John A. Macdonald

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Sir John Alexander Macdonald, GCB, KCMG, PC, QC, DCL, LL.D (January 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891) was the first Prime Minister of Canada from July 1, 1867 – November 5, 1873 and October 17, 1878 – June 6, 1891.

John Alexander Macdonald was born on January 11, 1815 in Glasgow, Scotland. His parents were Hugh Macdonald, an unsuccessful merchant and his wife Helen Shaw, who met in Scotland in 1811. After the failure of his father's business ventures, his family emigrated to Kingston, Upper Canada in 1820 along with thousands of others seeking affordable land and promises of new prosperity. Hugh's fortunes were to rise there. John was educated in the area's finest schools.

Macdonald became a lawyer in 1834 and set up his own law practice in Kingston. He earned the esteem of many by his unsuccessful but solid defence of the American raiders who were captured at the Battle of the Windmill (1838, near Prescott, Ontario) in the Rebellions of 1837. In 1843, at the age of 28, he married his cousin Isabella Clark (1811 - 1857). Soon after the wedding, Isabella became terribly sick with a mystery illness. She depended on medication and spent most of her time in bed. They had two children: a son named John, who died when he was 13 months old, and a second son Hugh John, who was raised by the family's neighbours and went on to become premier of the Province of Manitoba. The couple's marriage was ended after 14 years when Isabella died in 1857.

In 1867, at the age of 52, John A. Macdonald married his second wife Susan Agnes Bernard (1836-1920). They had one daughter, Margaret Mary Theodora Macdonald (1869-1933), who was born with hydrocephalus and suffered from physical and mental disabilities. Macdonald always hoped she would recover, but she never did. Sometimes, he would return home late from the House of Commons to rock his baby to sleep.

Contents

1 Political rise
2 Father of Confederation
3 Prime Minister
4 Titular honours
5 Supreme Court appointments
6 Trivia
7 References
8 External links

Political rise

In 1843, Macdonald exhibited his first interest in politics. He was elected to the legislature of the Province of Canada, gained the recognition of his peers and in 1847 was appointed Receiver General in William Henry Draper's administration. However, Macdonald had to give up his portfolio when Draper's government lost the next election. He left the Conservatives, hoping to build a more moderate and palatable base. In 1854, his helped with the founding of the Liberal-Conservative Party under the leadership of Sir Allan McNab. Within a few years, the Liberal-Conservatives would attract all of the old Conservative base as well as some centrist Reformers. The Liberal-Conservatives came to power in 1854 and under the new administration Macdonald was appointed Attorney-General. During his time in cabinet, Macdonald was usually the most powerful minister, even when other men held the premiership. In the next election Macdonald continued his rise in politics by becoming Joint Premier of the Province of Canada with Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché of Québec for the years 1856 and 1857.

Taché resigned in 1857, and George-Étienne Cartier took his place. In the election of 1858, the Macdonald-Cartier government was defeated and they resigned as Premiers. In an interesting piece of politics, the Governor General of Canada asked Cartier to become the senior Premier, only a week after his defeat. Cartier accepted and brought Macdonald into office along with him. This was legal as any member of the cabinet could re-enter the cabinet provided they did so within a month of resigning their previous position. Macdonald focused on communications and defence, especially the Intercolonial Railway. Canada had to pressure the Colonial Office, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and PEI to, as one historian notes, "consider an ambitious scheme proposed by their pushing and turbulent neighbor, Canada." [Creighton, 1956, p. 273]

The coalition government was again defeated in 1862. Macdonald then served as the leader of the opposition until the election of 1864, when Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché came out of retirement and joined ranks with Macdonald to form the governing party yet again.

Father of Confederation

At this point in Macdonald's career, he began to look to the future of politics in his region. He was the leader of arguably the largest British colony in the surrounding area and had the power to help enact agreements to confederate the British colonies. This would be done in an attempt to provide stability to the colonies, which were experiencing frequent government changes, to provide the basis for expansion into the West, and to create a unified country in order to guard against attacks from the Americans to the south.

To prevent the frequent changes of government in the Province of Canada, George Brown, the leader of the Reformers (the forerunners to the Liberal Party of Canada) and an extremely vocal opponent of Macdonald's Conservatives, joined with Macdonald in 1864 to form the "Great Coalition." This was an important step towards Confederation. Macdonald then spent 1864 to 1867 organizing the legislation needed to confederate the colonies into the country of Canada. In September 1864, he led the Canadian delegation at the Charlottetown Conference in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to present his idea to the Maritime colonies, who were discussing a union of their own. In October 1864 delegates for confederation met in Quebec City, Quebec for the Quebec Conference where the Seventy-Two Resolutions were created -- the plan for confederation. By 1866, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada had agreed to confederation. Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island were opposed. In the final conference of confederation held in 1866 in London, the agreement to confederate was completed.

In 1867, the British Parliament passed the British North America Act, creating the Dominion of Canada. Upon the creation of the dominion, the Province of Canada was then split into the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. (These provinces were considerably smaller than they are now, since much of their northern territory was still part of Rupert's Land, owned by the Hudson's Bay Company.)

Queen Victoria knighted John A. Macdonald for playing the integral role in bringing about Confederation. His appointment as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George was announced on the birth of the Dominion, July 1, 1867. An election was held in August which put Macdonald and his Conservative party into power.

Prime Minister

A Conservative election poster from 1891.

As Prime Minister, Macdonald's vision was to enlarge the country and unify it. Accordingly, under his rule Canada bought Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory from the Hudson's Bay Company for £300,000 (about $11,500,000). This land became the Northwest Territories. In 1870 Parliament passed the Manitoba Act, creating the province of Manitoba out of a portion of the Northwest Territories in response to the Red River Rebellion led by Louis Riel.

In 1871 the British parliament added British Columbia to Confederation, making it the sixth province. Macdonald promised a transcontinental railway connection to persuade the province to join, which his opponents decried as a highly unrealistic and expensive promise. In 1873 Prince Edward Island joined Confederation, and Macdonald created the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (then called the "North-West Mounted Police") to act as a police force for the vast Northwest Territories.

After the Pacific scandal in 1873, in which Macdonald was accused of taking bribes to award contracts for the construction of the railway, he was forced to resign and Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie formed a caretaker government. The subsequent 1874 federal election was won by the Mackenzie Liberals. Macdonald was returned to power in 1878 on the strength of the National Policy, a plan to promote trade within the country by protecting it from the industries of other nations and renewing the effort to complete the previously promised Canadian Pacific Railway, which was accomplished in 1885. That year, Louis Riel also returned to Canada and launched the North-West Rebellion in the territory of Saskatchewan, but now that there was a railway through the area the North-West Mounted Police were quickly sent to put it down. The trial and subsequent execution of Riel for treason caused a deep political division between French Canadians, who supported Riel (a culturally French Métis) and English Canadians, who supported Macdonald.

In 1891, Macdonald won the elections again, but by this time, 76-year-old political warhorse started to feel the years of overwork, stress, drink and several bouts of severe illness, including a gallstone problem in 1870 that turned his office into a sick room for two months. On May 29, 1891, Sir John A. suffered a severe stroke, which robbed him of the ability to speak, and from which he would never recover. He died a week later on June 6, 1891 at the age of 76. He would lie in state in the Canadian Senate Chamber (Prime Ministers now lie in state in the Hall of Honour in the Centre Block) where grieving Canadians turned out in the thousands to pay their respects. His state funeral was held on June 9, attended by hundreds of thousands of people. He is buried in Cataraqui Cemetery near Kingston, Ontario.

His career spanned 19 years, making Sir John A. Macdonald the second longest serving Prime Minister of Canada. He is the only Canadian Prime Minister to win six majority governments. He won praise for having helped forge a nation of sprawling geographic size, with two diverse European colonial origins, and a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds and political views.

Sir John A. Macdonald is depicted on the Canadian ten-dollar bill. He also has bridges, airports, and highways named after him (such as the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway), as well as a plethora of schools across the country. Macdonald and his son, Hugh John Macdonald briefly sat together in the Canadian House of Commons prior to the elder Macdonald's death.

Macdonald's funeral train carried his remains on June 10 1891, from Ottawa to Kingston.

In 2004, Sir John A. Macdonald was nominated as one of the top 10 "Greatest Canadians" by viewers of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He is considered by some Canadian political scientists to be the founder of the Red Tory tradition.

Titular honours

Macdonald, November 1883.

Sir John had the prenomial "The Honourable" and the postnomial "PC" for life by virture of being made a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada on July 1, 1867.[link]
He had the prenomial "The Right Honourable" as a member of the imperial Privy Council of the United Kingdom.
He had the prenomial "Sir" and postnomial "KCMG" as a knight commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George effective July 1, 1867.

Supreme Court appointments

Sir William Johnstone Ritchie (Chief Justice) - (January 11, 1879 - September 25, 1892) (appointed a Puisne Justice by Mackenzie in 1875)
John Wellington Gwynne - (January 14, 1879 - January 7, 1902)
Christopher Salmon Patterson - (October 27, 1888 - July 24, 1893)

Trivia

Macdonald was well known for his wit and also for his alcoholism. He is known to have been drunk for many of his debates in parliament. One famous story is that during an election debate Macdonald was so drunk he began vomiting violently on stage while his opponent was speaking. Picking himself up Macdonald told the crowd, "see how my opponent's ideas disgust me." ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

In another version of the story, he responded to his opponent's query of his drunkenness with "It goes to show that I would rather have a drunk Conservative than a sober Liberal." Neither of these stories actually happened, but are rather representative of how he was regarded. ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Macdonald's temper sometimes got the better of him, such as in one incident in the House of Commons when Donald Smith angered him so much, that he charged across the Commons floor to physically attack him. While he was restrained, Macdonald was unrepetentant proclaiming, "I'll lick him faster than Hell can scorch a feather!"
Macdonald resembled British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. At Disraeli's funeral in 1881, another British official thought that he saw Disraeli's ghost in attendance, although it was actually Macdonald.
Ontario's Macdonald-Cartier Freeway is named after Macdonald and fellow Father of Confederation George-Étienne Cartier which also was used for Ottawa's International Airport named Macdonald-Cartier International Airport.
While there is some debate over his actual birthdate, January 10 is the official date recorded and January 11 is the day Macdonald celebrated it.
The Vancouver Sun reported on June 30, 2005, that Macdonald's birthplace in Glasgow, Scotland, is under threat of demolition. [link]
In 2003, Nafekh Technologies, Inc. [link] created a John A. Macdonald action figure which was initially sold in specialty stores. The National Post reported on June 30, 2005, that Canadian Wal Mart stores are selling the figure.
Macdonald's private train car, which he named The Jamaica, was given to him by the Canadian Pacific Railway for his work on the railway.
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Macdonald's nicknames included Old Chieftain and Old Tomorrow. [link]

References

[Donald Creighton. John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician (1952), vol 1] to 1867
Donald Creighton. John A. Macdonald, old chieftain (1955) v 2
P. B. Waite, Macdonald: his life and world (Toronto and New York, 1975)
[Dictionary of Canadian Biography article by J. K. Johnson and P. B. Waite]
Michael Sletcher, ‘Sir John A. Macdonald’, in James Eli Adams, and Tom and Sara Pendergast, eds., Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era (4 vols., Danbury, CT, 2004).

External links

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