Dundas (Province of Canada electoral district)

Dundas was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada West, on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River east of Lake Ontario. It was created in 1841, upon the establishment of the Province of Canada by the union of Upper Canada and Lower Canada.

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

Dundas
Canada West

Province of Canada electoral district
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district
Legislature	Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
District created	1841
District abolished	1867
First contested	1841
Last contested	1863

Dundas was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly. It was abolished in 1867, upon the creation of Canada and the province of Ontario.

Boundaries

Dundas electoral district was located on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River, east of Lake Ontario, midway between Kingston and Montreal. It was based on the boundaries of Dundas County.

The Union Act, 1840 had 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 the pre-existing electoral boundaries of Upper Canada would continue to be used in the new Parliament, unless altered by the Union Act itself.[2]

The Upper Canada electoral district of Dundas was not altered by the Act. It was therefore continued with the same boundaries in the new Parliament. Those boundaries had been set by a statute of Upper Canada in 1798:

That the townships of Williamsburg, Matilda, Mountain, and Winchester, with such of the islands in the river Saint Lawrence as are wholly or in greater part opposite thereto, do together constitute and form the county of Dundas.[3]

Members of the Legislative Assembly

Dundas was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.[2] The following were the members for Dundas.

Parliament	Years	Member[4]	Party[5]
1st Parliament 1841–1844	1841–1844	John Cook	Unionist; Reformer

Abolition

The district was abolished on July 1, 1867, when the British North America Act, 1867 came into force, creating Canada and splitting the Province of Canada into Quebec and Ontario.[6] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[7] and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.[8]

References

1. Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
2. Union Act, 1840, s. 16.
3. An act for the better division of this province, SUC 1798, c. 5, s. 3. Reprinted in The Statutes of Upper Canada to the Time of Union, Revised and Published by Authority, Vol. I - Public Acts (Toronto: Robert Stanton, Queen's Printer, 1843).
4. J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860, (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43-58.
5. For party affiliations, see Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841-67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93-111.
6. British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
7. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
8. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 70.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: The Statutes of Upper Canada to the Time of Union, Revised and Published by Authority, Vol. I - Public Acts (Toronto: Robert Stanton, Queen's Printer, 1843).