Christopher Pennington - The Destiny of Canada

THE DESTINY OF CANADA

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THE DESTINY OF CANADA

Macdonald, Laurier, and the Election of 1891

CHRISTOPHER PENNINGTON

ALLEN LANE CANADA

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First published 2011

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Copyright Christopher Pennington, 2011

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Pennington, Christopher John, 1977

The destiny of Canada : Macdonald, Laurier, and the election of 1891 / Christopher Pennington.

(The history of Canada)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-670-06621-6

1. Macdonald, John A. (John Alexander), 18151891.

2. Laurier, Wilfrid, Sir, 18411919. 3. Canada--History--18671914. 4. Canada--Politics and government18781896.

I. Title. II. Series: History of Canada (Toronto, Ont.)

FC520.P46 2011 971.054 C2011-900750-9

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Dedicated to Chris, Ian, Emmett, and Winston

INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF CANADA SERIES

Canada, the world agrees, is a success story. We should never make the mistake, though, of thinking that it was easy or foreordained. At crucial moments during Canadas history, challenges had to be faced and choices made. Certain roads were taken and others were not. Imagine a Canada, indeed imagine a North America, where the French and not the British had won the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. Or imagine a world in which Canadians had decided to throw in their lot with the revolutionaries in the thirteen colonies.

This series looks at the making of Canada as an independent, self-governing nation. It includes works on key stages in the laying of the foundations as well as the crucial turning points between 1867 and the present that made the Canada we know today. It is about those defining moments when the course of Canadian history and the nature of Canada itself were oscillating. And it is about the human beingsheroic, flawed, wise, foolish, complexwho had to make decisions without knowing what the consequences might be.

We begin the series with the European presence in the eighteenth centurya presence that continues to shape our society todayand conclude it with an exploration of the strategic importance of the Canadian Arctic. We look at how the mass movements of peoples, whether Loyalists in the eighteenth century or Asians at the start of the twentieth, have profoundly influenced the nature of Canada. We also look at battles and their aftermaths: the Plains of Abraham, the 1866 Fenian raids, the German submarines in the St. Lawrence River during World War II. Political crisesthe 1891 election that saw Sir John A. Macdonald battling Wilfrid Laurier; Pierre Trudeaus triumphant patriation of the Canadian Constitutionprovide rich moments of storytelling. So, too, do the Expo 67 celebrations, which marked a time of soaring optimism and gave Canadians new confidence in themselves.

We have chosen these critical turning points partly because they are good stories in themselves but also because they show what Canada was like at particularly important junctures in its history. And to tell them we have chosen Canadas best historians. Our authors are great storytellers who shine a spotlight on a different Canada, a Canada of the past, and illustrate links from then to now. We need to remember the roads that were takenand the ones that were not. Our goal is to help our readers understand how we got from that past to this present.

Margaret MacMillan Warden at St. Antonys College, Oxford

Robert Bothwell May Gluskin Chair of Canadian History University of Toronto

PREFACE

Why write a book about the election of 1891? Is it a story that needs to be told? No one seems to have thought so, admittedly, in the one hundred and twenty years since it took place. Historians have penned a few articles about particular aspects of the subject, and it has made notable cameo appearances in several books situated in the late nineteenth century.

Thats wrong. There was nothing run-of-the-mill about the election of 1891. The great issue at stake was nothing less than the future of the relationship between Canada and the United States, and by extension, the future of Canada itself. The most immediate matter was the proper trade policy to pursue with the Americans. Was it best to keep up the National Policy of Sir John A. Macdonald and his Conservative government? Its high tariffs against British and American imports protected Canadian manufacturers from foreign competition, but also tended to stifle trade with the United States. Canada was then in a very bad way economically, particularly in relation to the United States, and by 1891twelve years after the National Policy had taken effectmany Canadians had lost faith in the wisdom of fighting a never-ending tariff war with their vastly larger and more prosperous southern neighbour.

In the election of 1891, for the first time in Canadian history, the electorate was presented with a clear and radical alternative to the National Policy. Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberals, throwing caution to the wind, ran on a platform of unrestricted reciprocity. At first glance it was a simple and appealing proposal: absolute free trade with the United States and, as a consequence, free access to the sixty million potential customers in the American domestic market. Its achievement would be a dream come true for Canadian exporters, especially the farmers who still made up three-quarters of the population. It was widely hoped in Canada that this heroic remedy would rescue the country from the economic doldrums, bring an end to a long era of gloomy pessimism, and reinforce the trembling foundations of Confederation itself.