|
A New
Nation | Nova
Scotia Balks | The Northwest
Territories | Manitoba & Riel
| Federal Provincial Relations
| British Columbia |
Prince Edward Island |
The Washington Treaty |
Scandal |
Liberal Interlude |
The National Policy |
The Railroad |
Immigration |
Rebellion |
Transition
Canada was founded by an act of the
British Parliament known as the British North American
Act or the BNA Act. This was the written contract or
rules and regulations which the four founding Provinces
(Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia)
had agreed to in conjunction with the British
government. In a wider sense the new Canadian government
and it's citizens also accepted the tradition and rights
of the people from the British system as it had been
developed over the centuries in the form of other
documents such as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as
well as various entrenched and sometimes intangible
rights and responsibilities of the people and the
government. The
new government under Macdonald did not wait long
to continue with its great project of nation building
and may have felt pressure to so when in 1867 the
American Secretary of State Cameron Seward concluded a
deal with the Russians to purchase Alaska from them for
a penny an acre or just over $7,000,000 dollars. This
arrangement now placed the U.S. on two sides of Canada
and the other British Colonies and threatened to
surround British North America. Macdonald, Cartier the
leader of the government in Quebec, and the Conservative
government entered into with Prince Edward Island, the
colony of Vancouver Island and British Columbia,
Newfoundland and the British Government over bringing
these other colonies and the great Northwest of the
Hudson Bay Company into Canada as additional provinces
and territories.
The first session of the New Parliament
of Canada began on December 4th, 1867 William McDougall
introduced a resolution which was ultimately intended
for Queen Victoria and was a proposal that the Hudson
Bay Company should turn over the vast lands of the
Northwest, know as Prince Rupert's Land to the Dominion.
This led to the dispatch of McDougall and Cartier in
October 1868 to London to negotiate with the Imperial
Government and the HBC for the transfer of the lands.
Within a few years, all except
Newfoundland had entered Confederation and Canada had
exploded in size becoming the second largest country in
the world and with a desperate need to somehow tie all
of these regions together as one State. |
