Reform movement (pre-Confederation Canada)
In Upper Canada (Ontario), the Reform movement was formed in opposition to the Family Compact. It was led initially by William Lyon Mackenzie, who became the principal figure in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Mackenzie went into exile as a result of the failed rebellion. The uprising led to the 1839 Durham Report, which recommended responsible government and the union of Upper and Lower Canada as a means of assimilating Francophones. Only the union of the Canadas was to be immediately implemented.
History of the Canadian Army
The North-West Field Force was a body of militia and regular troops created for quelling the North-West Rebellion of 1885, which constituted Canada's first military action without British troop support, although British officers such as Frederick Middleton were in command of the Canadian forces. Middeleton's successor as the commander of the militia, Colonel Ivor Herbert, proved to be a reformer who first revealed to the Canadian press that the ratio of officers in the militia to the privates was 1:2.24 in 1894. Herbert also created the post of quartermaster general to tend to the supply notes and appointed another British officer, Percy Lake as the quartermaster general. Herbert increased spending on the Permanent Force, and founded two new regiments, the Royal Canadian Regiment of Infantry, the Royal Canadian Dragoons and several artillery battalions. Herbert's reforms threatened the entrenched vested interests of the militia and after much lobbying by militia colonels cum MPs, Herbert was dismissed in 1894. In 1896, the new Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier appointed Sir Frederick Borden as Defence minister, who stayed on until the Liberals lost the 1911 election. Borden was a reformer, who appointed Colonel Edward Hutton of the British Army as the militia commander. During this period, the Permanent Force acquired a medical corps, transport corps, signalling corps, intelligence corps and an ordnance corps.