Upper Canada’s Empire: Liberalism, Race, and Western Expansion in British North America, 1860s – 1914

ABSTRACT

This article recovers a long-forgotten tradition of Canadian political thought – a Liberal idea of nation-building premised on the expansion and consolidation of an Upper Canadian empire. Combining a staunch imperial ‘Britishness’ with visions of western expansion and colonisation, Liberal politicians and intellectuals from the province of Ontario conceived Canada’s vast North-West territory as an Upper Canadian colony – an Anglo-Saxon settler empire that linked Ontario and its metropolis, Toronto, by rail and settlement to the Prairie West, British Columbia, and beyond to Britain’s Pacific empire. Between 1860 and 1914, this vision of western expansion underpinned Canada’s political and economic development, bringing ‘greater Ontario’ Liberals into contact with a series of racial others who were either incorporated into the Dominion or else disenfranchised and excluded.

KEYWORDS:

• Canada
• liberalism
• colonialism
• British Empire

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank James Belich, Robert Bothwell, John Darwin, Gerald Friesen, Cees Heere, Jordan Goldstein, Jesse Tumblin, and two anonymous referees for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Errors and misapprehensions are mine alone.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Quoted in Underhill, “Some Aspects of Upper Canadian Radical Opinion,” 53.

2 Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, 24.

3 Quoted in Mackenzie, George Brown, 319.

4 In 1791 the British colony of Upper Canada – today’s southern Ontario – was carved out of the colony of Quebec, the remnant of which became Lower Canada. From 1841–67 they were reunited in the United Province of Canada as Canada West and Canada East. However, Upper and Lower Canada continued to be used as colloquial names for the two Canadas. In this article, Upper Canada refers to pre-Confederation Canada West and post-Confederation southern Ontario, distinguishing the historic colony from its subsequent territorial enlargement to encompass the northern part of the province, or ‘New Ontario.’

5 Quoted in Mackenzie, George Brown, 320.

6 Grant, Ocean to Ocean, 1.

7 For 'neo-Britains', see Pocock, The Discovery of Islands, 181–95. For an introduction to the 'British world', see Bridge and Fedorowich, The British World: Diaspora, Culture and Identity; Buckner, Canada and the British Empire; Fedorovich and Thompson, Empire, Migration, and Identity in the British World; Magee and Thompson, Empire and Globalisation; Pietsch, Empire of Scholars; Potter, News and the British World; Schreuder and Ward, Australia's Empire; and Thompson, Imperial Britain.

8 Bright and Dilley, “After the British World,” 563–4.

9 See especially Perry, 'Whose World was British? Rethinking the ‘British World’ from an Edge of Empire, ' 134–5.

10 Darwin, The Empire Project, 147 (emphasis in original).

11 Ibid., 144–59.

12 Though Ontario Liberals were generally also small-‘L’ philosophical liberals, this analysis excludes such liberals who held different political affiliations as well as Liberal partisans from other regions of British North America. Neither does it attempt to provide a neutral definition of liberalism – a task fraught with conceptual and methodological dangers. See especially Bell, “What is Liberalism?” 682–715; and Freeden and Stears, “Liberalism,” 329–47. For an alternative approach to the history of Canadian liberalism, see McKay, “The Liberal Order Framework,” 617–51.

13 Champion, The Strange Demise of British Canada.

14 Underhill, “Foreword,” in Russell, Nationalism in Canada, 7 (emphasis in original). See also Igartua, The Other Quiet Revolution.

15 R. Douglas Francis, ‘Historical Perspectives on Britain’, 309–21. The best source on Anglo-Canadian historiography in the twentieth century remains Berger, The Writing of Canadian History. For an earlier generation of Canadian liberals, republicans, and radicals, see Ducharme, The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions.

16 Underhill, In Search of Canadian Liberalism, 43.

17 See especially Grant, Lament for a Nation.

18 Berger, The Sense of Power, 259.

19 See especially Bélanger, Prejudice and Pride; Massolin, Canadian Intellectuals, the Tory Tradition, and the Challenge of Modernity; Mills, The Idea of Loyalty in Upper Canada, 1784–1850; Wise, “Conservatism and Political Development,” 226–43; Wood, “Defining ‘Canadian’,” 49–69; Wright, “Antimodernism and English-Canadian Imperialism, 1880s-1918,” 134–53.

20 On the Round Table movement, see Eayrs, “The Round Table Movement in Canada,” 1–20; Kendle, The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union; Rickard, “Canada, the Round Table and the Idea of Imperial Federation,” 191–21.

21 Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, 26. See especially Bell, “Before the democratic peace,” 647–70; “Dissolving Distance,” 523–62; “From Ancient to Modern in Victorian Imperial Thought,” 735–59; and Reordering the World, chs. 2–4.

22 For Liberal debates over the British connection see Thompson, ‘Reframing the Great War: Liberalism, Sovereignty and the British Empire, c. 1860s-1914’.

23 Ewart, The Kingdom Papers, 1, 166.

24 Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier declared upon Gladstone’s death in 1898: ‘ … the loss is not England’s alone, nor is it confined to the great Empire which acknowledges England’s suzerainty, nor even the proud race which can claim kinship with the people of England. The loss is the loss of mankind’. Canada. House of Commons Debates, 26 May 1898, 6115. See also Darwin, The Empire Project, 152.

25 See especially Bell, “John Stuart Mill on Colonies,” 34–64; Matikkala, Empire and Imperial Ambition; Schreuder, “Gladstone’s ‘Greater World,” 267–90.

26 Gladstone, Our Colonies, 3, 10–11, 20–21.

27 Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, 24. See especially Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada; Houston and Smyth, “The Orange Order and the Expansion of the Frontier in Ontario, 1830–1900,” 143–71; Smyth, Toronto: The Belfast of Canada.

28 Careless, Brown of the Globe, I; and “Brown, George.”

29 Underhill, “Some Reflections on the Liberal Tradition in Canada,” 13; “Some Aspects of Upper Canadian Radical Opinion,” 47–8; Vance, “Scottish Chartism in Canada West,” 56–104.

30 See for example Thompson, “Ontario’s Empire.”

31 Bothwell, A Short History of Ontario, 60.

32 Willison, Reminiscences, 150.

33 As his successor as editor of the Globe put it: ‘Brown was ‘a statesman of scope and vision, an unwavering champion of British connection and British institutions, and in his life and achievements are set deep the roots of Canadian Liberalism’. Willison, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party, I, 26.

34 On the Union period, see especially Careless, The Union of the Canadas, 1841–1857.

35 Careless, Brown of the Globe, II, 9.

36 Quoted in Underhill, “Canada's Relations with the Empire,” 127–8. On Canada’s Confederation, see especially Creighton, The Road to Confederation; Krikorian, et al., Globalizing Confederation, and Roads to Confederation; Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation.

37 Careless, Brown of the Globe, II, 111.

38 On debates over the railway, see especially Den Otter, Civilizing the West, and The Philosophy of Railways.

39 Laurier, “The Construction of the Pacific,” 130–31, 134.

40 Blake, A National Sentiment, 8.

41 Underhill, “Some Aspects of Upper Canadian Radical Opinion,” 53.

42 Belich, Replenishing the Earth.

43 Darwin, The Empire Project, 153–4. See also Smith, “Instilling British Values in the Prairie Provinces,” 441–56.

44 Brown, “Confederation Resolutions [8 Feb 1865],” in Mackenzie, George Brown, 326, 329.

45 Quoted in Underhill, “Political Ideas of the Upper Canada Reformers,” 109.

46 Korneski, Race, Nation, and Reform Ideology in Winnipeg.

47 Grant, Ocean to Ocean, 62, 67. Historians often mistakenly identify Grant as a Conservative, largely because he was a prominent imperialist. In fact, both in Nova Scotia and Ontario, Grant advocated and advanced a variety of political and social reforms, and, aside from the 1891 election, broadly supported freer trade and the Reform / Liberal parties. See especially W.L. Grant, Principal Grant, 357–60; D.B. Mack, “Grant, George Monro.” http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/grant_george_monro_13E.html.

48 Willison, Reminiscences, 150. For the Métis uprisings in imperial context, see Read and Webb, “'The Catholic Mahdi of the North West': Louis Riel and the Métis Resistance in Transatlantic and Imperial Context,” 171–95

49 Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, 197–9. On Smith’s imperial and racial thought, see Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, 179–207.

50 See for example Belich, The Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict; Evans, et al., Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights; Laidlaw and Lester, Indigenous Communities and Settler Colonialism.

51 Mackenzie, George Brown, 302. On the origins of Upper Canadian and Dominion policy towards Indigenous peoples, see Leighton, “The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada.”

52 Leighton, “The Development of Federal Indian Policy in Canada,” 284–5.

53 Daschuk, Clearing the Plains, 27–8, 161.

54 Friesen, The Canadian Prairies, 92.

55 Ibid., 201–-2.

56 Hall, Clifford Sifton, I, 39–46, 54–62.

57 Colley, Britons; and “Britishness and Otherness,” 309–29. See for example Willison, Reminiscences, 150.

58 Bothwell, A Short History of Ontario, 95.

59 G.M. Grant to J.S. Willison, 18 March 1895, John Stephen Willison Papers, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (hereafter LAC), MG30 D29/17/130/12193.

60 Dafoe, Clifford Sifton in Relation to His Times, 41.

61 Toronto Globe, 21 March 1892. On J.S. Willison, see Clippingdale, The Power of the Pen; and Potter, News and the British World, 115–16, 121–22.

62 Morton, Manitoba: A History, 233.

63 For the idea of ‘better Britains,’ see Morgan, Building Better Britains.

64 For a useful discussion, see Romney, “From Constitutionalism to Legalism,” 121–74.

65 Ewart, School Question in Manitoba, 3, 5.

66 Skelton, The Language Issue in Canada, 456. See also Hall, “Clifford Sifton's Vision of the Prairie West,” in Francis and Kitzan, The Prairie West, 79.

67 From a total population of only 250,000 in 1891, the Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta mushroomed to more than 1.3 million people by 1911 and nearly 2 million by 1921. British and American immigrants arrived in especially large numbers: more than 600,000 from the United States between 1897 and 1913 – many of whom were in fact repatriated Canadians – and an astonishing 150,000 Britons, many of them destined for the West, who arrived in the Dominion in 1912–13 alone. See especially Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 409–10; Brown and Cook, Canada, 1896–1921, 57; Chilton, Agents of Empire.

68 J.W. Dafoe to Wilfrid Laurier, 18 Nov 1912 (copy), John W. Dafoe Papers (originals University of Manitoba Libraries), LAC, MG30 D45/reel M-73.

69 Widdis, With Scarcely a Ripple, 296. See also Laycock, Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies.

70 G.M. Wrong diary, 5 and 15 June 1912, George M. Wrong Papers, University of Toronto Archives, Toronto, Ontario (hereafter UTA), B2003/005/007/45.

71 See Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 412–17, 482–96.

72 Bothwell, A Short History of Ontario, 467.

73 Creighton, Canada’s First Century, 124. See also Stevens, “Laurier, Aylesworth, and the Decline of the Liberal Party in Ontario,” 94–113.

74 See especially Dutil and MacKenzie, Canada 1911; Potter, “The Imperial Significance of the Canadian-American Reciprocity Proposals of 1911.”

75 Quoted in Darwin, The Empire Project, 154.

76 Laurier, Transcontinental Railway, 3–4, 17. On Toronto finance and the Grand Trunk Pacific, see George Cox [et al.] to Wilfrid Laurier, 3 Nov 1902, Wilfrid Laurier Papers, LAC, MG26 G/C-796/67896–8; Dilley, Finance, Politics, and Imperialism: Australia, 126–8.

77 Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration, 4, 309n.3.

78 Willison, The American Spirit, 5–6.

79 Sifton, “The Making of Canada,” in Goldman, The Empire and the Century, 360.

80 Shortt, “Some Observations on the Great North-West, II,” 14.

81 On the racialist 'logic' of Anglo-Saxonism, see Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 466.

82 Grant, “Thanksgiving and Retrospect,” 227.

83 'Canadianizing the Foreign Element [1917–18?], Oscar Douglas Skelton Papers, LAC, MG30 D33/9/Articles & Drafts (2 of 2).

84 Skelton, The Language Issue in Canada, 461.

85 G.M. Wrong diary, 2 July 1916, George M. Wrong Papers, UTA, B2003/005/008/58.

86 J.S. Ewart to Edward Duveen, 26 July 1910, John S. Ewart Papers, Ewart Family Collection, Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, MG14 C22/1/79.

87 Clifford Sifton to J.W. Dafoe, 26 Sep 1911, John W. Dafoe Papers, LAC, reel M-73.

88 Dafoe, “Economic History of the Prairie Provinces, 1870–1913,” in Shortt and Doughty, Canada and its Provinces, XX, 310. On growing political radicalism and the bifurcation of the Liberal party in ‘Greater Ontario,’ see especially Laycock, Populism and Democratic Thought in the Canadian Prairies, 25–30; Sharp, The Agrarian Revolt in Western Canada. For Western Canadian ‘Britishness’ during this period, see Fedorowich, “Restocking the British World,” 236–69; Pitsula, Keeping Canada British; Smith, “Instilling British Values in the Prairie Provinces,” 441–56; Wardhaugh, Mackenzie King and the Prairie West.

89 Bosher, “Vancouver Island in the empire,” 349–50.

90 For British Columbia’s British world, see also Gough, Britannia’s Navy; and Perry, On the Edge of Empire.

91 Blake, A National Sentiment, 8.

92 Cole, “The Intellectual and Imaginative Development of British Columbia,” 72–3.

93 Smith, Canada and the Canadian Question, 62.

94 Laurier, Transcontinental Railway, 4, 17.

95 G.M. Wrong diary, 4 July 1916, George M. Wrong Papers, UTA, B2003/005/008/59.

96 Ward, White Canada Forever, 3–52.

97 G.M. Wrong diary, 19 and 21 June 1912, George M. Wrong Papers, UTA, B2003/005/008/45.

98 Willison, The New Canada, 30, 36.

99 Ward, White Canada Forever, 171. See also Roy, The Oriental Question.

100 W.L.M. King to Wilfrid Laurier, 6 June 1910, Wilfrid Laurier Papers, LAC, MG26 G/C-891/171794. See especially Gilmour, Trouble on Main Street.

101 Johnston, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru.

102 Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line.

103 Heere, “The British Empire and the politics of Asian migration, 1900–14,” 595–6.

104 Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 466.

105 Untitled speech notes [1912?], John Stephen Willison Papers, LAC, MG30 D29/53/39821–2. See also Milner, “The Two Empires, 16 June 1908,” in The Nation and the Empire, 289–300.

106 A point echoed by advocates for Sikh immigration. See Singh, “The Sikhs in Canada,” 86–91.

107 Smith, Loyalty, Aristocracy, and Jingoism, 61.

108 Skelton, “Current Events: The Test of Empire,” 100. See also Ewart, “Canada: Colony to Kingdom,” 274.

109 Skelton, “Current Events: Our Asiatic Problem,” 156. On Skelton's views of Asian immigration and the British connection, see Hillmer, O.D. Skelton, 42–3.

110 “Chinese Immigration,” George Monro Grant Papers, LAC, MG29 D38/11.

111 See for example, Freeden, “Eugenics and Progressive Thought,” 645–671; Leuchtenburg, “Progressivism and Imperialism,” 483–504; and Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists.

112 See especially Belich, “Race,” in Armitage and Bashford, Pacific Histories, 263–78.

113 Heere, “Japan and the British World, 1904–1914”; McKenzie, “Race, Empire, and World Order,” 73–93; Mitcham, Race and Imperial Defence, chs. 5 & 7; and Tumblin, “'Grey Dawn' in the British Pacific,” 32–54

114 Skelton, “Current Events: Our Asiatic Problem,” 157.

115 O'Brien, British an American Naval Power, 63.

116 For ‘Britannic Alliance,’ see Jebb, The Britannic Question; McIntyre, The Britannic Vision.

117 Parkin, “Canada and the Pacific,” in The Empire and the Century, 409–19.

118 Ewart, The Kingdom Papers, I, 310.

119 For this complaint, see Hillmer, O.D. Skelton, 8–9, 339-40n10.

120 ‘Canada's Naval Plans and the United States (draft),’ Oscar Douglas Skelton Papers, LAC, MG30 D33/10.

121 Grant, “Current Events: Canada and the Empire,” 227.

122 Skelton, “Current Events: The Resurrection of the Senate,” 109.

123 'Canada's Naval Plans and the United States (draft),' Oscar Douglas Skelton Papers, LAC, MG30 D33/10.

124 Quoted in Mackenzie, George Brown, 333.

125 Underhill, “Some Aspects of Upper Canadian Radical Opinion,” 61.