The Government of Ontario Was Not Subordinate to the Government of Canada

A struggle between Ottawa and Toronto--between federal paramountcy and provincial rights -- was inevitable. The fury of the constitutional battles which Mowat and Macdonald waged against each other resounded through the early 1880s. Mowat was determined to prove that the government of Ontario was not subordinate to, but co-ordinate with, the government of Canada.

--Donald Creighton, Canada's First Century, Wynford Project (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2012), 47.