Chapter 7. British North America at Peace and at War (1763–1818)
Chapter 7. British North America at Peace and at War (1763–1818)
7.6 Interwar Years: The Canadas
In 1791 the Constitutional Act replaced the Quebec Act and redefined the province’s boundaries. What had been the heartland of old Canada, stretching east from the Ottawa River’s junction with the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, became Lower Canada. Everything to the west became Upper Canada. Excluded from these borders were the 1.5 million acres to the north and west that drain into Hudson Bay and which remained under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company. (See Chapter 8.)
Bisecting Canada
Britain had several goals in mind with the Constitutional Act. First was to establish consistency in administrative structure in each of the colonies of British North America, and the creation of the colonies of New Brunswick and Cape Breton in 1784 provided a template for this purpose. As well, there was a desire to create some consistency within the British Parliamentary system: the British were starting to conceive of their model as an idea that could be exported around the globe.
The second goal was to ensure the power of the executive over elected representatives, which in some measure contradicted the first goal. The governor’s powers were, in fact, to increase at the head of an appointed executive council. An elected legislative council could draft legislation and recommend action, but it was the executive (over which the governor ruled) that made the key decisions.
What Britain sought, then, was the form of parliamentary government (an elected assembly, a royal representative in council), but its function would be defined by its loyalty to the Crown. Clearly the events in the American colonies had an impact on this thinking: there would be less autonomy allowed to colonial governments, not more.
The third goal of the Constitutional Act was to cut imperial costs by making it possible for the local governments to raise funds for local projects. This seems a small thing, but in the context of mercantilism it represented a break with the policy of heavy dependence on the mother country. Having self-sustaining but beholden colonies was the new objective.
Finally, the drafters of the new constitution envisioned two separate cultures in the Canadas, one that was predominantly Catholic and francophone (Lower Canada), the other made up chiefly of anglophones and influenced strongly by the Church of England (Upper Canada). To that end, the Clergy Reserves were created in the Constitutional Act: one-seventh of all lands in Upper Canada were granted to the Anglican Church. Moreover, land in Upper Canada would be surveyed according to British land-use practices: in blocks rather than in the narrow seigneurial strips. Dividing the colony thus addressed religious differences in Canada and land-use issues as well. It also attended to the issue of civil law. Upper Canada would have British common law while Lower Canada would continue to use the Coutume de Paris where appropriat