Charles Tupper was one of the 25 fathers of Confederation, as well as our sixth prime minister. Born in Amherst Nova Scotia in 1821, he didn’t get into the world of pre-confederation politics until a family friend, James Johnston, encouraged him to run for the Cumberland county seat in 1855. He did, and won the seat for the Nova Scotia conservatives. He was the premier of Nova Scotia from 1864 until 1867, and was one of the influences that led Nova Scotia into Confederation. In one of his speeches, he pointed out that if the maritime colonies did not join with the rest of BNA in confederation, they would be overlooked mainly because of the vast size and population differences confederation would pose. He also proposed a Maritime union, in order to protect the maritime colonies from American expansion, and to increase the amount of influence the maritime colonies held. John A. Macdonald believed that if the Maritime colonies were accepting to a union between themselves, perhaps they would be accepting to a larger union between all the colonies. So, he asked to attend the Charlottetown Conference in order to discuss Confederation with the delegates from the Maritimes. Tupper went on to attend both the Quebec and London Conferences, and was instrumental to the creation of Canada.

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