“My desire as a British subject is to see the colonies trade among themselves and with the Mother Country if she will let us and if she will not allow us to give her any advantages over the other countries, all I can says is, as an Englishman I pity her,” Bowell said in his major address to the delegates. “But if she is determined not to do that … all we have to say is ‘let her release us from her bondage under which we labour and let us trade among ourselves. We are large enough, we are old enough, we are rich enough and we are industrious enough to provide each other with that which we require not only for sustenance but for living in every way.’”

At the conclusion of the talks mid-way through July, the colonies did not get everything they wanted. But they had forced Britain to voice it support – though it was not binding – for the concept of a custom union and other improvements in trading arrangements within the Empire.

“The Ottawa conference would be seen as a significant way station on the journey from the 19^th century British Empire model of a dominant London and an all-powerful British Parliament at the centre setting rules for a global galaxy of subservient colonies, to a federation of independent, equal nations that culminated with the Statute of Westminster passed by the British Parliament in 1931,” Barry K. Wilson notes in his seminal biography of Bowell, Sir Mackenzie Bowell: A Canadian Prime Minister Forgotten by History.