Stanstead (Province of Canada electoral district)

Stanstead was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East. It was south-east of Montreal, in the Eastern Townships. Created in 1841, it was based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.

Stanstead
Canada East

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

Stanstead was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly. It was abolished in 1867, upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.

Boundaries

Stanstead electoral district was located In the Eastern Townships, south of Montreal (including areas now in Memphrémagog Regional County Municipality and Coaticook Regional County Municipality). The district extended south to the border with the United States.

The Union Act, 1840 merged the two provinces of Upper Canada and Lower 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 Lower Canada electoral district of Stanstead was not altered by the Union Act and therefore continued with the same boundaries in the new Parliament. Those boundaries had been set by a statute of Lower Canada in 1829:

The County of Stanstead shall contain the Townships of Hatley, Barston, Barford, Stanstead, Bolton and Potton, with all the gores and augmentations of the said Township[3]

Members of the Legislative Assembly

Stanstead was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.[2] The following were the members for Stanstead.

Parliament	Years	Member[4]	Party[5]
1st Parliament 1841–1844	1841–1844	Marcus Child	Unionist; initially Tory; later Groupe Canadien-français

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.[6] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[7] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[8]

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. 15.
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. See biographies of individual members for party affiliation: Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
6. British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
7. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
8. 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