Clear Grits. A populist movement that emerged within the Reform Party of Canada West after its electoral triumph of 1847 – 8 . Strongest in the western peninsula of Upper Canada, the movement represented a revival of the agrarian radicalism articulated by William Lyon Mackenzie . Clear Grit egalitarianism encompassed American-style democracy, a radical simplification of the law and the judicial system, and the abolition of professional qualifications for the practice of law and medicine. Grits condemned as ‘aristocratical’ the ideal of British-style parliamentary government to which the Reform Party was committed under Robert Baldwin , and they resented Baldwin's reluctance to secularize the clergy reserves , a longstanding party policy.
In 1854 the party split, its leading cadre and their bleu allies in Quebec joining the Upper Canadian Conservatives to form a new government. George Brown rallied the Grit rump and reconstituted the Reform party on the basis of resistance to ‘Lower Canadian domination’—the supposed oppression of Upper Canada by French-Canadian clericalism and Montreal financial interests. The party's policies of parliamentary representation according to population and, from 1859 on, the federalization of the United Province of Canada were accepted by the bleus in 1864 and implemented three years later by the British North America Act.
The term Grit survives as a synonym for Liberal.
Paul Romney
How to cite this entry:
Paul Romney "Clear Grits" The Oxford Companion to Canadian History. Ed. Gerald Hallowell. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 14 July 2011
