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Joint Premiers of the Province of Canada were the leaders of the Province of Canada, from the 1841 unification of Upper Canada and Lower Canada until Confederation in 1867. Following the abortive Rebellions of 1837, Lord Durham was appointed governor in chief of British North America. In his 1839 ''Report on the Affairs of British North America'', he recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be united under a single Parliament, with responsible government.〔 As a result, in 1841, the first Parliament of the Province of Canada was convened.〔 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. Officially, one of them at any given time had the title of ''Premier'', while the other had the title of ''Deputy''.〔 Despite this, however, the titular premier could not generally invoke unilateral authority over his deputy if he wanted to maintain his government's stability; in practice, both men had to agree on virtually any political course of action.〔 As a result, 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 twenty different people holding the office over its history.〔 With the introduction of responsible government in 1848, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine became the first truly democratic leaders of what would eventually become the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in present-day Canada,〔 and some modern historians, most notably John Ralston Saul, have promoted the idea that they should be viewed as Canada's true first Prime Ministers. ==Evolution of party politics== In earlier years, the political groups were loose affiliations rather than modern political parties.〔 The "reformers" allied under the banner of ''Reformers'' in Canada West and ''Patriotes'' in Canada East, while the "conservatives," meaning supporters of the elite ''Family Compact'' in Canada West and ''Château Clique'' in Canada East prior to unification, were known as ''Tories''. Although informal alliances existed between each ideological pair, these alliances were not political parties as they exist today.〔 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 Grit'' faction, and in order to stay in power traditional reformers in Canada East, led by Augustin-Norbert Morin, entered a coalition with Allan Napier MacNab's conservatives in Canada West. The early reformers ultimately dissolved as a political entity. Moderate reformers joined the new "Liberal-Conservative" party, later to become the Conservative Party, while the Clear Grits aligned with 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Joint Premiers of the Province of Canada」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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