Following Great Britain’s adoption of free trade and acceptance of colonial self-government, British North Americans were preoccupied with how to position themselves in the new industrial order. Their strategies were conceived in the context of Britain’s global empire based on industrial supremacy, financial institutions, and free trade. With British support, business and political leaders in the colonies developed the infrastructure to launch their own industrial revolutions and soon began to imagine a larger stage on which to play out their ambitions. Despite major obstacles in their path, a confederated Canada was proclaimed on 1 July 1867, and four years later its boundaries stretched to the Pacific coast. Pushing aside Aboriginal and Métis populations on the Prairies and taking the Rocky Mountains in their stride, Canadians in 1885 celebrated the completion of the longest railway in the world – the Canadian Pacific – which spanned the continent. These were, by any measure, awesome achievements.

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IN ACTION

Within a decade of the granting of responsible government, the foundations were put in place to sustain a more liberal and market-oriented society. Aristocratic privilege, monopolies, proprietary land regimes, and inheritance laws encumbering estates for the benefit of women and children were all swept away in the name of progress. Often stoutly resisted, the liberal order was a bundle of contradictions and rarely extended to those without the power to claim it, but for better or for worse, it was the framework in which public policy was structured.