He first demonstrated his newly regained aggressiveness in the House of Commons on 7 July , when he delivered the longest address of his parliamentary career.
He spoke as the active leader of the Quebec Liberals. In September and October Laurier spoke at no fewer than six public meetings, but the most telling at the time was his great address at the Champ-de-Mars in Montreal on 22 November, only six days after Riel had been hanged.
Speaking to a crowd of nearly 50,, he was so carried away that his words touched the collective imagination. How could M. Never since entering politics had Laurier gone so far in his remarks as on 22 November, nor would he ever do so again. On 16 March , during debate on a motion by the Conservative Philippe Landry that the house express its regret at the death of Riel, he found his first opportunity to point out the only path to be followed in the difficult process of building Canada.
French is the language of our mothers, the language which recalls to our minds the most sacred associations and so long as there are French mothers the language will not die. Yet these sentiments are quite consistent with our loyalty to England.
He justified his actions and words of the preceding months and then, on a somewhat provocative note, went so far as to scold the crowd.
Below the island of Montreal the water that comes from the north from [the] Ottawa unites with the waters that come from the western lakes. But uniting they do not mix. There they run parallel, separate, distinguishable, and yet are one stream, flowing within the same banks, the mighty St. Lawrence, and rolling on toward the sea.
More significantly, they made the acquaintance of a politician who wanted to offer Canadians a carefully considered path which was based on moderation but could become an inspiration.
On that day, 10 Dec. When Macdonald called a general election for 22 Feb. He directed the campaign in Quebec with renewed confidence. Mercier, the new provincial premier, and some nationalist and even ultramontane Conservatives came with him as he travelled through a number of regions with the ghost of Riel blithely in tow. It was no use. On 22 February Macdonald edged back into power.
Edward Blake, weakened, ill, sleepless, and with little enthusiasm for heading the party, resigned on 2 June As was the custom of the time, Blake had the last word about a successor. His choice was a surprise to the many Liberals who saw Laurier as too frail, easygoing, and flexible, or too tainted in Ontario by the Riel affair, or too threatened in Quebec by the clergy, who still remembered him as a Rouge.
It was certainly a surprise to Laurier, who categorically refused. That is not my aspiration. I am not a wealthy man, and my health is poor.
In his opinion the party needed a leader with integrity, sound judgement, and courage, one able to look at problems not from a racial or religious point of view, but strictly from the standpoint of the national interest, and one who could stir crowds, but also persuade Quebeckers to join the Liberal ranks in overwhelming numbers, an essential condition for taking power in Ottawa.
On 18 June Laurier yielded to the pressure and accepted, though he made it clear that he was assuming the leadership temporarily and would relinquish it as soon as Blake had recovered his health. In fact, he believed that it would be very difficult for a French Canadian to hold such a position in a federal party. He was definitely not enthusiastic at the time, but, as his correspondence also shows, he was, at the age of 45, amply endowed with nerve, determination, and the will to succeed. Laurier would spend the next nine years of his life convincing Canadians that he was capable of guiding their destinies.
Once again he found circumstances suggested a threefold strategy. By 14 July he had hit on such a policy: commercial union with that country. His choice was inspired by the widespread free-trade sentiment in the party, which gathered around the tireless Cartwright and was central to the continentalist thinking beloved of many Canadians.
It was then introduced in the House of Commons and defeated on 6 April, with some 20 Liberal mp s abstaining. Disappointed but not crushed, Laurier retained the option. He believed the vast market of 60 million Americans was an important outlet and he refused to allow the possibility that Canadian industries might be destroyed.
He also dismissed the accusation of disloyalty towards England, a country whose civilization he admired greatly but from which, he declared, the colony would have to detach itself progressively in order to become a full and complete nation. Until he did his best to resist the attack on unrestricted reciprocity, regarded by many as equivalent to commercial union, which they believed could deprive Canada of its identity.
He held out against Blake and other influential Liberals, and against the members of the Imperial Federation League, who were constantly crying treason to the empire and conjuring up annexation to the United States. He even had to defend himself against the Americans, who were shutting themselves off in a policy of narrow protectionism.
Despite his efforts, reciprocity did not become as effective a tool for mobilizing the rank and file as he would have liked. Nor did it do anything to calm intercultural conflicts. Canada in —90 was a cauldron about to boil over. The problem was basically one of national identity. Some saw the nation as closely linked to the British empire, while others saw it as attached to the North American continent. But there was more to the conflict.
A number of Protestant anglophones favoured an exclusively English-speaking and Protestant Canada. Fearing the strength and ambition of the Catholic French Canadians, which Mercier expressed so vigorously, they set out on a crusade against Canadian dualism. On the other hand, French Canadians, with the support of some anglophones, dreamed mainly of a bilingual and bicultural Canada.
They too set out on a passionate crusade. The agitation was soon felt in parliament. Laurier had to intervene in order to clarify both the position of his party and his definition of the nation that was to be built. This was the second objective he had in mind, and not the least important. He spoke out even more strongly on 22 Jan. Laurier fine-tuned a strategy based on the defence of provincial autonomy, even at the risk of sacrificing the spread of Canadian duality across the country.
How could he prevent a province with an English-speaking majority from creating exclusively English and Protestant institutions? He recognized the realities, but he put his faith in the magnanimity of the majority partners. It was tantamount to saying that the territories could abolish the use of French in their assembly when it suited them. The subordination of the fate of the two cultures to the principle of provincial autonomy left a number of people puzzled at the time.
For their part, French Canadian nationalists would never forgive Laurier for it but, as leader of a federal party, he had concluded that he was obliged to bow to political reality. But in Ottawa, Laurier, who like Macdonald and many others was anxious to calm premature agitation, quickly agreed with the government decision to allow the courts to deal with this delicate matter, and he washed his hands of it.
There remained his third objective. Laurier had quickly identified its importance after June , since it was a matter of revitalizing and reorganizing the party. Despite his ongoing intention to give up the leadership, he worked harder than ever. He put great weight on the creation of strong provincial organizations and the establishment of close ties to the provincial parties. In his home province he maintained the tradition he had established in —77, adroitly taking advantage of the ground Blake had gained over the years.
In Ontario he managed to render himself the indispensable arbiter for a caucus split into various factions. He also made some courageous political speaking tours in that province which, although not in themselves successful, nevertheless enabled him in the long run to become the only real rallying point for the rank and file.
The Liberal defeat in the general election of 5 March dampened the enthusiasm of many, even though the party had made substantial gains in Ontario, and Quebec had sent more Liberals than Conservatives to Ottawa for the first time since Macdonald had skilfully campaigned on loyalty to Canada and the empire, which he declared were being betrayed by unrestricted reciprocity, the main election issue. Laurier was disillusioned, and became increasingly so in , a year in which nothing seemed to go right for the Liberals.
He fought off his weariness by extensive reading and writing. Sometimes he would relax by going for a walk in Ottawa. Too often, he raised the question of his resignation, an obsession constantly on the tip of his tongue, but his colleagues protested each time, especially after Blake left Canada in June Not until did a new lease on life really begin for Laurier, bringing revived hope.
At this crucial stage he experienced a restored desire for action and benefited from a political situation that presented him with the opportunity of a lifetime. He undertook a series of speaking tours to give more momentum to the results of the convention and show he was equal to the dream of making Canada a nation. Aware of the growing importance of the agricultural west, he visited it in September and October and offered it a threefold program: loosening the grip of the National Policy, opening the American market, and increasing immigration.
He did not win the west at this time, but he did gain respect and sympathy. Laurier rose to the summit of political life as a result of one of the greatest tragedies of Canadian political history: the Manitoba school question, which resurfaced once and for all on 29 Jan. Suddenly the ball had bounced back into the court of the federal politicians. Through all the twists and turns of this affair, Laurier never played the hero.
He never issued a firm public statement, although he regularly expressed sympathy for the right of the minority to have their own schools and declared his desire to protect that right as well as he could. On 11 Feb. It was a courageous and generous gesture. Laurier vacillated, but held himself up as the defender of provincial rights and the symbol of hope for the minority. He moved that consideration of the measure be postponed for six months, and then went to great lengths to prolong debate unduly by systematic obstruction, thereby killing the bill.
On 16 April, in an indescribable scene, Tupper withdrew it. For many, Laurier had come to represent moderation and conciliation in a troubled Canada, and although he had been more opportunistic than statesmanlike, leaving the minority leaders flabbergasted and believing they had been betrayed, he had won the last round but one before his final coronation. There remained the general election, called for 23 June.
Even though he considered resigning as leader in order to strengthen the unity of the grass roots, Laurier made the most of his opportunity. By attacking on all fronts and not committing himself to a clear-cut position on the Manitoba school question, the main but not the only issue in this historic election, he won a majority of 30 seats, even though the Conservatives received He had gained a broad national mandate with a solid base in Quebec, which gave him 49 of his mp s.
At the age of 54, Wilfrid Laurier became prime minister of Canada, the first French Canadian to hold this office since confederation. Laurier now had to shoulder his destiny. He would serve four successive terms as head of the government of Canada over a period of 15 years to fulfil it. His quarter-century of experience in active political life, in close contact with the country and with people such as Macdonald, whom he greatly admired as a master of politics and a leader of men, provided him with a grounding, as did his moderate liberalism.
He exploited to the utmost the many, often contradictory aspects of his personality. With his exceptional charm and charisma, he could convince, captivate, and listen to each individual as at that moment the most important person in the world, or keep firm control of the members of his party. He also fell back on his habitual easygoing manner, both to gain respite from the fiery furnace he faced every day and to let time do its work. Skilful, opposed to taking rigid positions, and occasionally manipulative, he cultivated the art of ambiguity, of mental reservations, of blending into the surrounding air.
In dealing with issues, he refused to worry about details, preferring to concentrate on the essential, guided by a pragmatism that accepted men and things as they were. Above all, he elevated compromise and quiet diplomacy almost to a dogma.
Some regarded this penchant as a lack of conviction, an exaggerated nonchalance. In fact it was a strategy for achieving his purposes more readily in a dog-eat-dog environment.
All in all, the man was a politician, but most of the time he was open, tolerant of opposing views, and conciliatory, except when there was a question of disloyalty. He never allowed a minister to thwart his plans. He could then become firm, abrupt, and willing to sacrifice his best men for the sake of his goals — cabinet solidarity and the integrity of his government, to which he clung tenaciously. For 15 years only one person held the reins of power in Ottawa. All the same, Laurier succeeded in winning the sincere friendship of his colleagues, of the party rank and file in general, and even of his opponents.
Some saw him as a benevolent father, some as a disarmingly frank, close, and loyal friend, and still others as a noble soul. Almost all were impressed by the dignity of this great seigneur, this rallier of men. To keep the upper hand in his government and his party, Laurier never forgot one key factor: patronage.
He put it to every conceivable use: to show gratitude to a friend, draw an opponent into his camp, or get rid of an unwanted member of his inner circle. He attended to every detail, even to assigning a post office to a village. In this way, little by little, Laurier shrewdly wove an effective network of reliable friends and loyal organizers. On another level, he took on the task of building alliances. He sought close links with leading capitalists and with Ontario, a problem province.
He attempted to cajole influential members of the ultramontane clergy in Quebec, counting of course on the moderate bent of his liberalism but aware that his efforts in this direction risked antagonizing radical Liberals, who were perhaps more numerous than historians have indicated. At the same time, he did his best to inspire Marchand to be conciliatory in his proposed school reforms.
Despite the occasional serious clash, his actions gradually bore fruit, though people on both sides remained on their guard. The conquest of Conservative Quebec, at this stage, was due to Laurier more than anyone else.
From the day of the election Laurier had resolutely set about the task of getting his vast country moving again, after the economic depression and cultural and religious conflicts which had badly shaken it. His first concern was to choose his cabinet. He took into account regions, ethnic groups, and religions; he showed sensitivity to the feelings of industrialists by keeping Sir Richard Cartwright, the leading spokesman of reciprocity, out of the finance ministry and calmed the fears of the clergy by leaving radical Rouges out of important positions; he flattered the moderate Quebec Conservatives by appointing one of them and drew on the administrative experience of three former provincial premiers in preference to colleagues of opposition days.
As a result there were loud screams in the wings from the old guard, but between 13 and 20 July Laurier had put together a talented team of 11, including Mowat in the justice portfolio, Fielding in finance, Blair in railways and canals, Cartwright in trade and commerce, Tarte in public works, and Mulock as postmaster general. He at once shelved the inquiry that had been so often promised before and opted for negotiations with the Greenway government, to be conducted mainly by the highly credible Mowat.
The ultimate objective was compromise or, in plain terms, to yield to the will of the stronger party and then hope to satisfy the weaker through minor adjustments. On 19 Nov. It confirmed that separate schools would not be re-established but provided for religious instruction in the schools between and p. At least one Roman Catholic teacher was to be hired if the parents of 40 children in urban areas or 25 in rural ones so demanded.
In schools where there were 10 children who spoke a language other than English, instruction could be given in English and in the mother tongue, according to the bilingual system. That was all. Gone were the minority rights written into two constitutions. He concluded that the Laurier-Greenway compromise was imperfect and inadequate, but that it must be accepted and improved over time by moderate means. The golden age came to an end in , when the Liberals lost the election over the issue of unrestricted reciprocity.
As opposition leader, Laurier maintained the confidence of his party until the First World War. While he supported Canada's contribution to Britain's war efforts and urged young men in all provinces to enlist, Laurier was against conscription. The Liberal party was badly split over this issue in the election, and several Liberals formed a union government with the Conservatives for the duration of the war.
Laurier died on February 17, , having served for 45 years in the House of Commons. At his funeral, 50, people lined the streets of Ottawa, while hundreds of dignitaries and officials from all over the country followed the funeral procession.
This solemn occasion was one of the first public events in Canada to be recorded on film. The South African War — represented the first overseas conflict in which Canada became involved.
It generated divided feelings in the population, between those who favoured loyalty to the British Empire, and those who felt that Canada's security was not directly threatened. Under intense pressure to support the British Empire, Laurier reluctantly agreed to the recruiting of a small battalion, later augmented by many additional volunteers. Relations with the Americans were rocky during the Alaska Boundary dispute.
In , an international tribunal consisting of three Americans, two Canadians, and a British chief justice named Lord Alverstone was formed. Alverstone was in the difficult position of trying to avoid a deadlock. A ninth-generation Quebecer, Laurier served briefly in the cabinet of Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie before succeeding him as Liberal leader in Successful propaganda campaigns lured in thousands of farmers and gave Canada its largest population boom in history, which led to the creation of two new provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan , in Laurier also actively supported the expansion of British imperialism on the African continent through his involvement in the South African War between and , a conflict between the British Empire and Afrikaner settlers of Dutch descent over land that today falls within the borders of South Africa.
He was leader of the Liberal Party from to and served 45 years in the House of Commons. We see you are accessing our website on IE8. Search for academic programs , residence , tours and events and more.
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