In 1858, on this day at the Provincial Parliament in Toronto, forty year old legislator Alexander Tilloch Galt called for the immediate creation of "a general confederation of the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island with Canada and the Western Territories".

Announcing the dream of Canada
Just not our CanadaThe idea was not his but the timing was providential. Because three weeks later, the provincial government of John A. MacDonald was unseated and the Governor General Sir Edmund Walker Head overlooked George Brown and instead asked Galt to lead.

He reluctantly accepted the Premiership of the Province of Canada and began the construction of the big country that he had imagined, convincing the British to make British North America into the first sovereign Dominion within the British Empire. But unbeknown to the Governor General, Galt was one of many important Montreal men who had signed a petition to join the United States. And the inexorable direction of Galt's convergence policies would not become apparent for several years.