John A. Macdonald was in Eastern Ontario on this date in 1866 where he updated an enthusiastic audience in Cornwall on the progress being made to advance the Confederation project. He was speaking at a sold-out banquet and reports at the time said those in attendance hung on his every word.
“Gentlemen, I believe that Confederation is to be carried. (Loud cheers),” he said. “I believe that ere many weeks, and perhaps ere many days, you will see that the Lower Provinces, which at first repudiated the conduct of their delegates to the Quebec Conference, will, on calm and cool reflection upon the whole subject, and, above all, with a desire loyally to respond to the strongly expressed wishes of Her Majesty and Her Majesty’s Government in England, give up their local prejudices and feelings, and eventually, ere long, join with Canada in forming one great Confederation. (Loud and prolonged cheers.)”
The man who would soon be known before history as the Father of Confederation told the crowd how he and his colleagues had been treated while explaining the plans for Confederation while in England. Canada was indeed to become a force on its own within the British Empire.
“We were treated there, not as mere delegates going home from some small dependency, as previous messengers from the colonies had been treated, but we were placed in a position as if we were an embassy from some great nation; and we, the four Ministers of a single colony, were met, day by day, and for weeks and weeks, by four of the chief heads of the great departments of the Government of England. (Loud cheers),” Macdonald said. “We had the head of the Army in the Secretary for War, the head of the Navy in the Duke of Somerset; the head of the Financial Department and leader of the House of Commons (since the death of Lord Palmerston) in Mr. Gladstone; and the Secretary for the Colonies in Mr. Cardwell. These were the gentlemen with whom we had to deal, and they met us and discussed these great questions on which I am now addressing you on terms of perfect equality. (Loud cheers.)”
You can read this remarkable address by Macdonald of Kingston in full at this link, provided by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute: https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/john-macdonald-speech-banquet-honour-provincial-administration-march-1-1866/
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.