Anne McDonald 
Miss Confederation 
The Diary of Mercy Anne Coles

History without the stiffness and polish time creates.



Canada’s journey to Confederation kicked off with a bang — or rather, a circus, a civil war (the American one), a small fortune’s worth of champagne, and a lot of making love — in the old-fashioned sense.
Miss Confederation offers a rare look back, through a woman’s eyes, at the men and events at the centre of this pivotal time in Canada’s history.



Mercy Anne Coles, the daughter of PEI delegate George Coles, kept a diary of the social happenings and political manoeuvrings as they affected her and her desires. A unique historical document, her diary is now being published for the first time, offering a window into the events that led to Canada’s creation, from a point of view that has long been neglected.

Table of Content

• Foreword by Christopher Moore


• Preface


• One Miss Confederation, Mercy Anne Coles


• Two Charlottetown: The Circus, Champagne, and Union


• Three The Journey Begins: The Lure of Travel, the New — and Leonard Tilley


• Four From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: the “Failed, ” the Grand Success, or the Drunken Fiasco of the Government Ball


• Five Diphtheria


• Six The Temptation of John A. Macdonald


• Seven What She Said –— A Woman’s Point of View


• Eight Montreal Sightseeing and the “Eighth Wonder of the World”


• Nine Ottawa the Unseemly


• Ten Sightseeing in Toronto, 1864 Style


• Eleven Niagara Falls


• Twelve Family and Travel


• Thirteen Going Home


• Fourteen Confederation Suitors


• Fifteen Daughters and Fathers


• Conclusion


• Acknowledgements


• Appendix “Reminiscences of Confederation Days: Extracts from a Diary Kept by Miss Mercy A. Coles When She Accompanied Her Father, the Late Hon. George Coles, to the Confederation Conferences at Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa in 1864.”


• Notes on Sources


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Image Credits


• Index

About the author

Anne Mc Donald is an award-winning author. Her novel To the Edge of the Sea won the Saskatchewan First Book Award. Her play Lullabies and Cautions was recently showcased at the 2016 Spring Festival of New Plays. Her work has appeared in literary journals,  Canada’s History, and on CBC Radio. Anne teaches theatre and creative writing. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.