Beauharnois (Province of Canada electoral district)
 Province of Canada electoral district | |
|---|---|
| Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district | |
| Legislature | Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada |
| District created | 1841 |
| District abolished | 1867 |
| First contested | 1841 |
| Last contested | 1863 |
Beauharnois was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, in a rural area south of Montreal. It was created for the first Parliament in 1841 and was based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. It was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.
The electoral district was abolished in 1867, upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.
Boundaries
[edit]The electoral district of Beauharnois was south of Montreal (now in the Beauharnois-Salaberry Regional County Municipality), extending south to the boundary with the United States. The town of Beauharnois was the major centre.
The Union Act, 1840, merged the two provinces of Lower Canada and Upper 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 Beauharnois 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:
Map of Beauharnois
[edit]
Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841–1867)
[edit]Beauharnois was a single-member constituency, represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.[4]
The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly for Beauharnois. The party affiliations are based on the biographies of individual members given by the National Assembly of Quebec, as well as votes in the Legislative Assembly. "Party" was a fluid concept, especially during the early years of the Province of Canada.[5][6][7]
| Parliament | Members | Years in Office | Party | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Parliament 1841–1844 |
John William Dunscomb[a] | 1841–1842 | Unionist; Government supporter | |||
| Edward Gibbon Wakefield[b] | 
|
1842–1844 (by-election) |
French-Canadian Group; later "British" Group | |||
| 2nd Parliament 1844–1847 |
Eden Colvile | 1844–1847 | "British" Tory | |||
| 3rd Parliament 1848–1851 |
Jacob De Witt | 1848–1851 | "English" Liberal | |||
| 4th Parliament 1851–1854 |
Ovide Le Blanc | 1851–1854 | Ministerialist, then temporarily in opposition | |||
| 5th Parliament 1854–1857 |
Charles Daoust | 1854–1857 | "Rouge" | |||
| 6th Parliament 1858–1861 |
Gédéon Ouimet | 
|
1858–1861 | Bleu | ||
| 7th Parliament 1861–1863 |
Paul Denis | 1861–1867 | Bleu | |||
| 8th Parliament 1863–1867 |
Confederation; Bleu | |||||
Notes
[edit]- ^ Resigned on October 8, 1842, following appointment as Warden, Trinity House, Montreal on July 15, 1842: Côté, Political Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (1).
- ^ Elected in by-election November 9, 1842: Côté, Political Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (2).
Abolition
[edit]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.[8] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name and boundaries in the House of Commons of Canada[9] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[10]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict. (UK), c. 35, s. 2.
- ^ Union Act, 1840, ss. 16, 18.
- ^ 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. 25.
- ^ Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
- ^ J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860 (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43–58.
- ^ Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
- ^ Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93–111.
- ^ British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
- ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2.
- ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Statutes of Lower Canada, 13th Provincial Parliament, 2nd Session (1829), c. 74