Discovering Confederation

Janet Ajzenstat is one of Canada's most respected thinkers on the moral and philosophical foundations of responsible government and Confederation. Discovering Confederation is a study of political science over the last forty years through the intellectual lens of her career. Ajzenstat details her academic journey, from her early years as a hopeful, radical activist in the 1960s, through her graduate studies at McMaster University and the University of Toronto, her commitment to the importance of primary source documents, and to her decades-long teaching career. Learning from prominent political thinker Allan Bloom and philosopher and political commentator George Grant, Ajzenstat began to form her own opinions about parliamentary democracy and constitutional debate. She presents her discovery of the argument for parliamentary democracy, explaining how and why parliamentary democracy is sufficient security for individual rights. Though sometimes referred to as a conservative, Ajzenstat shows that her work is a defence of the political constitution, which ensures unconstrained and continuing deliberation amongst parties, interests, and philosophies of all political stripes. A candid and engaging showcase of a great mind at work, Discovering Confederation is a revealing account of Canada's political history and recent academic life.

In recognition of Canada’s sesquicentennial, this two-volume set brings together previously published scholarship on Confederation into one collection. The editors sought to reproduce not only the "classic" studies about the people, ideas, and events associated with the passage of the British North America Act, 1867, but also scholarly works that capture the complexities of the Confederation project. This ambitious anthology challenges the notion that there exists one dominant narrative underpinning 1867, and includes research that focuses on Indigenous peoples. Seven articles written in French are translated for the first time for publication in this collection. In the first volume of this anthology, Roads to Confederation introduces readers to the competing approaches to the study of Confederation and provides material that considers the nature of the 1867 project from the perspective of peoples and communities who have been traditionally excluded from the literature. It also includes the definitive scholarship on the ideational underpinnings of the making of Canada as well as several leading articles that set out different ways to understand the nature and purpose of the 1867 agreement.

This book corrects an imbalance in Canadian political literature through offering a conservative account of Canadian political thought. Across 15 chronologically organized chapters, and with a mixture of established and rising scholars, the book offers an investigation of the defining features and characteristics of Canadian conservative political thought, asking what have Canadian conservative political thinkers and practitioners learned from other traditions and, in turn, what have they contributed to our understanding of conservative political thought today? Rather than its culmination, Canadian Conservative Political Thought will be the beginning of conservative political thought’s recovery and will spark debates and future research. The book will be a great resource for courses on Canadian politics, history, political philosophy and conservatism, Canadian Studies, and political theory.

The influx of over 20,000 European and Chinese miners to the Fraser River in the spring of 1858, all of them hungry for gold, compelled the British government to declare the mainland, known then as New Caledonia, the Colony of British Columbia. In an attempt to capture the excitement of this period and the challenges faced by the colonial government during the years prior to Confederation, this book seeks to answer three vital questions: How did the gold rush unfold? Who were the participants? And what were the outcomes? Excerpts from the correspondence of government officials and from Matthew Baillie Begbie, the only Supreme Court judge in the Colony of British Columbia for most of that period, provide insight, humour and new perspectives into the actual gold rush events and the enormous task of establishing law and order during one of the major social upheavals of North America. In this history, readers will meet the miners, First Nations peoples, Hudson's Bay personnel, governors, royal engineers, assistant gold commissioners, steadfast community leaders, and women who trekked over the mountains-a kaleidoscope of colourful people and events.

Globalizing Confederation brings together original research from 17 scholars to provide an international perspective on Canada’s Confederation in 1867. In seeking to ascertain how others understood, constructed or considered the changes taking place in British North America, Globalizing Confederation unpacks a range of viewpoints, including those from foreign governments, British colonies, and Indigenous peoples. Exploring perspectives from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France, Latin America, New Zealand, and the Vatican, among others, as well as considering the impact of Confederation on the rights of Indigenous peoples during this period, the contributors to this collection present how Canada’s Confederation captured the imaginations of people around the world in the 1860s. Globalizing Confederation reveals how some viewed the 1867 changes to Canada as part of a reorganization of the British Empire, while others contextualized it in the literature on colonization more broadly, while still others framed the event as part of a re-alignment or power shift among the Spanish, French and British empires. While many people showed interest in the Confederation debates, others, such as South Africa and the West Indies, expressed little interest in the establishment of Canada until it had profound effects on their corners of the global political landscape.

Each of the maps featured in this book was showcased in the exhibition “Canada before Confederation: Early Exploration and Mapping,” which took place in several locations, both in Canada and abroad, in Fall of 2017. The authors provide a scholarly study highlighting the importance and unique features of each of these jewels of cartographic history, with particular attention paid to how they demonstrate the development of Canadian identity at the same time that they reveal Indigenous knowledge of the lands now known as Canada.

Reproduction of the original: The Fathers of Confederation by A.H.U. Colquhoun