For the sixty years of such changes as Canada went through from 1840 to 1900, the available books are now considerable and varied. There are substantial histories in the multi-volume Centennial Series of which the most useful are: J. M. S. Careless, The Union of the Canadas, 1841-1857 (1967); W. L. Morton, The Critical Years, 1857-1873 (1964); P. B. Waite, Canada, 1874—1896: Arduous Destiny (1971); R. C. Brown and Ramsay Cook, Canada, 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed (1974); and Morris Zaslow, The Opening of the Canadian North, 1870—1914 (1971). Several of these have useful bibliographies for further exploration.
The Confederation movement was a principal theme in the Morton book noted above. Others include D. G. Creighton, The Road to Confederation (1964) and P. B. Waite, The Life and Times of Confederation (1962). A useful background to Confederation is Paul G. Cornell, The Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841-1867 (1962). Ged Martin, Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837-67 (1995) is a recent account.
One way of getting the feel of this period is from biography and autobiography. History’s raw material is men and women’s lives and there are some exceptional biographies for Canada 1840-1900. The most important is D. G. Creighton, John A. Macdonald (1952) and The Old Chieftain (1955), republished in 1999 in a one-volume paperback. It can be considered the finest biography in English in Canada. The redoubtable founder and editor of the Toronto Globe, George Brown, is the subject of J. M. S. Careless, Brown of the Globe (1959) and Statesman of Confederation (1963). Brian Young offers a frank and vigorous appreciation of George-Etienne Cartier: Montreal Bourgeois (1981). On Sir Wilfrid Laurier see O. D. Skelton, Life and Times of Sir Wilfrid Laurier (2 vols. 1921); Joseph Schull, Laurier: The First Canadian (1965); and Real Belanger, Wilfrid Laurier: quand la politique devient passion (1986). Sir John Thompson, an important guardian of Canada’s national sanity as Minister of Justice, 1885-1894, is the subject of P. B. Waite, The Man from Halifax: Sir John Thompson, Prime Minister (1985). Another Nova Scotian, Sir Charles
Tupper, has not yet received a decent full biography; the best is Phillip Buckner’s study in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography [DCB], Vol. XIV.
The DCB is lovely for browsing. It is organized by dates of death of the subject, so one needs to know that in order to get the right one of the 14 volumes. For biographies in short compass there is no better source. For example, Joseph Howe’s life is sketched in lively detail in Volume X; Volume XIII (1910-19) contains a fine biography of Sir Hector Langevin; and Volume XIV (1911-20) is the best place to find an authoritative life of Edward Blake (1833-1912), the leader of the Liberal Party before Laurier, and of Sir William Van Horne (1843-1915), one of the builders of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Railway history in Canada is a big subject: the railway age began in the 1850s and continued until after the First World War. For the Grand Trunk Railway, G. R. Stevens, Canadian National Railways, vol. 1: Sixty Years of Trial and Error (1966) is a lively recital of the line’s adventures. W. K. Lamb, A History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1977) is well-written and sensible and Pierre Berton’s two volumes, The National Dream: The Great Railway, 1871-1881 (1970) and The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 (1971) are flamboyant and vigorous.
On the promotion of development of western Canada see Douglas Owram, The Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the Idea of the West (1980). The best introduction to the prairie west is Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History (1984). George F. G. Stanley, Louis Riel (1963) is still the surest approach to that controversial figure but it should be balanced with Thomas Flanagan, Louis ‘David’ Riel: ‘Prophet of the New World’ (1979), R. C. Macleod’s excellent The North-West Mounted Police and Law Enforcement, 1873—1905 (1976) and Bob Beal and Rod Macleod, Prairie Fire: The 1885 North-West Rebellion (1984). Maggie Siggins, Riel: A Life of Revolution (1994) adds new material and drama to the Metis struggle to retain their way of life. Further west, the history of British Columbia is well developed in Margaret A. Ormsby, British Columbia: A History (1971) and Robin Fisher, Contact and Conflict: Indian-European Relations in British Columbia, 1774-1890 (1977) is a refreshing study on aboriginal-white relations.
For Quebec, Quebec, a history, vol 1. 1867-1929 (1983) is a translation of the excellent Histoire de Quebec con-temporain, 1867-1929 (1979) by Paul-Andre Linteau, Rene Durocher, and Jean-Claude Robert. A. I. Silver, The French-Canadian Idea of Confederation, 1864—1900 (1982) is valuable as is Susan Mann Trofimenkoff, The Dream of Nation: A Social and Intellectual History of Quebec (1982). Robert Rumilly’s multi-volume Histoire de la Province de Quebec (1940-69) is a delight to read for those who read French.
The volumes in the Centennial Series noted above contain valuable accounts of Canada’s relations with the Empire and the United States in this period. These should be supplemented by C. P. Stacey, Canada in the Age of Conflict: A History of Canadian External Policies, vol. 1, 1867-1921 (1977) and Desmond Morton, A Military History of Canada (1985). Kenneth Bourne, Britain and the Balance of Power In North America, 1815-1908 (1967) surveys Imperial policy and David L. M. Farr, The Colonial Ojfice and Canada, 1867-1887 (1955) covers the institutional aspects of Anglo-Canadian relations. A classic study of Canadian imperial ideas is Carl Berger The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (1967). R. C. Brown, Canada’s National Policy, 1883-1900 (1964) is a standard study of Canadian-American relations in the period while Canadian attitudes towards the United States are sketched in R. C. Brown and S. F. Wise, Canada Views the United States: Nineteenth Century Political Attitudes (1967).
World History
