Canada, Province of. Parliament : The Parliament of the united Province of Canada succeeded the Parliaments of Upper and Lower Canada. Until 1856, the Legislative Council was appointive; thereafter, both Houses were elective. J.O. Coté's Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada... (Ottawa, 1866) provides detailed information on elections and by-elections to both Houses, offices held by individuals and the dates of Parliamentary sessions.
The range of records created or accumulated by the legislature is indicated by the testimony of the Clerk of the Legislative Council and the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly given to the Select Committee inquiring into Judicial and Parliamentry records, the Report of which is printed as Appendix KK to the Journal for 1846. The extremely fragmentary survival of records in thecustody of Parliament itself, the mixing with them of records preserved by other agencies, and the disruption of their order makes the drawing of conclusions about records-creation and records-keeping practices of the legislature particularly difficult.
The conduct of elections was the responsibility of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, an office frequently held in plurality by the Civil and Provincial Secretaries. Election records are found in RG 4, B 72 for Canada East and RG 5, B 25 for Canada West. Few poll books are known to have survived with them, or elsewhere.
Many of the records created and accumulated by Parliament and its officers have perished in fires. The great number of surviving post-1854 petitions presented to the Legislative Council demonstrate the magnitude of that loss. The preservation of manuscript and printed copies of Parliamentary records by officials elsewhere creates the illusion of dispersal and survival. Copies of addresses, minutes, proceedings, resolutions and other documents were routinely supplied to the governor's office, where the Civil Secretary ensured that these texts were forwarded to London for the information of imperial authorities, and kept on file for future reference. He was also responsible for preparing fair copies of the governor's Speeches and Messages, for presentation and for printing.
A variety of documents relating to or derived from the business of Parliament may be found amongst the Civil Secretay's correspondence (RG 7, series G 14, G 18 and G 20), or the Provincial Secretary's numbered files (RG 4, C 1 and RG 5, C 1). Duplicate minutes of the Legislative Council for 1849-1851 are found in MG 40, A 1. Proclamations summoning, proroguing and dissolving Parliament, preserved by the Provincial Secretary, are found in RG 4, B 7. Oaths of allegiance are found in RG 1, E 11. Registers were kept by several officials to record the passage of Bills into Acts; two survive in RG 1, E 12. Those compiled by Gustavus William Wicksteed while Law Clerk in the House of Assembly survived with his personal papers (see MG 24, B 57).
