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Create AccountRush-Bagot Agreement, finalized Apr 1817. US Secretary of State James Monroe proposed to British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh in 1816 that the 2 countries should agree to limit naval armaments to one ship each, on Lakes Ontario and Champlain, and 2 each on the Upper Lakes.
Reciprocity was a free trade agreement between the United States and Canada. It mutually reduced import duties and protective tariffs on certain goods exchanged between the two countries. It was in effect from 1854 to 1866 and was controversial at times on both sides of the border. It was replaced in 1878 by the Conservative Party’s protectionist National Policy. It involved levying tariffs on imported goods to shield Canadian manufacturers from American competition. A narrower reciprocity agreement was introduced in 1935 and expanded in 1938. However, it was suspended in 1948 after both countries signed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Wars often have many causes. Some are long-standing problems between nations, while others are dangerous sparks that inflame attitudes and push nations to a call to arms.
Round Table Movement, an organization devoted to the study of British Empire problems and the promotion of imperial unity, fd 1909 in London, Eng.
Trent Affair, the most serious diplomatic crisis between Britain and the US federal government during the AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.
Treaty-Making Power describes any and all types of international agreements governed by international law which are concluded between and among states and international organizations. Terms such as "convention," "protocol" and "declaration" are sometimes used to describe such agreements.
Compact Theory of Confederation, see CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.
Wartime Information Board, est 9 Sept 1942, succeeded the Bureau of Public Information, which had been formed early in WWII to issue certain information on the course of the war to the public. By 1942 the government believed that its troubles over CONSCRIPTION derived from inadequate publicity.
On 4 August 1701, the French concluded a peace agreement with the Five Nations Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). This brought to an end almost a century of hostilities marked by atrocities on both sides. The Haudenosaunee were permitted to trade freely and to obtain goods from the French at a reduced cost. In exchange, they pledged to allow French settlement at Detroit and to remain neutral in the event of a war between England and France. The accord assured New France superiority in dealing with issues related to the region’s First Nations. It also gave the French the freedom to expand militarily over the next half century.
The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was the forerunner of Canada's iconic Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Created after Confederation to police the frontier territories of the Canadian West, the NWMP ended the whiskey trade on the southern prairies and the violence that came with it, helped the federal government suppress the North-West Rebellion, and brought order to the Klondike Gold Rush. The NWMP pioneered the enforcement of federal law in the West, and the Arctic, from 1873 until 1920.
British American Land Company, chartered 20 March 1834 and promoted by John Galt, Canada Company founder; Edward Ellice, Lower Canada's largest absentee landowner; and others. It purchased 343 995 ha of crown land in the Eastern Townships (Qué) for £120 000.
Brandy Parliament, an assembly of 20 notables of New France, who on 10 October 1678 were asked their opinion of the sale of brandy to the Indigenous peoples. The title was bestowed in 1921 by historian W.B. Munro.
One of the great, unheralded events in Canadian history took place in September 1841 at an annual feast and ceremony of Illumination at Sharon Temple, meeting place for the Children of Peace.
The SS Queen Victoria played host to crucial discussions about Confederation in Charlottetown harbour in 1864. Two years later, the ship was lost in a hurricane off Cape Hatteras. The wreckage has never been found.
As a young lawyer, Wilfrid Laurier deeply opposed the idea of Confederation. Like the Parti rouge members he associated with in Canada East (formerly Lower Canada), he once described any union of the British North American colonies as “the tomb of the French race and the ruin of Lower Canada.” After 1867, however, Laurier accepted Confederation, and would spend the rest of his life passionately praising his new country — and the legal protections of its Constitution — for allowing French and English to live and thrive peacefully side by side in a single state. On 10 November 1871, as a newly elected member of the Québec provincial legislature, he articulated his freshly acquired admiration for Canada by speaking on what would become his favourite subject.
The 1869 Métis uprising in Red River had deeply divided Canadians along religious and linguistic lines. Five years later, the election of Louis Riel as a member of Parliament (MP) prompted a debate about whether the House of Commons should allow Riel to take up his seat there. Wilfrid Laurier — by this time a federal MP in the new Liberal government of Alexander Mackenzie — stood firmly on Riel’s side. Laurier had little personal sympathy for Riel. Politically, however, he used Riel and the Métis cause as a way of staking out the moderation and pragmatism that would become a hallmark his career. On 15 April 1874, he issued this stirring defence of Riel in the House of Commons.
By 1877, Wilfrid Laurier was a rising political star in Québec, although his profile outside his native province was not yet established. On 26 June 1877, Laurier spoke to members of Le Club Canadien in Québec City on the risky topic of liberalism — deemed a radical threat at the time to Québec’s conservative elites and to the Roman Catholic Church. Laurier disarmed such fears by stating clearly what Liberals held dear: political freedom, respect for the Crown, the continuance of Canada’s democratic institutions and religious tolerance. The speech was a master stroke. Overnight, Laurier created space in Québec for the Liberal Party and became, for the first time, a national figure.
The Manitoba Schools Question involved a struggle over the rights of francophones in Manitoba to receive an education in their mother tongue and their religion, constitutional rights that had been revoked by the provincial government of Thomas Greenway in 1890. Wilfrid Laurier’s solution to the problem followed what he called the “sunny way” — the way of negotiation, diplomacy and compromise — rather than forced legislation. He first used the term 8 October 1895, when he was leader of the opposition, in a speech he delivered in Ontario. The sunny way is a reference to one of Aesop’s Fables, in which the wind and the sun compete to see who can motivate a man to remove his jacket. The sun shines down, pleasantly and patiently, and the wind blows with bluster. The sun ultimately wins the day, proving that patience and enticement are more effective than force and coercion. After coming to power in 1896, Laurier settled the Manitoba Schools Question with sunny ways — but the politically expedient settlement his government achieved came at a steep price: the sacrificing of French language minority rights in Manitoba.
