Who is the father of confederation canada

It went to England's Festival of Empire in , after which it returned to Canada. It was destroyed when the Parliament Building burned February 3, On September 1, - one hundred years after the Charlottetown Conference - the same scene began to emerge again. Rex Woods was embarking on a commission from the insurance company, Confederation Life, to recreate the heirloom for presentation to the nation during Centennial celebrations.

Three delegates to the London Conference of - who had been officially recognized during the Diamond Jubilee in - were added on the right. The portrait above them is a tribute to Robert Harris. His signature is on the portfolio at the left, as in the original painting.

They included preservation of ties with Great Britain; a bicameral system including a Lower House with representation by population rep by pop and an Upper House with representation based on regional, rather than provincial, equality; responsible government at the federal and provincial levels; and the appointment of a governor general by the British Crown. Out of the discussions at Quebec emerged 72 resolutions that would form the basis of a constitution for a union of the British North American colonies.

The Quebec Resolutions, as they would be known, were presented to the British Government at the London Conference the following year and drafted into the British North America Act which was passed by the British parliament in March, The Dominion of Canada came into existence officially on July 1, Quebec has changed profoundly in years, and no one then foresaw gay marriage, aviation, securities regulation, or employment insurance.

Matters that were never dreamed of at the Quebec Conference come up constantly in Canadian constitutional policy. The Confederation makers may not have known much about telecommunications, but they did know something about drafting a constitution. In any federation, deciding what should be local and what should be national is an endlessly changing challenge. They seem to have had a rule of thumb: Matters that reinforced local communities and local cultures — education, social services, local government, the use of Crown lands and resources, even the courts — should be run locally.

To Ottawa they assigned the things that helped build a united national space for general prosperity: the military, foreign affairs, customs, trade and commerce, banks, money, even postage and censuses and copyrights. Each level of government had its own set of responsibilities.

Each could raise taxes to support itself. There were courts as well as legislatures to sort out disputes. Most importantly, each province and Ottawa had its own government and legislature, and in the end it was accepted that neither should prevent the other from running its own affairs. Over years, it has sometimes seemed that Ottawa has had too much power; sometimes that the provinces did.

Canadians often struggle to sort out whether new matters are rightly provincial or federal, and debatable choices have been made. Who pays is a constant challenge, too, and the Confederation makers did some horse-trading themselves on these matters.

But they could see that it was better to lay down some big general rules and to let the future apply those rules to new situations. They said nothing about telecommunications, which did not exist, but they also said nothing about, say, buggy-whip manufacturing, which did. In the next few years, we will often hear that Canada really became a nation just a century ago, at Vimy Ridge; or by the Statute of Westminster in ; or by patriation of the Constitution in ; or some other date.

Even our Governor General was British until In , Canada was a small country in a big world. Canada needed and wanted British support, and most Canadians wanted to know that the new nation was part of a larger empire.

But the British North American provinces had been governing themselves since , and Confederation united them but did not change those powers. The principle from was carried on in In its own sphere of affairs, a government accountable to a parliament elected by the people was sovereign, and no outside authority had a legitimate right to interfere.

It protected Ottawa from London as well. The Confederation makers wanted to lean on Britain for many things, but they had great confidence that, in anything they wanted to run themselves, they had the authority they needed. The Confederation makers had the same confidence that Canadians would run as much of their own affairs as they ever wished. Since it was introduced in , the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has become one of the most popular parts of the Canadian constitution — so popular, in fact, that today Canadians sometimes talk as if our rights were invented in and the confederation makers gave us a constitution without any rights.

Tricky question! The Confederation makers of the s talked about rights, and they believed that rights mattered. But they truly were parliamentary democrats.

They had vast confidence that parliaments could be relied upon to defend rights against meddling, or arbitrary or even tyrannical governments. They did not believe that anyone else could, or should, have the right to try So the Confederation makers rejected the idea of the American founders and the French revolutionaries.

That was a noble idea. But Parliament did not stop Canadian governments from implementing the War Measures Act; or imposing the head tax on Chinese immigrants; or permitting petty bureaucrats, police officers, and administrative agencies from infringing on the rights and freedoms of ordinary Canadians in a thousand small ways.

Before the Charter came into force in , there was no remedy for situations when Parliament could have intervened but chose not to do so.

There are some who argue that our rights now depend on unelected judges, accountable to no one, and maybe that is not a good thing — because, if we do not like what they decide, too bad. He was a lawyer who was elected to the island assembly, holding several cabinet posts. Palmer opposed Confederation under the terms presented in , but agreed to union in He later became chief justice of the P. Supreme Court. A Nova Scotia lawyer who attended the Quebec conference and believed the financial terms offered Maritime provinces to be unjust.

He agreed to support a united Canada only after more liberal subsidies were agreed to. McGee left Ireland at 17 during the famine and for years, back-and-forthed between his native land and America. He arrived in Montreal in and soon advocated for an independent Canadian nation. As he returned home from the Commons one night in , he was shot and killed by a Fenian sympathizer.

The Halifax-born lawyer was a Liberal for the first 16 years of his political career before joining the Tories in He was credited with helping draft the wording of the British North America Act. In the election, he was defeated in Nova Scotia — largely because of his pro-Confederation work. He returned to law and was named to the Supreme Court of Canada in The native of Hillsborough, N. At Confederation, he was appointed to the Canadian Senate and held that office until his death in Johnson was born in Liverpool, England, and moved to New Brunswick as a child.

He became a lawyer before being elected to the provincial assembly and serving in several cabinet posts. He was elected to the Commons in , but died the next year. Born in Truro, N. But like many union backers, he was turfed out by angry Nova Scotia voters. He later returned to the Commons and was eventually appointed lieutenant-governor of his home province. Pope was born in Bedeque, P. He was called to the island bar in and became P. It was Pope who was rowed out in an oyster boat to meet the Canadian delegates arriving in Charlottetown in After P.

He died in McCully was a teacher, lawyer, editor and judge from Cumberland County, N. An influential supporter of union, he was named to the Canadian Senate at Confederation, but resigned three years later to become a justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.

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