Champlain (Province of Canada electoral district)

Champlain was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East. It was on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, with the town of Champlain being the main centre of the district.

Champlain

Province of Canada electoral district
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district
Legislature	Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
District created	1841
District abolished	1867
First contested	1841
Last contested	1867

The electoral district was established in 1841, when the Province of Canada was created by the merger of Lower Canada and Upper Canada by the Union Act, 1840. It was based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.

Champlain was represented by one Member in the Legislative Assembly. The electoral district was abolished in 1867 upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.

Boundaries

The electoral district of Champlain was located on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, centred on the town of Champlain (in the current Mauricie area), and close to Trois-Rivières.

The Union Act, 1840 merged the two provinces of Lower Canada and Upper Canada into the Province of Canada, with a single Parliament. The separate parliaments of Lower Canada and Upper Canada were abolished.[1]

The Union Act provided that the pre-existing electoral boundaries of Lower Canada and Upper Canada would continue to be used in the new Parliament, unless altered by the Union Act itself.[2] The Champlain electoral district of Lower Canada was not altered by the Act, and therefore continued with the same boundaries which had been set by a statute of Lower Canada in 1829:

The County of Champlain shall be bounded on the north east by the County of Portneuf, on the south west by the River Saint Maurice, on the south east by the River Saint Lawrence, and on the north west by the northern boundary of the Province; which County so bounded comprises the Seigniories of Saint Anne and its augmentation, Sainte Marie, Batiscan, Champlain, Cap de la Magdeleine, and all the islands in the River Saint Lawrence nearest to and in front of the said county.[3]

Elections were held at the "Ferry nearest the River Saint Lawrence on the north east of the River Batiscan."[4]

Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841-1867)

Champlain was entitled to send one member to the Legislative Assembly.[5]

The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly from Champlain.[6]

	Member	Party[7]	Election [8]
	René-Joseph Kimber [9]	Radical Reformer	1841
	Henry Judah	Radical Reformer	1843
	Louis Guillet	Radical Reformer	1844
	Louis Guillet [10]	Moderate Reformer	1848
	Thomas Marchildon	Radical Reformer	1851
	Thomas Marchildon [11]	Parti rouge	1854
	Joseph-Édouard Turcotte [12]	Parti bleu	1858
	John Jones Ross	Parti bleu	1861
	John Jones Ross	Parti bleu	1863

Abolition

The district was abolished on July 1, 1867, when the British North America Act, 1867 came into force, splitting the Province of Canada into Quebec and Ontario.[13] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[14] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[15]

Footnotes

1. Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
2. Union Act, 1840, ss. 16, 18.
3. An Act to make a new and more convenient subdivision of the Province into Counties, for the purpose of effecting a more equal Representation thereof in the Assembly than heretofore, SLC 1829, c. 73, s. 1, para. 35. (There is a typographical error in the English version of para. 35, with the Saint Lawerence River being listed twice as a boundary. The French version makes it clear that the Saint Lawrence is the south-east boundary, while the Saint Maurice River is the south-west boundary.)
4. An Act to make a new and more convenient subdivision of the Province into Counties, for the purpose of effecting a more equal Representation thereof in the Assembly than heretofore, SLC 1829, c. 73, s. 3.
5. Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
6. J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860, (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43-58.
7. See biographies of individual members for party affiliation: Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
8. By-elections are indicated with Italic font.
9. Kimber resigned in 1843 to become a Legislative Councillor.
10. Guillet lost the 1851 election.
11. Guillet lost the 1858 election.
12. Turcotte was Speaker of the Assembly in 1862 and 1863. He successfully ran in the district of Trois-Rivières in 1863.
13. British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
14. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
15. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Statutes of Lower Canada, 13th Provincial Parliament, 2nd Session (1829), c. 74