1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University and
the editor of Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

Christopher Moore, a well-respected private historian, has written a
popular account of the making of Canadian Confederation. His purpose is
to examine the process by which the union of the British North American
colonies was achieved in 1867, and to draw some lessons from the
experience that might help us in our present frustrated constitutional
negotiations.

Moore points out that with the exception of a 1995 book by Ged Martin,
there has been very little written on Confederation since the
celebratory works by P.B. Waite, Donald Creighton, and W.L. Morton in
the 1960s. His is not a revisionist account. He challenges not the
findings of these earlier historians but rather the misinterpretations
of more recent commentators such as Peter Russell. His sources are
mostly secondary works—histories, scholarly articles,
biographies—but include a limited amount of archival material. He
rightly points out the enduring value of G. Peter Brown’s collection
of Confederation documents, prepared for undergraduate use in 1969 and
still the principal collection in the field.

There is some discussion of the influence of Edmund Burke’s writings
on the thinking of some of the colonial Confederation delegates, and of
Walter Bagehot’s exposition on the merits of mid-19th-century British
parliamentary government. These sections divert the reader from the main
course of the study and add little to our understanding of the
Confederation process.

In comparing 1864–67 and the present constitution-making impasse,
Moore points out that Macdonald and Tupper included opposition leaders
in their delegations to the Confederation con-ferences. He believes that
this tactic yielded use-ful results and regrets that it was not adopted
in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown discussions. However, his argument
is undermined by the fact that the opposition parties in Parliament and
the provincial legislatures supported both accords.

Moore is on firmer ground in maintaining that Confederation was a
legislative achievement rather than an executive one. It was the product
of a broadly based, well-informed electorate expressing its views
through a group of independent and vigilant legislatures. At the time,
party caucuses were powerful instruments by which the legislature
asserted its authority over party leaders. Today, this relationship has
been reversed: governments control Parliament as back-benchers carry out
the will of ministers and prime ministers. Moore believes that MPs must
assume their fundamental duty to make or break governments—a function
whose exercise was key to the process that gave rise to the British
North America Act. The limitations of executive leadership are the
reason for the failure of modern attempts at constitution-making. The
argument is debatable, but it is presented here with vigor and balance.

Especially interesting are Moore’s vivid portraits of the
Confederation principals. They were a varied lot, and he brings out
their strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncracies. His well-written book,
which includes a serviceable index, is recommended for the general
reader who is interested in how the political process worked 100 years
ago, and how it might work more effectively today.