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Wilfrid Laurier was born in the year that Upper and Lower Canada were yoked together in uneasy fellowship. He had just begun the practice of law at Arthabaskaville when the union of the two Canadas was dissolved and the wider federation of all the mainland provinces was achieved. It was in the Canada of the Union era that the stage was set and the players trained for the comedies and the tragedies, the melodrama and the vaudeville, of Confederation politics.

The stage was not a large one. The province of Canada was just emerging from its years of pioneer struggles and backwoods isolation. Its two million people seemed to count for little in the work of the world. Neither Britain nor France nor the United States gave them more than a passing thought. Even with the other provinces of British North America they had little contact: no road or railway bound them. Until well on in the Union period, each section had closer relations with the adjoining states than with its sister provinces—Upper Canada with "York" State, Lower Canada with New Hampshire and Vermont, and the Maritime provinces with Maine and Massachusetts.