Canadian Confederation (French: Confédération canadienne) was the process by which three British North American provinces—the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—were united into one federation, called the Dominion of Canada, on July 1, 1867. This process occurred with the rising tide of Canadian nationalism that was then beginning to swell within these provinces and others. It reached fruition through the British North America Act, 1867 (today known as the Constitution Act, 1867) which had been based on resolutions agreed to by colonial delegates in the 1864 Quebec Conference, later finalized in the 1866 London Conference.
Upon Confederation, Canada consisted of four provinces: Ontario and Quebec, which had been split out from the Province of Canada, and the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The province of Prince Edward Island, which had hosted the first meeting to consider Confederation, the Charlottetown Conference, did not join Confederation until 1873. Over the years since Confederation, Canada has seen numerous territorial changes and expansions, resulting in the current collection of ten provinces and three territories.
Political impasse in the Province of Canada and the loss of preferential access to U.S. markets after Washington cancelled the Canadian–American Reciprocity Treaty in 1866 sharpened the colonies' sense of economic vulnerability and motivated the desire for federal unification and market integration. The leaders of the Maritime colonies pressed for Ottawa's assumption of their public debts and for an intercolonial railway that would bind the trade of the St. Lawrence to an ice-free Atlantic port, while politicians across Canada West and Canada East saw federation as the only way to break legislative deadlock and finance large-scale infrastructure. At the same time, lingering fears of the U.S. concept of manifest destiny, memories of the Fenian raids, and Britain's desire to off-load defence costs persuaded many that a larger fiscal and military union offered the surest bulwark against American pressure and metropolitan indifference. The motto "peace, order, and good government" arose as an expression of a distinctly Canadian formulation of constitutional government in North America.
While historians have often portrayed Confederation as having emerged from pragmatic and administrative rationales, recent scholarship has uncovered a rich contest of ideas beneath the politicking, involving competing conceptions of order, power, liberty, rights, national development, and imperial autonomy. Confederation's legacy remains debated, celebrated as the moment Canada's people assumed control of its own development and started on the course to sovereignty, questioned for the limited place it left Indigenous peoples, and continually reinterpreted as constitutional debates over such things as the nature of Canadian federalism or the character of the founding compact reshape the understanding of its impact and significance.
Canada is a federation, rather than a confederate association of sovereign states, which is what confederation means in contemporary political theory. The country, though, is often considered to be among the world's more decentralized federations. Use of the term confederation arose in the Province of Canada to refer to proposals beginning in the 1850s to federate all of the British North American colonies, as opposed to only Canada West (now Ontario) and Canada East (now Quebec). To contemporaries of Confederation, the con- prefix indicated a strengthening of the centrist principle compared to the American federation.
In this Canadian context, confederation describes the political process that united the colonies in 1867, events related to that process, and the subsequent incorporation of other colonies and territories. The word is now often used to describe Canada in an abstract way, such as in "the Fathers of Confederation"; provinces that became part of Canada after 1867 are also said to have joined, or entered into, Confederation (but not the Confederation). The term is also used to divide Canadian history into pre-Confederation and post-Confederation periods.
The original Fathers of Confederation are those delegates who attended any of the conferences held at Charlottetown and Quebec in 1864 or in London, United Kingdom, in 1866, leading to Confederation. There were 36 original Fathers of Confederation; Hewitt Bernard, who was the recording secretary at the Charlottetown Conference, is considered by some to be among them.
The individuals who brought the other provinces into Confederation after 1867 are also referred to as Fathers of Confederation. In this way, Amor De Cosmos, who was instrumental both in bringing democracy to British Columbia and in bringing the province into Confederation, is considered to be a Father of Confederation. As well, Joey Smallwood referred to himself as "the Last Father of Confederation" because he helped lead Newfoundland into the union in 1949.
All the former colonies and territories that became involved in the Canadian Confederation on July 1, 1867, were initially part of New France, and were once ruled by France. Nova Scotia was granted in 1621 to Sir William Alexander under charter by James I. This claim overlapped the French claims to Acadia, and although the Scottish colony of Nova Scotia was short-lived, for political reasons, the conflicting imperial interests of France and the 18th century Great Britain led to a long and bitter struggle for control. The British acquired present-day mainland Nova Scotia by the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 and the Acadian population was expelled by the British in 1755. They renamed Acadia "Nova Scotia", which included present-day New Brunswick. The rest of New France was acquired by the British as the result of its defeat of New France in the Seven Years' War, which ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. From 1763 to 1791, most of New France became the Province of Quebec. However, in 1769 the present-day Prince Edward Island, which had been part of Acadia, was renamed "St John's Island" and organized as a separate colony. It was renamed "Prince Edward Island" in 1798 in honour of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn.
The first English attempt at settlement on that part of the continent that would become modern Canada had been in Newfoundland which would not join Confederation until 1949. The Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol began to settle Newfoundland and Labrador at Cuper's Cove as far back as 1610, and Newfoundland had also been the subject of a French colonial enterprise.
During and after the U.S. War of Independence, an estimated 50,000 United Empire Loyalists fled to British North America. The British created the separate province of New Brunswick in 1784 for Loyalists who settled in the western part of Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia (including New Brunswick) received slightly more than half of this influx, and many Loyalists settled in the province of Quebec, which later by the Constitutional Act 1791 was separated into a predominantly English Upper Canada and a predominantly French Lower Canada. The War of 1812 and Treaty of 1818 established the border between British North America and the United States at the 49th parallel from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains in Western Canada.
Following the Rebellions of 1837, Lord Durham in his Durham Report, recommended Upper and Lower Canada be joined as the Province of Canada and the new province should have a responsible government. As a result of Durham's report, the British Parliament passed the Act of Union 1840, and the Province of Canada was formed in 1841. The new province had two parts: Canada West (the former Upper Canada, today's Ontario) and Canada East (the former Lower Canada, today's Quebec). Governor General Lord Elgin granted ministerial responsibility in 1848, first to Nova Scotia and then to the Province of Canada. Later, the British parliament extended responsible government to Prince Edward Island (1851), New Brunswick (1854), and Newfoundland (1855).