Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s 1864 pitch to Nova Scotians was simple: Joining Canada was their last shot at not becoming Americans.
asserted
Joining → join → Americans
McGee, the acknowledged hype man of Canadian confederation, had spent most of his life assuming that the scattered colonies of British North America would eventually be absorbed by the United States.
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colonies → acknowledge → States
At one time he had even favoured it.
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he → favour → it
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But now, he told a skeptical Halifax audience, they had a “golden moment of opportunity” to prevent it from happening.
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they → tell → it
A moment which, “if neglected, may never come again.”
uncertain
which → neglect → ?
“Rest assured, if we remain long as fragments, we shall be lost,” he said.
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he → rest → fragments
Only a united Canada could head off the “Northern storm” that was sure to come.
uncertain
that → head → storm
Canada is often derided for a national identity that seems to exist only in opposition to the United States.
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that → deride → States
In early 2025, then prime minister Justin Trudeau was roundly mocked for a CNN interview in which he defined Canadian identity as merely “not American.”
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he → mock → identity
Just this week, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal called out Canada’s “weakness for defining itself in terms of America.”
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editorial → call → America
But Canada’s founders likely wouldn’t have disagreed with the characterization.
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founders → disagree → characterization
Their grand project was always about roping off a corner of the continent that would be forever untouched by the American Revolution, to forge an alternative nation that would avoid both America’s sharpest edges and its worst mistakes.
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that → rope → edges
And for the most part, that’s exactly what they did.
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they → ’ → what
When Sir John A. Macdonald first presented the outlines of what would come to be called the “Dominion of Canada,” he made a point of stressing that it avoided all the worst mistakes of their American neighbour.
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it → present → neighbour
As such, they’d been able to avoid the “defects which time and events have shown to exist in the American Constitution.”
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time → avoid → Constitution
The Americans, said Macdonald, had made the mistake of declaring their constituent states to be “sovereign” entities constantly at odds with federal authority.
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states → say → authority
Canada did away with this by a stronger central government.
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Canada → do → government
“We have thus avoided that great source of weakness which has been the cause of the disruption of the United States,” he said.
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he → avoid → States
Best of all, Canada’s head of state would be a monarch beholden at all times to elected ministers.
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head → elect → ministers
The U.S. president, by contrast, was effectively an elected “despot.
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president → elect → contrast
“A one-man power, with the command of the naval and military forces … and with the veto power as a branch of the legislature, perfectly uncontrolled by responsible advisers,” he said.
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he → say → advisers
Canadians in the mid-19th century harboured no particular ill-will towards the United States.
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Canadians → harbour → States
Several Fathers of Confederation had lived for extended periods in American cities.
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Fathers → live → cities
Records of the Confederation debates don’t contain a single denunciation of the United States, or wish for its destruction.
“I know myself I have not a particle of prejudice against the United States; on the contrary, I am bound to declare that many things in the constitution and the people I sincerely esteem and admire,” McGee declared in 1862.
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McGee → contain → 1862
McGee even recoiled at declarations that the United States was a failure.
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States → recoil → declarations
Such sentiments “ought to be frowned down, wherever it appears, by the Canadian public,” he said in 1861.
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he → ought → 1861
Macdonald said much the same.
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Macdonald → say → same
Even when he was slamming the flaws of the U.S. Constitution, Macdonald still praised it as “one of the most skillful works which human intelligence ever created … one of the most perfect organizations that ever governed a free people.
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that → slam → people
But these same Canadians also had no problem articulating why they personally didn’t want to live under the Stars and Stripes.
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they → have → Stars
It’s easy for modern Americans to see themselves as the freer, more conservative alternative to Canada.
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It → ’ → Canada
But the first generation of Canadians saw it exactly the other way around.
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generation → see → it
The United States, as they saw it, was a radical experiment in mob rule plagued by political and civic corruption.
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they → see → corruption
In 1849, after a small annexationist movement emerged in Montreal, the Montreal Gazette saw fit to issue a lengthy condemnation of the sicknesses of U.S. society.
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Gazette → emerge → society
“The numerous defalcations both in public and private offices in the U.S. shew something very far from perfection in the morale of Society,” it read, adding that the United States was plagued by a “dreadful catalogue of crimes of every description.”
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States → shew → description
Canada was not only safer and more virtuous, but its parliaments “shine with superior lustre and rise in proud preeminence with most of the popular legislative bodies of the separate States.”
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parliaments → shine → States
Canadians of the era were also known to recoil at the perceived godlessness of the U.S. political class.
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Canadians → know → class
Also in 1849, a Toronto newspaper reacted with horror that then U.S. president James Polk had only been baptized on his deathbed.
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Polk → react → deathbed
“How is it that the people of the United States suffered themselves to remain in this ignorance of the religious position of their Chief Magistrate?
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people → suffer → Magistrate
The anomaly must bring disgrace with it.”
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anomaly → bring → it
Canada’s founding generation was also quick to note the American penchant to speak loudly of liberty while holding millions in bondage, slavery having been phased out by the British Empire a generation prior.
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slavery → note → Empire
…and 20 more, not listed.
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