Saint Maurice was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, between Montreal and Quebec City. It was created for the first Parliament 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.
 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 lost some territory in the redistribution of 1853, when the district of Maskinongé was created, in part out of Saint Maurice. The district was abolished in 1867 upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.
Boundaries
editThe electoral district of Saint Maurice roughly covered the current Mauricie region of Quebec, except for the city of Trois-Rivières. The original boundaries were partially reduced in the 1853 redistribution, which created the new electoral district of Maskinongé from part of the Saint Maurice district.
The Union Act, 1840 had 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 Saint Maurice 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:
Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841–1867)
editSaint Maurice was a single-member constituency.[4]
The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly for Saint Maurice. The 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. "Party" was a fluid concept, especially during the early years of the Province of Canada.[5][6][7]
| Parliament | Members | Years in Office | Party | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st Parliament 1841–1844 |
Joseph-Édouard Turcotte[a] | 
|
1841 | Anti-unionist; French-Canadian Group | ||
| 1842–1844 (by-election) |
French-Canadian Group | |||||
| 2nd Parliament 1844–1847 |
François Lesieur Desaulniers | 
|
1844–1847 | French-Canadian Group | ||
| 3rd Parliament 1848–1851 |
Louis-Joseph Papineau | 
|
1848–1851 | French-Canadian Group, then Liberal | ||
| 4th Parliament 1851–1854 |
Joseph-Édouard Turcotte |
|
1851–1854 | Ministerialist | ||
| 5th Parliament 1854–1857 |
Louis-Léon Lesieur Desaulniers | 
|
1854–1863 | Bleu | ||
| 6th Parliament 1858–1861 |
||||||
| 7th Parliament 1862–1863 |
||||||
| 8th Parliament 1863–1867 |
Charles Gérin-Lajoie | 
|
1863–1867 | Anti-Confederation; Rouge | ||
Notes
edit- ^ Turcotte resigned his seat on December 6, 1841, on accepting an office of profit under the Crown; re-elected in by-election, July 8, 1842: Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860, p. 59, note (45).
Redistribution and abolition
editThe Saint Maurice electoral district lost some of its original territory in the redistribution of seats in 1853, when the new electoral district of Maskinongé was created.
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]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
- ^ Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
- ^ 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. 34.
- ^ Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
- ^ J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860 (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43–58.
- ^ Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
- ^ Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93–111.
- ^ British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
- ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
- ^ Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: 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.