John A. MacDonald by Creighton Donald Grant;Wright Donald A.;Waite Peter.;

Author:Creighton, Donald Grant;Wright, Donald A.;Waite, Peter.; [Donald, Creighton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2018-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

VI

It was a milder January than the last and lovely with clear skies, bright sun, and shimmering blue shadows on the snow. Macdonald’s health was much better than it had been a year before. He was in high spirits, and almost every prospect appeared favourable. Even the approaching domestic crisis could be looked forward to with joy only slightly mixed with apprehension. Agnes was close to her time; but there was nothing in her trials which reminded him of the half-forgotten terrors of Isabella’s confinements. Sometimes his wife felt “headachy” and unwell, and when he came home from Council in the late afternoon he would find that she had spent most of the day stretched out on the sofa reading a novel. But mainly she was well and confident, ready to receive callers and to preside at the dinner table; and sometimes she would venture out for a short walk with him, or he would persuade her to take a drive into the snowy countryside. His own light-hearted cheeriness was a strange contrast with his mood of a year ago. Agnes noted delightedly how often he came in “in great fun and spirits” to greet her.58

In fact, everything seemed to be going well. Everywhere Confederation appeared to be capturing the trophies of victory. Over in London, Cartier and McDougall grew more hopeful about the prospects of the Hudson’s Bay Company negotiations; and from Newfoundland, which had almost been written off as a possible member of the union, the Lieutenant-Governor, Anthony Musgrave, wrote to Macdonald, assuring him that he thought his ministers really meant business about Confederation in the approaching session of the legislature. The timing of this new union movement, Macdonald realized, could hardly have been more fortunate. It would help to discourage and confound the repealers in Nova Scotia, just as Howe’s entrance into the federal government would strengthen unionism in Newfoundland. Could he gain both the island and the peninsula in 1869? He began to plan in a mood of eager expectancy. The next session of Parliament would have to be postponed until late in the season in order to give time for Howe to join the government and win his by-election, and for delegates from Newfoundland to arrange terms of union at Ottawa. Then, about March 1, Parliament could be assembled to receive and endorse a splendid and comprehensive programme of Canadian expansion. “What a glorious programme it would be,” he wrote enthusiastically to Tupper, “to go down to Parliament next session with Nova Scotia pacified, Newfoundland voluntarily joining, and the acquisition of Hudson’s Bay.”59

On Monday, January 18, Howe, McLelan and Rose reached Ottawa from Portland. The next day Howe came to lunch at the “Quadrilateral” and talked Nova Scotia affairs with Macdonald until far on in the afternoon; and on Wednesday Agnes gave a dinner party for eight in honour of the visiting Nova Scotians. It took only a few days to arrange the “better terms”; and although, as Macdonald confided to Tupper, there was “a

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