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Two Mountains (Province of Canada electoral district)

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This article is about the pre-Confederation electoral district. For the successor federal electoral district, see Two Mountains (electoral district). For the successor provincial electoral district, see Deux-Montagnes (provincial electoral district).
Two Mountains
Canada East
Province of Canada electoral district
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district
LegislatureLegislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
District created1841
District abolished1867
First contested1841
Last contested1863

Two Mountains (French name: Lac des Deux Montagnes) was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, Canada East, in a rural area north-west of Montreal. It was created in 1841, based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.

Two Mountains was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly. It was abolished in 1867, upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.

Boundaries

Two Mountains electoral district was located in a rural area, north-west of Montreal, bordered by the Ottawa River, (now in the area known as the Deux-Montagnes Regional County Municipality). It was bordered to the south and south-west by the Ottawa River, which was the boundary between Canada East and Canada West.

The Union Act, 1840 merged the two provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada, with a single Parliament. The separate parliaments of Lower Canada and Upper Canada were abolished.[1] The Union Act provided that the pre-existing electoral boundaries of Lower Canada and Upper Canada would continue to be used in the new Parliament, unless altered by the Union Act itself.[2]

The Two Mountains electoral district of Lower Canada was not altered by the Act, and therefore continued with the same boundaries which had been set by a statute of Lower Canada in 1829:

The County of the Two Mountains shall be bounded on the east and north east, by the south west boundary of the Seigniory of Blainville, and the augmentation to Mille Isles, by the rear line of the augmentation to the Seigniory of the Lake of the Two Mountains, by the rear line of Argenteuil, the eastern outline of the Township of Wentworth continued to the south west bounds of the Township of Howard, thence along the said bounds, and continuing on the same course, north westward to the northern boundary of the Province, on the west by the said County of Ottawa, on the south and south west by the Grand or Ottawa River, and shall include the Isle Bizarre and all the Islands in the Grand or Ottawa River nearest to the said County, in the whole or in part fronting or intersecting the same, and on the north and north west, by the northern boundary of the Province; which County so bounded comprises the Seigniories of Mille Isles or Rivière du Chêne, Lake of the Two Mountains and the augmentation thereto, and Argenteuil, and the Townships of Chatham, Grenville and Wentworth, Harrington, Arundel and Howard, and the Parishes of Saint Eustache, Saint Benôit, Saint Scholastique, Lake of the Two Mountains, and Isle Bizarre, and all the Parishes, Townships and lands in the whole or in part comprised within the above limits.[3]

Members of the Legislative Assembly

Two Mountains was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly. The following were the members for Two Mountains.[4]

Parliament Years Member Party[5]
1st Parliament
1841-1844 		1841–1842 Colin Robertson Unionist and Tory
1842–1844 Charles John Forbes Tory

Abolition

The district was abolished on July 1, 1867, when the British North America Act, 1867 came into force, creating Canada and splitting the Province of Canada into Quebec and Ontario.[6] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[7] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[8]

References

  1. ^ Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
  2. ^ Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
  3. ^ An Act to make a new and more convenient subdivision of the Province into Counties, for the purpose of effecting a more equal Representation thereof in the Assembly than heretofore, SLC 1829, c. 73, s. 1, para. 28.
  4. ^ J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860, (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43-58.
  5. ^ For party affiliation, see biographies of individual members: Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
  6. ^ British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
  7. ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
  8. ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.
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