The first of these proposals would become law in under the aegis of Sandfield Macdonald, then attorney general and premier of Ontario, and Mowat himself would go further in in those offices by subjecting the right of trial by jury in most property-related issues to the discretion of the judge.
Subsequently he changed his mind about the unanimity requirement, and it was not abolished until he changed his mind again in In Mowat had urged John A. Macdonald, newly appointed attorney general, to introduce in Upper Canada the reforms comprised in the British common-law procedure acts of and and had offered to do the drafting himself.
The offer is early evidence of an interest in institutional and procedural reform that was to reach fruition in his Judicature Act of As was foreshadowed in his electoral address of , however, most of his legislative initiatives from to concerned reform of the law of property.
One is of special historical interest: a bill in to permit builders of milldams to flood upstream property upon payment of compensation. Such legislation was common in the United States and had been enacted for Lower Canada, but for Upper Canada Macdonald considered the bill an improper interference with common-law property rights and defeated it with the aid of the Lower Canadian members.
Anxious to strengthen his hand at the general election, he consulted Brown and Mowat, both of whom now accepted that no government could carry representation by population. Brown refused to join the cabinet but recommended Mowat, who became postmaster general on 16 May. The election produced a slim majority for Sandfield, now in alliance with the Lower Canadian Rouges under A. During his ten months in office, Mowat worked out new contracts for carrying the mails with both the Grand Trunk Railway and the Montreal Ocean Steamship Company.
The Grand Trunk had demanded a rate incorporating what amounted to a huge subsidy, designed to help the railway satisfy its principal creditors.
In Mowat had turned down a brief from the company in order to maintain his political independence. His contract with the steamship line for carrying mail between Canada and Britain set a rate amounting to little more than half that of the old contract. Mowat left office on 21 March , when the Sandfield Macdonald—Dorion ministry resigned.
Mowat supported Brown in caucus; however, when it overruled them, he, Brown, and William McDougall joined the government on 30 June , Mowat again becoming postmaster general.
From to , as premier and attorney general of Ontario, he would advocate a construction of the British North America Act of , the imperial statute that embodied the confederation settlement, which the majority of scholarly commentators since the s have perceived as a radical departure from the original intent of confederation.
His contemporary view of the Quebec agreement is obscure because his elevation to the bench a month after the conference prevented him from commenting on it in the ensuing confederation debates or otherwise. In the s, when the matter became controversial, he would admit that the federal government had an absolute right in law to disallow any and all provincial legislation, just as the imperial government had an absolute legal right to disallow any and all dominion legislation.
He asserted, however, that it had been understood at Quebec that the federal veto was to be subject to the same constraints that governed the imperial power to veto the legislation of colonies enjoying responsible government. On this basis, he maintained that disallowance of the Rivers and Streams Act was no more acceptable, constitutionally speaking, than imperial disallowance of a similar federal act.
On 14 Nov. He soon became known as a judge who was not readily thwarted by technicalities in rendering justice. His judgements were generally concise and unspectacular, consisting largely of quotations from the leading cases, which were almost always English, reinforced with brief statements of the principles they established, as in Clarke v. Hawke on the relationship between trustee and beneficiary.
Historically speaking, his most interesting case may be Dickson v. Burnham , in which a landowner sued a mill-owner for flooding his property. His reluctance in Dickson to emulate American judges, who tended to modify the law in order to promote an acknowledged social good often economic growth , manifested the idea, which was typical of the Upper Canadian judiciary, that making such changes was the business of the legislature.
He had taken the lesser office as the only way of withdrawing from politics, he said, and only after requesting and receiving assurances from Macdonald that the appointment would not bar his way to the chancellorship should that office fall vacant. Why he had wanted to quit politics in he did not say, but his wife was seriously ill at the time. VanKoughnet wanted the chief justiceship, but felt unable to make way for Blake without the consent of his brethren in chancery.
In , when VanKoughnet died, Macdonald named Spragge as chancellor only after offering the post to Blake, since he doubted whether the court could command sufficient authority without Blake. Mowat remained on the bench. On 25 Oct. He resigned as vice-chancellor the next day. There was no precedent in Canada for a judge resigning in order to lead a political party, and the move was deprecated by his political opponents.
The dominion general election in the summer of had diminished John A. Obliged by their own legislation to choose between membership in the House of Commons or a seat in the provincial assembly, Blake and Mackenzie, respectively premier and treasurer of Ontario, had opted for federal politics.
No Reformer in the assembly combined seniority and talent enough to take over from Blake and Mackenzie, and — especially while John A. Macdonald remained prime minister — it was desirable to maintain a strong Reform administration at Toronto. Mowat undoubtedly shared these concerns, but we may suspect more personal motives.
Whether he benefited financially from his re-entry into politics is unclear; his income as premier was substantially less than the pay of a vice-chancellor, but he resumed his partnership with James Maclennan. He may in any case have felt few qualms at quitting an office he considered second-best, and his rebuff over the chancellorship must have sharpened his long-standing mistrust of Macdonald. Perhaps, too, he had a lust for combat. No office in Ontario was more honourable than the premiership, he declared, and it presented a greater field for public service than the vice-chancellorship.
It would also afford the opportunity of engaging in the most protracted, and perhaps most enjoyable, professional contest of his career. On 29 Nov. The legislative session that opened six weeks later gave immediate evidence of his administrative prowess and political deftness. The most controversial measures of the session, private bills to incorporate the Orange associations of eastern and western Ontario, Mowat handled with characteristic finesse.
He allowed his caucus a free vote, but after the bills passed he advised Lieutenant Governor William Pearce Howland to reserve them for consideration by the dominion government, thereby foisting upon Macdonald the thorny decision as to their becoming law. Macdonald refused to make any recommendation with respect to the bills, but the delay gave Mowat time to defuse the issue. In he carried a general incorporation act for charities and benevolent societies, under which the Orange order could become incorporated without any appearance of special consideration on the part of the provincial government.
This act was itself camouflaged by its presentation as part of two broader reforms: a general reform of the law of incorporation, which included a similar act relating to joint-stock companies, and a rationalization of government grants in aid to private charities. On taking power, the Reformers had inherited a sizeable financial surplus.
Combined with statutory federal payments and the revenue from a buoyant timber trade, this surplus could sustain a modestly expansive mode of government with minimal recourse to taxation and borrowing. Mowat exploited this good fortune by founding his drive to form a pro-Reform consensus on a judicious activism: the use of public power to foster the provincial economy and mitigate the effects of urban and industrial growth.
The government promoted the economy by liberal subsidies for railway construction, investment in land drainage, and the building of colonization roads on the frontier of settlement. Two other institutions specializing in vocational training were founded in Toronto during the s: the Ontario School of Art and the School of Practical Science.
The Bureau of Industries, set up in to collect and publish data useful to farmers and manufacturers, soon expanded its activities to embrace lumbering, mining, and finance. Whatever its origin, his attitude was politically shrewd: the working-class vote had long been significant in urban constituencies, and industrialization was increasing its importance in the province at large. Another measure of that year established safety regulations for the operation of mechanical threshers.
Extensions of the franchise in , , and culminated in the introduction of adult male suffrage in Vote by ballot, a superior system of voter registration, and a better judicial procedure for combating electoral corruption were all instituted to enhance the purity of elections. In the non-political Council of Public Instruction was abolished, and education was committed to a new government department with its own minister.
Self-education was promoted by grants to municipalities for the establishment of free public libraries. Ross encouraged the founding of kindergartens and developed secondary and post-secondary education to limits that the government judged politically acceptable, and in he carried an act making school attendance compulsory for children between 8 and 14 years of age.
In the field of social welfare, the government sponsored a number of measures for the benefit of the disadvantaged. Child labour was progressively reduced in industry and retailing.
Efforts were made to sort out the mentally retarded from the insane and train them to the limits of their ability. The Public Health Act of obliged each municipality to set up its own board of health, which was to be subject to the supervision of the provincial board. In his special sphere of responsibility as attorney general, Mowat brought in a miscellany of reforms designed to provide new legal facilities and more expeditious remedies without damaging the professional hegemony of the bar.
A sequence of judicial reforms culminated in the Judicature Act of , which finally obliterated the ancient separation between the common law and equity. The keynote of his administration was caution, and he preferred permissive to coercive action. As a result, legislation was sometimes futile. Acts of and to facilitate the arbitration of trade disputes were virtually unused.
The Industrial Schools Act of , which authorized urban school-boards to set up residential facilities for the training of disadvantaged children, remained a dead letter for a decade, until new legislation permitted the boards to delegate these powers to private charities. Even in the area of law reform, Mowat was sometimes chided for his timidity. If Mowat was cautious, however, it was with the caution of cunning rather than timidity. He needed to make new friends without alienating old ones, but the prospective friends, and the means by which they might be won, made this task a very delicate one.
Ross and vetted by Lynch. The Conservatives reacted by accusing the government of a mania for centralization, hoping to detach it from its rural supporters by appealing to their traditional localism and loathing of patronage-based politics. A particular focus of this propaganda was the liquor licence act of , known as the Crooks Act after Adam Crooks, the minister who carried it, though Mowat and Arthur Sturgis Hardy had shared in its drafting. The act shifted the licensing function from the municipalities to the province and set up a bureaucracy to administer it.
This ingenious measure simultaneously created jobs for Reformers and deterred Conservative licensees from their customary political exertions, but in doing so it gave the government a vested interest in the continuation of the liquor trade, which the Conservatives might exploit in order to appeal to Reformers with prohibitionist leanings.
Boultbee was discussing federal politics, but his remarks applied equally to provincial affairs. The majority was exceptional, but otherwise the result was typical of every election from to in each the Reformers secured adequate or ample majorities by winning 48 or 49 per cent of the vote, with the Conservatives trailing by one or two per cent except in , when their share fell to 45 per cent.
The state of dominion politics seemingly made little difference. Yet the vote split much as it had in January , when the Liberals were riding high in Ottawa and the Conservatives were still mired in the Pacific Scandal. Instead, in , he gerrymandered the province. The Division Courts Act of , which transferred the power of naming division-court clerks and bailiffs from the dominion-appointed county judges to the province, was justified by the laxity of clerks and bailiffs under the old regime and by the great principle of responsible government, which was said to require that every officer charged with the administration of justice be appointed by the province.
Studies of elections in lateth-century Ontario suggest that voting, especially in rural areas, was largely an expression of traditional political allegiances rooted in ethno-religious identity.
On the contrary, both the constitutional and the territorial dispute posed a fundamental challenge to the Reform world-view. From the very start of his premiership, Mowat was confident that the BNA Act guaranteed provincial sovereignty. During his years on the bench, however, several imperial officials had expressed themselves to the contrary.
In Macdonald had disallowed an Ontario statute precisely because it presupposed provincial sovereignty. He challenged Macdonald in vain to refer the question to the Privy Council.
He left Ottawa in to become lieutenant-governor of Ontario. He died at Government House in April at the age of His tenure in office is representative of the emergence of modern Ontario. He is held in high regard as a party builder who played a key role in the development and establishment of the structure and style of politics in 19th-century Canada and provincial relations into the 20th century.
Peter H. Russell and Christian Leuprecht Peter B. From to , delegates from British North America met to share their opinions on union and, ultimately, to forge a new country. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Remember me. I forgot my password. Why sign up? Create Account. Suggest an Edit. Enter your suggested edit s to this article in the form field below. Accessed 13 November In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published February 18, ; Last Edited April 10, Educated there; called to the bar of Upper Canada, , and practised in Kingston and Toronto.
Oliver Mowat. Dictionaries export , created on PHP,. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet. In office October 25, — July 21, July 22, Kingston, Upper Canada. April 19, aged 82 Toronto, Ontario. Preceded by Edward Blake. Leader of the Ontario Liberal Party — Succeeded by Arthur Hardy. Preceded by None. Succeeded by Andrew Pattullo. Preceded by John Ferguson. Senator for Ontario — Succeeded by William Kerr. Preceded by Adam Crooks. Attorney General of Ontario — Preceded by Mackenzie Bowell.
Leader of the Government in the Senate of Canada — Succeeded by David Mills.
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