Québec Garden

While walking through Charlottetown, I came across this stone marking the Québec Garden, dedicated by Québec City in June 2014 during the 150th anniversary year of the Charlottetown Conference.  Its location in Charlottetown represents an important connection between two Canadian cities. In September 1864, delegates gathered in Charlottetown and began seriously considering the creation of a federation of the British North American colonies. A month later, many of those same delegates met again in Québec City.

At the Québec Conference, the idea discussed in Charlottetown began taking political form. The delegates developed the 72 Resolutions, outlining how a new federal government might work and establishing many of the principles that eventually became part of Canada’s constitutional structure.

The garden therefore commemorates more than an anniversary. It links two places that played consecutive roles in the creation of Canada:  Charlottetown, where the idea was embraced, and Québec, where much of its framework was developed.  One small stone in a Charlottetown garden quietly connects the two cities and two meetings that, only weeks apart in 1864, helped change the future of Canada.