John A (67 page)

^*147
This first version of the BNA Act contained only twenty-two clauses and, unlike the Quebec Resolutions and the final act, did not specify the powers of the central government, relying instead on its general enabling power to make laws for “the peace, order and good government.”
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^*148
This crashing fall from grace is reported in the biography by Elisabeth Batt,
Monck: Governor General, 1861–1868
. She hedges her bets by saying that although this story is told by Monck's descendants, it should be remembered that “the Irish were ever loath to spoil a good story for lack of a ha-porth' of exaggeration.”
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^*149
An apt description of what Macdonald was doing would be “ragging the puck,” except that hockey was then so new that the phrase had yet to be minted.
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^†150
In fact, the
Globe
got hold of a summary of the BNA Bill and published it in late February 1867, fiercely attacking the shifts in jurisdiction to favour Ottawa and the increase in subsidies to the Maritimes. By that time, though, it was all too little, too late.
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^*151
One of the particular attractions of the Westminster Palace Hotel was that it had been equipped with that new technological marvel, an elevator.
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^*152
Hewitt Bernard did keep some scanty minutes.
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^*153
Macdonald was wearing so many garments in bed simply because British buildings in those days were heated only by open fires, windows were single paned and doors gaped.
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^*154
The British authorities insisted on adding a provision authorizing the cabinet to appoint extra senators under exceptional circumstances. This power was first used by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1990 to secure passage of the Goods and Services' Tax Bill through a Liberal-dominated Senate.
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^*155
Feo Monck, in her diary about the 1864 Quebec Conference, recalled Macdonald telling her teasingly that the new nation might be called “Canadin” and, as might well have actually happened, that “in some speeches he had said that, to please the Nova Scotians, it should be called ‘Acadia.'” She concluded, “John A. is very agreeable.”
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^†156
At the time, it was widely assumed that the likeliest sibling to be sent to rule Canada as its King was the third son, Prince Arthur. He did in fact make it, although in a lesser role. In 1911, Prince Arthur, by then the Duke of Connaught, was appointed governor general, serving until 1916. He died in 1942, at the age of ninety-one.
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^†157
Quite different, though, was the first draft of the British North America Bill as sent from the Colonial Office to the delegates at the Westminster Palace Hotel. To the fury of the Canadians, this version used the word “colony” throughout, declaring that the provinces were to be “united into one colony.” The offending word was struck out and never used again.
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^*158
A problem with the chosen title, “Dominion,” overlooked by the London Conference delegates, was that no ready translation for the term exists in French. The one most often used, “La Puissance,” is hardly satisfactory.
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^†159
Carnarvon reached this judgment despite Monck's counter-argument that “Kingdom” would meet “the natural yearning of a growing people to emerge…from the provincial phase of existence.”
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^†160
Tilley's authorship was confirmed by his son, also called Leonard, in a letter he wrote on June 28, 1917, on the eve of Confederation's half-century, to the High Court registrar in Toronto. He recounted that his father had told him how he came upon the phrase in his daily Bible reading, and, “When he went back to the sitting of the convention that morning,” he had suggested the title, “which was agreed to.”
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^*161
Waite included this sentence in his 1953 doctoral thesis, “Ideas and Politics in British North America, 1864–66.”
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^*162
Not until January 23, 1867, does the familiar “Peace, Order and good Government” triad appear in a draft. This version reappears in the later drafts of January 30 and February 2 and then in the actual BNA Act.
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^†163
One of the very few substantial references during the entire Confederation process to the phrase “Peace, Order and good Government” was made not by any Father of Confederation but by its godfather, Colonial Secretary Lord Carnarvon. In his speech in the Lords introducing the British North America Bill, he said that the powers of the federal government “extend to all laws made for the ‘peace, order and good government' of Confederation”—a term he described as having “an ample measure of legislative authority.”
The author has been able to find only one early use of “peace and order” in its contemporary descriptive sense. The anti-Confederate Howe once described the Maritimes as “accustomed to peace and order,” in contrast to the belligerent, boastful Canadians. And he made this remark back in 1849.
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^*164
The phrase's origin is most probably in John Locke's
Two Treatises of Government
of that same year of 1689, where Locke described government's purpose as “the Peace, Security and publick good of the people.”
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^†165
The form used in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the earliest appearance of the phrase in Canada, was “Public Peace, Welfare, and good Government.”
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^*166
To appreciate why Morton's insight should have had such a consciousness-raising effect, it should be remembered that right afterwards—in 1965—George Grant published his seminal
Lament for a Nation
, which itself had so powerful an effect among Canadian nationalists.
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^†167
Much of the material for this section was provided by the research staff of the Library of Parliament. A number of the facts are drawn from a groundbreaking article by the historian Stephen Eggleston in the
Journal of Canadian Studies
.
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^*168
Lady Macdonald's diary covers the years 1867 to 1869 with some regularity, but later entries are few and far between. Her diary is the only known one kept by a Canadian prime ministerial spouse.
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^*169
Marriage contracts of this kind were quite common—most particularly when the woman was bringing property into the union and would immediately lose control over it to her husband—until the passage of the Married Women's Property Act of 1887.
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^*170
Her ancestry, through her mother, was Scottish.
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^*171
The details about Macdonald's self-designation as “Honourable” and of the other distinguished marriages at St. George's Church were uncovered by the journalist Arthur Milnes on a research trip to London.
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^†172
Disraeli once paid his wife, Mary, the highest-possible matrimonial compliment by telling her she was “more a mistress than a wife.” At the end of a long day in the Commons, Disraeli returned home to find Mary had stayed up waiting for him with a bottle of cooled champagne and a pork pie from Fortnum and Mason.
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^*173
Earlier, Carnarvon, for the same purpose of limiting debate, had called the bill “in the nature of a treaty.”
The Daily News
commented tartly that it was, in fact, “merely an inter-colonial project.”
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^*174
British MPs were famously uninterested in colonial affairs. On one occasion a debate was held in the Commons to determine why this should be so: few attended, and the debate ended inconclusively.
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^*175
That Agnes's mother and brother lived with her at the start of her marriage prompted historian Keith Johnson to write one of the niftiest footnotes in Canadian historiography—“Macdonald had in-laws the way other people had mice.”
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^*176
When the diary was published in 1873, Feo Monck's “beastly” was toned down to “horrid.”
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^*177
This was by no means a failing only of Ottawa. Anna Jameson, in her
Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada of 1838
, noted, “A Canadian settler
hates
a tree, regards it to be destroyed, eradicated, annihilated…. The idea of useful or ornamental is seldom associated here even with the most magnificent timber trees.”
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^†178
Smith was in fact anticipating things. In 1867, the entire new dominion civil service numbered just 2, 660. As for the “professional politicians,” only a few dozen actually lived in Ottawa. Most members of Parliament got by in boarding houses during the three months or so that Parliament met each year. Not until after the Second World War did Ottawa become a politics-obsessed, one-industry town.
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^*179
Kenny's career continued in anonymity, but of a most agreeable kind. After resigning from the cabinet in 1870, he was appointed a senator and later gained a knighthood.
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^*180
The super winner of the Confederation senatorial lottery had to have been New Brunswick's David Wark. Called to the Upper House in October 1867, Wark remained a senator for forty years, leaving the chamber only by death in 1905, at the age of 101.
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^*181
The celebrations staged by Canadians were outclassed, inevitably, by the great Exposition Universelle held in Paris in that same year of 1867. It attracted ten million visitors. Several Canadian companies even won prizes for their goods; the prize that mattered, though, was the victory by a crew from Saint John, NB, at the World Rowing Championships held on the Seine.
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