1867 Quebec general election
Canadian provincial election
The 1867 Quebec general election was held in August and September 1867 to elect members of the First Legislature for the Province of Quebec, Canada. The Quebec Conservative Party, led by Premier Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau, defeated the Quebec Liberal Party led by Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière.
Creation of Quebec
The province of Quebec was created on July 1, 1867, with the proclamation of the British North America Act, 1867. That Act united the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into Canada. The Province of Canada was split into two provinces, with Canada East (formerly Lower Canada) becoming the new province of Quebec. The Legislature of Quebec was composed of the Lieutenant Governor, representing the Queen; the elected Legislative Assembly, with sixty-five seats; and the appointed Legislative Council.
Because the old Province of Canada was dissolved on July 1, 1867, the former government ceased to exist, with no formal provisions for the creation of the government of Quebec. The first prime minister of Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald, had planned to have the experienced Quebec politician, Joseph-Édouard Cauchon, appointed as the first premier. However, the proposal met strong opposition from Montreal anglophones, based on Cauchon's position on public and religious schools, which was a major political issue at the time. As a compromise candidate, the Quebec Conservatives proposed Pierre-Joseph-Olivier Chauveau, who had political experience in the Province of Canada but had been out of electoral politics for twelve years.
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This entry incorporates text from “1867 Quebec general election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.