The Charlottetown Conference and the Birth of Canada by Deirdre Kessler, Douglas Baldwin, and: Three Weeks in Quebec City: The Meeting That Made Canada by Christopher Moore (review)

Deirdre Kessler and Douglas Baldwin, The Charlottetown Conference and the Birth of Canada (Halifax: Nimbus, 2015), 123 pp. Paper. $15.95. ISBN 978-1-77108-320-1.Christopher Moore, Three Weeks in Quebec City: The Meeting That Made Canada (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2015), 262pp. Cased. $35. ISBN 978-0-670-06525-7.The early 1960s saw the publication of a series of major historical publications to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Confederation. So far only two popular studies have been published to mark the 150th anniversary. The volume on The Charlottetown Conference and the Birth of Canada is obviously aimed at young readers and has nothing new to say about the Charlottetown Conference. Indeed, the authors seem more interested in the social activities that accompanied the Conference and in the nature of the hoop skirts worn by the 'Mothers of Confederation' (p. 82) than in the details of the political agreement that was worked out at Charlottetown. Three Weeks in Quebec City by one of Canada's most important popular historians is a far more substantial study. Christopher Moore sets out to write 'a day-by-day, debate-by-debate, dinner-and-dance-by-dinner-and-dance exploration of the meeting in Quebec city' (p. 253) and he has succeeded in producing an engaging narrative full of interesting detail. Specialists will find little to surprise them in Moore's account since the book covers much the same ground as his earlier study, 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal (1997). Moore has kept up with the recent Canadian literature and incorporates it into his text, but his interpretation of events has not changed much. He also has the annoying habit of going beyond the evidence, ascribing motive to both individuals and groups when all the historical record shows is silence. He also uses hypothetical questions to create a dubious interpretation of events. On 13 October the delegates at Quebec passed a motion declaring the desire of the delegates to perpetuate the connection with the mother country. Moore asks, Was there 'a hinting of independence in the motion that was passed (p. 83)?' The obvious answer is no. But Moore wishes to downplay the importance of the British connection to the delegates at Quebec. He even claims that only three of the 33 men around the table had been born in Britain and that most of the delegates 'were generations away from British or French roots' (p. 84). This may have been true of the Francophones. But it was certainly not true of the Anglophones. …

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