George Brown (Canadian Politician) - Biography

Biography

Brown was born in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, Scotland, on November 29, 1818 and immigrated to Canada in 1843, after managing a printing operation in New York with his father. He founded the Banner in 1843, and The Globe in 1844, which quickly became the leading Reform newspaper in the Province of Canada. In 1848, he was appointed to head a Royal Commission to examine accusations of official misconduct in Provincial Penitentiary of the Province of Upper Canada at Kingston. The Brown Report, which Brown drafted early in 1849, included sufficient evidence of abuse to set in motion the termination of warden Henry Smith. Brown's revelations of poor conditions at the Kingston penitentiary were heavily criticized by John A. Macdonald and contributed to the tense relationship between the two Canadian statesmen.

Brown used the Globe newspaper to publish articles and editorials that attacked the institution of slavery in the southern United States. In response to the Fugitive Slave Law passed in the United States in 1850, Brown helped found the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. This society was founded to end the practice of slavery in North America, and individual members aided former American slaves reach Canada via the Underground Railroad. As a result, black Canadians enthusiastically supported Brown's political ambitions.

Brown was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada in 1851. He reorganized the Clear Grit (Liberal) Party in 1857, supporting, among other things, the separation of church and state, the annexation of Rupert's Land, and a small government. But the most important issue for George Brown was what he termed representation by population, or commonly known as "rep by pop".

From the Act of Union (1840), the Canadian colonial legislature had been composed of an equal number of members from Canada East (Lower Canada, Quebec) and Canada West (Upper Canada, Ontario, Canada). In 1841, Francophone-dominated Lower Canada had a larger population, and the British colonial administration hoped that the Canadiens in Lower Canada would be legislatively pacified by a coalition of Loyalists from Lower Canada with the Upper Canadian side. But during the 1840s and 1850s, as the population of Upper Canada grew larger than the Canadien population of Lower Canada, the opposite became true. Brown believed that the larger population deserved to have more representatives, rather than an equal number from Upper and Lower Canada. Brown's pursuit of this goal of righting what he perceived to be a great wrong to Canada West was accompanied at times by stridently critical remarks against French Canadians and the power exerted by the Catholic population of Canada East over the affairs of largely Protestant Canada West, referring to the position of Canada West as "a base vassalage to French-Canadian Priestcraft."

For a period of four days in August 1858, political rival John A. Macdonald lost the support of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada on a non-confidence vote and his cabinet had to resign. After Alexander Galt declined the opportunity, George Brown attempted to form a ministry with Antoine-Aimé Dorion. At the time, newly appointed ministers had to resign their seats and run in by-elections. When members of Brown's ministry resigned their seats to get re-elected, John A. Macdonald re-emerged and through a loophole was re-appointed with his ministry to their old posts. Brown was the de facto premier of Province of Canada in 1858. The short-lived administration was called the Brown-Dorion government, named after the co-premiers George Brown and Antoine-Aimé Dorion. This episode was termed the "double shuffle."