As Canadians note the 200th birthday of the country’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, UFV adjunct history professor Ged Martin asks: was Macdonald planning to retire to British Columbia?<\/p>\n
In March 1891, Macdonald led his Conservative Party to a narrow election victory. He had been talking about getting out politics for some time — after all, he was 76 — and now was the moment.<\/p>\n
But there was no easy exit strategy from being prime minister. He did not even have an obvious successor.<\/p>\n
He had to move a long way from Ottawa — he had been too big on the national stage for too long to hang around.<\/p>\n
Politicians did not get pensions. Macdonald was not poor but he wasn’t wealthy either.<\/p>\n
His wife, Agnes, was 22 years younger. Their only child, daughter Mary, needed constant care to cope with disability. He had to provide for their futures.<\/p>\n
So Macdonald had to maximize his savings. In 1890, he was planning to invest his cash in BC mortgages — the best interest rates available across Canada.<\/p>\n
He also needed a retirement job.<\/p>\n
Becoming a lieutenant-governor would have been attractive — good salary, a nice mansion, light duties.<\/p>\n
But Macdonald’s home province was out — he hated Ontario Liberal premier Oliver Mowat.<\/p>\n
He spoke no French, so Quebec was closed too.<\/p>\n
Jealous Maritimers did not welcome outsiders in their top jobs.<\/p>\n
Manitoba was split by a language and religious conflict over schools funding.<\/p>\n
Alberta and Saskatchewan had not yet become provinces.<\/p>\n
But British Columbia would have been attractive.<\/p>\n
Macdonald had visited the province back in 1886. He had travelled the newly opened Canadian Pacific Railway through the Fraser Valley, but did not stop there.<\/p>\n
Macdonald enjoyed relaxing in Victoria, a city that had elected him to Ottawa as its absentee MP in 1878.<\/p>\n
Like his home town of Kingston, Ontario, Victoria was a small city with a strong “British” atmosphere — and the climate was much better!<\/p>\n
Agnes liked British Columbia. She holidayed on the West coast after Sir John A’s death.<\/p>\n
BC politics would have been a downside — with no formal political parties, the legislature was a circus, and the lieutenant-governor would have had a hands-on role to keep the machine working.<\/p>\n
But that would have been no problem for a skilled operator like Sir John A.<\/p>\n
So — was he planning to retire to Government House in Victoria?<\/p>\n
Lieutenant-governor Hugh Nelson, a Macdonald supporter, had been four years in the job — he quit in 1892 on health grounds.<\/p>\n
So a change was on the cards.<\/p>\n
The choice of a lieutenant-governor was entirely an Ottawa responsibility. Nobody in BC would have been consulted.<\/p>\n
So the fact that there’s no actual evidence of Macdonald’s plans is not a problem — the appointment would have come out of the blue, with a simple announcement by the Governor General from Rideau Hall.<\/p>\n
Well, it never happened — worn out by the election campaign and a growing wave of political scandal, Sir John A. Macdonald died in office on June 6th 1891.<\/p>\n
UFV adjunct professor Ged Martin lives in Ireland and contributes to UFV classes via Skype. He is the author of John A. Macdonald: Canada’s First Prime Minister (Dundurn, 2013).<\/em><\/p>\n For more information, contact Ged Martin at Ged.Martin@ufv.ca<\/a><\/p>\n 01\/11\/2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Canadians note the 200th birthday of the country’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, UFV adjunct history professor Ged Martin asks: was Macdonald planning to retire to British Columbia? In March 1891, Macdonald led his Conservative Party to a narrow election victory. He had been talking about getting out politics for some time … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}