Ottawa County
Province of Canada electoral district
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district
LegislatureLegislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
District created1841
District abolished1867
First contested1841
Last contested1863

Ottawa County was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, in the Outaouais region across the Ottawa River from the city of Ottawa. 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.

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 Ottawa County 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 Ottawa shall be bounded on the south east by the south easterly boundary line of the Seigniory of La Petite Nation, running northward along the said boundary line, from the Ottawa River, to the depth of the said Seigniory, and thence the same course continued to the northern boundary of the Province, on the west by the northerly and westerly bounds and limits of the Province, and on the south west by the Grand or Ottawa River, in its whole extent to the Lake Temiscaming, and from the head of the said Lake, by a line due north to the boundary line of the Hudson Bay Territory, and shall include all the Islands in the said Grand or Ottawa River, and in the Lake Temiscaming, nearest to the said County, and in the whole or in part fronting the same; which County so bounded, comprises the seigniory of La Petite Nation, and the following Townships, situate on the Grand or Ottawa River, that is to say, Lochaber, and its augmentation, Buckingham, Templeton, Hull, Eardly, Onslow and all the Townships in the said limits, on the north of the said Grand or Ottawa River.[3]

The Ottawa County electoral district was located in the Outaouais region in the western part of Canada East. The Ottawa River formed the western boundary of the electoral district, and also the boundary with Canada West.

Members of the Legislative Assembly

Ottawa County was a single-member constituency.[4]

The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly from Ottawa County. "Party" was a fluid concept, especially during the early years of the Province of Canada. Party affiliations are based on the biographies of individual members given by the National Assembly of Quebec, as well as votes in the Legislative Assembly.[5][6][7]

Parliament Members Years in Office Party
1st Parliament
1841–1844 		Charles Dewey Day[a] 1841–1842 Unionist and Government Tory
Denis-Benjamin Papineau[b] 1842–1844
(by-election) 		French-Canadian Group

Notes

  1. ^ Seat vacated on appointment to the Bench, June 21, 1842: Côté, Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (29).
  2. ^ Elected in by-election, August 17, 1842. Seat vacated on being appointed Commissioner of Crown lands, an office of profit under the Crown, September 3, 1844: Côté, Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (30).

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, 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. 27.
  4. ^ Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
  5. ^ J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860 (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43–58.
  6. ^ Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
  7. ^ Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93–111.
  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.

Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Statutes of Lower Canada, 13th Provincial Parliament, 2nd Session (1829), c. 74.

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