Commentary This is Part 4 of a multi-part series examining Macdonald’s legacy. Previous parts can be found in the following links: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. When a handful of sparsely populated British colonies in the northwest corner of the vast American continent came together in 1867, few informed observers of world affairs thought the new Dominion of Canada had any chance whatsoever of surviving. First, the settlers in what became Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were a disparate collection of people divided by language, race, history, religion, culture, geographical distance, and diverse commercial interests. What political philosophers would later call “social capital”—the deep reserves of trust and reciprocity required to hold a society together—was sadly lacking among Her Majesty’s remaining subjects in North America. In 1867, according to the commonly understood meaning of the term, Canada was in no way a “nation-state.” It was a patchwork …