Canada Became a Self-Governing Dominion
On this day · 1 July 1867
On a single summer morning in 1867, four colonies woke up as one new country with a name of its own.
On July 1, 1867, the British North America Act came into force and stitched four British colonies into a single federal country: the Dominion of Canada. The old Province of Canada split into Ontario and Quebec, joining Nova Scotia and New Brunswick under one Parliament in Ottawa.
The word dominion was deliberate. It signalled a self-governing nation within the British Empire rather than a fully independent republic. Canada now ran its own internal affairs, while Britain still kept a hand on foreign policy and the constitution itself, which remained an act of the UK Parliament.
Four colonies went to bed as separate British possessions and woke up as one country.
Sir John A. Macdonald became the first prime minister. The date was long marked as Dominion Day, and since 1982 it has been celebrated as Canada Day. Full legal independence came only gradually, through later milestones like the Statute of Westminster in 1931 and the patriation of the constitution in 1982.
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