This project uses new technology to extend the digital record of parliamentary debates back into the earliest years of Confederation. It is easy to romanticize the past as a time of gentle, consensus-driven politics, contrasting it with the polarized present. However, pre-Confederation politics were frequently vicious; only after Confederation did parliamentary debate begin to stabilize and adopt a more disciplined tone. By recovering the founding debates from 1867 to 1871 in a usable form, students and scholars can test that story: they will see how casually power once spoke about domination, how what we now call “technocratic” issues (e.g., federalism, immigration) were framed through assumptions about civilization, moral authority, and how norms of civility and partisanship were negotiated and contested. Student RAs will learn and apply methods from the fields of digital humanities and natural language processing.