Such is the background of Mercy Coles. It is important to keep this in mind, because this Confederation story is one told from a young, unmarried woman’s point of view. It is a story told by someone along for the events, and tied in that way to the goings-on. Yet, Mercy Coles was interested in something far different from the resolutions of the British North America Act. She was twenty-six, after all, when twenty-six was getting old to be single.*** Mercy had seven surviving sisters altogether. Her two older sisters were already married, and of the two just younger than she, Eliza was about to be married in December, and the other one already was. The next in line after that was already twenty years old. Thus, the pressure was on, and Mercy’s interest in the men she met during this time is not surprising. Many of the men, including John A. Macdonald, were taken with her. And here she was with a bevy of single women, younger and thus perhaps more desirable than herself, vying for the attention of Canada’s foremost bachelors.
In her Confederation photograph, taken by the celebrated Montreal photographer William Notman, Mercy’s eyes gaze back at the viewer with intensity and interest. Her long, dark hair, thick with curl, is parted in the middle and pulled back from her brow, in the style of the day. She liked to have fun, to dance, to sing. She was easy to talk to. She liked teasing and being teased. Her wide mouth and full lips must have smiled easily. Men found her intelligent and attractive, especially in her “irresistible blue silk.”9 They paid attention to her. And she definitely enjoyed receiving their attention — but then, who doesn’t, when they’re young and looking for love?
Mercy Coles, October 29, 1864.
And that’s what she was doing — amid the grand and heady spectacle of the balls, banquets, and events that went along with the Confederation Conference of October 1864, in Quebec City. It was the perfect place for such a quest, because that city was the headiest of places in Canada then, with its corps of officers, garrison of British soldiers in red uniforms, and regimental bands. It was the hub of cultural and diplomatic life, and the most debonair of any of Canada’s cities. Quebec City was, and is, strikingly beautiful, sitting atop a cliff, overlooking the St. Charles and St. Lawrence Rivers. The streets of the old city are cobblestoned, and wind crookedly past buildings and houses that look more European than North American.
Even amid the wonders of Quebec City and the conference events, however, it’s clear that the country’s politics affected Mercy Coles, too. This tale of the “Road to Confederation” is one shaped by a young female traveller interested in what all young people are interested in: falling in love, finding a mate, the excitement of travel, and the lure of “away.” It is the herstory of Confederation.
Mercy is refreshingly honest, and writes so blithely of people and events that we are caught in the moment in time at which history was being made, without the veneer and gloss time can create. We are allowed an intimate view into the past at this seminal period in Canada’s history, and at the men, now famous, or once famous and now forgotten, who shaped Canada’s future. Further, we’re exposed to a female voice at the making of Confederation.
Women were not part of any official delegation, but the importance of connections to, and relationships with, women was recognized by those who were, and so it was that women had an unofficial role in the negotiations. As PEI delegate Edward Whelan noted for his newspaper, the Examiner:
The Cabinet Ministers — the leading ones especially — are the most inveterate dancers I have ever seen, they do not seem to miss a dance the live-long night. They are cunning fellows; and there is no doubt it is all done for a political purpose; they know if they can dance themselves into the affections of the wives and daughters of the country, the men will certainly become an easy conquest.10
Mercy’s writings of the attention she received from men like John A. Macdonald and Leonard Tilley help us understand how the relationships at play worked to make Confederation a possibility.
In her diary, Mercy is willing to gossip; she’s open; she’s flirtatious. And yet she also shows a conventional side, happy to follow the strictures and guidelines expected of a young, single woman — but, interestingly, this is found mostly later in her diary, once the conference tour, and the possibility of her being wooed by any of the bachelors, has ended. Throughout, she maintains a sense of propriety — for example, she never mentions the first names of the other young women who attended the Confederation conference. Even when Emma Tupper and Margaret Gray visit her sickroom, she refers to them as “Miss Tupper” and “Miss Gray.”
As Mary McDonald-Rissanen points out in her recent work on Prince Edward Island women diarists, In the Interval of the Wave, young women at that time would have read a lot of “comportment” literature, books written to teach young women how to behave properly. Yet, Mercy Coles also gossips and is flirtatious in her behaviour, and we only know that because she’s written about it herself. Keeping a diary or journal is often used as a way to envision oneself, a way to create a self-identity through discovering oneself by writing. In the lively, breezy way in which she wrote, Mercy was definitely creating an image of herself, of how she wanted to be seen and how she wanted life to be.
In the 1860s, keeping a journal or diary was a way to achieve a level of independence, or at least the freedom to express one’s thoughts, even if only in writing. Diary-keeping was recognized as a genre fit for women, but only if there were no intention of publishing the writing. Thus, women were free from scrutiny in their private journals, and could even subvert society’s roles and ideals in playing at the creation of themselves.**** Mercy Coles was free to invent this persona who did not, in her writing life, behave as conventionally as she sometimes behaved in real life.
Taking the time to keep a journal or diary showed an awareness of the self, of one’s own story as unique from those of others, one that was worthy and important enough to record, even if it was only meant for oneself. It was also an indication of status: the woman who did this had enough time of her own, not absorbed by domestic duties, to write.
As the decades passed after Confederation, Mercy Coles obviously felt her diary was worthy of more attention than hers alone. Not only did she preserve it carefully, she took the time to share her stories and knowledge of Canada’s beginnings with others, such as in a Charlottetown Guardian newspaper article published in 1917 about her time in Quebec City.
The diary is everything one wants it to be: it’s gossipy, detailed, and full of social commentary. It is part travelogue, filled with detailed descriptions of her family’s travels across Canada, and then through the U.S. states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York on their return trip home to PEI. It covers the period from October 5, 1864, when she and her parents leave Charlottetown, to Thursday, November 17, 1864, when they return. Mercy writes of her seasick travel across the Northumberland Strait, and her journey by rail and ship to Quebec, all the single women flirting with Leonard Tilley, or vice versa.
The diary also covers the days of the conference itself, which began on October 10 and continued until October 26, with plenty of balls, banquets, parties, and outings — to court both the women and the Maritime delegates. The times, both politically and literally, were not quite as “sunny” as they’d been in Charlottetown, particularly for Prince Edward Island, which ended up opting out of the initial Confederation of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Ontario. And the weather was appalling.
After the conference and tour of the Canadas ended, the Coles family continued on, through the United States, to visit with Mercy’s mother’s