Sir George-Étienne Cartier
(September 6, 1814 - May 20, 1873) George-Étienne Cartier was one of the most influential politicians of his generation. Together with John A. Macdonald, he was co-premier of the Province of Canada. He took part in the Charlottetown, Québec and London conferences, and was among the most ardent supporters of Confederation. As one of the primary architects of Canadian Confederation, George-Étienne Cartier fully deserves to be called a Father of Confederation. Admitted to the Bar of Lower Canada in 1835, the first part of George-Étienne Cartier's public life was linked to the cause of the Patriotes. In 1834, he worked to elect Louis-Joseph Papineau and Robert Nelson. He was also a member of the Fils de la Liberté (Sons of Liberty) and, during the 1837 Rebellion, fought in the battle of Saint-Denis (November 22). After a brief exile in the United States, he returned to Lower Canada, where he practiced law from 1839 to 1848. The Sulpicians and the Grand Trunk Railway were among his clients. In fact, it was George-Étienne Cartier who, in 1852, presented a bill to the Union parliament to create the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada. George-Étienne Cartier entered politics in 1848, when he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Union of Canada as the representative for the riding of Verchères. In 1854 he joined the Cabinet, becoming provincial secretary for Canada East. When Étienne-Paschal Taché left political life, George-Étienne Cartier replaced him to form the government with John A. Macdonald, first from 1857 to 1858, and then from 1858 to 1862. After Sir Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine left and Étienne-Paschal Taché retired from politics, George-Étienne Cartier became the most influential politician in Canada. Following in the intellectual footsteps of Sir Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine, George-Étienne Cartier was in agreement with the Act of Union but began in 1858 to actively promote a federation of the provinces in North America. To this end, he travelled to London with Alexander Tilloch Galt and John Ross to try to convince Queen Victoria of the merits of a British North American union. Political instability in the Province of Canada reached its peak at this time, with no less than six governments in six years. George-Étienne Cartier joined the Great Coalition of 1864 to mitigate this situation and to set in motion the process leading to Confederation. On July 1, 1867, George-Étienne Cartier entered John A. Macdonald's first government as minister of militia and defense. As the law of the time allowed, he also ran in the provincial election and was elected into the government of Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau. Defeated in the 1872 federal elections in Montréal East, he was parachuted into the Provencher constituency in Manitoba. He would never see his riding. George-Étienne Cartier oversaw the negotiations between the Canadian and British governments and the Hudson's Bay Company in the purchase of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory. He also negotiated the creation of the province of Manitoba with Bishop Taché. He later played an active role in the negotiations leading to the entry of British Columbia into Confederation. It was also Cartier who, in 1872, introduced the bill on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the House of Commons. After his defeat in Montréal East in 1872, George-Étienne Cartier travelled to London hoping to find a cure for the chronic kidney condition which had plagued him for many years. His health did not improve and he died in London at the age of 58. When John A. Macdonald, his political ally for close to 20 years, announced news of Cartier's death to the House of Commons, he was reduced to tears. George-Étienne Cartier's funeral in Montréal drew a crowd the likes of which the city had never seen before. The information from this page is from: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/confederation/index-e.html |
Read the article below from the Globe and Mail and then answer the questions in the forum below.
Title: Who was the true father of Confederation?
Source:Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada). (Jan. 3, 2014): Opinion and Editorial: pA13. FromCanadian Periodical Byline: Alastair Sweeny CANADIAN HISTORY Sir John A. Macdonald was infinitely charming and crafty, but Confederation was not his achievement. Indeed, it could have happened without him. The real driver of Confederation was Macdonald's colleague, his "Siamese twin,"Sir George-Etienne Cartier. So why has Macdonald garnered better press, with some even calling him "Father of the Country"? Willful ignorance of the facts and reliance on myth, rather than reality. Richard Gwyn's recent two-volume retelling of the Macdonald legend is nicely written, but it does nothing to dispel that ignorance. Mr. Gwyn boldly states Macdonald was "British North America's irreplaceable man." In truth, our beloved whisky-sodden first prime minister was a follower, an also-ran in the movement to confederate.The fight for Confederation was a French-Canadian project, and Cartier became its leader. The French were enraged by Lord Durham's proposal to abolish Lower Canada and absorb it into a single province with Upper Canada, with the intent of assimilating the French. For 25 years, Cartier's party battled to restore a province where French Canadians would have a majority. Their weapon was bloc voting. If they remained united, and allied with an Upper Canada rump party, they would keep power. Indeed, it worked out that way: Cartier's party held power during all but two of the years leading up to Confederation. Following the retirement of Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, the Province of Canada had a succession of eight ministries kept in power by the big bleu/conservative majority. (The only exceptions were the shaky 1862-64 J. S. Macdonald-Sicotte-Dorion ministry and the short-lived Brown-Dorion ministry.) In 1864, frustrated by deadlock, GeorgeBrown acquiesced, joining Cartier and Macdonald's Great Coalition to work toward Confederation. Finally, Cartier controlled the levers to make Confederation happen. He was solicitor of the Grand Trunk Railway, the railway committee chair and minister of militia. He took the lead at Charlottetown in 1864, convincing Maritimers that the British provinces needed an intercolonial railway, a common defence against the United States and a railway to the Pacific. Even after 1867, he continued the great work, in some cases where Macdonald was indisposed or drunk. In the years before his death, Cartier handled the purchase of the North-Western Territory and Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Co. and, as acting prime minister, negotiated Manitoba's entry as a province. He met with B.C. delegates to draft their terms of union, telling them to press not for a wagon road, but for a railway. Why has he been downgraded in our national mythology? He was complicated and perhaps too passionate to be truly Canadian. You won't find Cartier bobbleheads at Wal-Mart. English Canadians yearn for a presidential founding father, their very own GeorgeWashington. They ignore Cartier, almost as a nuisance who gets in the way of adoration of Sir John A. Many French Canadians, identifying as a conquered nation and oppressed people respond similarly. Cartier doesn't fit the narrative. Even though he was the poet of the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837 and founded the new province of Quebec in 1867, he remains politically incorrect, almost invisible there Cartier's role in the Pacific Scandal was also a factor. Countless historians have reworked the fairy tale of money changing hands for the Canadian Pacific Railway contract, ignoring Cartier's fight against American railway promoters who wanted a southern CPR route, and paid to engineer his 1872 defeat. Macdonald's friends also contributed. Some questioned Cartier's state of mind before his death. Macdonald confessed to his first biographer, Joseph Pope, that "Cartier was as bold as a lion. He was just the man I wanted. But for him Confederation could not have been carried." In fact, the present nature of Confederation owes the most to Cartier's demands for provincial powers. Macdonald, with an eye on Cartier's voting bloc, didn't need much winning over. Cartier didn't merely supply the political capital for Confederation; he set the wheels in motion over track he himself had laid. Macdonald was just the man he wanted. Cartier himself made a telling argument against the Macdonald legend. On June 30, 1867, the eve of Dominion Day, Henry J. Morgan, author of The Canadian Parliamentary Companion, visited Cartier in Ottawa. Cartier was proud that he was "the first man, as prime minister of United Canada, to make Confederation an administrative act and to carry it to the foot of the Throne. "John A. had nothing to do with that." Alastair Sweeny is the author of George-Etienne Cartier: A Bio-graphy and consultant on a new Historica Canada Heritage Minute about him, which launches Jan. 11. Alastair Sweeny Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)"Who was the true father of Confederation?" Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada] 3 Jan. 2014: A13. Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. In the Forum below address the following questions?
1. After reading the information on Sir George-Étienne Cartier and John A. MacDonald, who would you say is the more important father of Confederation? 2. Are any facts in this article inaccurate or exaggerated? 3.Does this article change the way you think about Confederation or the founding fathers? |