The immediate proposal is said to have come from George Brown; the large political idea had long been advocated by Macdonald and Alexander Galt in Upper Canada - by Joseph Howe and others in the maritime provinces.
Macdonald, at the head of a representative delegation from Ontario and Quebec, met the public men of the maritime provinces in conference at Charlottetown in 1864, and the outline of confederation then agreed upon was filled out in detail at a conference held at Quebec soon afterwards.
The pledge made at confederation with regard to the building of the Intercolonial railway to connect the maritime provinces with those of the St Lawrence was fulfilled.
The " maritime provinces " of eastern Canada, including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, may be considered together; and to these provinces as politically bounded may be added, from a physical point of view, the analogous south-eastern part of Quebec - the entire area being designated the Acadian region.
Between 1891 and 1901 the number of farmers in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritime provinces decreased, and there seemed a prospect of the country being divided into a manufacturing east and an agricultural west, but latterly large tracts in northern Ontario and Quebec have proved suitable for cultivation and are being opened up.
