Leinster (Province of Canada electoral district)

Leinster
Province of Canada electoral district
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district
LegislatureLegislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
District created1841
District abolished1867
First contested1841
Last contested1851

Leinster was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, west of Montreal. It was created in 1841, and was based on the previous electoral districts of l'Assomption and La Chesnaye (or Lachenaie) in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada. It was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.

The electoral district was abolished in 1854, as part of the expansion and redistribution of electoral districts that came into force that year.

Boundaries

The Union Act, 1840 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 while many of the pre-existing electoral boundaries of Lower Canada and Upper Canada would continue to be used in the new Parliament, some electoral districts would be defined directly by the Union Act itself.[2] Leinster was one of those new electoral districts. The Union Act merged the previous electoral districts of the County of Lachenaie and the County of L’Assomption, to create a new district, called Leinster.[3]

The former districts of Lachenaie and l'Assomption had been defined by the 1829 boundaries as follows:

The County of Lachenaie shall comprehend the Parishes of Lachenaie, Saint Henry de Mascouche and Saint Roch, and the Townships of Kilkenny and Wexford.

The County of l'Assomption shall comprehend the Parishes of Saint Sulpice, comprising Isle Bouchard, Repentigny, l'Assomption and Saint Jacques and the Townships of Rawdon and Chertsey.[4]

With the merger of those counties, the new district stretched from south-west of Montreal (now Les Moulins Regional County Municipality), north across the Saint Lawrence River to the north-west of Montreal (now the L'Assomption Regional County Municipality).

Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841–1854)

Leinster was a single-member constituency.[3]

The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly for Leinster. 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 		Jean-Moïse Raymond[a]
1841–1842
 Anti-unionist; French-Canadian Group
Jacob De Witt[b]
1842–1844
(By-election)
 French-Canadian Group
2nd Parliament
1844–1847 		Jacob De Witt
1844–1847
 French-Canadian Group
3rd Parliament
1848–1851 		Norbert Dumas
1848–1851
 Ministerialist
4th Parliament
1851–1854 		Louis-Michel Viger
1851–1854
 Ministerialist

Notes

  1. ^ Vacated seat on January 1, 1842, on appointment as District Registrar of Leinster: Côté, Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (16).
  2. ^ Elected in by-election, August 8, 1842: Côté, Appointments and Elections, p. 59, note (17).

Abolition

The Leinster electoral district was abolished in 1854, when the 1853 redistribution of electoral districts came into force.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
  2. ^ Union Act, 1840, ss. 16, 18.
  3. ^ a b Union Act, 1840, s. 19.
  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. 1, paras. 30 and 31.
  5. ^ J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860 (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43–58.
  6. ^ Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
  7. ^ Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93–111.
  8. ^ An Act to enlarge the Representation of the People of this Province in Parliament, SProvC 1853, c. 152, s. 1, para. 29.

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