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| Affiliation | Conservative |
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| Name | John A. Macdonald |
| Address |
Kingston, Ontario , Canada |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
January 11, 1815
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| Died | June 06, 1891
(76 years)
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| Contributor | Monsieur |
| Last Modifed | Monsieur
Jan 11, 2007 02:29pm |
| Tags |
Scottish -
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| Info | The Right Honourable Sir John Alexander Macdonald, GCB, KCMG, PC, QC, DCL, LL.D was the first Prime Minister of Canada.
He was born on January 11, 1815 in Glasgow, Scotland. His parents were Hugh Macdonald, an unsuccessful merchant, and his wife Helen Shaw. After the failure of his father's business ventures, his family emigrated to Kingston, Upper Canada in 1820 along with thousands of others seeking affordable land and promises of new prosperity. Hugh's fortunes rose there. John was educated in the area's finest schools.
Macdonald became a lawyer in 1834 and set up his own law practice in Kingston. He earned the esteem of many by his unsuccessful but solid defence of the American raiders who were captured at the Battle of the Windmill in the Rebellions of 1837. In 1843, at the age of 28, he married his half second cousin, Isabella Clark. Soon after the wedding, Isabella became terribly sick with a mysterious illness. She depended on medication and spent most of her time in bed. They had two children: John Alexander, who died when he was 13 months old, and Hugh John, who was raised by Macdonald's sister Margaret and her husband after Isabella's death in 1857. Hugh John went on to become premier of the Province of Manitoba.
In 1867, Macdonald married his second wife Susan Agnes Bernard. They had one daughter, Margaret Mary Theodora Macdonald, who was born with hydrocephalus and suffered from physical and mental disabilities.
In 1843, at the age of 28, John Alexander Macdonald exhibited his first interest in politics. He was elected to the legislature of the Province of Canada in 1847 was appointed Receiver General in William Draper's administration. Macdonald had to give up his portfolio when Draper's government lost the next election. He left the Conservatives, hoping to build a more moderate base. In 1854, he helped in founding the Liberal-Conservative Party under the leadership of Sir Allan McNab. Within a few years, the Liberal-Conservatives attracted the old Conservative base as well as some centrist Reformers. The Liberal-Conservatives came to power in 1854 and Macdonald was appointed Attorney General. Macdonald was usually the most powerful minister. In the next election Macdonald continued his rise in politics by becoming Joint Premier of the Province of Canada with Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché of Québec.
Taché resigned in 1857, and George-Étienne Cartier took his place. In the election of 1858, the Macdonald-Cartier government was defeated and they resigned as Premiers. Interestingly, the Governor General asked Cartier to become the senior Premier a week after his defeat. Cartier accepted and brought Macdonald into office along with him. Macdonald focused on communications and defence, especially the Intercolonial Railway.
The government was again defeated in 1862. Macdonald served as opposition leader until the 1864 election, when Taché came out of retirement and joined with Macdonald to form the governing party yet again.
Queen Victoria knighted Macdonald for playing an integral role in bringing about Confederation. His creation as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George was announced at the birth of the Dominion, July 1, 1867. An election was held in August which put Macdonald and his Conservative Party into power.
Macdonald's vision as Prime Minister was to enlarge the country and unify it. Accordingly, under his rule Canada bought Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory from the Hudson's Bay Company for £300,000. This land became the Northwest Territories. In 1870 Parliament passed the Manitoba Act, creating the province of Manitoba out of a portion of the Northwest Territories in response to the Red River Rebellion led by Louis Riel.
In 1871 Britain added British Columbia to Confederation, making it the sixth province. Macdonald promised a transcontinental railway connection to persuade the province to join. In 1873 Prince Edward Island joined Confederation, and Macdonald created the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to act as a police force for the vast Northwest Territories.
After the Pacific scandal in 1873, in which Macdonald was accused of taking bribes to award contracts for the construction of the railway, he was forced to resign and Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie formed a caretaker government. The 1874 federal election was won by the Mackenzie Liberals. Macdonald was returned to power in 1878 on the strength of the National Policy, a plan to promote trade within the country by protecting it from the industries of other nations and renewing the effort to complete the previously promised Canadian Pacific Railway, which was accomplished in 1885. That year, Louis Riel launched the North-West Rebellion in Saskatchewan, but it was quickly put down. The trial and execution of Riel for treason caused a deep division between French Canadians, who supported Riel and English Canadians, who supported Macdonald.
In 1891, Macdonald won the elections again, but by this time, 76-year-old political warhorse started to feel the years of overwork, stress, drink and several bouts of severe illness, including a gallstone problem in 1870 that turned his office into a sick room for two months. On May 29, 1891, Sir John A. suffered a severe stroke. He died a week later on June 6, 1891 at the age of 76. He would lie in state in the Canadian Senate Chamber where grieving Canadians turned out in the thousands to pay their respects. His state funeral was held on June 9, attended by hundreds of thousands of people. He is buried in Cataraqui Cemetery near Kingston, Ontario.
His career spanned 19 years, making him the second longest serving Prime Minister of Canada. He is the only Canadian Prime Minister to win six majority governments. He won praise for having helped forge a nation of sprawling geographic size, with two diverse European colonial origins, and a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds and political views.
Macdonald is depicted on the Canadian ten-dollar bill. He also has bridges, airports, and highways named after him (such as Ontario's Macdonald-Cartier Freeway), as well as a plethora of schools across the country.
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