On Sunday morning we went to the Cathedral, where Bishop Williams preached. The music was very good. The organist was quite talented. Father and mother and Mr. Tilley and I sat together. Major Bernard told me later at the hotel that we were to have an excellent time throughout the week and that there was to be a Reception on Tuesday and a public ball on Friday. Mrs. Penny invited mother and me to visit her. Mr. Galt, Mr. Cartier, Mr. Couchon, Mr. Cameron and a lot of other gentlemen were there, and Mr. Galt gave me a warm welcome to Canada. On Monday night the steamer arrived with the other delegates who showed signs of fatigue. Among the party were the two Misses Gray (daughter of Colonel Gray of P.E.I. and daughter of Colonel Gray of St. John), Mrs. and Miss Tupper, Mrs. and Miss Archibald. Mr. McDougall (afterwards Sir William) brought his daughter to see me and we went out shopping together. After lunch Mr. Drinkwater (Sir John’s secretary), mother and I went for a drive. We went to the Cathedral then to the Seminary Chapel to see the fine paintings. Afterwards we drove to the Provincial Building to see what the library was like; it did not strike us as being very wonderful. On our return Mrs. Campbell, wife of Hon. Mr. Campbell, called on mother and me. When the gentlemen came from the Conference they brought cards of invitation to Mrs. and Miss Tupper and Miss Gray to dine at Government House. Mother and I have a card for Wednesday. The organist of the Cathedral, a Mr. Pierce, called on us; he was a very nice man. Mr. McDougall and his daughter, Jessie, dined with us. Father and all the gentlemen who were not dining at Government House were dining at the Stadacona Club. On the night of Wednesday, October 12, we went down to the drawing room where quite a number of ladies were assembled. Several gentlemen wanted to take me into the room. The Governor General Lord Monck stood in the middle of the room with his private secretary at his right. The aide-de-camp announced us each in turn and the governor shook hands with us in a friendly manner. About 800 persons were presented. I was very tired before it was all over. There were refreshments in a room adjoining. On the following day we went to see the falls at Lorette and the Indian Chief. It was raining and so we did not go down into the gorge. Colonel Gray led the party. We went into the Chief’s house; it was not what I had expected to see. The only thing Indian about it was a tomahawk. I bought a wooden spoon to take home as a curio. The Old Chief was the last of the Huron Tribe. He had two silver medals presented by King George IV and one by the Prince of Wales. In the evening we dined at the Governor General’s. Mr. Thomas D’Arcy McGee took me to dinner and sat between Lady McDonald****** and me. On Thursday night Mr. Sala, the great English journalist, dined with us. I was rather disappointed in the man, a rough red-faced Englishman, black hair and black eyes. Mr. George Brown sat near me and introduced me to him.
On Thursday afternoon mother and I went for a walk on Durham Terrace. While there a large piece of rock fell. At first we thought the house nearby was on fire, owing to the great amount of dust that arose. When the gentlemen came home from the conference they said that the rock had pierced the roof of the house and killed a child in a cradle. (Note: the sore throat which troubled her regrettably developed into diphtheria and Miss Coles could not attend the ball. She however obtained a description of it from her mother and others from which the following is taken.) The young ladies came up to see me next morning and said I had not missed much. The ball was rather a failure so far as the delegates were concerned. The Quebec people never introduced either the ladies or the gentlemen to any partners, nor did they see whether or not they were provided for as regards supper. The Grays were indignant at the manner in which their daughters were treated. Miss Gray and Miss Tupper came to see me; they went to Mount Morency******* on Saturday. Mr. Livesay accompanied them.
The bachelors of Quebec had a ball in the Provincial Building. We were invited to a party on the following evening. On Wednesday mother, father, and I went to visit the Ursuline Convent. There was a brilliant ball at Madame Tessier’s. Father came home and said he had never had such a time before. There was only one Island lady there. Mr. Lea, Clerk of the Council, paid me a visit on Friday afternoon; he was the first gentleman who came to see me in my sickness. The conference met at 12 o’clock and adjourned at 6 o’clock. I was very much better and could go into the parlor. I learned that Mr. John A. had been making enquiries about me. Mr. Livesay also sent me a very kind message. Mr. J.A. Macdonald dined with us at night. After dinner he entertained me with small talk and gave me a conundrum: “Why were he and Mrs. Alexander like two Roman generals?” The answer was “She’s Alexander and I sees her (Caesar).” On the following morning I went out for a drive and remained out an hour. We did not go in at any place. Mr. Livesay gave me his photograph. He looks so venerable with his white hair. (This photograph is still in the position of Miss Coles.) I had quite a collection of photographs, for every gentleman sent me his. (Among the most valuable of Miss Coles’ treasures is an album containing the photographs of the ladies and gentlemen she met at the conference including the delegates and many of the citizens of Quebec.) I went down to luncheon and had some Malpeque oysters from the Island; it was the first thing I enjoyed during my illness. We were told that we were positively to start from Montreal on the next Thursday.
On Wednesday I went for a drive to see where it was that the rock had fallen and killed a child. At dinner in the evening Sir John sat next to me. We left for Montreal as expected on Thursday, where I received a letter from home. We reached the St. Lawrence Hotel at night, half past ten. On the advice of Dr. Tupper the ladies, instead of going by the midnight train, took steamer. On arriving at the hotel I was surprised to find that I was the invalid for whom preparations have been made. Evidently Mr. Macdonald, who had always proved a very kind friend to me, had telegraphed ahead. I found the room, which had been assigned to me, equipped with a large fireplace. They must have been somewhat astonished to see the invalid acting in such a spritely way as I did. The hotel was immense. On Friday night, October 29, I attended a splendid ball and danced with Mr. Crowther in the first quadrille. General Williams called on us all in the afternoon. I had seen him before in Charlottetown; he was “the Hero of Kars.” I did not stay very late at the dance, although I was engaged for several dances; but mother and father remained. Mother told me when she came home the ball was a great success. They showed me the menu card. (A souvenir of this ball in the shape of a white satin program is in the position of Miss Coles.) Mr. Andrew McDonald,******** Colonel Gray, and Mrs. Pope and mother and I went to Notman’s studio. It was an elaborate photographic studio. We were on board the Prince of Wales on Monday morning, October 31, on the Ottawa River. We left Montreal at 7 o’clock that morning when we saw the rapids mentioned in the Canadian boat song. We made the acquaintance of a Mr. Robertson who offered us his place at the Cathedral, in which we saw the Bible presented by the Prince of Wales. We went up to the McGill College in the vicinity of which there were magnificent residences, and then back to the hotel in the street car. At the hotel we took an omnibus to go for a drive over the Victoria Bridge. One of the ladies came down to the door and said she would not go in the omnibus, and while arguing in favour of a carriage, her husband stepped into the omnibus, leaving her standing at the door. We passed through Griffin town, a very muddy place, and chaffed Mr. McGee on the state of his constituency. At the bridge we got out and looked at the last rivet in the construction work; it was a silver rivet which the Prince of Wales had driven when he was in Canada. They opened the windows and we looked down on a raft of timber which was just then passing under the bridge. It was a lovely day and we enjoyed the outing immensely. On November 1st we were in Ottawa. In the picture gallery of the parliament building we had luncheon. It was a pleasant affair, and some of the men made speeches, my father being among them. He was speaking of the allurements they were going to hold out to the Maritime Provinces to enter Confederation. Father horrified mother and me by saying that among the fine things we had down here, we had the finest looking ladies, pointing to mother as a specimen. The other gentle
man said equally ridiculous things. After luncheon we saw a model of the library; it consisted of plaster. We went to the top of the building which commanded a view of the Chaudière Falls. In the evening we attended an elaborate ball which we all enjoyed very much, but I left with half a dozen engagements to be fulfilled. Mr. Bridges [Brydges] bet me that mother was lying on the sofa and I bet him that she was not, and I won. We arrived at Toronto at 10 o’clock. A crowd of about five thousand was in front of the hotel, and speeches were made from the gallery. Next morning we went to see the public institutions. All the older boys of the public school turned out when the headmaster read an address and Colonel Gray of P.E. Island replied. In honour of the occasion the boys were given a holiday. We saw the Lawyers’ Hall, a magnificent building. The students wore caps and gowns. We next paid a visit to the museum where we saw some beautiful butterflies. The Normal School was a sort of “variety” institution, combining all sorts of things. We had to hurry back to the hotel. Mother and I went shopping. Colonel Bernard was awaiting in the parlour when we came home and he took us to dinner. At night we had a splendid dance; the ladies were very attractive in their pretty dresses. We did not get home until 3 o’clock. On the following day most of the party went to Toronto while we went to Ohio. I did not see Mr. J.A. Macdonald, but Mr. Bernard said he had asked him to say goodbye. At Buffalo we saw the falls; a Mr. Swinyard accompanied us. We bought curiosities at exorbitant prices and then we drove to Street’s Gardens, with their beautiful grounds. After seeing all there was to be seen, we drove to the station and said good-bye. The Tuppers went to New York and the others went on to Toronto.
* * *
* The Canadians arrived on Thursday, September 1. Mercy has a number of dates and days wrong in this extract.
** Sir Thomas Adams Archibald.
*** September 14 would have been Wednesday. The events line up with Peter Waite’s descriptions in his Life and Times of Confederation, 1864–1867, but Mercy has her days of the week wrong.
**** The family name was Reed, not Reid.
***** Frederick Carter was the other Newfoundland delegate.
****** This should be Lady MacDonnell, wife of Sir Richard MacDonnell, lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia.
******* This is Montmorency Falls.
******** Andrew Macdonald.
Note on Sources
The full transcription of Mercy Coles’s original diary, a photocopy of which is held by Library and Archives Canada, is included here. As noted, this is the first time this diary has been published in full. As a reference and comparison, I’ve also included, in the appendix, a transcription of the newspaper article titled “Reminiscences of Confederation Days: Extracts from a Diary Kept by Miss Mercy A. Coles When She Accompanied Her Father, the Late Hon. George Coles, to the Confederation Conferences at Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa in 1864.” Interestingly, this extract has some notable omissions, errors, and additions to the original diary document. I’ve noted many of those throughout the book.
This book is, I believe, the only place in which Mercy and her family’s two weeks of visiting and travel back home from the Quebec conference, through the United States during the Civil War, is documented.
For overall understanding of the political landscape, and background to Confederation, I read many books on Maritime history: Ian Ross Robertson’s The Tenant League of Prince Edward Island, 1864–67; W.M. Whitelaw’s older work from the 1930s; and, of course, Francis Bolger’s Prince Edward Island and Confederation: 1863–1873. For additional information on Confederation I read Donald Creighton’s The Road to Confederation: The Emergence of Canada, 1863–1867; biographies of John A. Macdonald by Donald Swainson, Donald Creighton, and Richard Gwyn; and Joseph Pope’s work on the correspondence of Macdonald. In particular, I am indebted to Christopher Moore’s 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal, and to Peter B. Waite’s The Life and Times of Confederation, 1864–1867, first published by University of Toronto Press in 1962, a crucial resource for anyone exploring Canada’s Confederation. Waite used the newspaper reports of the day to comment informatively, and eloquently, on everything to do with Confederation. Both books have been indispensable resources.
Mary McDonald-Rissanen’s work on women diarists found in In the Interval of the Wave: Prince Edward Island Women’s Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Life Writing, and Joanne Findon’s Seeking Our Eden: The Dreams and Migrations of Sarah Jameson Craig, along with Kathryn Carter’s The Small Details of Life: 20 Diaries by Women in Canada, 1830–1996, which I read selectively, helped shape my understanding of women’s writing in the period in which Mercy Coles was writing.
For “Charlottetown: The Circus, Champagne, and Union,” I made use of a number of primary sources, such as the PEI newspapers, and George Brown’s letters written to his wife, Anne, in September of 1864, found in the George Brown fonds at Library and Archives Canada. Francis Bolger’s Prince Edward Island and Confederation: 1863–1873 was very helpful for my understanding of PEI’s limited pro-Confederation stance.
Jamie Bradburn, in the blog The Torontoist, on April 11, 2012, offers one of the livelier, and also more succinct, explanations of the Great Coalition. Bradburn quotes W.L. Morton’s book The Critical Years. See http://torontoist.com/2011/04/goin_down_the_coalition_road/.
I made extensive use of C.M. Wallace’s biography of Leonard Tilley, found in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, throughout “The Journey Begins: The Lure of Travel, the New — and Leonard Tilley.”
The DCB was invaluable for its biographies of Hewitt Bernard, George Brown, George Coles, Charles Fisher, Alexander Galt, John A. Macdonald, Susan Agnes Bernard Macdonald, William McDougall, Lord Monck, William Pope, Joseph Pope, William Steeves, Leonard Tilley, and Charles Tupper, among others.
For “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: The “Failed,” the Grand Success, or the Drunken Fiasco of the Government Ball: Thursday, October 13 to Monday, October 17,” I used Frances Elizabeth Owen (Feo) Monck’s unedited journal, which is a wealth of information about Canada’s social side, and a fascinating read. It is found in W.L. Morton, Monck Letters and Journals 1863–1868: Canada from Government House at Confederation, published by McClelland and Stewart in 1970.
Throughout the book, and, in particular, in both “Diphtheria” and “The Temptation of John A. Macdonald: Thursday, October 20 to Wednesday, October 26,” Hewitt Bernard’s minutes of the conference, found in G.P. Browne’s Documents on the Confederation of British North America, were useful. From the minutes, I have noted who Bernard reported as absent from the talks, and for what reason. Bernard’s minutes also provide information on the conference discussions, and on voting.
In “What She Said — A Woman’s Point of View,” I used Feo Monck’s unedited journal and Peter B. Waite’s article “Edward Whelan Reports from the Quebec Conference,” found in the Canadian Historical Review XLII, 1961.
“Montreal Sightseeing and the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’: Thursday, October 27 to Monday, October 31” owes much to the McCord Museum’s online display of photographs and information on the Victoria Bridge. Elaine Kalman Naves’s two-episode documentary for CBC’s Ideas (May 2012) on William Notman was also integral to the portrayal of Notman here.
The firsthand accounts of the American Civil War in “Family and Travel: Saturday, November 5 to Thursday, November 10” are from two online sites with extensive information and primary source material. The Charles Caley Civil War letter is housed at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana. The university has a significant collection of Civil War correspondence, which can be found online. The excerpts from Henry Hitchcock’s diary, and General Sherman’s writings, are found on the GeorgiaInfo website.
For the Prince Edward Islanders’ stance on the Civil War, Professor Ed MacDonald was informative, and helpfully suggested the piece from the Islander magazine, “Soldiers of Liberty: Islanders
and the Civil War,” by Greg Marquis.
In “Going Home: Thursday, November 10 to Thursday, November 17,” the quotations from George Coles, and information on his deteriorating state of health, are found in T.H. Holman’s article in The Island Magazine 29, Spring/Summer 1991: 20–22.
For the final chapter on the “Daughters of Confederation,” I used many genealogical sources. I searched wherever I could, and made my best estimates by examining all the material that I found. It was a challenging process, as information varied from source to source. I used the Ancestry.ca website, family genealogical sites, and histories of the fathers and mothers of the women I was researching, as well as family histories and local histories. I think I found everything that could be found, although I am sure there must still be many mementos, and perhaps “cartes” — the photographs taken by the famous photographers of the day — out there yet, treasured by the relatives of these “Daughters of Confederation.”
Notes
Chapter One: Miss Confederation
1. Mercy Anne Coles, Reminiscences of Canada in 1864 (diary), R2663-0-6-E, Library and Archives Canada (hereafter cited as Coles diary).
2. “Reminiscences of Confederation Days: Extracts from a Diary Kept by Miss Mercy A. Coles When She Accompanied Her Father, the Late Hon. George Coles, to the Confederation Conferences at Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa in 1864,” Charlottetown Guardian, June 30, 1917 (hereafter cited as “Extracts from a Diary”).
3. Evelyn MacLeod, One Woman’s Charlottetown: Diaries of Margaret Gray Lord, 1863, 1876, 1890 (Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1988), 53.
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