Fathers of Confederation
Robert Harris’s Fathers of Confederation, perhaps Canada’s best-known historical painting, was destroyed in the 1916 fire at the original Parliament Building. An aging Harris had declined to reproduce the work, and in 1964 the Confederation Life Assurance Co. hired Toronto artist Rex Woods to create a version of the original composition. Woods increased the dimensions to 3.5 meters by two metres, added three figures and, in the background, a portrait of Harris.
The original painting pictured delegates to the Charlottetown and Quebec conferences that laid the ground for the confederation of Canada in 1864. The sobriquet “Fathers of Confederation” arose later and eventually became the title of the painting.