Saguenay (Province of Canada electoral district)

Saguenay was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, to the north-east of Quebec City. 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.

Saguenay

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 electoral district of Saguenay was located on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, north-east of Quebec City, and extending north to the provincial boundary (now in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region).

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 Saguenay 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 Saguenay shall be bounded on the south west by the said County of Montmorency, on the north east by the north easterly boundary of the Province, on the south east by the River Saint Lawrence, including all of the Islands in the River Saint Lawrence nearest to the said County and in whole or in part fronting the same, and on the north west by the northern boundary of the Province; which County so bounded comprises part of the seigniory of Beaupré, the seigniories of Gouffre, Eboulemens, Murray Bay and Mount Murray and the Township of Settrington.[3]

Members of the Legislative Assembly

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

Parliament	Years	Members[4]		Party[5]
1st Parliament 1841–1844	1841–1842	Étienne Parent[note 1]		Anti-unionist; Groupe Canadien-français
	1842–1844 (by-election)	Augustin-Norbert Morin[note 2]		Groupe canadien-français

Notes

1. Resigned on October 14, 1842, on appointment as Clerk of the Executive Council.[6]
2. Elected in by-election, November 28, 1842.[7]

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.[8] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[9] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[10]

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. 39.
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 (43).
7. Côté, Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (44).
8. British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
9. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
10. 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