Assorted Notes - 2 July 2021

[dewline]

1. The End of (Some of the) American Freeways and What Might Be (Re)Built Where They Used to Stand

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-01/a-federal-agency-asks-how-it-can-be-more-equitable

2. Waiting for another wave of rain here in Ottawa. It's like there's a wave of storms stalled, stretching from Pembroke to southwest of Hamilton as I type this entry.

3. Speaking of colonialism: Macdonald and company had to get it all approved at Westminster in the first place, right?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/02/the-toxic-legacy-of-the-british-empire-in-canadas-residential-schools

4. More on other topics later.

Comments

[jsburbidge]

3: Broadly speaking, no. Even in the pre-Responsible government days most decisions were made locally by the Governor-in-Council.

The colonies of British North America were pretty generally independent of Westminster for domestic decisions (the exception being the existence of appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council until 1949). Prior to the Statute of Westminster, the Imperial Parliament could overrule Canadian legislation but rarely did. The Governor General and the Lieutenant-Governors were local and not expected to pass matters on to the monarch.

Post-1867 a few matters remained in Imperial hands for a while (Admiralty jurisdiction until, IIRC, the 1890s). But even some foreign affairs matters were generally independent of Britain: Kipling's The Lady of the Snows memorialized, not the founding of Saint Mary Major but tariffs levied by Canada against Britain. ("A nation spoke to a nation, a throne spoke to a throne:/ Daughter I am in my mother's house but mistress in my own."