John Sandfield Macdonald was Canadian born and bred—something that was unusual among his political contemporaries at the time. Born in 1812 in Glengarry, Upper Canada, he died in 1872 in Cornwall, only 30 kilometres from his birthplace. About 500 Scottish Highlanders had settled in eastern Ontario in 1786, in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War, under the leadership of the Catholic priest Alexander Macdonell, trained at the Jesuit Scots College in Rome. Macdonell rallied his people to the Crown and the Upper Canadian elite. Glengarry was thus an old fashioned “Tory” milieu, dedicated to the monarchy and the British Constitution.
Sandfield (he was referred to by his middle name) lost his mother when he was eight. An adventurous boy, he tried a few times to run away, thwarted on one occasion when an indigenous man demanded 50 cents to paddle him across to the U.S. side of the St. Lawrence River, but he had only 25 cents. He attended Cornwall’s famous Grammar School established by Anglican churchman John Strachan, and upon graduation in 1835 articled in the law firm of the top local Tory, Archibald McLean. McLean was a War of 1812 hero severely wounded at Queenston Heights while serving in the 3rd Regiment of York Militia, an all-Canadian unit brought into being by the Upper Canada Assembly in the Militia Act of 1793, and perpetuated today by the Queen’s York Rangers (1st American Regiment), part of Canada’s Army Reserve. Sandfield himself served as a lieutenant in the Queen’s Light Infantry in Toronto in 1838-39 in the aftershocks of W. L. Mackenzie’s pro-American rebellion.
Later, Sandfield exercised his wanderlust by travelling the Niagara peninsula and playing cards aboard paddle steamers on Lake Erie. He once won $19 gambling against “Sweet William” Henry Draper, who became his mentor in law and politics. In 1840, Sandfield married Marie Christine Waggaman, daughter of a former Louisiana senator and sugarcane planter descended from the Maryland gentry, and on her mother’s side from Louisiana’s old French military aristocracy. (Her brother, Col. Eugene Waggaman, fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War, leading his Greek, Italian, and other foreign-born troops of the 10th Louisiana Regiment by giving commands in French, and surrendered at Appomattox.)
At the time, Sandfield had the high-level job of Queen’s Messenger, carrying dispatch boxes between the British Ambassador in Washington, D.C., and the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada.
Miss Waggaman’s first language was French, and she spoke Spanish too. She was a pretty good catch for the lanky man from Glengarry! So exciting was the six-foot-three Sandfield’s company that she, also tall and dark, ran away from Mademoiselle Bujac’s finishing school in Baltimore to elope with him, and they were married in New York. According to his biographer, Bruce Hodgins, Sandfield’s pride was such that he resembled a “high lord.” They settled in Cornwall, building a handsome house in 1822 which they called Ivy Hall, where they were generous hosts, especially “as to wines, etc.” They had three sons and four daughters.
Sandfield was first elected to the Assembly of the United Province of Canada in 1841, representing Stormont, Dundas, and Glengarry. His political litmus test for any proposal was “what will its effect be on the British Connexion.” He gravitated towards conservative Reformers like Robert Baldwin and their French counterparts like Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine. He was open to French Canada, and worked with former Rouges like Louis-Victor Sicotte, a man with “butter-coloured gloves,” a “wretched little hat perched on his head,” and “a large black cloak reminiscent of a domino without a hood, and holding in his right hand his little handbook on parliamentary procedure bound in red leather.”
Sandfield’s political star was rising but he was outmanoeuvred by Sir Francis Hincks, who found him too independent-minded. Sandfield felt “let go to pasture like an old horse,” according to historian J.M.S. Careless. But he still had a solid following and bounced back and became Speaker of the Assembly in 1851. As Speaker, he relished the flowing black robe with tricorne hat. Over his white kid gloves he wore a gold ring in which was set a large red carnelian stone.
Composite photograph titled “First Parliament of Ontario,” showing the members in session in the legislative chamber of the Parliament Buildings in 1871. Public Domain
Sandfield stood up for the “Double Majority,” an important theme in Canadian history. Double Majority meant that no legislation could pass if it was offensive to either the majority English of Upper Canada or the majority French of Lower Canada. A majority was required in both for a law to be adopted. It was a precept that ensured the laws were in the interest of both dominant cultures—an understanding of the French–English “partnership” that united George-Étienne Cartier and John A. Macdonald in the coalition for Confederation.
There were many coalitions in those days, one of them led briefly by Sandfield and Sicotte in 1862–63, and another by Sandfield and Antoine-Aimé Dorion in 1863–64, as co-premiers. As far as they were concerned, the Double Majority worked well to secure the interests of both halves of Canada.
When proposals came for a wider Union, Sandfield cried foul. He opposed Confederation as an “American” scheme. The federal principle was American, as were the idea of “one from many,” and a Senate of the provinces. Provinces resembled U.S. states, loosely united under “Ottawa,” a Canadian version of Washington, D.C. Sandfield resented how quickly Confederation’s proponents were trying to push it through. And he argued, not unreasonably, that there should be elections in each province before such a big change was accepted.
Sandfield believed the United Province would work just fine “if we were free from demagogues and designing persons who sought to create strife between the sections.” He invoked his own Canadian birth—adding that the troublemakers had arrived “yesterday” full of “audacity.” Men like George Brown, John A. Macdonald, and Thomas D’Arcy McGee were not born in Canada. Sandfield didn’t believe Confederation would do anything to eliminate the province’s political, language, and religious conflicts—and in that he was correct.
Sandfield was highly regarded for his integrity and courage—but some resented that, as they saw it, he did not always control his temper, and tended to “sneer down opponents.”
Despite his opposition, Sandfield adjusted to Confederation once it became inevitable. In 1867, he travelled upriver by steamboat to Ottawa where he was the house guest of Sir John A., recently sworn in as the first prime minister and knighted by Queen Victoria. It was rumoured Sir John would offer Sandfield the post of lieutenant governor of Ontario—but in fact the prime minister urged him to serve as its first premier. He was sworn in on July 15. Next, Ontario’s legislature reopened on Dec. 27, 1867, at the old assembly building at Front and Simcoe streets in Toronto with much military fanfare. The Governor General’s Body Guard of Upper Canada (formerly the 1st York Cavalry, and today the GG’s Horse Guards) performed its role of many years, now accompanying the lieutenant governor from his residence to the legislature.
His term as a reforming premier was quite successful, working to populate northern Ontario and build railways, though he suffered from two accusations. The public found him too subservient to Sir John A.—and John A. found him too independent. He also never quite let go of the Old Canada centred on its greatest metropolis of Montreal.
In the winter of 1872, he fell ill. “A touch of the horse distemper,” he called it. He had suffered from fevers before, “chill shadows of the evening of life.” Doctors said his repeated fevers meant that his heart was now fatally “displaced and impaired.” Having lived a life of service, he did not regret leaving his body behind, calling it a “bag of old bones.” Having received the last rites, he died at Ivy Hall surrounded by his extended family on June 1 at age 59. Hodgins concluded that John Sandfield Macdonald, defender of the Old Province of Canada, was “enigmatic and just short of greatness.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
C.P. Champion
Author
C.P. Champion, Ph.D., is the author of two books, was a fellow of the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen's University in 2021, and edits The Dorchester Review magazine, which he founded in 2011.
