The fighting Father of Confederation, Dr. Charles Tupper, delivered a lengthy address to a gathering of Nova Scotia Tories 150 years-ago today. In opposition after his leader, Sir John A. Macdonald, and their party had been tossed from office over the Pacific Scandal a year previously, Tupper put new energy back into the party faithful. The press noted that he was greeted with a “perfect storm of applause, which was long in subsiding.” Dr. Tupper, obviously, drew great energy from the greeting he received, speaking approximately two hours.
“Let me ask you, Mr. Mayor, and this vast and intelligent body of citizens, whether I am right or wrong when I say that after seven years of trial this hostility to Confederation was hushed, and that no man could be found to reiterate the wild and groundless statements with which Confederation was then opposed,” he said, contrasting the province’s feelings now present under the Liberal government then in power in Ottawa with the years he and his Tories held power. “I am proud to know and believe that it is only since the gentlemen at present in power, controlled the destinies of the country that any voice of discontent with Confederation was raised; all complaint having ceased under our administration.”
You can read Tupper’s address in full at this link: https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/cihm_04618/cihm_04618.pdf
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.