Canada’s Governors General 1847–1878: Biography and Constitutional Evolution (review)

Barbara J. Messamore’s study of Canada’s five governors general between 1847 and 1878, a reworking of her 2003 University of Edinburgh doctoral dissertation, is unabashedly at odds with social history – what she calls the mainstream of Canadian academic history. Her book is history from above, in explicit contrast to history ‘from below’; it is a history which ‘must take account of extraordinary individuals’ and which, inspired by Donald Creighton, focuses on the ‘interplay between character and circumstance.’ Her basic premise, drawn from previous scholars, is that Canadian constitutional history can be studied through an examination of changes in the powers of the governors general. Thus, in seeking to understand the constitutional evolution of Canada following the granting of responsible government, she focuses on the lives and deeds of Elgin, Head, Monck, Lisgar, and Dufferin. She thereby aims to ‘marry constitutional history and biography,’ an approach which contrasts with other examinations of the constitution as a legal system or as the product of broader political and other forces (as in Kennedy or Dawson).

After an introductory chapter that provides an overview of the office and the men who filled it, appropriately entitled ‘Governor-Generalities,’ Messamore turns to a series of case studies showing how her subjects acted in specific instances of political crisis and instability. There are chapters that deal with Elgin, responsible government and the Rebellion Losses Bill in 1848–49; Head and the ‘double shuffle’ in 1858, when he refused Brown’s request for a dissolution of parliament after the Reform ministry’s defeat in the Assembly and, instead, allowed Macdonald to use dubious procedural tactics to restore the Conservatives to power; Monck and the creation of the Great Coalition in 1864; Lisgar and the Washington Treaty of 1871; and Dufferin and the Pacific Scandal in 1873. A final chapter examines the lead-up to the changes made to the letters patent (commission) and instructions of the governors general in 1878, which provide the closing date of the study.

Messamore’s biographical approach is useful in that it allows us to see the role of the governors general as more than just the ceremonial figureheads that a superficial understanding of Canadian history might assume them to be. It is clear, and this is perhaps Messamore’s most important point, that even after the granting of responsible government in 1848 and its concretization in 1849, the governors general remained active and influential in Canadian high politics. They helped shape British imperial policy, notably via their semi-private correspondence with colonial officials in London. They worked as political negotiators, helping resolve tensions on the Canadian political scene, and they acted as quasi-diplomats, notably in relations between Canada and the United States.

There are, however, drawbacks to Messamore’s more circumscribed view of political and constitutional history as being ‘the preserve of this favoured class’ and synonymous with high politics, even leaving aside the debate over the respective merits of history from above and from below. Her focus on a limited number of political and constitutional crises means that this is not really an overview of viceregal influence on Canadian politics and constitutional change in the period. For example, the book, which consistently downplays the importance of Confederation, says nothing of Monck’s role during the Confederation negotiations themselves. Nor does Messamore examine political and constitutional change on a more everyday level, as seen through the normal functions of the governor general’s office. The ceremonial aspect of the office is explicitly de-emphasized, and there is little discussion of the practice and evolution of matters such as the appointment of government officials or the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy, with the exception of Lord Dufferin’s actions in the case of Ambroise Lépine, convicted for the execution of Thomas Scott. In the case of pardons, as Carolyn Strange has argued, the decision to execute or pardon an obscure...