The Province of Canada was a British colony in British North America from 1841 to 1867. Its formation reflected recommendations made by John Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, in the Report on the Affairs of British North America following the Rebellions of 1837–1838.
The Province of Upper Canada was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the Province of Quebec since 1763. Upper Canada included all of modern-day Southern Ontario and all those areas of Northern Ontario in the Pays d'en Haut which had formed part of New France, essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River or Lakes Huron and Superior, excluding any lands within the watershed of Hudson Bay. The "upper" prefix in the name reflects its geographic position along the Great Lakes, mostly above the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River, contrasted with Lower Canada to the northeast.
The Lower Canada Rebellion, commonly referred to as the Patriots' War in French, is the name given to the armed conflict in 1837–38 between rebels and the colonial government of Lower Canada. Together with the simultaneous rebellion in the neighbouring colony of Upper Canada, it formed the Rebellions of 1837–38.
The Constitutional Act 1791 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which was passed during the reign of George III. The act divided the old Province of Quebec into Lower Canada and Upper Canada, each with its own parliament and government. It repealed the Quebec Act 1774. The act remained in force until 1841, when it was largely repealed by the Union Act, 1840, which reunited the two provinces into the new Province of Canada. Some provisions relating to the clergy reserves remained in force. The remaining provisions of the act were repealed over time, with final repeal in 1966.
The Upper Canada Rebellion was an insurrection against the oligarchic government of the British colony of Upper Canada in December 1837. While public grievances had existed for years, it was the rebellion in Lower Canada, which started the previous month, that emboldened rebels in Upper Canada to revolt.
The Family Compact was a small closed group of men who exercised most of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was the Upper Canadian equivalent of the Château Clique in Lower Canada. It was noted for its conservatism and opposition to democracy.
The Rebellions of 1837–1838, were two armed uprisings that took place in Lower and Upper Canada in 1837 and 1838. Both rebellions were motivated by frustrations with lack of political reform. A key shared goal was responsible government, which was eventually achieved in the incidents' aftermath. The rebellions led directly to Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America and to the Act of Union 1840 which partially reformed the British provinces into a unitary system and eventually led to the British North America Act, 1867, which created the contemporary Canadian federation and its government.
The Parti canadien or Parti patriote was a primarily francophone political party in what is now Quebec founded by members of the liberal elite of Lower Canada at the beginning of the 19th century. Its members were made up of liberal professionals and small-scale merchants, including François Blanchet, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, John Neilson, Jean-Thomas Taschereau, James Stuart, Louis Bourdages, Denis-Benjamin Viger, Daniel Tracey, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Andrew Stuart and Louis-Joseph Papineau.
John Neilson was a journalist, publisher and politician in Lower Canada. Born in Scotland, he emigrated to Lower Canada in 1791 at age 15, to work in his older brother's publishing company in Quebec City. On his brother's death a few years later, he inherited the business. Neilson became one of the leading publishers and booksellers in Lower Canada and in Upper Canada, selling books in both French and English. He was the editor of the newspaper La Gazette de Québec / The Quebec Gazette, published in French and in English.
Denis-Benjamin Viger was a 19th-century politician, lawyer, and newspaper publisher in Lower Canada, who served as joint premier of the Province of Canada for over two years. A leader in the Patriote movement, he was a strong French-Canadian nationalist, but a social conservative in terms of the seigneurial system and the position of the Catholic church in Lower Canada.
Charles Richard Ogden, was a Joint Premier of the Province of Canada for Canada East from 1841 to 1842 with William Henry Draper PM for Canada West. Odgen was a member of the Château Clique, the group of English-speaking officials who supported the Governor General, appointed by the British government. Trained as a lawyer, he developed a lucrative practice at Trois-Rivières and then Montreal. He had a lengthy career as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.
Denis-Benjamin Papineau was joint premier of the Province of Canada for Canada East from 1846 to 1847. The joint premiers for Canada West during this period were William Henry Draper and then Henry Sherwood (1847).
Charles Dewey Day, was a lawyer, political figure, and judges in Lower Canada and Canada East. He was a member of the Special Council of Lower Canada, which governed Lower Canada after the Lower Canada Rebellions in 1837 and 1838. He was elected to the first Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada in 1841, but resigned in 1842 to accept an appointment to the Court of Queen's Bench of Lower Canada.
Joseph-Édouard Turcotte was a lawyer, businessman, and political figure in Canada East. Born to a merchant family, he considered the priesthood, but after the loss of one arm in an accident, he opted instead for a legal career. In addition to the law, he was engaged in journalism and in business activities in Trois-Rivières.
James Leslie was a Canadian businessman and political figure. An immigrant from Scotland in 1804, he became a successful Montreal businessman and was one of the founders of the Bank of Montreal.
Louis-Michel Viger was a lawyer, banker, businessman, seigneur and political figure in Lower Canada, and then in Canada East in the Province of Canada.
Frédéric-Auguste Quesnel,, was a lawyer, businessman and politician in Lower Canada. He was a member of the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Council of Lower Canada. Following the union of the Canadas, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and later was appointed to the Legislative Council. Throughout his career he was a political moderate, seeking greater political power for French-Canadians under British rule, but also supporting the British connection generally. Condemned by the Patriotes as a vendu ("sell-out") in the Lower Canada Rebellion, in 1860 he was elected President of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society of Montreal.
John Robinson Hamilton, QC was a lawyer and political figure in Lower Canada and then the Province of Canada. He represented the electoral district of Bonaventure 1832 to 1834 in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. Following the creation of the Province of Canada, he again represented Bonaventure from 1841 to 1844 in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. He opposed the union of Lower Canada and Upper Canada into the Province of Canada, and supported the reform movement, which favoured responsible government.
Robert Nugent Watts was a political figure in Canada East, Province of Canada. He represented the electoral district of Drummond for ten years in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. He was a supporter of the union of Lower Canada and Upper Canada and a Tory.
The Parliament of the Province of Canada was the legislature for the Province of Canada, made up of the two regions of Canada West and Canada East.
