Canada's Classical Liberal Founders

In the early twentieth century, it was the standard teaching that the crucial event of the pre-Confederation years, the event that shaped political attitudes and set the stage for the union of 1867, was the overthrow of the colonial oligarchies. Robin Winks calls the historians and political scientists who subscribed to this view "liberals." Today, we would call them classical liberals, or Lockean liberals. In my opinion, they offer a picture of our history that is consonant with the views of the Canadian founders.

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 14.