What Canada’s founders thought of the United States

Delegates of the Charlottetown Conference, with future prime minister John A. Macdonald sitting at the centre. The gathering in September 1864 was a key step toward Canadian Confederation and took place during the height of the American Civil War. Photo by Library and Archives Canada

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In a landmark 1864 speech, Sir John A. Macdonald, the future first prime minister of Canada, admonished listeners who might be inclined to see the neighbouring United States as a “failure.”

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“On the contrary, I consider it a marvellous exhibition of human wisdom,” said Macdonald. “It was as perfect as human wisdom could make it.”

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Macdonald would of course come to be the central figure in the creation of Canada, a country whose entire purpose was to prevent the top half of North America from becoming the United States.

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Despite this, there’s little if any America hate to be found in the various speeches, letters and debates that led to Canada’s founding. On the contrary, Canada’s creators admired and respected their southern neighbour, and sought their own country in part because they thought they could build a better version.

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During an 1865 Confederation debate, Quebec politician Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière referred to Americans as a “great people” whose example “dazzled” the average Canadian.

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That same debate would have another representative reference George Washington as the founder of a “great country.” Yet another would praise the U.S. Constitution as a document “laid down by some of the wisest and ablest statesmen.”

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U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had just been assassinated, and after passing a resolution expressing their “most profound regret” at the “atrocious crime,” they suspended legislative proceedings for the week out of respect.

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In his own landmark 1865 speech making the case for an independent Canada, Father of Confederation George Brown read out a series of U.S. economic statistics in order to argue if Canada did everything right, they might be able to match the “wondrous material progress” of their American neighbours.

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George-Étienne Cartier, Quebec’s main representative on Confederation, had even lived in the United States for a time as a political exile. As a younger man, he had needed to hide out in Vermont after participating in the 1837 Lower Canadian rebellion against British rule.

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When British Columbians met in 1870 to debate their entry into Canada, they acknowledged that their prosperity up until that point had been owed to a “powerful and active” United States.

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“The United States hem us in on every side; it is the Nation by which we exist; it is the Nation which has made this Colony what it is,” said B.C. representative Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken.

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This was an era in which Canadians had no shortage of legitimate grievances against their U.S. neighbour.

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The U.S. and Canada had enjoyed a kind of early free trade agreement starting in 1854, only for Canadian industry to be sidelined by the U.S. Congress suddenly cancelling the agreement in 1866.

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What’s more, in this era British North America was regularly plagued by miniature invasions of their territory staged from U.S. soil. Those would be the Fenian Raids, a series of armed invasions of Canadian territory by U.S.-based Irish nationalists.