Suggested Study Questions

Following are some suggested questions to guide your study of the material on this website. The questions are organized according to the various sub-topics on the site.

After the "Questions" section there is an "Answers" section which offers responses to the questions given.

QUESTIONS

1) What improvements in transportation and communication in the mid-1800s contributed to unifying the British North American colonies?

2) What changes were occurring in the Canadian economy during the mid-1800s and how did railway development reflect these changes?

3) When and where was the first conference to discuss Confederation? In what way did this conference exhibit the regional conflicts that still plague Canada?

4) When the leaders were discussing the details of this proposed union at the Quebec Conference a month later, their arguments were about many of the same issues we discuss today in Canada.

(a) What is the difference between legislative union and federal union?
(b) Why would Maritimers and French Canadians prefer a federal union?
(c) What compromise did the fathers of Confederation agree to when they divided up powers between the central government and the provinces?

5) Why did the Rouges party in Canada East oppose Confederation?

6) Why did some Maritimers object to Confederation?

7) Why was Joseph Howe an influential person in Nova Scotia by 1867? Why did Nova Scotia premier Charles Tupper want Confederation passed as soon as possible?

8) Read over the biographies of the Fathers of Confederation. What did most of them have in common?

9) What act created the Dominion of Canada and became its first constitution? When was it passed?

10) What were the first four provinces of Canada?


ANSWERS

1) Railway, steamship and telegraph created links over a larger geographic area.

2) Moving away from mercantile system where Canada provided raw materials to British manufacturers (aided by Repeal of the Corn Act in Britain). Canada producing its own manufactured goods - new industrialists wanted larger market and a unified system of transportation to deliver their goods to larger home markets (esp. railways).

3) The Charlottetown Conference in P.E.I. 1864. The meeting was originally to be among Maritimers only, to discuss their possible union. Macdonald, Cartier, Brown and others from Canada East and Canada West went to the conference to promote their idea of a larger union (arrived by ship with fanfare, wives and champagne for a week of what we might today call “schmoozing”). They managed to persuade the delegates to consider their plan despite objections from a number of Maritimers including Joseph Howe of Nova Scotia.

4) (a) Legislative union: strong central government (all powers central). Federal union: each member equal (all provinces would have equal powers). (b) They would have equal voice (to larger, stronger provinces or the English majority) which they wouldn’t have in a majority-ruled system like legislative union. (c) Provinces had a specific list of powers including education and language and the federal government had all other (residual) powers necessary for “peace, order and good government.”

5) English Canadians would greatly outnumber French Canadians in the new House of Commons.

6) Their trade orientation was north-south with the United States and eastward with Britain; also feared loss of their special identity.

7) Newspaper owner, campaigned against oligarchies to become the father of responsible government in Nova Scotia, the first British North American colony to achieve it.

8) Connected to railway developers and the new industrialists.

9) The British North America Act. July 1, 1867

10) Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.