Vaudreuil was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, west of Montreal. It was created in 1841, based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.
Vaudreuil 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
Vaudreuil electoral district was located west of Montreal, between the Saint Lawrence River to the south and the Ottawa River to the north, bordering on Canada West (now in Vaudreuil-Soulanges Regional County Municipality).
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. (UK), 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.
The Lower Canada electoral district of Vaudreuil 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 Lower Canada in 1829:
Map of Vaudreuil
The seigniories which composed Vaudreuil electoral district were as follows:
Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841–1867)
Vaudreuil was a single-member constituency.
The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly for Vaudreuil. 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 John Simpson 1841–1844 Unionist; "British" Tory 2nd Parliament 1844–1847 Jacques-Philippe Lantier 1844–1847 French-Canadian Group 3rd Parliament 1848–1851 Jean-Baptiste Mongenais 1848–1857 French-Canadian Group 4th Parliament 1851–1854 Ministerialist 5th Parliament 1854–1857 Bleu 6th Parliament 1858–1861 Robert Unwin Harwood 1858–1860 Conservative Jean-Baptiste Mongenais 1860–1861 (By-election) Bleu 7th Parliament 1861–1863 Jean-Baptiste Mongenais 1861–1863 Bleu 8th Parliament 1863–1867 Antoine Chartier de Lotbinière Harwood 1863–1867 Confederation; Conservative
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