Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine

Picture: Britannica.com

Louis LaFontaine was born in Quebec in 1807. Elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, he supported Papineau until the latter was obliged to flee to the U.S. after the Rebellions of 1837-8.

Like his friend and Upper Canadian political colleague Robert Baldwin, LaFontaine supported the adoption in Canada of the British constitution. As explained by James T. Marsh, he understood how the power and flexibility of Britian's constitution would ensure the cultural survival of French Canadians.

The "Great Ministry" of 1848 that he shared with Robert Baldwin, saw the establishment of a public school system and a system of municipal government, as well as the creation of the University of Toronto. The following year, in spite of Tory opposition, the Rebellion Losses Bill of 1849 was passed to compensate Lower Canadians who had suffered property damage during the rebellions.

From 1853 to his death just three years before Confederation, LaFontaine was Chief Justice of Canada East (formerly Lower Canada and now Quebec.)

Robert Baldwin

Picture from Upper Canada History

Born in 1804, Robert Baldwin was called to the bar in Toronto and became a member of the Upper Canada Legislature in 1830. After the short-lived Rebellions of 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada failed, Lord Durham was sent from England to study the situation. He governed briefly, then returned to file his report in 1839. Meanwhile, Canadians grew ever more determined to elect representatives.

When the new province of Canada was formed by the 1841 Act of Union, the new governor was Lord Sydenham. Like his predecessors, he was disincline to allow Canada's representatives to have any power to govern. Initially, he recruited Baldwin for the Executive Council. However,  Baldwin resigned from his party and joined the opposition in an effort to achieve responsible government.

As discussed in John Ralston Saul's recent book about them, Robert Baldwin and his friend Sir Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine were at the centre of a group of reformers who led the first elected government in 1842-3.

Representing the interests of both Upper and Lower Canadians, these two men altered the Upper Canada school system and transferred the capital from Kingston to Montreal. They also established the non-denominational University of Toronto.

Library and Archives Canada states that when the governor refused to consult cabinet about partisan appointments in 1843, the reformers resigned en masse and served with the opposition till 1848, at which time they were re-elected.

During this three-year mandate, called the 'Great Ministry,' Baldwin, La Fontaine and their colleagues in government reformed the Upper Canada judiciary, granted amnesty to participants in the Rebellions of 1837-8, altered the system of municipal government and implemented responsible government in the Province of Canada.

For Robert Baldwin, the struggle for responsible government was the struggle of Canada against her "oppressors," those who would withold Canada's claim to the British constitution (Canadian Encyclopedia). He died in Toronto at 54; sadly he didn't live to see the Confederation he had done so much to prepare for.

From fictional Victorian history to real history: Lincoln

On a bright winter morning, I surface from the imaginary world of Anne Perry's Victorian London and begin to ponder on real history. Recently, I've been creating posts on important political figures of the eighteenth and nineteenth century who helped make Canada what it is today. As individuals, we are all shaped by our past, and of course the same is true of nations.

I am fascinated by the individuals -- usually visionary and often personally troubled -- who make things happen in their lifetimes that cause long-lasting change after their deaths.

Recently, we saw the film Lincoln, and I was struck by how different were the circumstances of the passing of the Thirteenth amendment from my vague imaginings.

It was suggested in the film, and I believe the real history supports this idea, that Lincoln was the one man among his contemporaries who absolutely knew that slavery was wrong and had to end. He also felt a strong calling to take action to make this happen. To get the amendment passed before the window of opportunity closed, though, he had to use political bribery. To the disgust of some of his colleagues, pragmatism was the order of the day.

Amid the devastation of a civil war whose shadows still lie over his country, Lincoln achieved his goal of ending slavery through a constitutional amendment. By the time his purpose was accomplished, his family was alienated and his country wounded almost beyond bearing.

If we come to birth for a purpose, his was complete. Yet it seems bitter that after such enormous effort and sacrifice, he should die by an assassin's bullet shortly after his enormous achievement. It is also sad that did not live long enough to help heal the nation's wounds and reunify the country, a necessity that his successors proved incapable of understanding, let alone carrying out.

Reading Anne Perry in post Christmas quiet

Image from goodreads

In the lull and that follows the holidays, we leave the Christmas decorations up for a few extra days. On the comfy sofa, with the benison of a lighted tree, a flickering fireplace and the fragrance of winter narcissi in the room, in addition to a not-yet-disassembled jigsaw puzzle on the table beside me, I fall into the stillness of the post-Christmas season.

It was in this delicious atmosphere of quiet that I read the latest Thomas and Charlotte Pitt novel. I have known Thomas Pitt since he was available on a library cassette tape. My daughter was a teen then, attending the Langley Fine Arts School, where there was a craze for knitting. The two of us sat companionably together with our knitting, listening to a tale of how Thomas, with the assistance of his able wife Charlotte, solves a political crime resulting from Anglo-Irish tensions.

Now Anne Perry has completed twenty-five novels featuring the Pitts. From a callow and rumpled young man who falls in love with a woman "above his station" -- the setting is late-Victorian London -- Thomas has developed into a middle-aged husband and father of two teenagers. He has also been promoted to head Special Branch, where he finds that  whether or not he feels prepared, he must do his best to fill the shoes of his predecessor, Victor Narraway.

I saved last year's Treason at Lisson Grove to read lying on the "Christmas sofa," but as backup, I also got the next book, Dorchester Terrace (Ballantyne 2012), out of the library.

For many years Anne Perry has made the long journey from her home in Scotland to attend the Surrey International Writers' conference. I have heard her speak many times, and each year I notice her between sessions. We have talked a few times; one year, she told me she missed the Saje booth in the trading hall, and the next, I felt moved to give her a tiny bottle of the Saje floral essence I'd shared with her the year before.

My first introduction to her books came at SIWC too. I was browsing the tables when a woman I barely knew told me something nasty about this author's past. In a spirit of discouraging such unsought-for gossip, I immediately decided to buy an Anne Perry. I was just back from a trip to London, and because I had been on that street only days before, the title that caught my eye was Southampton Row.

In the intervening time, I have read almost all of Perry's works. I love the series that features William Monk,  a brooding policeman who must live in the present and watch his own every move, since he has lost a great swath of his past to amnesia. Other characters in these books -- Oliver Rathbone and Victorian feminist Hester Latterly -- I found equally compelling.

Her tales of World War I, each with a line of poetry as a title, are loosely based on her own family history. They are also wonderful stories, and with the dilemmas of chaplain Joseph Reavley, focus on Perry's persistent theme of making difficult moral choices. The first in this series is No Graves as Yet, and the last We Shall not Sleep.

Anne Perry is getting ever better at her craft. Treason at Lisson Grove was compelling, but Dorchester Terrace was even better.

Sadly, my Anne Perry season is over for this year. I must disassemble the jigsaw and put aside the books. Duty calls. Fortunately, there will be a new Pitt novel published in April. God willing, I can enjoy this particular pleasure again next year.

Lord Durham

Picture: City of Montreal

The Earl of Durham, John George Lambton, was a politico who had supported Whig reforms in Britain. He was sent as Governor-general to British North America following the Rebellions of 1837. Not terribly keen to go, he was urged on by Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne the year of the two rebellions in Canada.

Durham was asked to suggest changes to the colonial government to ensure lasting peace and prosperity.

In 1839 he presented the Durham report, recommending unification of Upper and Lower Canada, responsible government, the establishment of municipal institutions in Canada and the assimilation of French Canadians.

His report described the problems in Quebec as being "racial," rather than political. He advised unifying the two Canadas, taking the view that the French would be assimilated over time. Yet even though he judged Canadiens as being "devoid of history and literature" (Quebec History), he did hope and expect that his reforms would create greater opportunities for French Canadians.

However, in order to achieve this political, cultural and economic elevation, he believed they would have to speak English. The fact that he banished 8 patriotes to Bermuda, and forbid several others, including Louis Joseph Papineau, from returning to the country under threat of death obviously didn't help his popularity in Lower Canada, where he was denounced as a racist.

On the other hand, in Upper Canada, Durham's recommendation that the colonies be granted responsible government gained him enthusiastic recognition. 

Political opposition to Durham's "illegally" exiling Papineau and others meant he soon resigned as Governor-general and returned to England, where he made his report. Back in Britain, the Union Act was passed in 1841, but the "mother country" balked at granting responsible government, which was not achieved until 1848.

William Lyon Mackenzie

Picture: Upper Canada History

William Lyon Mackenzie (1795-1861) was the grandfather of one of the nation's most famous Liberal PMs, William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Scotland-born, Mackenzie arrived in Upper Canada in 1820, and soon began to publish a newspaper called the Colonial Advocate in the city of York (later Toronto).

In this newspaper, and later as a politician, Mackenzie was a strong critic of the "family compact," an upper class clique that had control of the colonial government at the time.

In 1828, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for the first time. Though he was expelled for libel a number of times, each time he was re-elected.

He became the first mayor of Toronto in 1834, and indeed the first mayor in the Province of Ontario and in that role he established the city's motto and coat of arms, and established various civic institutions. Instead of running for a second term, however, he ran for and was elected to the legislature at the end of his term.

In 1836 he founded another newspaper, The Constitution. His Reform party shared the popular discontent at the time with political patronage, land granting policies, and the routine favouring of recent immigrants from England.

The Reform party twice got control of the Legislative Assembly and in 1836 Lieutenant-governor Sir Francis Bond Head was sent out to quell the discontent in the House. However, the situation only got worse and in 1837 economic uncertainty and a resulting food shortage led to a crisis. At first, Mackenzie wanted to pressure the government by working with Lower Canada and boycotting imported goods.

But when Head sent troops to Lower Canada, Mackenzie was at the head of the Upper Canada rebels,
many of whom were Americans. The group met in a tavern and drafted a new US-style constitution for Upper Canada. However, this first rebellion lasted only four days. Afterwards, Mackenzie lived in exile in the US, where he wrote for the New York Tribune until he was pardoned. He returned to Canada in 1849 where once again he served in parliament and worked as a journalist.

Meanwhile, in 1837  in Lower Canada, Louis-Joseph Papineau had led a similar rebellion. In that province, however, much of the conflict was more between the French majority and the English minority, who did not want to be ruled by them.

After this trouble, Britain sent Lord Durham to report on the troubles, and he returned with the recommendation that the two Canadas be joined. More moderate leaders such as Baldwin and Lafountaine took the helm, the Province of Canada was created by the Act of Union in 1840, and Canada was finally on the road to responsible government.

Louis Joseph Papineau

Picture: the Canadian Encyclopedia

Louis-Joseph Papineau was born in Montreal in 1786. His father made money as a notary and in business; in 1802, he purchased a seigneury from the seminary of Quebec. In this way, the family rose to become part of what was called by Lafontaine the "family compact."

After his primary schooling, Papineau was sent to the College de Montreal, and after an altercation with the Sulpicians who ran the school, he continued his studies at Le Petit Seminaire de Quebec.

Papineau became a notary and, then a lawyer. His election to the assembly for the county of Kent in 1809 marked the beginning of a long political career.

At the time Papineau entered politics, French Canadian nationalism was rising. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, society was changing, and nationalists -- liberals, professionals, and small businessmen -- felt the need to defend traditional French Canadian institutions. English merchants and civil servants, as well as immigrant Americans, were seen as a threat.

Papineau joined the Parti Canadien and in 1815 was elected Speaker of the House of Assembly. When in 1822-3 the merchants' party wanted the Canadas unified, an idea much opposed in Lower Canada, Papineau went with John Nielsen to London to prevent this measure from being taken. Whether or not he deserved it, Papineau got the credit for quashing this bill.

In 1826 the party name was changed to the Patriote party, and it was within this party that conflict arose between more liberal and democratic reformers and Papineau's French Canadian nationalists, who defended institutions that were not particularly liberal or democratic.

In 1830, influenced by the ideas of  Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, Papineau spoke in favour of a Canadian republic, though he found it hard to reconcile this idea with his fondness for the seigneury which he had purchased from his father. A believer in the sacred right of property ownership, he was in effect a conservative, who supported the strong privileges of the church and clergy under the seigneurial system of French Canada. Ironically, the church perceived him as a dangerous liberal democrat, because of the liberal content of his political speeches.

He was hostile to commerce, no doubt in large part because the British were in control of the larger scale trading. Though in his early days he respected the British constitutional system, this admiration came to an end in later years, when he favoured the American way of doing things more. His involvement in the Rebellions of 1837 has been described as "ambiguous;" among other things, he destroyed documents and encouraged his subordinates to do the same.

After the second failed rebellion, Papineau left for France by way of New York, and stayed there until 1845, even though his wife had returned in 1843 and he himself had received amnesty the year before. Upon returning to Canada, he became involved in politics once more and fell into conflict with Lafontaine. For one thing, he absolutely opposed the union of the two Canadas, preferring the idea of annexing Lower Canada with America.

In 1871, he died in the Manor house he had earlier built for himself and his family at his seigneury at Montebello.

(Source: Fernand Ouellet)