Macdonald and His Montreal-Based Supporters Subscribed to the Old Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence; George Brown Wanted to Settle the North-West to Satisfy Toronto's Economic Ambitions

One of Macdonald’s most-quoted statements about Canadian acquisition of the North-West region was made in a letter to Sir Edward Watkin in March 1865. Watkin, as president of the Grand Trunk Railway, wanted to extend the rail line from the Atlantic to the Pacific and hence pushed for some form of British North American confederation. Macdonald was not as initially enthusiastic about the idea of a transcontinental nation. “I would be quite willing, personally,” he observed on the eve of a trip to London to discuss the confederation agreement, “to leave that whole country a wilderness for the next half-century, but I fear if Englishmen do not go there, Yankees will.” These words nicely captured Macdonald’s quandary — how he was essentially bound by political necessity, and not personal enthusiasm, to Canadian acquisition of the North-West. He and his largely Montreal-based supporters subscribed to the old commercial empire of the St. Lawrence, while the drive to settle the British North-West was a Reform plan, spearheaded by George Brown, to satisfy Toronto’s economic ambitions. But if the Great Coalition of 1864 was to bring about constitutional renewal in place of deadlock, then territorial expansion into the western prairies had to be a planned feature of the Confederation deal (section 146 of the BNA Act). Even then, Macdonald was reluctant to assume control of such a large parcel of land. As Richard Gywn has observed in the first volume of his Macdonald biography, the Conservative leader was preoccupied, if not overwhelmed, with the problems of the United Province of Canada, and his interest in territorial expansion “varied from negligible to non-existent.” His response, in Gywn’s words, was “cautious to a degree.”

--Bill Waiser, "Macdonald's Appetite for Canadian Expansion: Main Course or Leftovers?" in Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies, ed. Patrice Dutil and Roger Hall (Toronto: Dundurn, 2014), 342-343.