What I have a hard time seeing is Confederation happening if (Central) Canada winds up with some kind of peerage... MAYBE something could be managed in the Maritimes, but bringing any form of western settlement in is hard to picture. And that's without the elephant in the room that something so decidedly... whatever it is... would absolutely enrage a decent chunk of the most expansionist Americans.
Unbuilt Canada
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I agree, and I think it would be best for Canada as a whole to see the Family Compact and the Chateau Clique decisively broken as quickly as possible. I like the idea of the canals being built, but that would require Britain thinking more of the needs of Canada as opposed to just having it as a resource colony, which for the most part Canada was then. If the St. Lawrence Seaway can be a 19th Century thing (though I regard that as challenging to finance) it would be a very positive thing, particularly if the project can be built to include the Welland Canal, and both are built (or later rebuilt) big enough for proper ocean-going vessels. (Ideally, big enough for sizable lakers early on, and then expanded once in the 1880s, and then once the Georgian Bay Ship Canal is built (and built to Panamax dimensions), the Seaway's plans for growth go into effect. The Seaway's locks are (owing to Canada paying for the cost of it themselves) all on the Canadian side of the river, most famously resulting in the rebuilt Canal having the city of Cornwall, Ontario built right up to it. This results in there being a sizable shipbuilding industry on the Great Lakes, the grain terminals of Thunder Bay being bigger than OTL, container ports along the Great Lakes being built in the second half of the 20th Century and a changed international connection between the Lakes and Eastern Canada.
Ming777
Monthly Donor
I know there was supposed British fears of the opposition to the family compact and the clique being too American.
I wonder if instead, those advocating for responsible government point out the parallels between the Family Compact and the political families and the Southern slavers in the states (i.e. accuse the Family Compact as being little better than the Plantation Owners in the south)
I wonder if instead, those advocating for responsible government point out the parallels between the Family Compact and the political families and the Southern slavers in the states (i.e. accuse the Family Compact as being little better than the Plantation Owners in the south)
I highly doubt that conversation would happen before the 1850s primarily because while they were a lot of unsavory things, they were absolutely loyal to Britain and the Empire. No matter how we look at it, though, they need to be removed from the equation.
Swinging back to the Unbuilt Canada once more, looking at the canal projects now, it strikes me that the idea of lift locks like the one in Peterborough are entirely plausible with mid-19th Century design, and with that it becomes possible to make a lot of the proposed canal designs easier, particularly the one along the Humber and Nottawasaga rivers. Does this make this a viable project in the 19th Century, and then part of an Ontario Canals system for pleasure boaters in the 20th? Does this mean we get more of a boating industry in Canada than we have now? It won't stop the railways from happening (or ultimately making the smaller canals obsolete from a commercial standpoint) but it could help to make the Georgian Bay Ship Canal happen and make for a very nice system of waterways for pleasure boaters. Also think you could get some next architecture and designs out of it....an analogue to the Falkirk wheel in Ontario, anyone? 🙂
I'm not sure how possible it is, but I still think figuring out how the Brits can have a major presence on the Salish Sea long before Confederation is about the only way you'd pull that off, or have the Americans decisively defeated in the War of 1812 in such a way that more of the upper Midwestern US is annexed into Canada, most importantly Michigan, its Upper Peninsula, the south shore of Lake Superior and the border regions up to the Lake of the Woods or even the Red River to allow a much easier route to the West than Northern Ontario is.
If you go the former option and can establish enough of a presence north of the Columbia that the Americans roaring West on the Oregon Trail are forced to stay to the south side of the Columbia. This would absolutely require the First Nations of BC to be on the side of the Brits though for that to have any chance of working, and once Confederation is a thing (and presumably they want to join) you will need to have the CPR built as quickly as humanly possible to keep the Americans out. (The fact they will be rebuilding from the Civil War will help with them staying out, mind you, but you'll still want to get that line built quickly.)
The second option changes a whole lot of things and really creates variables that are hard to figure out in their entirety. We've seen TLs here that grow Canada down to the 42nd Parallel, but I'm not sure how viable that's likely to be.
As far as Canadian Navy with capital ships, that was very much a proposed thing IOTL - Canada planned to build three Queen Elizabeths, but this was halted by World War I, which overwhelmingly rewrote the Royal Canadian Navy's plans and made their capital ships ideas pretty much disappear. You'd have to hold off the War a few years to make that work, but it's possible.
That one is much more difficult because Britain and Japan had no chance of matching the Americans in a naval buildup - they simply couldn't afford it - so if you push the Americans too harshly they will pull out and then you gotta deal with them outbuilding everyone (which would be difficult for Britain and impossible for Japan), and knowing that the Admiralty basically got command of HMAS Australia during the First World War, the odds of the Americans considering any of Britain's dominions as independent of them with regards to the Naval treaties is zero unless you dramatically improve relations between Britain and America way before OTL.
Not quite. In 1912 Canada did propose to contribute to the construction of 3 dreadnoughts to be named, reportedly, Acadia, Quebec, and Ontario, as proposed in the Naval Aid Bill of 1912. These would be paid for by Canada, operated by the RN, with an accelerated training program for Canadian sailors, to be turned over to the RCN if and when Canada was able to actually operate them. This was a proposal by the Borden Conservative government. It was the guiding principle of the Conservative Party that Canadian naval policy would support the home country.
The Wilfred Laurier Liberal government (who was now in opposition) had intended to build a (relatively) independent Canadian navy, with 4 Bristol class cruisers and 6 Acorn class destroyers split between both coasts, as ordered in the Naval Service Act of 1910. It was the the guiding principle of the Liberal Party that Canadian naval policy would build an independent Canadian navy. The Borden Conservatives killed this procurement when they were elected.
The two parties tended to scrap the other's policy when the government switched parties. Quebec, which was mostly represented federally by the Liberal Party, generally opposed militarism, imperialism, and the associated taxes. After acrimonious debate, the Conservative Naval Aid Bill of 1912 passed in the Conservative majority House of Commons, but died in the Liberal dominated Senate.
The Canadian Queen Elizabeth class dreadnoughts were killed by Canadian domestic politics, not the war. As it was, in peacetime, Canada could barely crew the two old training cruisers, Niobe and Rainbow, so would have had a really hard time crewing three Queen Elizabeths.
Toward a Canadian Naval Service (1867-1914) - Canada.ca
Toward a Canadian Naval Service
The Naval Service of Canada : Its Official History. Vol 1, Origins and Early Years - Canada.ca
Official history of Canada's Navy in the Second World War (WW2). This first volume covers the early history of the Naval Service of Canada.
That makes more sense and I agree with it, particularly if you can build the canal large enough to have viable commercial vessels using it in the 19th Century. If you're planning on that I'd start at Trenton as OTL and go north, starting with a canal west from the Bay of Quinte to Presque Isle and north along the Trent River, first to Campbellford and Marmora and then to Rice Lake, followed by up the Otonabee to Peterborough. As the population in the area grows and the production from its agricultural, lumbering, mineral and industrial businesses grows, you start expanding from there, first northwards to Lakefield and the connected lakes of the Kawarthas, then go westward. You'll need lock complexes at Bobcaygeon and Buckhorn no matter what, and I'd strongly recommend building through Lindsay to Lake Scugog, which could be used as a point to allow agricultural traffic from what is today Durham Region to go to shipping without having to go via congested Toronto. This could easily be done by the 1850s if finances are available, and you can have ships realistically of up to 350' x 50' x 16' using this pathway, which in the 19th Century is plenty big enough for commercial use. Meanwhile, Kivas Tully's plan for a canal along the Humber and Nottawasaga Rivers is pushed by Toronto and its environs and begins construction in the late 1840s. It has few difficulties through what is today Toronto, but it has difficulties reaching the Nottawasaga and is only partially complete by Confederation. The building of railways supercedes it, and while the section to Kleinburg is completed but is limited in its use for water reasons until many years later.
After the Transcontinental railway is built, demands for a connection between the prospering Kawarthas and Lake Huron leads to the rest of the OTL Trent-Severn being built from two directions, from Port Severn on Lake Huron and Fenelon Falls on the Kawarthas. The Lake Huron side has fairly smooth time reaching Lake Sincoe and Lake Couchiching, but there is challenges on the Kawarthas side that are nevertheless beaten. Boats first reach Lake Simcoe from Lake Huron in 1881 and the Trent-Severn system is finished in 1885. The completion of it, though, leads to a major effort to finish the Humber-Nottawasaga Canal system by local politicians and business interests long since disgruntled with the near-monopoly of the Grand Trunk railroad and their freight rates. Thus empowered, the canal becomes a major undertaking and is completed in 1896 between the Nottawasaga River and Lake Simcoe, allowing the water of Simcoe and Couchiching to feed the overbuilt infrastructure of the Humber-Nottawasaga route, which is further assisted by redirecting waterways in that direction.
The Ontario Canal System proves more than economically viable, and while some extensions are looked at none are built for a variety of reasons.
Fair enough, I had thought that the ships had been ordered later than that and thus halted by the war. My miss.Not quite. In 1912 Canada did propose to contribute to the construction of 3 dreadnoughts to be named, reportedly, Acadia, Quebec, and Ontario, as proposed in the Naval Aid Bill of 1912. These would be paid for by Canada, operated by the RN, with an accelerated training program for Canadian sailors, to be turned over to the RCN if and when Canada was able to actually operate them. This was a proposal by the Borden Conservative government. It was the guiding principle of the Conservative Party that Canadian naval policy would support the home country.
The Wilfred Laurier Liberal government (who was now in opposition) had intended to build a (relatively) independent Canadian navy, with 4 Bristol class cruisers and 6 Acorn class destroyers split between both coasts, as ordered in the Naval Service Act of 1910. It was the the guiding principle of the Liberal Party that Canadian naval policy would build an independent Canadian navy. The Borden Conservatives killed this procurement when they were elected.
The two parties tended to scrap the other's policy when the government switched parties. Quebec, which was mostly represented federally by the Liberal Party, generally opposed militarism, imperialism, and the associated taxes. After acrimonious debate, the Conservative Naval Aid Bill of 1912 passed in the Conservative majority House of Commons, but died in the Liberal dominated Senate.
The Canadian Queen Elizabeth class dreadnoughts were killed by Canadian domestic politics, not the war. As it was, in peacetime, Canada could barely crew the two old training cruisers, Niobe and Rainbow, so would have had a really hard time crewing three Queen Elizabeths.
Toward a Canadian Naval Service (1867-1914) - Canada.ca
Toward a Canadian Naval Servicewww.canada.ca
The Naval Service of Canada : Its Official History. Vol 1, Origins and Early Years - Canada.ca
Official history of Canada's Navy in the Second World War (WW2). This first volume covers the early history of the Naval Service of Canada.
Indeed, I researched those ships for The Three Amigos. I always had to wonder though, if Canada was gonna pay the freight for three battleships, before then are they under Canadian operational control or British? Loyal to the Empire or not I struggle to see Canada's government being willing to pay for British ships.All kinds of AH scenarios are possible where the ships could get built.
Naval Service of Canada, Vol 1, p 187. My bolded text.
The Naval Service of Canada : Its Official History. Vol 1, Origins and Early Years - Canada.ca
Official history of Canada's Navy in the Second World War (WW2). This first volume covers the early history of the Naval Service of Canada.
Ming777
Monthly Donor
True, but keep in mind some believe the American delegates were pushing harder than what they actually wanted. There was likely some leeway. See Dr Alexander Clarke's video on an Equitable Washington Naval Treaty and similar videos.