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Act of Union
DCHP-2 (Sep 2016)
Spelling variants:act of union
n. — historical, Politics
an act of the British Parliament, passed in 1840 and proclaimed 10 February 1841, that united Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada.
Type: 4. Culturally Significant — The term Act of Union is not unique to Canada, as other acts of union have been enacted, such as the Act of Union (May 1, 1707) unifying England and Scotland or the Acts of Union of 1800 by the British and Irish parliaments, unifying England and Ireland. See Chart 1. In the Canadian context, the term is used in reference to the 1840 treaty that united Upper Canada and Lower Canada as the Province of Canada. In 1867 the British North America Act replaced the Act of Union.
See also COD-2, s.v. "Act of Union", which is marked "Canadian History", Gage-1, s.v. "Act of Union", ITP Nelson, s.v. "Act of Union".
See also COD-2, s.v. "Act of Union", which is marked "Canadian History", Gage-1, s.v. "Act of Union", ITP Nelson, s.v. "Act of Union".
Quotations
1826
"Let the public faith be most scrupulously kept with the French inhabitants of Canada; let their religion and their laws be confirmed to them in the act of union; and let the most positive instruction be given to the King's representative there, never to assent to any bill that invades these rights - but let not a state of things continue which gives to the French the entire mastery over his Majesty's English subjects in that colony, and excludes the most loyal and best informed portion of the population from any share in the discussion of their interests in the popular branch of the Legislature."
1841
At 12 o'clock the Hon. Levius P. Sherwood, Thomas Kirkpatrick and William Hepburne, Esquires, commissioners appointed by his Excellency the Governor General to administer the oath prescribed by the statute to the members elect, proceeded to administer the same, and the members present having been sworn in due form, the clerk of the House of Assembly then read the proclamation of his Excellency summoning the Provincial Parliament, and also the 33d section of the Act of Union, [...].
1880
While Canada has assumed, while the Dominion has undertaken the defence and the protection of these Fisheries, while that duty is thrown upon her by the Act of Union, while we have in view the limited duration of the Washington Treaty, we cannot avoid remembering all the cost, all the expense, all the responsibility of this protection, of this defence, and that it must fall upon the Dominion as a whole - on the Dominion Treasury - while all the benefits of these Fisheries accrue to the several Maritime Provinces.
1900
Military rule, the Quebec act, the constitutional act, the act of Union, were each dealt with in a way that merited the Rev. Salem Bland's remark: -"I hope that Prof. Shortt's paper will be preserved for us, because I do not know where we can get anything like it that is nearly so good."
1948
Durham also recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be merged into a single "Province of Canada." This was done by the Act of Union of 1840, which provided one government for "Canada East" and " Canada West," as they came to be known, with each of the old provinces electing an equal number of members to the assembly.
1979
To end the stalemate, Durham, in his famous report, recommended that the government be entrusted to a single legislature that was decidedly English. The ideal solution would have been to federate all the British colonies, but there was not enough time. Aimed at essentials, London decided to join together in a single Legislature the Assemblies of Upper and Lower Canada, and in 1840 passed the Act of Union. Even though the population of Lower Canada was larger than that of Upper Canada, [...]
1997
Mr. Bouchard and his ilk aren't satisfied with that. But the suspicion is that nothing's been satisfactory - the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the Quebec Act of 1774, the Constitutional Act of 1791, the Act of Union of 1841, the British North America Act of 1867, the Victoria Accord of 1971, or the Constitutional Act of 1982.
2015
One of our two agreed descriptors for the purpose of governance and law-making was John Graves Simcoe's famous 1792 phrase "the very image and transcript of that of Great Britain." The other was "for the peace, welfare and good government." This is found in all our constitutions, being the 1763 Royal Proclamation; the Quebec Act, 1774; the Constitutional Act, 1791; the Act of Union, 1840; and the Constitution Act, 1867, section 91, becoming "for the Peace, Order and good Government of Canada ... ".
References
- Gage-1
- ITP Nelson
- COD-2
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