Joseph Howe, Volume II: Volume II, The Briton Becomes Canadian, 1848-1873

by J. Murray Beck

Professor Beck shows how, in Churchillian fashion, the final resolution was preceded by a series of setbacks and disappointments in Howe's public life. These were the result of a bold colonization scheme encompassing an inter-colonial railway between Halifax and Quebec; a quixotic mission of recruitment in the United States for the British armies in the Crimea; the embattled leasdership of an unstable provincial administration in the early 1860s; and the hard-fought campaign to prevent passage of the British North America Act. Disillusioned by the indifference of British politician to his long-standing advocacy of a refurbished British Empire in whose government colonial leaders could share, Howe turned his energies to making the new Canadian federation work. A whole-hearted supporter of Confederation in his later years, Howe displayed an irrepressible vitality that Professor Beck sees as the trademark of the man.

448 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1983

Reviews

[Ed Stoddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Howe was certainly a complex character and his perspective was far more global than this Nova Scotian who trained as an historian realised. One of his sons fought in the US Civil War for the North, and part of his opposition to Confederation was rooted in concerns about provoking American power. He also had a conception of the British Empire - with British North America central to it - as a united political entity that went against the grain of thinking in Whitehall. His international adventures included a clandestine attempt to recruit Americans to serve with the British in Crimea.
Beck's biography was published 40 years ago and while I enjoyed it and learned much from it, it must be said it now seems dated. Howe needs a new biographer who can draw on the changes in historiography over the past four decades ...