The 1st Parliament of Ontario was the inaugural legislature of the Province of Ontario following Canadian Confederation. Its composition was determined by the 1867 Ontario general election held in conjunction with the first Canadian federal election over several weeks in August and September. It was in session from December 27, 1867, until February 25, 1871, just prior to the 1871 general election.
This parliament along with the 1st Quebec Legislature and the 1st Canadian Parliament were joint successor-legislatures of the 8th Parliament of the Province of Canada, the final composition of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada.
John Stevenson served as speaker for the assembly.
On the surface, the 1867 general election produced a virtual tie between the Conservative Party led by John Sandfield Macdonald and the Liberal Party led informally by Archibald McKellar.
|- ! colspan=2 rowspan=2 | Political party ! rowspan=2 | Party leader ! rowspan=2 colspan=1 | Candidates ! rowspan=2 colspan=1 | Seats ! colspan=2 | Votes |- !# !%
|style="text-align:left;"|John Sandfield Macdonald | 78 || 41 || 80,111 ||50.28%
|style="text-align:left;"|Archibald McKellar | 80 || 41 || 77,689 ||48.76%
| || 15 || – || 1,523 ||0.96% |- ! colspan="3" style="text-align:left;" | Total | 173 ! 82 ! 159,323 ! 100.00% |- | colspan="5" style="text-align:left;" | Registered electors | 215,722 | |- | style="text-align:left;" rowspan="2" colspan="3" |Acclamations | style="text-align:left;" colspan="2" | ||2 |- | style="text-align:left;" colspan="2" | ||4
The partisan make up of the legislature was not as straight forward as the numbers suggest. Political parties in the early days of confederation were characterized by "loose coalitions" that may change from issue to issue. The party labels on official record for those early elections were retroactively applied after partisan political system was more formalized, and thus were not all accurate. For example, Edmund Burke Wood, Ontario's inaugural Treasurer who was also elected to the federal parliament, was recorded as elected to the Ontario legislature as a conservative (likely because he served in the Sandfield Macdonald ministry) and to the House of Commons as a Liberal (likely because he returned to the Liberal fold in 1873 and was later appointed by Liberal prime minister Alexander McKenzie to be chief justice of Manitoba). In 1867 however, he was explicitly repudiated by the South Brant Liberal association, was elected to both seat as a coalitionist, and his opponent for the federal seat, Henry Blakey Leeming was none other than the local Liberal association president.
It was clear however that the Patent Combination, the notional coalition ministry of John Sandfield Macdonald appointed provisionally upon Canada's confederation, was able to command the support of more than half of the members of this parliament, usually with comfortable margin. During this parliament's first session, Of the nine recorded divisions that were reported from the first sesson of thei
while those oppose were in minority, allowing the ministry to continue in government., that more than half of the members returned were supportive of
In the first several years of Confederation, individuals could hold seats in federal and provincial parliaments simultaneously. The following men were elected to both the House of Commons and the Ontario legislature in 1867:
Two further members were elected to the federal parliament during this parliament:
There were four sessions in duration of the first Ontario Parliament:
â¡ Concurrently a MP. Names in bold indicate member of cabinet (Sandfield Macdonald ministry)
The make up of the first parliament was fairly stable, with only a few changes.