Durham electoral district was based on
Durham County, on the north shore of
Lake Ontario, in
Canada West (now the province of
Ontario), east of what is now
Toronto.
Oshawa and
Port Hope were two of the main towns. The
Union Act, 1840 had merged the two provinces of
Upper Canada and
Lower Canada into the
Province of Canada, with a single
Parliament. The separate parliaments of Lower Canada and Upper Canada were abolished. The
Union Act provided that the pre-existing electoral boundaries of Upper Canada would continue to be used in the new Parliament, unless altered by the
Union Act itself. Durham County had been an electoral district in the
Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, and its boundaries were not altered by the Act. Those boundaries had been initially been set by the first
Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada,
John Graves Simcoe, in 1792: The boundaries were further defined by a statute of Upper Canada in 1798, and modified by an additional statute in 1834: In 1834, the townships of Verulam, Fenelon and Eldon were added to Durham County. Since Durham was not changed by the
Union Act, those boundaries continued to be used for the new electoral district. == Members of the Legislative Assembly ==