Rimouski (Province of Canada electoral district)

Rimouski was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, in the Lower-Saint Lawrence region. It was created in 1841 and was based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. It was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.

Rimouski

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	1863

The electoral district was abolished in 1867, upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.

Boundaries

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 Rimouski 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 Rimouski shall be bounded on the eastward by the Inferior District of Gaspé, on the southward by the south west boundary line of the Seigniory of Rivière du Loup prolonged to the southern bounds of the Province, and on the north west by the River Saint Lawrence, including all the Islands in the said River Saint Lawrence, in front of the said County, in whole or in part nearest the same, which said County so bounded, comprises the Seigniories of Rivière de Loup, Isle Verte, d'Artiguy, Trois Pistoles, Rioux des Trois Pistoles, Bic, Rimouski, Barnabé, Lepage, Thivierge, Mitis and Matane, and all other Seigniories and lands comprised within the said limits.[3]

The electoral district of Rimouski was thus on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence at the beginning of the Gaspé peninsula (now in the Bas-Saint-Laurent administrative region).

Members of the Legislative Assembly

Rimouski was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.[2] The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly from Rimouski.

Parliament	Years	Members[4]		Party[5]
1st Parliament 1841–1844	1841–1842	Michel Borne[note 1]		Groupe canadien-français
	1843–1844 (by-election)	Robert Baldwin[note 2]		Reformer

Notes

1. Resigned seat on December 15, 1842 to allow Robert Baldwin to stand for election.[6]
2. Elected in by-election, January 30, 1843.[7]

Significant elections

Monument to Lafontaine and Baldwin on Parliament Hill, Ottawa

In 1842, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin formed the first joint ministry in the Province of Canada, and were appointed to the Executive Council by the Governor General. At that time, the law required that if members of the Legislative Assembly took a position under the Crown, the members' seats were vacated and they had to stand for re-election. Lafontaine was easily re-elected in his riding, but Baldwin was defeated in his riding of Hastings in Canada West.

To ensure his colleague could re-enter the Legislative Assembly, Lafontaine arranged for Michel Borne, the member for Rimouski, to resign his seat so Baldwin could stand for election there. (Borne was in his sixties and had infrequent attendance at Parliament.[8]) Baldwin, an anglophone from Canada West, was elected by the heavily francophone, but pro-reform, voters of Rimouski.

The by-election was important for the success of the Lafontaine-Baldwin alliance, and also as an early step in building political parties within the Province of Canada based on common political views, rather than purely ethnic affiliations.[9]

Abolition

The district was abolished on July 1, 1867, when the British North America Act, 1867 came into force, creating Canada and splitting the Province of Canada into Quebec and Ontario.[10] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[11] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[12]

References

1. Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
2. Union Act, 1840, s. 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. 3.
4. J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860 (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43–58.
5. For party affiliations, see biographies of individual members: Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
6. Côté, Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (36).
7. Côté, Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (37).
8. Quebec National Assembly: Michel Borne.
9. James H. Marsh, "Editorial: Baldwin, LaFontaine, and Responsible Government", Canadian Encyclopedia, October 15, 2019.
10. British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
11. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
12. 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