1867 Ontario general election


The 1867 Ontario general election was the first provincial election held in the newly created province of Ontario, upon Canadian Confederation to elected the members of Ontario 1st Legislative Assembly. The election took place in conjunction with the first Canadian federal election from late August to September that year, and on the same electoral boundaries.
The partisan make up of the legislature is not as straight forward as the numbers suggest. Political parties in the early days of confederation were characterized by "loose coalitions" that may change from issue to issue. It was clear however, that more than half of the members returned were supportive of the Patent Combination, the coalition ministry of John Sandfield Macdonald, appointed provisionally upon Canada's confederation, while those oppose were in minority, allowing the ministry to continue in government.

Context - Politics of the Province of Canada

The outcome of the first Ontario election tells the story of the political mastery of one John Macdonald and the expediency of another, two erstwhile rivals both from eastern Ontario though with no familial relationship. While the more radical George Brown was the most prominent Liberal among the fathers of confederation and the principal rival to Canada's founding prime minister John A Macdonald, it was John Sandfield Macdonald who replaced John A when the later was ousted. With the exception of a two-day ministry led by Brown, one of two Macdonalds occupied the English co-premiership in the final decade of the United Province of Canada.
The politics of that final decade was however plagued by division along not just partisan but also religious and language lines. Governments were propped up by disgruntled opposition members with transitory loyalty and therefore were routinely on the verge of collapse. The province's final Liberal ministry, led by John Sandfield Macdonald and collapsed in May 1864, was the fourth government to collapse in six years. Coming to terms with the unviability of the politics of the United Province, John A Macdonald's Tories and the Clear Grits wing of the Liberals led by George Brown entered into the Great Coalition with the goal of coming up with a sustainable arrangement of confederation. To secure Brown's buy-in, John A Macdonald gave three of the five seats designated for English speakers in his cabinet to the Liberals, a concession he refused to make in 1858 to secure Sandfield Macdonald's support. In opposition were a small faction English-speaking Liberals led by the sidelined Sandfield Macdonald and the Parti rouge from French Canada, opposing not just the government but the confederation project.
Once confederation arrangement were settled, Brown exited the coalition as planned. Recognizing the Conservatives’ extremely weak position in English Canada might prove his political undoing in the new dominion, John A set out to preserve the coalition under the Liberal-Conservative banner. Despite his vigorous opposition to confederation once it became inevitable, Sandfield Macdonald avenged his alienations from his Liberal peers by taking his small band of followers into the Liberal-Conservative coalition, and was sown in on July 15, 1867 as the provisional premier of the newly created province. "Hunting in pairs," the two Macdonalds secured electoral mandates in their respective spheres in the concurrent elections.

Rules of engagement

As a newly created province within a newly created nation, not all rules governing the conduct of election and suffrage were clearly defined. The British North America Act 1867 prescribes a number of ground rules relevant to the first election.
The elections laws of Canada West were updated in 1866, with electors required to meet a property qualification of being an owner or tenant with a property value listed on the assessment roll of $600 in a city, $400 in a town, $300 in an incorporated village, and $100 in a township or police village. Furthermore, urban residents must prove an annual income of at least $250. An estimated 16.5 per cent of the population of Ontario was enfranchised for the 1867 election.
The writ of election was issued on August 7, with election taking place over a number of weeks in August and September, with electoral district polls closing at different dates throughout the period. Under the system each electoral district was required to be polled in one day, but the day did not have to be the same across all electoral districts. Votes were recorded orally. The returned writs were dated as early as August 21 to as late as September 26.
Members were elected through first past the post voting, each in a separate single-member district. This system would be in use across Ontario until 1886. Electoral district boundaries largely aligned with boundary of existing administrative divisions (counties and cities, with more populous counties further divided into multiple seats. The newly created province's inherited the boundary of Upper Canada which ceased to exist 27 year earlier. Its northern boundary was undefined, but there were few inhabitant north of Sudbury. The newly created electoral district of Algoma had the smallest electoral roll in the province. The distribution of seats are as follow:

Results

To properly interpret and understand the election results form 1867, one should be mindful of factors that would seem peculiar in 21st century.Dual mandate - It was possible for a candidate to stand and be elected in more than one electoral district. It was also possible for a candidate to simultaneously hold a seat in the House of Commons and a seat in a provincial legislature. The following men were elected to both the House of Commons and the Ontario legislature that years:
  • * Edward Blake, elected MP for Durham West and MLA for Bruce South, later Premier of Ontario and federal Liberal leader
  • * John Carling, elected MP and MLA for London, a key lieutenant of Sir John A Macdonald and later a member of his federal cabinet
  • * Thomas Roberts Ferguson, elected MP for Cardwell and MLA for Simcoe South
  • * John Sandfield MacDonald, elected MP and MLA for Cornwall, Ontario's first Premier
  • * Edmund Burke Wood, elected MP and MLA for Brant South, Ontario's first Treasurer in the Macdonald ministryDemographic - Ontario, like Canada, was overwhelmingly an agrarian, rural society in the nineteenth century. Only nine of the 82 seats were allocated to "towns". Other than the two seats for Toronto and the seat for Hamilton, the other 6 urban seats all have relatively small population. The combined population of the eight towns accounted for less than 10% of the province's population. Furthermore, with electoral boundary largely conforming with boundaries of administrative district, the population of electoral districts varied greatly, ranging from as many as 39,000 in Huron North to less than 4,000 in Niagara Loose partisanship - Partisanship in the early days of confederation was characterized by "loose coalitions" rather than formal, cohesive parties. Contemporaneous election returns did not record candidates' party affiliations. The party labels on official record for those early elections were retroactively applied after partisan political system was more formalized, and thus were not all accurate. For example, Edmund Burke Wood, one of the four dual-mandate holders and Ontario's inaugural Treasurer, was recorded as elected to the Ontario legislature as a conservative and to the House of Commons as a Liberal. In 1867 however, he was explicitly repudiated by the South Brant Liberal association, was elected to both seat as a coalitionist, and his opponent for the federal seat, Henry Blakey Leeming was none other than the local Liberal association president.
These are some of the factors that led to Ontario's first ministry being formed in manner that would be unfathomable in modern days. John Sandfield Macdonald, the leader of the last Liberal ministry of the United Province of Canada who ousted Conservative John A Macdonald in 1862 only to be ousted by him two years later, the vocal opponent of confederation sidelined by his Liberals peers, upon confederation transformed himself into a key ally and potent weapon of the new Prime Minister in keeping the Liberals from power. He was maneuvered into the premier's chair by John A Macdonald and led a Liberal-Conservative Patent Combination ministry during the province's first five years. While premier leading what was effectively a conservative government in Toronto, he was also recorded as a Liberal MP in Ottawa, which if true would put him in opposition to his political benefactor the prime minister. Reporting of the proceedings in Ottawa however show Sandfield Macdonald along with former Liberals who joined the federal cabinet were routinely subjects of derision by the Liberal opposition.
! colspan=2 rowspan=2 | Political party
! rowspan=2 | Party leader
! rowspan=2 colspan=1 | Candidates
! rowspan=2 colspan=1 | Seats
! colspan=2 | Votes
!#
!%
! colspan="3" style="text-align:left;" | Total
! 82
! 159,323
! 100.00%

MLAs elected by region and riding

Party designations are as follows:
Northern Ontario
Ottawa Valley
Saint Lawrence Valley
Central Ontario
Georgian Bay
Wentworth/Halton/Niagara
Midwestern Ontario
Southwestern Ontario
'''Peel/York/Ontario'''