the distress in Nova Scotia and Québec, however, Macdonald once again set his sights on expansion. He now had his intercontinental railway, but Canada, in his view, was not whole. “The Dominion cannot be considered complete without Newfoundland. It has the key to our front door.” This lock, however, he was unable to open.
A dispute with the united states over trade and fishing erupted in 1886 with the seizure of an American fishing schooner, the David J. Adams, from Digby Harbour in Nova Scotia. The boat entered Canadian waters to buy ice and bait. A recent federal law permitted entry only for the purpose of acquiring wood, water, shelter, and repairs, and “for no other purposes whatever.” It seems peculiar and excessively nationalistic to deny a foreigner the opportunity to give Canadians money for what they regularly sold, but such was the sentiment of the day.
The Americans were understandably outraged. The Colonial Office initially sided with the Americans and set aside the Canadian law, which represented a humiliating setback for the Canadian government in its quest for independence. However, not long after, Macdonald persuaded the Imperial Government to consent to the Canadian bill and commit the Royal Navy to protect the Canadian fisheries.
A Québec provincial election was scheduled for October 14, 1886, the first time since Riel’s execution that French-speaking voters would go to the polls. The provincial Conservatives lost the election—but barely—taking 29 of 65 seats. Macdonald realized that his ability to sustain a national coalition depended on keeping Conservative forces alive and vibrant in Québec. “The triumph of the Rouges over the corpse of Riel changes the aspect of affairs
...of the Dominion government completely. It will encourage the Grits and opposition generally; will dispirit our friends, and will, I fear, carry the country against us at the general election.”
This gloomy prediction was partly influenced by the strong hand that Liberal Premier Oliver Mowat had in Ontario. But if there was any consolation in Québec, it was that Conservatives remained numerous in the legislature. It was far from a rout.
In Manitoba, the provincial government opposed the railway monopoly given to Canadian Pacific. Macdonald held firm. He was not about to allow his rail line to bleed into the United States. When the Manitoba government rebelled and passed legislation in 1887 creating its own competing Red River Valley Railway, an incensed Macdonald thundered to its Lieutenant Governor James Cox Aikins: “Your bankrupt population at Winnipeg must be taught a lesson, even if some of them are brought down to trial at Toronto for sedition.” He elaborated on his frustration to his colleagues: “When you reflect on the legislature of 35 members, with a population of 110,000, coolly devoting a million of dollars to build a railway from Winnipeg to the frontier, between two lines owned by the CPR, running in the same direction, one on the east and the other on the west side of the Red River, when there is not enough business for one of the two existing lines, you can understand the recklessness of that body.”
Within two weeks of the bill being passed by the Manitoba Legislature, it was “disallowed” by the federal government.
By 1887, more than four years had passed since the last federal election. Macdonald was biding his time, waiting for both the reaction to Riel’s hanging and general provincial discontent to dissipate. But he could not avoid the inevitable forever, and the election was called for February 22, 1887.
Despite Macdonald’s early predictions of defeat, his party won 122 of 215 seats, earning support from all parts of the country. The Liberals picked up only eight seats nationwide over their tally in 1872. Surprisingly, Macdonald outpolled the Liberals in Québec. Quebecers, it seemed, expressed their disapproval in the provincial election, but spared Macdonald when the federal vote was taken. For generations to come, Macdonald would be blamed for the poor showing of Conservatives in Québec, yet his supposed affront to French Canada did not undermine his political career. Nonetheless, the Riel incident was something Liberals would exploit for political advantage for the next century.
Despite Macdonald’s and his government’s longevity, the situation in Canada looked gloomy. The editorial in the Mail newspaper on October 27, 1887 raised serious doubt about the future of Canada.
Our enormous debt, the determination of the people of the Northwest to break loose from trade and transportation restrictions in defiance of the federal authority; the exodus of population from the Northwest and the far larger stream pouring out of the older provinces; and threats of secession heard in the three Maritime provinces; the decline in our exports which are less today by five dollars per head of population than they were in 1873, although since then we have spent no less than $120 million of borrowed money in developing our resources; the gathering of the local premiers at Québec to devise ways and means of allaying provincial discontent and averting provincial bankruptcy—these, to go no further, are phenomena, which, if they presented themselves in any other country, young or old, we should regard as the forerunners of dissolution.
The basic question was whether Macdonald’s vision of the confederation of British colonies, designed in large measure to resist an enormous pull of the United States, could be sustained. Would Canada succeed as an independent nation? Was Canada a mistake?
Despite a desire by Macdonald and the colonial office for a strong central government, the provinces had been winning more battles than they lost with the federal government. And citizen allegiance was proving to be more provincial than federal. The size of the provinces, particularly after expansion in Québec and Ontario, added to their power.
Macdonald envisioned provinces of roughly equal population, but seemed helpless when confronted with boundary changes. If he could not stop Ontario from growing, he had to let Québec acquire new lands to maintain balance. Macdonald feared more from provincial boundary readjustment than the other threats to nationhood. “I have little doubt that a great portion of the vast region asked for by the two provinces will be capable of receiving and will receive a large population ...I look to the future in this matter . . . farther ahead perhaps than I should. But are we not founding a nation? Now just consider for yourself—what a country of millions lying between English Canada and the Atlantic will be.”
Macdonald’s battles with the provinces continued. In the fall of 1887 the new Québec premier Honoré Mercier announced his intention to call a conference of the provinces to consider “their financial and other relations” with the federal government. The provinces urged revocation of the federal power of disallowance and sought more money from the federal government. Macdonald scoffed at the conference. There was nothing in the Constitution that contemplated such an arrangement and he was not about to give it legitimacy. He would negotiate grievances only with individual provinces. Harper appears to be following Macdonald’s lead, and did not hold a full-scale first minister’s conference over his first term as prime minister.
Macdonald wanted to retire, however, and was constantly surveying his Cabinet for a successor. He also wanted his Cabinet take more of the load of governance. But whenever Macdonald challenged the Cabinet to develop policy and offer opinions it simply deferred to his judgment. In frustration, he remarked “now this acquiescence is flattering enough, but it does not help me.”
Nevertheless, Macdonald opposed what he saw as a North America centric vision for Canada. Liberals called for a commercial union and unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. To Macdonald, this was an unacceptable first step towards political integration. “It looks like sheer insanity (for Liberals) to propose practically to limit our foreign trade to the United States when there is such an immense opening for the development of our commerce with the rest of the world.”
A larger threat to Canada than a debate over foreign trade policy, however, was the cultural divisions within its own borders. Agitator D’Alton McCarthy, a former Tory MP, had been fomenting discord over the use of the French language in Ontario and the West. He wanted Canada to pursue a vision and policies that supported a single national identity: an English one. He helped persuade the government of Manitoba to abolish the French language in public schools. Not long after, the Northwest Territories followed suit. But the use of the French language in schools was a right guaranteed by the articles under which these provinces and territories joined Confederation, a right