# Canadian Confederation **Canadian Confederation** was the 1867 union that created the Dominion of Canada, enacted by the British Parliament through the British North America Act and taking effect on July 1. It joined the Province of Canada — split into Ontario and Quebec — with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into a single federation under the Crown, with John A. Macdonald as first prime minister. The other provinces and territories were added over the following decades. Confederation built a deliberately federal, and in key respects decentralized, state designed to hold together a country with two founding European nations, French and English. That original bargain — and the durable tension between central authority and provincial, especially Quebec, autonomy — frames every later crisis in the [[Canadian History Hub]], from the [[October Crisis]] to the [[Quebec Sovereignty Movement]] to the [[Western Alienation]] of the Prairie West. It is the opening node of the federal-bargain arc. > [!note] Stub > Phase 1 spine stub. Expand: the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences, the Fathers of Confederation, the BNA Act's division of powers, the westward expansion.