Shefford was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, in the Eastern Townships. It was created in 1841, based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.
Shefford was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly. It was abolished in 1867, upon the creation of Canada and the province of Quebec.
Boundaries
Shefford was located to the south-east of Montreal, in the Eastern Townships (including areas now in the regional county municipalities of Brome-Missisquoi and La Haute-Yamaska).
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.Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2. The Union Act provided that the pre-existing electoral boundaries of Lower Canada and Upper Canada would continue to be used in the new Parliament, unless altered by the Union Act itself.Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
Shefford electoral district of Lower Canada was not altered by the Act, and therefore continued with the same boundaries which had been set by a statute of Lower Canada in 1829:
Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841–1867)
Shefford was a single-member constituency.
The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly for Shefford. 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.J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860 (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43–58.Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.Paul G. Cornell, Alignment of Political Groups in Canada, 1841–67 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962; reprinted in paperback 2015), pp. 93–111.
Parliament Member Years in Office Party 1st Parliament1841–1844 Sewell Foster 1841–1847 Unionist; Tory 2nd Parliament1844–1847 "British" Tory 3rd Parliament1848–1851 Lewis Thomas Drummond 1848–1858 French-Canadian Group 4th Parliament1851–1854 "English" Moderate 5th Parliament1854–1857 English Ministerialist 6th Parliament1858–1861 Liberal 6th Parliament1858–1861 Asa Belknap Foster 1858–1860 Liberal-Conservative 7th Parliament1861–1863 Lucius Seth Huntington 1861–1867 Liberal 8th Parliament 1863–1867 Anti-Confederation; Liberal
Notes
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.British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6. It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of CanadaConstitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2 and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.
See also List of elections in the Province of Canada
References