Yamaska was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East, in a rural area south of the Saint Lawrence River. It was created in 1841, based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.
Yamaska 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
Yamaska electoral district was located in a rural area on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River (now in an area contained in Nicolet-Yamaska Regional County Municipality). The Saint François River ran north through the district, flowing into the Saint Lawrence.
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.
The Lower Canada electoral district of Yamaska 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:
Members of the Legislative Assembly (1841–1867)
Yamaska was a single-member constituency.
The following were the members of the Legislative Assembly for Yamaska. 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 Members Years in Office Party 1st Parliament 1841–1844 Joseph-Guillaume Barthe Anti-unionist; French-Canadian Group 2nd Parliament 1844–1847 Léon Rousseau French-Canadian Group 3rd Parliament 1848–1851 Michel Fourquin Ministerialist 4th Parliament 1851–1854 Pierre-Benjamin Dumoulin Ministerialist 5th Parliament 1854–1857 Ignace Gill Bleu 6th Parliament 1858–1861 7th Parliament 1861–1863 Moïse Fortier Rouge 8th Parliament 1863–1867 Anti-Confederation; Rouge
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 Yamaska (federal electoral district) Yamaska (provincial electoral district) List of elections in the Province of Canada
References