Just after midnight struck, a long salute of 101 guns was fired, all the church bells pealed, and a huge bonfire was kindled. Then, presumably, the people of Ottawa went to bed; but neither they nor Her Majesty’s loyal subjects in other parts of the new Dominion were permitted to enjoy too long a rest on that short summer night. Early in the morning, when the sky was hardly paling with the approach of sunrise, the royal salutes began. At Saint John, New Brunswick, the twenty-one guns in “honour of this greatest of all modern marriages” were fired off at four o’clock. At six, they sounded out from Fort Henry, just across the river from Kingston. And at eight, when it was now full day, the Volunteer Artillery of Halifax discharged a long salvo from the Grand Parade, which came back, as if in booming echoes, from the guns of the naval brigade on the Dartmouth side of the harbour. The bells were ringing also, in town halls, and clock towers, and church steeples. High Mass was sung in the cathedral at Three Rivers at seven o’clock in the morning; and all over the country, people dressed in their Sunday best were walking soberly along the streets to pray, in early church services, for the welfare of the Dominion.
By nine o’clock, the sun was already high. The air was warm; the sky’s benignant promise was unqualified. People thronged the streets of their own cities and towns, or crowded into excursion trains and steamers to join in the celebrations of their neighbours. The steamer America brought nearly 300 visitors across the lake from St. Catharines to swell the crowds in Toronto. And down in the Eastern Townships, the little villages of Missiquoi – Philipsburg, Bedford, Dunham and Frelighsburg – arranged a common celebration to which people flocked from all over the county.
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Down in the Maritime Provinces, where the anti-Confederates watched the bright day with sullen disapproval, a few shops stayed ostentatiously open; a few doors were hung with bunches of funereal black crepe; and in Saint John, New Brunswick, a certain doctor defiantly flew his flag at half-mast until a party of volunteers happened to come along, offered politely to assist him in raising it, and, on receiving a furious refusal, raised it anyway and went on their way rejoicing. But there were few such incidents; and everywhere it was a good-humoured crowd…
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It was mid-morning – nearly eleven o’clock. The crowds were thicker now, and they pushed their way along more purposefully, as towards an important objective. The day marked the greatest state occasion in the history of British North America, and now its solemn, official climax was at hand. The Grand Parade at Halifax, Barrack Square at Saint John, Queen’s Park at Toronto, and Victoria Square and the Place d’Armes in Montreal were rapidly filling up with waiting citizens. And all over the country, in scores of market squares, parks, and parade grounds, the little officials of Canada, the mayors, and town clerks, and reeves, and wardens, were about to read the Queen’s proclamation, bringing the new federation into official existence…The proclamation was read; the bands crashed into “God Save the Queen”; there were cheers for the Queen and the new Dominion.
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By nine o’clock at night, the public buildings and many large houses were illuminated all across Canada. And in Toronto the Queen’s Park and the grounds of the private houses surrounding it were transformed by hundreds of Chinese lanterns hung through the trees. When the true darkness at last had fallen, the firework displays began; and simultaneously through the four provinces, the night was assaulted by minute explosions of coloured light, as the roman candles popped away, and the rockets raced up into the sky.
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In Ottawa, long before this, Monck and Macdonald and the other ministers had quitted the Privy Council chamber; and Parliament Hill was crowded once again with people who had come to watch the last spectacle of the day. The parliament buildings were illuminated. They stood out boldly against the sky; and far behind them, hidden in darkness, were the ridges of the Laurentians, stretching away, mile after mile, towards the north-west.
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