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Although Canada East (the former Lower Canada, now Quebec) and Canada West (the former Upper Canada, now Ontario) were united as a single province with a single government, each administration was led by two men, one from each half of the province.
This form of government proved to be fractious and difficult, leading to frequent changes in leadership -- in just 26 years, the joint premiership changed hands eighteen times.
With the 1848 introduction of responsible government, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine became the first truly democratic leaders of what would eventually become present-day Canada, and some modern historians view them as essentially Canada's earliest Prime Ministers.
In earlier years, the political groups were loose affiliations rather than modern political parties. The "reformers" (dark red in the chart below) allied under the banner of Reformers in Canada West and Patriotes in Canada East, while the "conservatives" (dark blue) were known in Canada West as Family Compact and in Canada East as Tories.
1854, however, proved a pivotal year in the evolution of Canadian politics. Although the Rouges and the Liberals had already emerged in Canada East, these were relatively fringe groups. In 1854, however, many dissatisfied voters in Canada West turned to the more radical Clear Grits, and in order to stay in power the traditional reformers entered a coalition with the conservatives.
The Reformers ultimately dissolved as a political entity. The moderate reformers joined with the conservatives to create the Conservative Party, while the radicals aligned themselves with the Clear Grits, the Liberals and the Rouges to create the modern Liberal Party, thereby creating the political party structure that prevails today.
The pattern of new protest parties emerging from time to time, and becoming integrated into the mainstream of Canadian political life, was also established by this realignment. Later groups included the Progressives, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the Social Credit Party of Canada and the Reform Party of Canada.
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