however, were not the Globe’s concerns. What was important was north-western expansion in itself; and whether Isbister’s story stemmed from Colonial Office gossip or not, it seemed sharply to illuminate the Canadian government’s apathy in regard to the North West.
Obviously, the ministry had hung back. Its Upper Canadian members might make resounding speeches to their constituents on expansion; the cabinet might talk of western boundary claims and send an exploring party to the Hudson’s Bay territory; but these were mere sops to Upper Canada. The Liberal-Conservative ministers had taken no effective steps to secure the North West. Instead they had passed quibbling resolutions through the Assembly to evade the Colonial Office’s proposal that Canada test her claim to the territory in the courts, and had rejected any other action as premature. In all this, Lower Canada’s antipathy to westward expansion had been more than suspected. But now – now here was a vivid illustration of how its power in the Canadian union flatly prohibited a vital advance.
That was enough for the Globe. Cartier might also have told Lytton (so Isbister had added) that he could conceive of a separate province being erected in the North West which might some day form part of a British North American federation. Yet to Brown and his journal this was all one with the ministry’s shelved policy of confederation – a useful dodge, a vague, high-sounding reference to the indefinite future, invoked when necessary to avoid practical action now. The paper saw the meaning before it quite simply: “The North West territory lies open before us – a field white for the harvest. We must not enter upon it; Lower Canadian interests forbid it.”26
It was just one more aspect of Lower Canadian domination: the baneful consequence of a union based on equal parliamentary representation, which prevented the more populous Upper Canada from exercising its proper weight of numbers, while effectively throwing the balance of power to the close-knit French-Canadian community of Lower Canada. “Both the British and French in Lower Canada persist in ruling us,” the Globe added bitterly.27 The English minority in the East were in the main as guilty, since they had helped to maintain Lower Canadian ascendancy for their own commercial reasons, and ridden rough-shod over western rights. Worst of all, however, were those Upper Canadian supporters of the governing coalition, the Conservative forces led by John A. Macdonald – mere hired “sepoys” in George Brown’s opinion.28 For they had sold out their own community for government posts and patronage, and a share in the iniquitous régime.
In short, to Brown and his journal, the failure to open the North West was only a further sign of the power of Lower Canada over the present Canadian union. It was only part of a malign pattern of politics that imposed high tariffs, compensation for French-Canadian seigneurial rights, ruinous Grand Trunk railway bills, separate-school measures – and always the reign of extravagance and venality – on an Upper Canadian majority in complete defiance of its will. The whole thing was insufferable! The union must be changed! Changed to a federal form that would give each Canada a government of its own to look after its essential interests, while leaving matters of joint concern to a central authority. This was the moral and the message that the Globe once more pressed upon its followers as the winter days wore on. Plainly the political pot was coming to the boil again, as Brown briskly reheated the whole issue of constitutional change.
3
Another parliamentary session was approaching. Upper Canada’s Liberals had to be prepared to push their fundamental answer to the problems of the union, the resolutions adopted by the Toronto Convention of 1859 for a federation of the two Canadas. The Constitutional Reform Association set up at that great November meeting was busy reorganizing the party for victory, rebuilding Reform committees from the central executive in Toronto to the farthest outlying township. At the Association’s headquarters on Melinda Street, Brown and Oliver Mowat worked closely with its enterprising secretary, William McDougall, drafting the formal address that was designed to lay the Convention platform before the people and urge them to petition parliament on its behalf.29 And then on February 15, Brown and his Toronto party colleagues met as the central executive committee, to approve with due solemnity the completed Address of the Constitutional Reform Association.30
As printed and circulated throughout the West, its four giant sheets were packed with small type and statistics, under heavy black headings that variously proclaimed: “In justice to Upper Canada in Parliamentary Representation – Upper Canada Pays Seventy Per Cent of the National Taxation – Lower Canada Rules Upper Canada Even in Local Matters”, and finally, “The True Remedy” – the Reform Convention’s plan.31 The plan, however, was given in little more detail than in the original key resolution passed by that body, which had called for separate provincial governments to control “all matters of a local or sectional character” and for “some joint authority” to deal with affairs in common.32
The vagueness of that latter phrase had, of course, been necessitated at the Convention by the widespread sentiment among its back-bench members for a peremptory dissolution of the union, “pure and simple”. Those who, like Brown, recognized the fundamental value of a union of the Canadas – whatever the faults of the existing one – had been forced to minimize the role of any new central government in order to bring the dissolutionists to accept a policy of federation. It was still wise not to say too much about the policy that might rouse the “pure and simple” faction still strong in the agrarian West beyond Toronto. It was best, in fact, to present grievances in detail and federal union only in principle.
Nevertheless, the Constitutional Reform Address did state that the functions of the proposed joint authority should be “clearly laid down – let its powers be strictly confined to specified duties”. Furthermore, the written constitution that would define the limits of federal authority was to forbid the central government to incur new debt or increase taxes beyond the level necessary to meet existing obligations and discharge its specific functions. Even though the central power was not spelled out, therefore, Brown, Mowat, McDougall, and the other Toronto leaders clearly envisaged a sharply limited federation. They were not just seeking to appease dissolutionists in the party. Concerned as they were with Upper Canada’s rights, and alarmed as they were by the present piling up of public debt, it was only natural that they should place their main emphasis on new provincial governments that were to be as inexpensive and as close to the people as possible.
The grand Address was warmly hailed by the Reform press across the West. Excitement and hope rose quickly to a peak, as the Globe ran the whole thing as a supplement on February 22, and again went through the case for constitutional change. Parliament was only days away; the Address promised that a vigorous effort would be made to secure the Convention plan once the legislature gathered in Quebec on the twenty-eighth. After four years in Toronto, the travelling capital of the United Province had now returned to the eastern city, to stay until the buildings at the newly chosen permanent seat of government, Ottawa, had been completed. This might take some time yet: the Minister of Public Works, John Rose, had only recently turned a frozen sod (with difficulty) to mark the beginning of Ottawa’s expensive edifices.33 Accordingly, George Brown once more set out for a session in Quebec, a day or so before its opening, with the prime aim of pursuing there the policy of the Reform Convention and Address.
Essentially it was his programme. True, William McDougall, one of the best minds in the party, had moved the crucial resolution for a joint authority at the Toronto Convention, and much of the Address had come from his hand. Staid but capable Oliver Mowat was no less thoroughly behind it. But it was Brown beyond all others who had swung western Reformers from their earlier insistence on representation by population to the remedy of federation, and away from dissolution of the union – Brown who had worked to save both the unity of his party and the unity of the St. Lawrence lands through a federal plan for Canada. His own future as party leader and the future of Upper Canada Liberalism were tied to the Convention scheme. A great deal could turn on the course of events at Quebec.
Aboard the clattering Grand Trunk, as Brown weighed the possibilities, he could
