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Vaudreuil (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 Vaudreuil (electoral district). For the successor provincial electoral district, see Vaudreuil (provincial electoral district).

Vaudreuil
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

Vaudreuil was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, 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.

Vaudreuil 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

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Vaudreuil electoral district was located west of Montreal, between the Saint Lawrence River to the south and the Ottawa River to the north, bordering on Canada West (now in Vaudreuil-Soulanges Regional County Municipality).

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 Lower Canada electoral district of Vaudreuil was not altered by the Act. It was therefore continued with the same boundaries in the new Parliament. Those boundaries had been set by a statute of Lower Canada in 1829:

The County of Vaudreuil shall be bounded on the north and east by the River Ottawa, on the south and south east by the River Saint Lawrence, and on the south west and west by the boundary line separating that part of Lower-Canada, and Upper-Canada situate between the Saint Lawrence and the Ottawa, and shall include the Isle Perrot, and all the Islands in the said Grand or Ottawa River and in the River Saint Lawrence, nearest to the said County, and in the whole or in part fronting the same; which County so bounded, comprises the Seigniories of Vaudreuil, Rigaud, Soulanges and New Longueuil and the Township of Newton.[3]

Map of Vaudreuil

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The seigniories which composed Vaudreuil electoral district were as follows:

Map showing the seigniories which composed Vaudreuil electoral district

Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841–1867)

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Vaudreuil was a single-member constituency.[2]

The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly for Vaudreuil. 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.[4][5][6]

Parliament Member Years in Office Party
1st Parliament
1841–1844 		John Simpson 1841–1844 Unionist; "British" Tory
2nd Parliament
1844–1847 		Jacques-Philippe Lantier 1844–1847 French-Canadian Group
3rd Parliament
1848–1851 		Jean-Baptiste Mongenais 1848–1857 French-Canadian Group
4th Parliament
1851–1854 		Ministerialist
5th Parliament
1854–1857 		Bleu
6th Parliament
1858–1861 		Robert Unwin Harwood[a] 1858–1860 Conservative
Jean-Baptiste Mongenais[b] 1860–1861
(By-election) 		Bleu
7th Parliament
1861–1863 		Jean-Baptiste Mongenais 1861–1863 Bleu
8th Parliament
1863–1867 		Antoine Chartier de Lotbinière Harwood 1863–1867 Confederation; Conservative

Notes

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  1. ^ Resigned seat, October 3, 1860, to stand for election to the Legislative Council: J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada from 1841 to 1865, 2nd ed. (Ottawa: G.E. Desbarats, 1865), p. 114.
  2. ^ Elected in by-election, November 26, 1860: Côté, Political Appointments and Elections, 2nd ed., p. 114.

Abolition

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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.[7] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[8] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[9]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict. (UK), c. 35, s. 2.
  2. ^ a b 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 (9 Geo. IV), c. 73, s. 1, para. 26.
  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. ^ Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
  6. ^ Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93–111.
  7. ^ British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
  8. ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2.
  9. ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.

Public Domain 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.

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