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This record is a lead, not a finding

It was imported from the project’s earlier compilation and has not been through verification. It is published so it can be checked and corrected. Do not cite it as established.

UnverifiedLegacy leadChanged party affiliationGroup event

14 Anti-Confederate MPs join various parties (1869)

1869year only — the day is not recorded

CanadaFederalHouse of Commons

What the record says

In 1869, in the House of Commons, the record groups fourteen changes of affiliation, which do not all run between the same pair of affiliations. Fourteen people are named individually, and the record marks the resolution of this group as complete. The event itself is dated only to the year; the participant rows all carry January 30, 1869. No source is cited for this event record: it is a legacy lead, kept from an earlier phase of the project because it points at something real, not because anyone has checked it. These entries record the affiliations and their dates. They do not record why the changes were made, and nothing here should be read as a statement of motive. This paragraph was assembled by machine from the rows named in it, and is pending review.

This is a group event

One event in which several members moved together. It counts as ONE event with several participants, never as several separate crossings.

Counted as one event: 1
Participants named in the record: 14
Head count confirmed editorially: 14

Every participant named

Counting a group event as several crossings is the single largest source of disagreement between published floor-crossing totals. This site counts events; see the counting rules for how to put our figure and someone else’s on the same footing.

How a group event is counted

Participants

14 participants named in the recordEvery participant named

Hugh Cameron
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-7999322A-01
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal-ConservativeTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
James William Carmichael
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-53A525CD-02
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
William Henry Chipman
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-1FC044D3-03
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
Thomas Coffin
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-3138906A-04
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal-ConservativeTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
James Fraser Forbes
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-B32A862E-05
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
Alfred Gilpin Jones
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-6760CD9C-06
Anti-Confederation PartyToIndependentTo the crossbenchWhere the seat went: The member left a caucus and sat as an independentThe change begins at a party and ends outside every caucus. No party gained the seat. A designation such as “Independent Liberal” or “(Not in Caucus)” is on this side of the line: it describes an alignment, not a caucus membership.What you may rely onWhere the member sat afterwards, and only that. Whether they walked out or were expelled is `voluntary_status`, which is recorded separately and reads unknown on most legs; /coverage has the live share.How it countsCounted as its own figure and never added to the floor-crossing total. They are different acts, and a single number that merged them could not answer either question.
Marked as a label rather than a party: the database has no party row for this side of the transition. Overwhelmingly this means the member sat as an Independent, and there is deliberately no “Independent” party.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Left to sit as an Independent
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
Edmund Mortimer McDonald
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-63D6A314-07
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal-ConservativeTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
Hugh McDonald
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-CD4036EE-08
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal-ConservativeTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
James Charles McKeagney
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-CD9C8531-09
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal-ConservativeTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
Archibald Woodbury McLelan
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-FF953607-10
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal-ConservativeTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
Patrick Power
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-802637AA-11
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
William Hallett Ray
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-6096C515-12
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
William Ross
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-8CAF73DF-13
Anti-Confederation PartyToLiberal Party of CanadaTo another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable
Alfred William Savary
CTF-EP-GRP-18690130-9542F30B-14
Anti-Confederation PartyToConservative Party of Canada (1867–1942)To another partyWhere the seat went: The seat was carried to another partyBoth sides of the change are parties, and they are different parties. The member sat with one caucus and then sat with another, without the seat being returned to voters in between.What you may rely onThat a party gained a seat it did not win. It says nothing about why: the record separates where a member went from whether they chose to go.How it countsThe direction the floor-crossing total is drawn from, but not the total itself. A small number of legs whose labels read party-to-a-different-party are ruled election-time relabelling, and count toward nothing.
Riding
not recorded
Effective
January 30, 1869
Kind of transition
Changed party affiliation
Voluntary
Not recorded
Direction
Not recorded
Appointment
Not applicable

Claims and the sources cited for them

Every statement this record makes is stored as a separate claim with its own review state and its own citations. A claim with no citation is shown as such rather than omitted.

14 Anti-Confederate MPs join various parties changed affiliation from Anti-Confederate to Various in 1869.
Pending review
Field:
affiliation_change
Confidence:
Not assessed
Signed by:
Not signed by a named contributor
- PARLINFO — Changes in Political Affiliation (Library of Parliament)
  Library of Parliament / Bibliothèque du Parlement · record participant rows of 14-anti-confederate-mps-1869 already cited to this source: 14 of 14 recorded participants — Alfred Gilpin Jones; Alfred William Savary; Archibald Woodbury McLelan; Edmund Mortimer McDonald; Hugh Cameron; Hugh McDonald; James Charles McKeagney; James Fraser Forbes; James William Carmichael; Patrick Power; Thomas Coffin; William Hallett Ray; William Henry Chipman; William Ross — research/parlinfo-2026-08-31/transitions.csv lines 123, 149, 169, 178, 274, 408, 561, 562, 571, 573, 688, 709, 759, 769 · MUL
  This citation carries the evidence already attached to this event's participant rows up to the event claim. The source evidences 14 of the 14 participant rows recorded for this event, which is all of them. Auditability caveat carried from the source record: the PARLINFO page renders its rows client-side, so the Wayback capture fixes the query but not the result set. The checkable artifact is the committed extract research/parlinfo-2026-08-31/transitions.csv (882 rows, sha256 5b17f2aeb6835b2d93c456c4feb2f9c5b43f1cb22bed01fa9427a84c8fdd15e4), re-verified byte-for-byte on 2026-09-01.
  Archived copy — September 1, 2026
  CTF-S-PLI-DATASET-B36D7418 · Reliability tier: primary official · Rights: link only · Accessed: September 1, 2026
In 1869, in the House of Commons, the record groups fourteen changes of affiliation, which do not all run between the same pair of affiliations. Fourteen people are named individually, and the record marks the resolution of this group as complete. The event itself is dated only to the year; the participant rows all carry January 30, 1869. On 2026-09-01, 1 citation was attached to this record's affiliation claim, drawn from 1 source, and they are recorded as pending review. The editorial status of the record is unchanged: it remains a legacy lead, and no editor has yet stood behind it. These entries record the affiliations and their dates. They do not record why the changes were made, and nothing here should be read as a statement of motive. This paragraph was assembled by machine from the rows named in it, and is pending review.
Pending review
Field:
summary
Confidence:
Low
Signed by:
Official-source deterministic verifier
Assumptions: Machine-assembled from this database’s own rows and from no other source. The text restates, as sentences, the participant rows attached to this record: the affiliation recorded on either side of each change, the date at the precision that row carries, the jurisdiction and chamber, whether the change is filed under a group event, and whether the event record behind it carries a citation. No date is printed finer than the row’s date_precision, so a year-precision row yields a year and never a day. Both languages are composed from the same rows rather than translated from one another. No motive, benefit, causation or characterisation of a person appears, and none may be added under this claim.
Counterarguments: Two limits, stated rather than glossed. First, the prose is only as sound as the rows beneath it: where a party link is wrong the wrong party name is printed, and where an event is a legacy lead the sentence repeats an unverified lead — saying so, but repeating it. Second, restating a thin record fluently can make it read as established; the pending status on this claim, and the sentence inside the text naming the evidence state, are the only things that say otherwise. Four label-to-party mappings were deliberately not printed, because the party row’s name did not exist on the date of the event; the underlying links were left untouched and are still visible on the record.
No source is cited for this claim.

What happened afterwards

Recorded outcomes only. An absence here means nothing has been recorded, not that nothing happened, and no causal link to the affiliation change is asserted unless a source establishes one.

No outcome is recorded for anyone on this event.

Linked records

component of Anti-Confederate → Liberal Party of Canada (1869-01-30)This event records part of the same real-world episode as the group lead 14-anti-confederate-mps-1869. Both records describe the same people; participant totals that count them separately will double-count. Recorded so the overlap is explicit rather than hidden.
component of Anti-Confederate → Liberal-Conservative (1869-01-30)This event records part of the same real-world episode as the group lead 14-anti-confederate-mps-1869. Both records describe the same people; participant totals that count them separately will double-count. Recorded so the overlap is explicit rather than hidden.
component of Alfred Gilpin Jones (1869)This event records part of the same real-world episode as the group lead 14-anti-confederate-mps-1869. Both records describe the same people; participant totals that count them separately will double-count. Recorded so the overlap is explicit rather than hidden.
component of Alfred William Savary (1869)This event records part of the same real-world episode as the group lead 14-anti-confederate-mps-1869. Both records describe the same people; participant totals that count them separately will double-count. Recorded so the overlap is explicit rather than hidden.

Revision history

Every change to this record is appended here. Nothing is edited away.

r4 expanded
Wrote summary_en and summary_fr, both of which were empty. The text is machine-assembled from this database’s own rows and from no other source: the 14 participant rows attached to this event, each with the affiliation recorded on either side, the date at the precision that row carries, the jurisdiction and chamber, and whether the event record behind it carries a citation (0/1). No date is printed finer than date_precision. No motive, benefit, causation or characterisation is asserted, in keeping with the published mandate of the automated validator that signs it. Both languages are composed from the same rows rather than translated from one another. The last sentence of the text says, in the text itself, that it was assembled by machine and is pending review, so the disclosure travels with the paragraph through the API and through a copied quotation. The text is recorded as claim CTF-CL-SUM-D1EE3276AF49, kind project_analysis, assertion status pending_review. Nothing was copied or paraphrased from any encyclopaedia: the earlier removal of Wikipedia-derived prose from this project is not reversed by this change. Publication status and verification level are unchanged.
September 1, 2026 · Official-source deterministic verifier
r3 expanded
14 of an estimated 14 participants were named from cited sources and attached to this event; resolution status set to 'complete'. PARLINFO records exactly 14 Anti-Confederate MPs changing affiliation on 1869-01-30. The date is mid-term (the 1867 general election was Aug-Sep 1867), so it is a genuine in-term cluster rather than an election artifact.
September 1, 2026
r2 corrected
Corrected the stored permanent URI. It pointed at /en/crossings/14-anti-confederate-mps-1869, a path this site has never served, so the citation target returned HTTP 404. It now points at /crossings/14-anti-confederate-mps-1869, the canonical record address. No fact, date, party, participant or source in this record was changed.
September 1, 2026
r1 created
Imported from the legacy archive as an unpublished research lead. Historical narrative, motive labels, and benefit scores were not treated as verified claims.
July 31, 2026 · Crossing the Floor project maintainer

Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction: Canada
Level: Federal
Legislature: Parliament of Canada
Chamber: House of Commons

Place and party names on this page come from the institutional tables, never from free text on the record.

Record identifier

Record identifier: CTF-E-000144
Revision: 4
Published: Not published as a verified record
Last verified: Never verified
Record last changed: September 1, 2026
Evidence on this record: 2 claims, 1 citations
Session: not recordedNo parliamentary session is recorded on this event. The session is never inferred from the date.

Cite this record

Crossing the Floor. “14 Anti-Confederate MPs join various parties (1869)” (CTF-E-000144). The Crossing the Floor Database, release 2026-08-01.1. https://crossingthefloor.ca/crossings/14-anti-confederate-mps-1869 (consulted —).

Permanent address: https://crossingthefloor.ca/crossings/14-anti-confederate-mps-1869
Release: 2026-08-01.1
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 InternationalLicence recorded on this release: OGL-Canada-2.0 (project-authored structured data only)

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