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1. Growth and Change in B.N.A.
From Canadian History Portal - HCO
| A. The Road to Confederation →→ 1. Growth and Change in B.N.A. → 2. Causes of Confederation 1861-66 → 3. The Path to Union 1864-67 → 4. Building the New Nation → 5. Confederation Today →→ B. All Aboard for the West |
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Good Times
The quarter of century prior to Confederation witnessed significant change within British North America. A new political system was ushered in with the Act of Union of 1840-1841. Baldwin and LaFontaine headed the first responsible ministry in Canadian history. In 1857, a new and permanent capital was selected after considerable debate and compromise. The Great Migration saw a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants settle, develop, and add to life in British North America. The economy boomed under the influence of the British protected market and the canal building mania. In short, the years between the Rebellions of 1837 and Confederation of 1867 were ones marked by change and growth.
Economically, these were good times, at least up to 1846 when Britain repealed the Corn Laws to ensure the poor had cheaper grain. British North America enjoyed a preferential tariff arrangement with the Mother Country whereby its products were charged a significantly lower tariff than that which was charged for goods coming from other countries.
As a result, British North American produce, most notably wheat and timber, flooded into Britain. With high British demand for its products, the economy began to boom. Especially noteworthy was the practice of importing American wheat into British North America, via the newly built canal systems, milling it and therefore branding it as British North American, and then shipping it onto Britain.
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Shippers, bankers, canal and mill owners all grew wealthy. At the same time, the growth dictated a substantial expansion of the labour force. As the number of jobs increased, there was greater consumption, which in turn spurred more investment, that in turn led to more jobs. British North America was at the beginning of a significant economic expansion that would continue even after the Corn Laws were repealed.
The Timber Trade
Growth was not confined exclusively to wheat. The timber business boomed. Timber, like wheat, became a major staple. In 1841, for example, timber exports to Britain constituted two-thirds of all exports. Britain, limited in its timber stands and going through the Industrial Revolution, could not get enough of British North American lumber products. Wood for shipbuilding, house construction, and railway ties were the three main areas of demand in both Britain and British North America. Quebec City and Saint John were the principal ports for timber exports. With growth, the industry itself underwent a significant alteration, changing from largely independent, part-time loggers to large logging companies.
The Maritimes too participated in this economic boom as it enjoyed its own Golden Age of shipping in the 1840s. Shipbuilding employed almost as many Maritime workers as did fishing. Saint John, one of several shipbuilding centers, built over one hundred ships a year during its heyday. But shipyards were not restricted only to Saint John; they appeared to be everywhere. For instance, both sides of the Miramichi River were lined with shipyards - for twenty kilometers! As a result, not only did the Atlantic economy flourish but also shipping itself became a major commercial activity in the Atlantic region. Beginning with the timber trade to carry timber to Britain, shipping expanded rapidly. By the 1850s, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island ranked third in the world in tonnage.
]The economic boom momentarily turned to bust but then quickly reverted back to boom. Britain was experiencing the Industrial Revolution. Because of more efficient production methods, greater mechanization, the new factory system, and economies of scale, a surplus of various goods was produced. If Britain was going to be successful in trading those goods to continental Europe and the United States, it would have to open its door to their products. For British North America, that meant the end of the preferential trading arrangements it had enjoyed. By the mid-1840s, British manufacturers, wanting both the cheapest raw materials for their factories possible and access into foreign markets, were lobbying the government to introduce free trade. Thus, in 1846, the Corn Laws were repealed and ushered in a series of other preferential trade arrangements.
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Depression in BNA
The immediate impact on British North America, coming at the same time as the influx of Irish immigrants to their shores, was devastating. British North American farmers were simply unable to compete against cheaper European wheat in the British market. Hundreds of farms were simply abandoned as their former owners either sought employment in the emerging urban centers or else moved south to the United States.
What happened to wheat was repeated in the British North American timber trade. Once again, their timber could not compete with that coming from the Baltic Sea area. Sawmills and gristmills closed their doors with equal rapidity. To worsen an already dire situation, the United States allowed grain and other material to be trans-shipped duty-free through American ports. As a result, the British North American shipping industry also fell on hard times.
However, the economic downturn was short-lived. Once again the timing was noteworthy. At the same time that Lord Elgin signed the Rebellion Losses Bill, compensating those who had suffered property damage during the Rebellions of 1837 in Lower Canada, the economy went into a tailspin with the British decision to adopt free trade. There were riots in the streets of Montreal as the economic and political elite felt abandoned and betrayed.
Marco Polo, the Fastest Ship in the World  On December 26, 1852, Marco Polo arrived back in Liverpool England from Melbourne, Australia in 140 days, a trip that usually took 240 days. The ship was then declared "The Fastest Ship in the World". As it aged, the Marco Polo was refitted and used in the Australian immigrant trade. By 1880, it had been condemned and was purchased by a Norwegian company to export Canadian timber. In 1883, while heading back for England and just off the coast of Prince Edward Island, its seams began to pour water. The crew had to jettison cargo, but had to saw in half some of the ship's supporting girders. This and the gale force winds began loosening the ship's tired hull even more. Finally, in an effort to salvage at least their own lives, the captain and crew ran the ship aground at Cavendish beach, inspiring a young Lucy Maud Montgomery to write “The Wreck of the Marco Polo.”  |
The Annexation Manifesto
On October 10, 1849, a group of over 325 frustrated Montréal citizens calling themselves the Annexation Association signed The Annexation Manifesto, advocating the union of Canada and the US unless the British assisted the Canadian economy. The manifesto was published a day later in the Montréal Gazette, and a second version followed in November.
- RESOURCE: The Annexation Manifesto and Reply
The group, primarily business people, were opposed to the growing free trade movement in Britain, and British abolition of duties on Canadian lumber, wheat and flour. They also fiercely disagreed with British consent to the Rebellion Losses Bill, which they saw as aid to rebels. But the group was also supported by radical republicans like Louis-Joseph Papineau, who preferred American institutions to British ones.
Apart from Papineau, signers included future finance minister Alexander Galt and John Abbott, a future prime minister; others included John Torrance, Jacob De Witt, M.P.P., John Redpath, John Molson, David Torrance, William Workman, David Macpherson, Luther Holton, Benjamin Holmes, John Rose, Edward Goff Penny, William Molson, Lorn Macdougall, Benjamin Workman.
The Manifesto was soon opposed by a group calling itself the British American League, backed by leading politicians such as Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and their followers, including George-Étienne Cartier.
The manifesto had a hoped-for effect on the British, who pushed for freer trade with the US. The result was the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, which restored Canadian prosperity.
The Elgin-Marcy Reciprocity Treaty
Elgin devised the perfect solution - rather than annexation to the United States, he proposed free trade. It was initially a hard sell as the Americans could see little in the idea to benefit them. However, through Elgin's determination, diplomacy, and charm, by 1854 he won the Americans over and signed the <a href="6docs/1854reciproc/reciproc.php">Reciprocity Treaty</a>. Grain, timber, coal, and potatoes could all enter the large American market duty free for the next ten years in exchange for American fishers being allowed to ply their trade off the Grand Banks. This reciprocal agreement - reciprocity of trade - let British North America prosper again.
Other factors, many of them interrelated, also contributed to the growth and change. One of those factors was the substantial population growth. In the twenty years after 1841, the overall population of British North American more than doubled from 1.1 million to 2.5 million. All areas grew but Canada West positively mushroomed from 432 000 to 1.4 million. The two main sources of the great majority of these new arrivals were the British Isles and the United States. The largest and best-known nationality that arrived was the Irish.
The Famine Ships
Tens of thousands of destitute Irish sought to escape the potato blight famine of 1845 and 1846. A black fungus turned the potato, the staple of the Irish diet, into a rotten inedible mush. The famine, coupled with cholera and typhus, ravaged the countryside and filled the cemeteries. Those who had the money booked passage across the Atlantic Ocean. Those who could not, boarded empty timber ships returning to North America. These vessels soon became known as coffin, or fever ships, and endured nine weeks of horrendous conditions.
- Resource: Read about the Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship from Dublin to Quebec in 1847.
After enduring their harsh voyage, the new arrivals were quarantined and checked for illness and disease. Grosse Ile, near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, was the first point of entry for arrivals at Quebec City or Montreal. The year 1847 was fairly typical. Of the close to 90 000 immigrants who arrived in Quebec City, over 5 000 died on the voyage while almost the same number died in quarantine on Grosse Ile. After overcoming incredibly difficult conditions, the Irish and other groups that came to British North America in the mid-nineteenth century would add much to the economic well being and social fabric of their newly adopted land.
The Underground Railway
Another prominent immigrant group were African Americans who arrived on the famed Underground Railway.
Not an actual railway as one would think, this was a series of safe passages, barns and houses that spirited black America slaves to the Promised Land and freedom.
In 1850 the US Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it dangerous for escaped slaves to remain in the North.
Abolitionists, most notably William Lloyd Garrison author of "The Liberator", and Harriet Tubman, nicknamed "the Black Moses," risked their lives to free between thirty to forty thousand fugitive slaves.
Traveling by night and hiding by day, they faced danger and death at every turn as they hid from bounty hunters and the legal authorities. Various locations in Canada West such as Dresden, Chatham, and Oakville became both final destinations and new homes.
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Tubman, who escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849, made at least 19 trips to the South to guide fugitives to freedom. She made 11 trips to Canada on the Underground Railway begun by John Brown in 1859, leading over 300 "passengers" to Canada. She allowed no dropping out or turning back. Once, she pointed a pistol at a discouraged fugitive, telling him, "Move or die." During the US Civil War, war she served the Union as a scout, spy, and nurse.
British North America Canals & Railways
British North America also benefited from the Industrial Revolution. The most immediate impact came in the area of transportation and communication. The initial improvements came along the natural waterways. The Lachine Canal, built in 1823, enlarged in 1843-48, then again 1873-74, enabled shippers to bypass the rapids along the St. Lawrence River.
In 1829, the Welland Canal, the only canal still in commercial use today - the Lachine and Rideau canals are still open for pleasure boating - linked Lakes Ontario and Erie was built to bypass Niagara Falls. The Rideau Canal, constructed between Kingston and Ottawa, was intended more as a strategic than a commercial venture.
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By mid-century, a network of canals had been built that enabled steamboats to travel from the Atlantic Coast to the head of the Great Lakes.
Railways, even more than canals, were transforming life in British North America. Distances shrunk, isolation was reduced, settlement patterns were altered, and the economy was stimulated. Fresh produce could be delivered to stores daily. Towns, dotted along newly built railway lines, sprang up. Thousands of jobs were created by this new growth industry. Tracks had to be laid, bridges built, steel foundries boomed, and engines maintained. Telegraph lines paralleled the tracks and improved communication.
Canals and railways also changed the role of government. Recognizing the immense benefits that the new mega-projects offered, they scrambled to support them in a number of ways. And engineer Thomas Coltrin Keefer, whose family built the Welland Canal, wrote a North American best seller trumpeting the need for railways, called The Philosophy of Railroads.
Representation by Population
Politics, like everything else of the time, changed considerably. Responsible government, finally achieved in 1849, was largely the work of Robert Baldwin and Louis LaFontaine. Lord Elgin, despite his personal opposition, signed the Rebellion Losses Bill, which compensated people who had suffered property damage during the 1837 Rebellions. But now a new political movement was gathering steam in western Ontario.
The growth and change experienced by British North America in the quarter century prior to Confederation was immense. Demographically, the Great Migration substantially increased the population as well as beginning its diversification. The economy prospered, briefly went into a recession, and then boomed again. The canal mania and railway boom stimulated both transportation and communication as well as the economy.
Sidelight: Cartier Chooses Ottawa as the Capital The choice of Ottawa was a project of the Cartier-Macdonald Ministry and in particular, the personal choice of Prime Minister George-Étienne Cartier. The Cartier-Macdonald ministry that came to office in 1858 had one major goal, Confederation. George-Étienne Cartier was the true power of the dual ministry, holding roughly twice as many seats as his "siamese twin", John A. Macdonald. Cartier's desires were paramount. The building of a new capital city was one of the cornerstones of his program, as well as re-establishing the province of Québec that had been taken away on the recommendation of Lord Durham. Cartier chose Ottawa for several reasons: 
The decision to put forward Ottawa enraged the other major cities that had served as the Canadian capital - Québec, Montréal, Kingston and Toronto. On the opposition benches, George Brown and the Quebec Rouges were outraged at Cartier's choice, so to distance himself from the decision, Cartier and Governor General Head determined to have the choice come from Queen Victoria herself. And who could disagree with this? Justifying Queen's Victoria's "choice", Cartier argued, "It is true that Ottawa is in Uppper Canada, but in terms of business, it is a Lower Canadian city, lnked to Qubec by the timber trade, and to Montreal by its demand for imports. There, the French Canadians will feel themselves in a sympathetic environment, because they number 5,000 out of a total population of 12,000, the majority of whom are Catholics. They will find colleges, convents, churches and all that is especially dear to them in Lower Canada. For all these reasons, Ottawa is an excellent choice, not only as our capital city, but as a means of increasing prosperity and attracting colonization to the region. It is a fortunate choice, a disinterested one, one that must satisfy all reasonable men."  After a short blessing from the Chaplain of Parliament, the Prince approached the cornerstone. Made of white Canadian marble from a quarry near Arnprior, it hung suspended from the centre of the huge ornamental crown by a large pulley, which ran round a gilt block. Under this was a cavity in which was placed a glass bottle containing a collection of coins, and a parchment-scroll inscribed thus: "The foundation-stone of the Houses of Parliament in the Province of Canada, was laid on the 1st day of September, in the year of our Lord 1860, in the 24th year of Her Majesty's reign, at the City of Ottawa, by H. R. H. the Prince of Wales. [Here followed the names of all the Members of the Legislative Council, the names of all the Members of the Assembly, the names of the Government of Canada, the names of all the Architects, &c.] " On October 20, 1865 a further Royal Proclamation fixed the permanent seat of the government of the Province of Canada at Ottawa. When the BNA provinces federated in 1867, Ottawa remained the capital of what Cartier called "the new nationality." |
| Growth and Change - Gallery | Stories and Texts | Web Links | Student Activities | Student Projects |
| A. The Road to Confederation →→ 1. Growth and Change in B.N.A. → 2. Causes of Confederation 1861-66 → 3. The Path to Union 1864-67 → 4. Building the New Nation → 5. Confederation Today →→ B. All Aboard for the West |
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