Where Once They Stood: Newfoundland's Rocky Road towards Confederation
408
Where Once They Stood: Newfoundland's Rocky Road towards Confederation
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780889776098 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Regina Press |
| Publication date: | 03/16/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 408 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Melvin Baker received a PhD in History from the University of Western Ontario and has published extensively in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Newfoundland history. He is currently Archivist-Historian for Memorial University.
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CHAPTER 1
REJECTING CANADA AND EMBRACING THE NEWFOUNDLAND NATION, 1864–1869
Newfoundland's journey to the Canadian Confederation was long and complex. The idea for a union of the British territory in North America, which Newfoundland had been a part of since 1497, has a similarly long and complicated history. Among the first to promote such a union was inventor and printer Benjamin Franklin, one of the American Founding Fathers who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. In 1754, worried about persistent and deadly attacks from French military in New France and their Indigenous allies, the famed statesman and diplomat invited leading gentlemen to Albany, New York, to discuss the creation of a union that could organize a common defence network and promote greater commerce among British peoples in North America. It is not clear if he envisioned Newfoundland being part of such a confederacy, but like so many other attempts throughout the early nineteenth century, his efforts came to naught. Newfoundland was obviously interested in the well-being of the rest of British North America, nonetheless. Soldiers and sailors of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment of Fencible Infantry, formed in 1795, rushed to the defence of Canada during the War of 1812 and fought gallantly at Fort George, Fort York, and throughout the Niagara Peninsula and at Fort Mackinac, where they helped repel an American attack. Yet Newfoundland showed little enthusiasm several decades later when James William Johnston of the Nova Scotia legislature attempted to reignite interest in a union of the British colonies. His impassioned pleas that forging such a confederation would realize a "dream as old as the English presence in America" fell on deaf ears. When, however, Alexander Tilloch Galt, the united Province of Canada's minister of finance, raised the possibility of hosting a conference to explore a federal union in 1858, Newfoundland expressed considerable interest. But those plans, too, were soon abandoned as the British government did not share Galt's enthusiasm at that time. When the idea resurfaced a few years later, the state of affairs in North America had changed considerably. There was then significant interest for the project in both the Maritime colonies and the Canadas. The Maritime legislators had arranged a conference for the first week of September 1864 in Charlottetown to discuss legislative union of the Maritime colonies. Newfoundland was not invited, however, and only learned about it through a fortunate stroke of serendipity.
Newfoundland premier and attorney general Hugh W. Hoyles (1861 — 65) happened to be in Halifax visiting his wife's family when plans were being made for the Charlottetown Conference. It might be possible that he had timed his holiday to learn about the plans then being contemplated for a union of the British North American colonies as the St. John's press were reporting on the plans for Maritime union. Educated at Pictou Academy, Hoyles had received his legal training under Nova Scotia's attorney general Samuel George Archibald, making him, at the time, one of the few Newfoundland politicians born and educated in British North America. Canada was not an unknown land to Newfoundlanders. Canadian magazines and news stories were available throughout the colony, including reports by early August 1864 of the impending meeting at Charlottetown. Travel and trade between the colonies were commonplace. Like many of his contemporaries on the mainland and, indeed, throughout much of Europe and elsewhere, Hoyles saw little hope for economic, cultural, and social expansion in small political units. He believed that a union of the British colonies might offer the best solution to some of Newfoundland's persistent economic problems.
Hoyles personally reached out to the leading members of the Nova Scotia government, including Dr. Charles Tupper, premier and provincial secretary, and asked if Newfoundland might be included in the upcoming conference. The premier of Newfoundland made it clear, however, that his interest was "solely on his own responsibility, [and] without authority either from the Government or the Legislature." Hoyles reminded Tupper that the "determination of this question, so far as Newfoundland was concerned, would altogether rest" with its voters — a position that would be expressed explicitly by Newfoundland leaders time and again in the years to come. Although he was clearly interested in union, Hoyles distinguished himself in Halifax with a timidity and caution that would characterize his approach to the issue of Confederation throughout his tenure.
Tupper, meanwhile, was apologetic. He and his colleagues had given no thought whatsoever to Newfoundland joining their proposed union. Somewhat awkwardly, he confessed to Hoyles that they felt "Newfoundland had no wish to become a party to it." If, however, that proved not to be the case, "the other Colonies would not object to Newfoundland entering the proposed Union." Tupper then invited Hoyles to Charlottetown as Newfoundland's unofficial representative so that Hoyles might see first-hand what was being contemplated. But Hoyles politely refused. He had to return to St. John's to greet the new governor, Sir Anthony Musgrave (1864 — 69), who was set to arrive early that September and would prove to be a determined supporter of Confederation. Hoyles had no reason to fear that Newfoundland would again be forgotten, however. Tupper assured him that "at the Convention the question of the introduction of Newfoundland should be considered, with a view of providing for her admission," should its legislature wish to join "a Legislative Union with the other Maritime Provinces, upon such terms as might be equitable." If cautious, Hoyles was also persistent and enthusiastic about the Charlottetown Conference. Before departing Halifax, he asked Tupper one more time that he ensure "the Government of Newfoundland ... be furnished with the fullest and earliest information of the proceedings" at Charlottetown.
Newfoundland and the Quebec Conference
The plans at Charlottetown did not unfold as Tupper and his fellow Maritimers had anticipated. Like the Newfoundlanders, the Canadians had learned of the conference, but unlike Hoyles they had no intention of passing on it. They requested an invitation and arrived in Prince Edward Island with a renewed interest in the federal union that Galt had recommended a few years earlier. The Maritime politicians embraced the Canadian proposal for a larger federation of all of British North America and agreed to a second conference, in Quebec City, that October. The extent of Canadian leadership and dominance at Charlottetown was evident in the invitation to Newfoundland to join the conference at Quebec. It came not from Tupper but from John A. Macdonald, attorney general from Canada West, who would play a leading role in making the Dominion of Canada and, indeed, become its first prime minister in 1867. Macdonald telegraphed Hoyles from Halifax, on September 12, that an official invitation would arrive shortly from Charles Stanley Monck(the fourth Viscount Monck) — governor general of the Province of Canada (1861 — 67) and first governor general of Canada (to November 1868) — but he hoped that Hoyles would immediately confirm his participation. Then Macdonald and the other politicians set off on a tour of Maritime towns to make themselves better acquainted with the region; they did not, however, venture across the Cabot Strait to Newfoundland.
The Newfoundland government acted quickly, if cautiously, on Macdonald's invitation and decided to go to Quebec City. Premier Hoyles believed that Confederation could provide more effective management for Newfoundland's important fisheries and much-needed capital to fuel economic diversification and development. Nevertheless, Hoyles was not to be Confederation's major advocate, nor would he venture up the St. Lawrence to Quebec City. The Executive Council in St. John's decided, after "mature deliberation," that the Newfoundland delegates would not be given authority to bind the government or legislature "to any ulterior proceeding." It was resolute in its decision, insisting that the legislature — not the delegates at Quebec — reserve "the fullest right and power of assenting to, dissenting from or, if advisable, of proposing modifications of any terms that may be proposed" at the Quebec Conference. The Newfoundland government also decided, as had the colonial governments from throughout British North America, that the issue of union would not be a "party question." Like Tupper and other colonial leaders, Hoyles sought a bipartisan approach to deciding union. He invited Ambrose Shea, leader of the Opposition and a member of Newfoundland's Roman Catholic community, to join Hoyles's chief lieutenant, Frederic Bowker Terrington Carter, Speaker of the House and a member of Newfoundland's Protestant community, in Quebec City. The Newfoundland delegation was the smallest and the only one not led by its premier or a minister of the Crown.
Shea and Carter realized immediately the possibilities that union offered. In this, they were really soulmates with Tupper and Samuel Leonard Tilley, premier of New Brunswick, who believed their colonies could be part of something better and more grandiose — a "British America, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, [that] would in a few years exhibit to the world a great and powerful organization, with British Institutions, British sympathies, and British feelings, bound indissolubly to the throne of England." Shea's father had emigrated from County Tipperary to St. John's in the early 1780s, and Shea saw himself as a native Newfoundlander, not a Briton who happened to be living in St. John's. He came from the older Irish tradition that had favoured cooperation with the British; however, by the time Newfoundland won a measure of self-government in 1832, notions of working with Britain had largely fallen out of favour with many Irish Catholics in Newfoundland, as well as with those in Ireland. Shea had welcomed the founding in 1840 of the Natives' Society of Newfoundland, which was committed to promoting the interests of the colony's native-born (rather than newcomers and British merchants who spent several months each year in the colony) regardless of religion or ethnicity. He became its president in 1846, even though he endured fierce attacks from many fellow Catholics and from priests for promoting his non-sectarian views. Shea supported responsible government, which was achieved in 1855, and free trade — or reciprocity — with the United States. He was among the first to stress the importance of diversifying the colony's economy and to embrace the notion of a trans-island railway as a means of achieving greater national self-sufficiency. Like other members of his family, Shea resisted clerical interference in public life, and as editor of his newspaper, the Newfoundlander, he promoted the interests of Newfoundland without much regard to religion. He even became leader of the Liberal Party, although this was an unlikely home for him given that it was long favoured by the Roman Catholic establishment and dominated by recent immigrants from Ireland, who harboured a tremendous dislike for all things British in their fervent Irish nationalism and their struggle for Home Rule. Despite his support for Confederation, Shea could never be its champion, as the Catholic hierarchy was aligned against him, and he was never able to bring the Catholic voter to his side.
It would eventually fall to Carter to lead the Confederation movement in Newfoundland, but it had been in law and business rather than politics that his family had come to prominence. His family had arrived in Newfoundland from Devon in the southwest of England in the mid-1700s and had established operations at Ferryland and then in St. John's. His grandfather, William Carter, was appointed a judge of the vice-admiralty court, and his father and uncle were magistrates. Frederic studied law in England, and on his return to St. John's in 1842, he was admitted to the Newfoundland Bar. He soon became part of the St. John's elite and was active in the Natives' Society. Like many of his Anglican and Conservative contemporaries, he was opposed to the granting of responsible government, but he soon came to terms with it and won election (by acclamation) to the Newfoundland House of Assembly in 1855. He was later a Conservative member of a delegation sent by the Newfoundland Assembly to London to protest a draft agreement concluded between Britain and France that would have given France an exclusive fishery along parts of the French Shore. Carter had strongly protested the draft agreement as it was negotiated without Newfoundland's consent, and he believed it would be detrimental to Newfoundland's interests. When his close friend, Premier Hoyles, formed a ministry in 1861, Carter was chosen as Speaker of the House of Assembly and was an integral part of the Conservative government as it struggled to find solutions to the colony's social and economic problems, notably the expenditure on poor relief and economic uncertainty.
Carter and Shea departed St. John's for Quebec City on September 23, 1864. En route, they passed a vessel bringing a letter from Charles Tupper asking Premier Hoyles to send five delegates to Quebec instead of the two who were then making their way up the St. Lawrence River. Tupper had invited them to join the Nova Scotia delegation departing from Pictou on October 16, which would have given the Newfoundlanders a great opportunity to learn what had transpired at Charlottetown — but this was not to be. Although the smallest delegation at Quebec City, arriving without any knowledge of the discussions at Charlottetown, Shea and Carter would earn, nevertheless, a revered place in Canadian history as two of the original Fathers of Canadian Confederation. They appeared in Jules I. Livernois's now famous photograph of the delegates in Quebec, taken on October 27, 1864, and in Robert Harris's 1884 painting, Conference at Québec in 1864. For many in St. John's, however, there was no such veneration for the pair. "Generations yet unborn," an anti-Confederate was later to write,
Will curse the day
Carter and Shea
Crossed the Sea
To barter away
The rights of Terra Nova!
Such doggerel was a sign of the difficulties that lay ahead for Shea, Carter, and other Newfoundlanders favouring union with Canada.
At Quebec City, Shea and Carter were instant and enthusiastic supporters of union, although there was no disguising the fact that both were mere observers of the proceedings. Shea was elected one of the secretaries to the conference, perhaps an indication of the others' eagerness to have Newfoundland join their ranks. When delegates toured Canada East and Canada West following the Quebec Conference, Carter spoke glowingly of Confederation to the Quebec Board of Trade and again in Toronto. "I hope sincerely," he said, "if this confederation is formed, that it will tend effectually to destroy that party spirit and those prejudices, and that acerbity of feeling which have lamentably prevailed; for we generally find the intensity of the acerbity is proportioned to the narrowness of limits." In Carter's view, the smaller and more isolated the pit, the fiercer the rats; Carter had witnessed sectarian upheaval in Newfoundland politics and knew first-hand the perils of an isolated and fragile economy such as Newfoundland's. Union, he believed, would diminish the religious strife, stabilize Newfoundland's political climate, and spur economic growth and development. In Montreal, Shea spoke to a receptive audience of the mutual benefits of union, and with Carter he signed a formal report warning that union could not be rejected "without aggravating the injurious consequences of our present isolation." A Montreal newspaper praised the Newfoundland pair for their "tact and sagacity and [their] large and enlightened views ... [which] seemed moved by one will and purpose — to guard the interests of Newfoundland and, at the same time, to promote the grand design."
Shea and Carter reported to the House of Assembly in early January 1865 on the 72 Resolutions agreed to at Quebec. Plans for the new country were ambitious, they said. Macdonald had launched the conference by providing "an exposition of the whole question" of union for their benefit, as they had missed the discussions in Charlottetown. He had opened with an elaborate statement showing the benefits of union and the great opportunities it would bring to all of them collectively and that they could never hope to attain as individual and isolated provinces. Provision was being made for the admission as provinces into the union, on equitable terms, of Newfoundland, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island. Confederation was to be a federal union under the British Crown that would "protect the diversified interests of the several Provinces, and secure efficiency, harmony and permanency in the working of the Union," while avoiding the mistakes of the American system. Shea and Carter said they embraced — like others gathered at Quebec — a constitution that shared responsibility between competing provincial and national interests, and found balance between unity and diversity, while still forging a national economy. There was recognition in Quebec in 1864 of the linguistic, religious, cultural, and geographical diversity of Canada. Canadians might never have a common sense of national identity, they reported, but it was hoped they would share a common sense of purpose and of citizenship. Shea and Carter believed that plans for the new country could provide a design for social cohesion while recognizing distinctions of diversity. Newfoundland's cultural uniqueness and identity would be secure in such an arrangement. Shea and Carter believed all could prosper and flourish in the new nation, although it is now evident that, like others at Quebec, they ignored the Indigenous Peoples in Newfoundland and Labrador and, indeed, those throughout British North America.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
PREFACE,
INTRODUCTION Newfoundland: A Place in Search of Security,
CHAPTER 1 Rejecting Canada and Embracing the Newfoundland Nation, 1864–1869,
CHAPTER 2 The Nation Turns Inward, 1870–1901,
CHAPTER 3 Prosperity, Confederation, and the Dominion of Newfoundland before and after the Great War, 1902–1927,
CHAPTER 4 Despair, Government by Commission, and a Slow Rebuild, 1928–1941,
CHAPTER 5 The National Convention, Social Citizenship, and Newfoundland's Future, 1941–1946,
CHAPTER 6 Constitutional Options Explored: Delegations to London and Ottawa, 1946–1948,
CHAPTER 7 Referendum, Social Citizenship, and Canada: Newfoundland Becomes a Province, 1948–1949,
CONCLUSION,
BIBLIOGRAPHY,
PHOTO CREDITS,