1874 and have done so to my heart’s content.” The only blemish on election night was Macdonald’s loss in his home riding of Kingston to Alexander Gunn. While the defeat was attributed to lingering distaste over the Pacific Scandal, the loss was a mere inconvenience, and easily fixed in a by-election.
CHAPTER 3
CEMENTING THE BOND
Every American statesman covets Canada. The greed for its acquisition is still on the increase, and God knows where it will all end. . . . We must face the fight at our next election, and it is only the conviction that the battle will be better fought under my guidance than under another that makes me undertake the task, handicapped as I am, with the infirmities of old age.
Back in the prime minister’s office, Macdonald breathed life into his national vision. True to his campaign promise, he increased tariffs on imported American goods, which risked retaliation in the form of a prohibitive duty on the export of Canadian lumber. But it was the building of the transcontinental railroad that occupied most of his attention: “Until this great work is completed . . . we have as much interest in British Columbia as in Australia, and no more. The railway once finished, we become one great united country with a large interprovincial trade and a common interest.”
The railway was critical to increasing Canada’s population, strengthening its economy, and enhancing its ability to sustain itself against American incursions. Macdonald knew that Canada could not take on a project of such magnitude on its own and sought loan guarantees from the British government.
With the levers of power at his disposal, Macdonald put the might of patronage to work. He would not make appointments prior to an election, thus encouraging his campaign staff to “work harder for your return.” When Toronto Tories grumbled about the lack of jobs coming their way, Macdonald retorted, “As soon as Toronto returns Conservative members, it will get Conservative appointments.” Macdonald eagerly dished out patron age jobs, although he was frustrated that there were not enough to satisfy his party. “Five years’ opposition have made our friends rather hungry and they are worrying me about office, but the departments have all been crammed by the Grits so that it will be sometime before there will be any vacancies.” Macdonald dreamed of a more independent and assertive Canada, but he remained committed to Great Britain. Macdonald was prepared for the time being to have the British Empire represent Canada to the world, hoping “to stave off for a very long time to come any wish on the part of Canada for a separate set of representatives in foreign countries.” The prerequisite to an independent voice for Canada on the international stage was economic and military self-sufficiency. “The sooner the Dominion is treated as an auxiliary power rather than a dependency, the sooner will it assume all the responsibilities of the position including the settlement of its contribution to the defence of the Empire whenever and wherever assailed.”
And Canada was coming of age. In 1879, Macdonald’s former finance minister, Alexander Galt, persuasively argued the case for Canada to the Colonial office: “Canada has ceased to occupy the position of an ordinary possession of the Crown. She exists in the form of a powerful central government, having already no less than seven subordinate local executive and legislative systems, soon to be largely augmented by the development of vast regions lying between Lake Superior and the Rocky Mountains.”
Macdonald succeeded in establishing semi-diplomatic standing between Canada and Great Britain, which bypassed, to a degree, the representatives of the Colonial Office stationed in Ottawa. However, the rank of Canada’s emissary to Britain was to be a representative with limited authority. A British dispatch reported of the representative, “His position would necessarily be more analogous to that of an officer in the Home Service than to that of a minister at a foreign court.” In the end, the title for Canada’s representative to Great Britain was given the lofty and noble title “High Commissioner for Canada in London.” Alexander Galt was its first holder.
Great Britain did not see Canada as an independent nation with the right to have its views represented directly on the world stage. It was under stood that if Canada was threatened, Great Britain would come to its defence. Consequently, in the view of the British government, Great Britain should decide Canada’s foreign policy. The foreign policy of Great Britain was the foreign policy of all of its colonies.
Besieged with pressing domestic and international issues, at age sixty-five Macdonald told his friends, “It is better to wear out than to rust out,” but he urged his Cabinet to consider the issue of his succession on March 25, 1880. The Cabinet, however, would not let him go. Then again, Macdonald was not very serious about leaving. If he was addicted to anything, it was politics. He was passionate about the child he had created—Canada—and like an obsessed parent, he could not let go.
By 1879, due perhaps to Macdonald’s protectionist policies, the economy had begun to strengthen. In the eyes of the nation, Macdonald’s policies had been vindicated. Canada was growing again and was open for immigration. Macdonald’s Conservatives believed in immigration and the railway was essential to Canada’s growth and independence.
On October 21, 1880, the contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad was signed. It called for 1,900 miles of railroad between Callander, Ontario and Kamloops, B.C. Sir Hugh Allan was out and George Stephen was in as the railway’s president. Businessman Donald Smith, whom Macdonald once called “the biggest liar I ever saw,” was also involved. The railway was to be financed with British money, not American. Despite Macdonald’s protectionist and nationalist policies, the terms of the contract stated that all materials used for the construction of the railway were to be imported duty free. The consortium was exempt from taxes and could build whatever branches off the main rail line they chose. However, the railway contract, which included a subsidy of $26 million and a land grant of 25 million acres, would be profitable only if thousands of settlers took up the offers and purchased the land the railway had for sale.
While it made economic sense to divert the rail line south of the border, Macdonald would have none of it. Every single inch of the transcontinental railroad would have to go through Canada. To protect the economic viability of the all-Canadian routes, Canadian Pacific was given a monopoly over all rail traffic in Canada.
Liberals opposed the railway contract and its monopolistic provisions. Blake said it was irresponsible for the government to sanction a rail line through the scrub country north of Lake Superior, calling it a “criminal absurdity of nationalism.” Common sense, the Liberal leader suggested, was to go west through American territory. Macdonald scoffed at the notion, suggesting that the Liberals had American money and American media on their side.
When a competing bid surfaced after the Canadian Pacific deal had been arranged, Macdonald saw it as a Liberal-concocted American-friendly sham.
Mr. Speaker the whole thing is an attempt to destroy the Pacific Railway. I can trust to the intelligence of this House, and the patriotism of this country, I can trust not only to the patriotism but to the common sense of this country, to carry out an arrangement which will give us all we want, which will satisfy all the loyal, legitimate aspirations, which will give us a great, a united, a rich, an improving, a developing Canada, instead of making us tributary to American laws, to American railways, to American bondage, to American tools, to America’s freights, to all the little tricks and big tricks that American railways are addicted to for the purpose of destroying our road.
When the bill to create the railway company passed in the House of Commons on February 1, 1881, Alexander Morris, one of the men who had conceived of Confederation, and who helped bring Macdonald and Brown together, wrote to Macdonald: “I write to congratulate you on the second crowning triumph of your more recent life, second only to that of Confederation. You have now created a link to bind the provinces indissolubly together, and to give us a future and a British nationality.”
