Sherbrooke County (Province of Canada electoral district)

Sherbrooke County was an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly of the Parliament of the Province of Canada, in Canada East. It was located in the Eastern Townships, based on the rural areas around the town of Sherbrooke. The town was a separate electoral district, also named Sherbrooke.

Sherbrooke County
Canada East
Province of Canada electoral district
Defunct pre-Confederation electoral district
LegislatureLegislative Assembly of the Province of Canada
District created1841
District abolished1867
First contested1841
Last contested1863

Sherbrooke County electoral district was created in 1841, based on the previous electoral district of the same name for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, and 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

Sherbrooke County electoral district was located in the Eastern Townships (now the Estrie administrative region). The town of Sherbrooke was the major centre, but was not part of the Sherbrooke County electoral district. The town was a separate electoral district, also named Sherbrooke. Sherbrooke County was largely rural, and extended from the town of Sherbrooke south to the border with the United States.

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.[1] 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.[2]

The Lower Canada electoral district of Sherbrooke County 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:

The County of Sherbrooke shall contain the Townships of Garthby, Hatford, Whitton, Marston, Clinton, Woburn, Stanhope, Croydon, Chesham, Adstock, Lingwick, Weedon, Dudswell, Bury, Hampden, Ditton, Emberton, Drayton, Auckland, Newport, Westbury, Stoke, Ascot, Eaton, Hereford, Compton, Clifton, Windsor, Brompton, Shipton, Melbourne and Orford, together with all gores or augmentations of the said Townships.[3]

Members of the Legislative Assembly

Sherbrooke County was represented by one member in the Legislative Assembly.[2] The following were the members for Sherbrooke County.

Parliament Years Member[4] Party[5]
1st Parliament
1841–1844		 1841–1844 John Moore Unionist; originally Tory, switched to Groupe Canadien-français (1843)

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.[6] It was succeeded by electoral districts of the same name in the House of Commons of Canada[7] and the Legislative Assembly of Quebec.[8]

References
  1. Union Act, 1840, 3 & 4 Vict., c. 35, s. 2.
  2. Union Act, 1840, s. 18.
  3. An Act to make a new and more convenient subdivision of the Province into Counties, for the purpose of effecting a more equal Representation thereof in the Assembly than heretofore, SLC 1829, c. 73, s. 1, para. 14.
  4. J.O. Côté, Political Appointments and Elections in the Province of Canada, 1841 to 1860, (Quebec: St. Michel and Darveau, 1860), pp. 43-58.
  5. See biographies of individual members for party affiliation: Québec Dictionary of Parliamentary Biography, from 1764 to the present.
  6. British North America Act, 1867 (now the Constitution Act, 1867), s. 6.
  7. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 40, para. 2
  8. Constitution Act, 1867, s. 80.

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Statutes of Lower Canada, 13th Provincial Parliament, 2nd Session (1829), c. 74.

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