elections, each conducted in splendid isolation from the others, each taking its tone from the events leading to Confederation in the particular provinces.”8 Ontarians did not debate the merits of Confederation in either the national or provincial election campaigns but their different perceptions of Ontario’s interests led them to favour different dominion-provincial and intrastate relationships.

During the campaigns, Coalition candidates claimed that Canada could not yet afford partisanship. Confederation righted old wrongs, such as Lower Canadian dominance in the former Legislative Assembly. At a political meeting in West York, Sandfield argued that those who tried to renew old interprovincial rivalries “were the enemies of the country,” because such actions would only jeopardize Confederation.9 Macdonald went even further by contending that prospective provinces were not interested in the Province of Canada’s old partisan divisions, and that perpetuating these differences could hinder the expansion of the dominion across British North America by compromising the appeal of Confederation in Prince Edward Island or British Columbia.10 _{The campaigns of both the dominion and} provincial Coalitions, therefore, emphasized the need to give the new Confederation a “fair trial” by allowing them to govern until new partisan divisions emerged.

6 _{Margaret Helen Small, "A Study of the Dominion and the Provincial Election of 1867 in Ontario," MA thesis,}

Queen's University, 1968, 151-153.

7 _{For further analysis of the 1867 elections consult: Small, "A Study of the Dominion and the Provincial}

Election of 1867 in Ontario.”

8 _{Beck, Pendulum of Power, 1.} 9 _{Leader, 20 July 1867.} 10 _{Ibid, 26 July 1867.}

Coalition supporters also solicited electoral support by insisting that a strong

Confederation required Ontarian collaboration. The Toronto Leader explained that “Ontario, in respect of population, is nearly one half of the dominion; and serious inconvenience would arise if it were to come in collision with the General Government.”11 A week later, the Leader elaborated:

Mr. Sandfield Macdonald has, in this combination, taken the best possible precaution against Ontario being brought into collision with the Dominion. It was of the utmost importance to this Province that this should be done; for if Ontario had been arrayed against the rest of the Confederation, the other Provinces would, in self-defence, have united against her. In that event, she would have found herself in a minority, and more at the mercy of the other three Provinces than Upper Canada was of Lower Canada.12

Ontario was large and important, and could sabotage Confederation if it did not support Ottawa. Yet Ontario lacked the strength to dominate Confederation. Going it alone in parliament would alienate their province from the rest of the Canada and limit their ability to influence the cabinet. Cooperating with the other provinces was the best way to protect Ontario’s interests. Coalitionists repeatedly emphasized these themes. Historian Bruce Hodgins notes several occasions when Sandfield emphasized the importance of harmony between Ontario and the dominion government or told Ontario’s voters that their province had to “prevent Ontario from being politically isolated.13 In a public letter to Torontonians, Robert Harrison, the Coalition MP for West Toronto, argued that the election of Brownite Liberals to the House of Commons would encourage sectionalism in the Maritimes and endanger the fragile new Confederation.14 The Belleville Intelligencer agreed.15 Ontarians had to protect their country’s future by preventing their province’s influence from being misappropriated and misused by Liberal sectionalists.

Brownite Liberals expected to sweep Ontario’s ridings in both elections and dominate the provincial and dominion governments. They claimed that Sandfield’s dominion-

provincial cooperation was a “patent combination” steeped in corruption and jurisdictional

11 _{Ibid, 15 July 1867.} 12 _{Ibid, 22 July 1867.}

13 _{Hodgins, John Sandfield Macdonald, 93.} 14 _{Leader, 4 July 1867,}

confusion that would undermine Ontario’s provincial autonomy and intrastate influence.16 The Globe opined that Quebec’s ability to “command” the country would only end if Liberals won Ontario’s dominion and provincial ridings.17 _{On 24 July, the same newspaper} published an editorial expounding its vision of Ontario’s future dominance. Representation by population guaranteed that “no great injustice can be done to a section like Ontario, which has now nearly half of the whole representation, and will have more than half before many years go by.” Should Ontario’s majority prove insufficient in the interim, the Globe believed either Quebec’s English ridings, or Maritime representatives, would vote with Ontario MPs. The main threat to Ontario’s intrastate influence was therefore Ontarian voters. The Globe contended that “it is absolutely necessary, at the coming election to see that men are returned who will not submit to French domination.”18 Only the election of Coalition representatives could compromise Ontario’s preponderant influence and expose Ontario’s wealth to

predation by the rest of Canada.

When the campaigning ended, Ontario voters gave John A. Macdonald’s dominion Coalition 52 seats (nearly two-thirds of the province’s ridings). Most of these were

Conservatives, but the tally also included Liberal-Coalitionists such as McDougall.

Sandfield’s majority is harder to determine, but it did not exceed ten seats. Like its national counterpart, Sandfield’s government contained mainly Conservatives, but also included Liberal-Coalitionists such as Edmund Wood19 The popular vote was much closer. John A. Macdonald’s government, for example, won 63% of Ontario’s seats with only 51% of the popular vote (see Appendix 2). These divisions demonstrate that Ontarians continued to contest what type of preponderant federalism would inform their representatives’ actions.

Ontario also secured the largest number of cabinet ministers. The appointment of Senators limited their willingness to protect regional interests by overruling the House of

16 _{Globe, 20 August 1867. The origin of this term ‘patent combination’ is not entirely clear. See Small, "A}

Study of the Dominion and the Provincial Election of 1867 in Ontario," 176-178.

17 _{Globe, 8 July 1867.} 18 _{Ibid, 24 July 1867.}

19 _{Small, "A Study of the Dominion and the Provincial Election of 1867 in Ontario," 275-276. Hodgins, John}

Sandfield Macdonald, 90-93 agrees with this estimate. Some Ontarians still believed that the Coalition’s continuation was necessary the following year. See for example: William Foster to Aikins, 15 August 1868, LAC, MG27, ID1.

Commons. This inefficacy made the Canadian cabinet the next logical place for intrastate representation. Macdonald only struck the regional balance of five Ontarians, four

Quebecers, and four Maritimers, after extensive dealing and “great difficulty.”20 _{The prime} minister, along with Alexander Campbell, became Ontario’s Conservative representatives. Campbell, who articled and later became a partner in Macdonald’s Kingston law office during the early 1840s, was a member of the Great Coalition. He attended the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences, and joined the cabinet as Postmaster General and leader of the government in the Senate. Despite his lifelong service as one of Macdonald’s Ontario lieutenants, he also maintained a friendship with Mowat, who had also articled in

Macdonald’s law office.21 Three Liberal-Coalitionists from Ontario also joined the cabinet: William McDougall became the Minister of Public Works, William Pearce Howland became the Minister of Inland Revenue, and Fergusson Blair became the President of the Privy Council.