Who were the Fathers of Confederation?

The Fathers of Confederation were the 36 delegates who attended one or more of the three Confederation conferences (Charlottetown September 1864, Quebec October 1864, and London December 1866 to February 1867) and signed the resolutions or finalised the British North America Act. They came from the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. The term Fathers of Confederation has been used since 1879 and entered formal historical usage.

The most prominent Fathers included John A. Macdonald (Co-Premier of Canada West, later first Prime Minister), George-Étienne Cartier (Co-Premier of Canada East, later Macdonald's most important Cabinet colleague), George Brown (Reformer leader of Canada West, advocate of federalism), Alexander Galt (Finance Minister of Canada, leading economic advocate), Étienne-Paschal Taché (Co-Premier of Canada East, chairman of the Quebec Conference), Hector-Louis Langevin (Quebec lawyer and politician, later Cabinet minister, controversial for his role in residential schools), and Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Irish-Canadian journalist and orator, assassinated in 1868).

Maritime Fathers included Charles Tupper (Premier of Nova Scotia, later sixth Prime Minister of Canada in 1896), Samuel Leonard Tilley (Premier of New Brunswick, later federal Cabinet minister, credited with proposing 'Dominion of Canada' from Psalm 72:8), John Hamilton Gray of New Brunswick (Conservative leader), John Hamilton Gray of Prince Edward Island (Premier of PEI, hosted the Charlottetown Conference), Edward Whelan (Catholic Reformer from PEI), William Pope (PEI), Edward Palmer (PEI), John Mercer Johnson (NB), Peter Mitchell (NB), Charles Fisher (NB), Robert Duncan Wilmot (NB), William Henry (NS), and Adams Archibald (NS).

Fathers from the Province of Canada beyond the Co-Premiers included James Cockburn (Canada West), Jean-Charles Chapais (Canada East), Alexander Campbell (Canada West), Oliver Mowat (later long-serving Premier of Ontario), William McDougall (Canada West), William Howland (Canada West), and others. Newfoundland sent Frederic Bowker Terrington Carter and Ambrose Shea to the Quebec Conference, though Newfoundland did not join Confederation until 1949. The Fathers of Confederation are commemorated in many Canadian places and institutions, including the Fathers of Confederation Buildings Trust, the famous Robert Harris painting 'Fathers of Confederation' (1884, original lost in the 1916 Parliament Buildings fire, replicated in 1965), the Fathers of Confederation Memorial Building (Charlottetown Confederation Centre of the Arts, 1964), and the Fathers of Confederation monument on Parliament Hill (1967).