Alexander Mackenzie (politician)

Scottish-born prime minister of Canada (1873-1878)

• Born: January 28, 1822
• Birthplace: Logierait, Perthshire, Scotland
• Died: April 17, 1892
• Place of death: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

After working as a building contractor and contributing to the construction of many of Canada’s public works, Mackenzie moved into politics and became the new nation’s second prime minister. In that capacity, he engineered greater political independence from Great Britain while encouraging an honest and democratic government at home.

Early Life

Alexander Mackenzie was the son of Mary Stewart Fleming and Alexander Mackenzie, a Scottish carpenter who repeatedly relocated his family as he searched for work. After his father died in 1836, Alexander dropped out of school. At the age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to a stonemason. Four years later, he became a journeyman mason and moved to the town of Irvine, where he worked on the construction of a railway line and met fellow stonemason William Neil and his family.

Mackenzie became a close friend of the Neils and accompanied them when they emigrated to Canada aboard the sailing ship Monarch in 1842. He eventually settled with them in Kingston, a town that is now in Ontario. On March 28, 1845, he married Helen Neil, a daughter of William Neil. By that time, Mackenzie’s brother Hope had left Scotland for Canada, and the remainder of the Mackenzie family followed in 1846.

Although his formal education ended when he was about thirteen, Mackenzie had continued to educate himself widely, if informally. Finding work in Canada as a mason proved more difficult than he had expected, so he became a building contractor in partnership with his brothers. With them, he worked on the Beauharnois and Welland canals, Fort Henry, and various churches, banks, courthouses, and jails in the region. He and his wife moved farther west to Sarnia (also now in Ontario) on the shores of Lake Huron in 1847. Five years later, Helen died. The following year, on June 17, 1853, Mackenzie married Jane Sym, the daughter of a neighbor.

Life’s Work

Under the Act of Union, the British colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada had merged in 1841 to form the Province of Canada. The province was governed by a legislative assembly, and the city of Kingston, to which Mackenzie and the Neils had emigrated in 1842, served as its capital from 1841 to 1844.

Mackenzie joined the liberal Reform Party (also known as the Clear Grits) soon after arriving in Canada and worked for the election of Reform candidate George Brown to the province’s legislative assembly in 1851. The following year, he became the editor and publisher of a liberal newspaper, The Lambton Shield. Mackenzie’s sense of duty also led to his involvement in local affairs as census taker, volunteer firefighter, school board trustee, and member of a temperance society—activities that along with his reputation for honesty helped him win election to the assembly himself in 1861. He would spend the rest of his life in politics.

The shape of British North America changed once again on July 1, 1867, when, under the British North America Act , several separate colonies were brought together to form the Dominion of Canada. The Province of Canada was again divided, with what had been Lower Canada becoming Quebec and Upper Canada becoming Ontario.

The Dominion’s governor-general, Great Britain’s representative in Canada, chose Conservative Party leader John A. Macdonald—another Scottish emigrant—to be the Dominion’s first prime minister; Macdonald’s position was confirmed by general elections in 1867. At the same time, Mackenzie was elected to the Dominion’s new House of Commons; however, his old political ally George Brown, who had become leader of the Reform Party, was defeated, paving the way for Mackenzie to take his place as head of the party. From that new position of power, Mackenzie engineered the union of the Reform Party with several similar parties to form the loosely knit Liberal Party.

Mackenzie also served in the Ontario provincial assembly from 1871 to 1872, when dual representation—as such double legislative service was known—was abolished. The fact that Mackenzie had actually favored the bill abolishing such representation enhanced his reputation for selfless service to the nation.

Under Macdonald, the Conservative Party won a majority of seats in the 1872 elections. The following year, however, it was revealed that Macdonald’s party had accepted a large contribution from a group subsequently chosen by the government to build a Pacific Railway into western British North America—a project that the Liberals had already attacked as too costly. In the wake of what became known as the “Pacific Scandal,” Macdonald resigned. On November 7, 1873, Mackenzie was named prime minister by the governor-general. An election held early during the following year gave the Liberals a majority in the House of Commons and confirmed Mackenzie in office.

As Canada’s second prime minister, Mackenzie moved to strengthen the new Dominion’s unity, although he was fiscally more careful than his predecessor. He himself directed the economically powerful Department of Public Works to assure its honesty. He also chose to build the Pacific Railway, which had been a condition for British Columbia’s entry into the Dominion in 1871, in sections, linking the sections wherever possible with water routes and wagon roads.

Mackenzie also instituted a number of political reforms. Under his administration the right to vote was extended, election days were standardized, the secret-ballot system was introduced, and taverns were closed on election days. When Great Britain tried to intercede in negotiations between the Dominion and British Columbia governments, Mackenzie persuaded the British to allow the Canadians greater latitude in governing themselves. In addition, the creation of the Supreme Court of Canada in 1875 made it possible for the Dominion to review its own laws, thus decreasing the number of legal appeals to Britain.

Despite his achievements in the political sphere, Mackenzie proved unable to cope with the economic depression then affecting Canada and the rest of the world. An election in 1878 returned Alexander Macdonald and the Conservatives to power. Although poor health, including the loss of his voice, forced Mackenzie to resign leadership of the Liberal Party in 1880, he remained in parliament until his death in Toronto on April 17, 1892. He was buried in Sarnia.

Significance

Alexander Mackenzie served as prime minister and member of Parliament during a crucial period in Canada’s development. He worked successfully to extend democratic ideals within the Dominion, while at the same time limiting Britain’s power to interfere in Canada’s internal affairs. His policies thus paved the way for the even greater degrees of liberty and autonomy in Canada that were to follow.

Mackenzie’s integrity and industriousness were acknowledged by all, but his inability to deal with Canada’s economic problems has led critics to label him as having been too timid for his dynamic times—a verdict that was shared by a majority of Canada’s voters when he was in politics. A man of working-class background and deep religious convictions, he was fiercely democratic in private as well as public life. Unlike preceding and succeeding prime ministers, he steadfastly refused a knighthood from the British crown.

Bibliography

Brown, R. Craig, ed. The Illustrated History of Canada. Toronto: Key Porter, 2002. An inviting and readable survey of Canadian history that places Mackenzie in the context of his times. Contains numerous black-and-white and color illustrations and bibliographical essays.

Buckingham, William, and George W. Ross. The Hon. Alexander Mackenzie: His Life and Times. Toronto: Rose, 1892. A pioneering if partisan biography of the politician written by two close friends that was published shortly after his death.

Riendeau, Roger. A Brief History of Canada. New York: Facts On File, 2000. A succinct history of Canada, supplemented with black-and-white illustrations, maps, texts of key documents, and suggestions for further reading.

See, Scott W. The History of Canada. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. A short survey, supplemented with appendixes and a bibliographic essay, that criticizes Mackenzie’s leadership as ineffective.

Thomson, Dale C. Alexander Mackenzie: Clear Grit. Toronto: Macmillan, 1960. The standard modern biography, admiring but judicial, drawing extensively on papers made available since the early work of Buckingham and Ross.