This one is rather complex to understand for a non-nationalist, in fact, I had trouble with it myself because I feel like this is mainly a house of cards built to support a narrative than an actual fact, but oddly enough, while their facts are a little slim there is indeed a series of problems with the 1867 constitution.

First, in 1837 there was the Patriotes Rebellion in which armed French patriots took arms against the British government controlling Lower Canada (The name for Québec before Canada was actually formed).

The response from the British was both military and political. The rebellion was squashed by 1500 British soldiers on one hand, and the Act of Union was adopted in 1840 on the other hand.

We’ll see more about the Act of Union of 1840, but let me just state the clear admitted goal of the act:

To ensure a loyal English majority in British North America by anglicizing the French Canadians.

In other words, the clear goal of the act of Union of 1840 was to eliminate French from North America.

I’ll spare you the details for now, but the summary is that it failed. The act of Union of 1840 couldn’t survive in part because of the rising population in Upper Canada (Ontario) which was reducing the demographic weight of Lower Canada.

With the growing importance of Railroads and the failure of the Act of Union, a new plan was hatched: to unite the 4 British colonies together:

• Upper Canada (Ontario)
• Lower Canada (Québec)
• New Brunswich
• Nova Scotia

For Québec, this would prevent the most populous Upper Canada from having a complete domination over Canadian politics, but it also scared a lot of French Canadians since it further diluted the French Canadian voter power.

The Conservatives (Blue) considered that joining Canada was the best option for Québec while the Liberals (Red) wanted to put it to a referendum.

Here is where the problem started: The Clergy, which was still very powerful in Québec, started to campaign for the Conservatives with the now famous quote:

The Sky (Heaven) is blue, Hell is red

Nationalists also claim that in many districts, liberal supporters were prevented from voting and that in other ones, voting was done in public with the clergy threatening excommunication for liberal voters.

I have no clear idea if these last claims are true of not. but what the nationalists are missing is that the election didn’t really matter that much.

The main and number one problem is that in the 1860s, Québec had little choice in its future and at no one was independence on the table for Lower Canada.

The only option that Québec really had was to try to negotiate a less horrible deal than the Act of Union, with fear all around: in the other 3 colonies just a few decades before that, for example, Catholics were banned from voting!

For example, in 1864, the Courrier du Canada supported the confederation because its:

the least harmful of a set of poor solutions

That’s the main problem with the 1867 Confederation. The other 3 provinces could have stayed as semi-autonomous colonies (like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia before 1867), but that option was never on the table for Lower Canada.

If the 1867 confederation was a wedding for the other 3 provinces, in many ways, it was a shotgun wedding for Québec.