The Hub is pleased to present a weekly column from author and historian Antony Anderson on the week that was in Canadian history.
April 25, 1849: Canadians burn down their Parliament building
The world had been falling apart for quite some time. By the late 1840s, property prices had collapsed, bankruptcies abounded, and mills sat idle. Merchants and farmers had been stabbed in the back by the Mother Country which, in 1846, had repealed the Corn Laws that allowed Canadian “corns,” i.e. barley, oats, and wheat, into the British marketplace with minimal duties; the precious imperial preference snatched away, consigning loyal colonials to compete with foreigners in a harsher contest of freer trade. Some began to dream of annexation to the richer, prosperous southern republic.
Economic calamity was conjoined with political turmoil. After the rebellions a decade before, Upper and Lower Canadians—Protestant, Catholic, francophone, anglophones of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English descent, former Americans, all so multicultural—had been shoved into an unholy legislative union in 1841, becoming Canada West and Canada East within the united Province of Canada. In this face-to-face collision, electors and elected were, at the same time, grappling with a new scheme: responsible government, foisted on them with the full contrivance, again, of London.
Now the pampered and precious—who had been used to a world where good breeding had opened doors to plum patronage posts bestowed by friends and relatives enjoying their own plummy posts —had to endure a House of Assembly where their social inferiors had been chosen by the rabble and worse, where traitors had elected traitors who insisted on speaking French and demanding equality of status and treatment. Was God no longer an Englishman?
The rebellions of the 1830s—disorganized, flailing skirmishes really but unnerving nonetheless—continued to send aftershocks through the Canadas. Once the military had put down the rebels, and the judiciary had hung some of them and cast others into exile, individuals came forward seeking financial compensation for damage caused to their property by vandals and looters and in some cases, zealous government troops. Anglophone claimants in Canada West received compensation while—illogical, hypocritical—anglophone members in the new legislative union raged that any compensation to the francophones in Canada East was reward for treason. French claims were bogged down in debates and delays.
On January 30, 1847, into this slough of despond came the new governor general, James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, 12th Earl of Kincardine, dispatched to cajole rather than coerce entangled politicians into being responsible and responsive. His mission was daunting, made even more so, as he lamented in private, by “the materials with which I have to work in carrying out any measures for the public advantage. There are half a dozen parties here, standing on no principles, and all intent on making political capital out of whatever turns up.” Perceptive, charming, blessed with a disarming modesty of manner, he was exactly the right man for the crisis. And best of all, he knew his place
In February 1849, the Rebellion Losses bill formally turned up in the House of Assembly, then located in Montreal, the capital being a moving target in those days, alternating between French and English cities. The debate on compensation was, on the surface, about the money. Really, it was about anglophone prejudices and fears, about losing power, about having to live in a world that was making less sense. All too often, anger buried reason and middle grounds seemed to crumble on touch.
During one session, a fistfight broke out in the visitors’ gallery. In another, a young conservative politician from Kingston became so infuriated he challenged one of the government members to a duel and strode out of the House. The sergeant-at-arms raced to fetch the enraged member, a certain John A. Macdonald, and escorted him back to his seat so tempers could cool without shots being fired.
As an outsider to this sectarian feud, Elgin could afford to be emotionally detached. Naturally inclined to moderation, he worked with moderates on all sides to get the bill passed. The conservatives flooded him with petitions, trying to bypass the legislature, hoping he might dissolve the House or repeal the bill or punt it over to London where it might be suffocated. “The Tory party are doing what they can by menace, intimidation, and appeals to passion to drive me to a coup d’Ètat.” Elgin ignored these backstage machinations, knowing they could trigger another francophone rebellion and threaten the fragile union.
So he stuck to his radical plan: let the Canadians sort their messes out themselves in public. Thanks to brilliant diplomacy conducted by Premier Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and his right-hand man, Robert Baldwin, anglophone reformers from Canada West joined their reformist colleagues in Canada East to get the bill passed. (That is another story for another time.)
“The elected members duly fled from the invaders, rescuing the portrait of Queen Victoria on the way out.”
On April 25, 1849, Elgin ventured to the legislature, housed in the St. Anne’s Market building, to bestow royal assent. Duty performed, he left the building, striding through a crowd both cheering him and shouting abuse, and got into his carriage whereupon a handful of “persons of a respectable class in society” threw rocks and eggs at him. Elgin escaped without injury but the mob was not satisfied. An anglophone newspaper ran a special edition declaring, “Anglo-Saxons! You must live for the future. Your blood and race will now be supreme, if true to yourselves.” It called for a mass rally.
Some 1500 people gathered that evening at Champs de Mars, a large park in the heart of Montreal. In the glow of burning torches, hatred was spewed and farmed until a grievance convoy broke away and headed towards the legislature building. Members of Parliament were still in session debating a bill on courtroom procedures. Suddenly rocks shattered windows. The locked front doors to the building were battered open by the captain of the volunteer firefighters and a notary using the firefighters’ own ladder. The elected members duly fled from the invaders, rescuing the portrait of Queen Victoria on the way out. One of the mob members sat in the speaker’s chair and proclaimed the House dissolved. The intruders felt entitled to smash anything they could, including at least one chandelier fed by a gas pipe and indeed quite a few other gas pipes. Some flung their lit torches into the building. Flame mixed with gas and a fire broke out and spread, burning this makeshift Parliament building to the ground, including the 20,000 books in the library.
The next evening, gangs roamed the streets, attacking the homes of prominent reform politicians. Government troops needed another day to restore the peace. “I confess,” Elgin wrote in a private letter, “I did not before know how thin is the crust of order which covers the anarchical elements that boil and toss beneath our feet.”
The abused but undaunted governor general was invited to receive a formal apology from the House and mindful of keeping up the appearance of order, rode into town escorted by troops. Once again, the good people of Montreal threw stones at his carriage and then as he left, chased him in their cabs and carriages, throwing more rocks and curses. Elgin decided it would be prudent to remain out of town and out of view for the next few weeks so the anglophone mob would have no cause to riot again and likewise, the francophone populace would lack any excuse to rise to his defence.
In stark contrast to European governments dealing with their own riots the year before, neither Elgin nor the reform government responded with violence. He maintained his much tougher path of moderation. Author John Ralston Saul argues this is one of the defining moments in Canadian history.
The immediate temper cooled. The economy eventually picked up. Democracy, such as it was in the cantankerous province, went on evolving as francophones and anglophones kept on learning to live with each other. To defuse the annexationist threat, Elgin negotiated a trade deal with the United States, the Treaty of Reciprocity (1854–1865) which lasted until the republic collapsed into civil war. Suddenly British North America looked like the better choice. In one letter, he had noted in passing, “We must take the world as we find it.” Good thing he ignored his own advice. He had helped the young province from sliding into its own civil war.
