This chapter explores the dramatic context in which the union of British settler colonies in North America was conceived, among them the Industrial Revolution, American Civil War, “Little Englandism,” and political deadlock in the United Canadas. After a framework for political union was established at conferences in Charlottetown and Quebec City in 1864, four colonies (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec) were brought together by the British North America Act passed in the British Parliament in 1867. The “dominion” of Canada quickly extended its boundaries by the acquisition of Rupert’s Land (1869-70); British Columbia (1871), Prince Edward Island (1873), and the Arctic (1880), essentially making the new nation-state a holding company for British territorial interests in North America. A national policy, orchestrated by Conservative Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, entailed the suppression of Métis and Indigenous peoples in the Northwest (who mounted rebellions led by Louis Riel in 1869 and 1885) to make way for agricultural settlement; building the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway; and the adoption of tariff walls to encourage industrial growth.

The story of Catholic Canada is not simply a binary of French and English. Rather, there were a number of groups, including significant populations of Scottish Catholics, in the Maritime provinces and Upper Canada (modern Ontario). This chapter takes as its starting point the regional nature of Canadian history and examines the development of distinctively (and distinct) Irish Catholic communities in the Maritime provinces and Upper Canada/Ontario.