Champlain (Province of Canada electoral district)

Champlain was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East. It was on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, with the town of Champlain being the main centre of the district.

This article is about the pre-Confederation electoral district. For the successor federal electoral district, see Champlain (federal electoral district). For the successor provincial electoral district, see Champlain (provincial electoral district). For the Lower Canada electoral district, see Champlain (Lower Canada).

Champlain
Province of Canada electoral district
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district
LegislatureLegislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
District created1841
District abolished1867
First contested1841
Last contested1867

The electoral district was established in 1841, when the Province of Canada was created by the merger of Lower Canada and Upper Canada by the Union Act, 1840. It was based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.

Champlain was represented by one Member in the Legislative Assembly. The electoral district was abolished in 1867 upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.

Boundaries

The electoral district of Champlain was located on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, centred on the town of Champlain (in the current Mauricie area), and close to Trois-Rivières.

The Union Act, 1840 merged the two provinces of Lower Canada and Upper 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 Champlain 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:

The County of Champlain shall be bounded on the north east by the County of Portneuf, on the south west by the River Saint Maurice, on the south east by the River Saint Lawrence, and on the north west by the northern boundary of the Province; which County so bounded comprises the Seigniories of Saint Anne and its augmentation, Sainte Marie, Batiscan, Champlain, Cap de la Magdeleine, and all the islands in the River Saint Lawrence nearest to and in front of the said county.[3]

Elections were held at the "Ferry nearest the River Saint Lawrence on the north east of the River Batiscan."[4]

Champlain was a single-member constituency.[5]

Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841-1867)

The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly from Champlain.[6]

Parliament Years Members[7] Party[8]
1st Parliament
1841–1844		 1841–1843 René-Joseph Kimber[lower-alpha 1] Anti-unionist; Groupe canadien-français
1842–1844
(by-election)		 Henry Judah[lower-alpha 2] Groupe canadien-français
2nd Parliament
1844–1848		 1844–1851 Louis Guillet Reformer
3rd Parliament
1848–1851
4th Parliament
1851–1854		 1851–1857 Thomas Marchildon Reformer
5th Parliament
1854–1857		 Rouge
6th Parliament
1858–1861		 1858–1861 Joseph-Édouard Turcotte Bleu
7th Parliament
1861–1863		 1861–1867 John Jones Ross Bleu
8th Parliament
1863–1867		 Bleu

Notes
  1. Appointed to the Legislative Council of the Province of Canada on September 1843, automatically vacating his seat in the Assembly.[9]
  2. Elected in by-election September 22, 1843.[10]

Abolition

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.[11] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[12] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[13]

Footnotes
  1. Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
  2. Union Act, 1840, ss. 16, 18.
  3. 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. 35. (There is a typographical error in the English version of para. 35, with the Saint Lawerence River being listed twice as a boundary. The French version makes it clear that the Saint Lawrence is the south-east boundary, while the Saint Maurice River is the south-west boundary.)
  4. 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. 3.
  5. Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
  6. J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860, (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43-58.
  7. J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860 (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43–58.
  8. For party affiliations, see biographies of individual members: Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present. See also Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93–111.
  9. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections, pp. 28, 59, note (7).
  10. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (8).
  11. British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
  12. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
  13. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.

Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Statutes of Lower Canada, 13th Provincial Parliament, 2nd Session (1829), c. 74

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