Roads to Confederation surveys the way in which scholars from different disciplines, writing in different periods, viewed the Confederation process and the making of Canada. Recognizing that Confederation has been traditionally defined as a process affecting only British North America’s Anglophone and Francophone communities, Roads to Confederation offers a broader approach to the making of Canada, and includes scholarship written over 145 years.

Volume 2 of this collection focuses on three major themes. It presents research from the perspective of Canada’s regions, with one chapter focusing exclusively on the competing understandings of 1867 from the perspective of Quebec. Next, it includes material pertaining to the geopolitical underpinnings of 1867 that addresses the relationship between Confederation, the U.S. Civil War and American expansionism, Great Britain and war in the European theatre. Also included is leading scholarship by Stanley B. Ryerson, Adele Perry, Fernand Dumond, Ian McKay and James W. Daschuk that questions whether Confederation itself was a formative event. Together with its companion volume, this is an invaluable resource for those who wish to deepen their understanding of the historical foundations on which Canada rests.

Jacqueline D. Krikorian is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at York University.

Jacqueline Krikorian's profile page

David M. Cameron is a professor emeritus of political science at Dalhousie University, Halifax, and was a consultant in policy development in the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, Ottawa.

David Cameron's profile page

Marcel Martel is a professor in the Department of History at York University, where he holds the Avie Bennett Historica Dominion Institute Chair in Canadian History. He is the author of Not This Time: Canadians, Public Policy, and the Marijuana Question, 1961-1975 (2006), Le Deuil d’un pays imaginé. Rêves, luttes et déroute du Canada français (1997), and co-author of Speaking Up. A History of Language and Politics in Canada and Quebec (2012).

Marcel Martel's profile page

Andrew McDougall is an assistant professor of Canadian politics at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Andrew McDougall's profile page

Robert C. Vipond is a professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

Robert Vipond's profile page

"The wide range of perspectives will be valuable to students and scholars, particularly in examining the centrality of the Confederation moment and tensions informing Canadian nationalism, or even geopolitical interest that shaped Canada in North America."

Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol 52 no 1, March 2019

"For those of us who teach Confederation, and who often wish we could renovate our classes to better capture the multiplicity of scholarly takes, this distillation of so many important approaches to the topic will be a blessing; Donald Creighton’s road to Confederation must now be seen as just one route among many."

<em>Canadian Historical Review</em>