William Henry Pope

William Henry Pope

William Henry Pope (born May 29, 1825 in Bedeque , Prince Edward Island , † October 7, 1879 in St. Eleanors , Prince Edward Island) was a Canadian politician , lawyer and journalist . As one of the fathers of the Confederation , he was one of the pioneers of the Canadian state founded in 1867.

biography

Pope studied law at the Inner Temple in London , returned to Prince Edward Island and did an internship with Edward Palmer . In 1847 he was admitted as a lawyer , and he also worked as a real estate agent. From 1859 he was editor of the conservative newspaper The Islander , in the same year he ran for parliamentary elections. Although he was not elected, Prime Minister Palmer appointed him to the cabinet as colonial secretary. In 1863 Pope finally triumphed in the Belfast constituency and kept his ministerial post under the new Prime Minister John Hamilton Gray .

In Prince Edward Island, Pope was one of the few prominent politicians who advocated the unification of the colonies in British North America into a federal state. In September and October 1864, he attended the Charlottetown Conference and the Québec Conference . Although his younger brother James Colledge Pope became Prime Minister in 1865 , he was increasingly isolated in government. When he was in Brazil with a trade delegation in 1866 , the government refused to join Canada. In protest against this political maneuver, he resigned from the government and in 1867 decided against re-election.

Pope continued to campaign for membership with newspaper articles. In 1870 he was re-elected to parliament. When the construction of the Prince Edward Island Railway nearly bankrupted the colony in 1872, there was a change of opinion. The government was forced to start accession negotiations with the Canadian government. Eventually, Prince Edward Island joined in July 1873 and the federal government appointed Pope as a district judge.

Web links

• William Henry Pope . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
• Short biography from Library and Archives Canada