Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

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differences, including the Loyalist claims and the rights of British fur

traders in the West.

The departure of the American colonies from the British Empire also

involved negotiations that established the St. Croix River as the ofﬁ cial

boundary between what would be the future state of Maine and the

future province of New Brunswick and which renewed ﬁ shing rights in

the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the inshore waters of Nova Scotia and

Newfoundland. Even though the Americans had forfeited these rights

by seceding from the empire, imperial authorities realized the practical

difﬁ culties and the potential conﬂ ict that would result from their con-

tinued exclusion. American ﬁ shermen were also allowed the right to

continue to dry their catch along unsettled mainland coasts. Despite

being addressed by the Treaty of Versailles, the international boundary

and ﬁ shing rights would remain sources of dispute between the United

States and the British North American colonies.

With the end of the American Revolution in 1783, Britain had lost

its most stable and populous colonies, which had formed the pillars of

the old mercantile system. Britain still retained a foothold on the North

American continent, but the remnants that were left could not compen-

sate for the loss of the thirteen colonies. The three remaining northern

colonies, consisting of scarcely more than 40,000 English Protestants

and over 110,000 French Catholics, were isolated from one another

and were at a much more primitive stage of development than the lost

colonies to the south. The resources of the remaining empire in North

America were far less varied, and the opportunities for expansion there

far less extensive. Indeed, the sugar islands of the West Indies and the

colonial prospects unfolding in India offered far more promise. More-

over, imperial authorities could easily have been discouraged by the

lack of loyalty that the remaining North American subjects manifested

in the face of invading rebels, were it not for concern over the plight of

the “Loyalist” American refugees who made their way to Quebec and

Nova Scotia.

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THE EMERGENCE OF

COLONIAL COMMUNITIES

(1783–1850)

he American Revolution profoundly altered the destinies of two

nations in North America. Ironically, the event that gave birth to the

United States of America also gave impetus to the creation of English

Canada. The Loyalists as refugees of the American Revolution became

the founders of two provinces, Ontario and New Brunswick; and the

presence of the Loyalists as a group with a strong moral claim on Britain

prompted the restructuring of government by the Constitutional Act,

itself a reaction to the American Revolution. Without the Loyalist

presence, land-hungry New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians would have

poured into the unoccupied southern Ontario frontier beginning in the

1790s, and New Englanders would have moved into sparsely settled

New Brunswick when the Maine frontier expanded in the 1830s. The

Loyalist population of Upper Canada also proved to be a bastion of

defense against American invasion during the War of 1812, thereby

ensuring that an English Canada still existed to accommodate the sub-

sequent tide of British immigration.

The Coming of the Loyalists

A prominent Revolutionary leader, Samuel Adams, speculated that one-

third of the people of the thirteen colonies actively supported the

Revolution, one-third remained neutral, and one-third actively sup-

ported Britain. The accuracy of this estimation has been difﬁ cult to

ascertain, but it does point to the prevailing lack of unity in the embry-

onic stages of American nationhood. Upwards of 100,000 people suf-

fered persecution and were forced into exile for supporting the imperial

cause or for remaining neutral during the Revolution, and as many as

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

102

one-half of those refugees escaped to British North America. The more

inﬂ uential Loyalists, including royal ofﬁ cials, wealthy merchants, land-

owners, and professionals, as well as high-ranking military ofﬁ cers,

returned to Britain during or after the Revolutionary War to take

advantage of the preferments that awaited them there. The vast major-

ity of Loyalists, however, being of lesser means, either drifted to nearby

British colonies or gathered in the imperial stronghold at New York,

from which they were evacuated to other parts of the empire (Moore

1984).

Nova Scotia, as the most accessible British colony by sea and one

with an abundance of vacant land for settlement, was considered the

most convenient destination for the 30,000 to 40,000 Loyalist refugees,

who tended to come from the coastal towns. Almost half of the Loyal-

ists were settled along the Saint John River valley, while most of the

other half went to peninsular Nova Scotia. Small groups of Loyalists

also settled in Cape Breton Island, Prince Edward Island, and New-

foundland. About half of the Loyalist immigrants came from New York

or New Jersey, while the origin of the remainder was almost equally

divided between New England and the southern states. Many of the

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approximately 3,000 black Loyalists who came to Nova Scotia had

taken advantage of the British proclamation of 1779, which offered

freedom to any slaves who left their American masters to support the

British cause. Disappointed over the settlement prospects, nearly half of

these black Loyalists had left Nova Scotia to join a free black colony in

Sierra Leone by the early 1790s (Winks 1997).

Indeed, disappointment was a prevailing sentiment as the sudden

inﬂ ux of a population that was almost double the size of the existing

colony created difﬁ culties for new and established settlers alike. For

their devotion to the imperial cause, the Loyalists were promised land

grants ranging from 100 acres for the head of a family, with an addi-

tional 50 acres for each member, to 1,000 acres for a military ofﬁ cer.

Although poor crops, shortages of supplies, and delays in securing title

to land contributed to early hardship, many of the Loyalists suffered

from the reality of being former town dwellers unaccustomed to the

challenges of pioneer life in Nova Scotia, with its marginal farmland

and erratic climate. Despairing of the grueling life and limited resources

of “Nova Scarcity,” some Loyalists gave up the struggle and drifted back

to the United States after tempers had subsided; others went to Britain

or tried their luck in the new western province of Upper Canada

(Brown and Senior 1984).

Tension was further heightened by the rivalries that soon developed

between Loyalist and existing settlers. Some Loyalists complained that

the more desirable locations were already held by the earlier arrivals,

while Loyalist leaders who had held ofﬁ cial positions in the old colony

demanded government posts in Nova Scotia. By virtue of their recent

sacriﬁ ces, the Loyalists felt entitled to preferential treatment and were

openly resentful of the “neutral Yankees,” whom they suspected of dis-

loyalty. To satisfy the Loyalists, the British government partitioned the

colony in 1784 to create the new province of New Brunswick, com-

posed mostly of Loyalists, which could serve as a buffer between pen-

insular Nova Scotia and the United States. The following year, the

community of 3,500 people at the mouth of the Saint John River

became the ﬁ rst incorporated city in what is now Canada. While Saint

John was to be the economic heart of the new province, Thomas Car-

leton, the ﬁ rst governor of New Brunswick, selected Fredericton to be

the provincial capital—not only to promote inland settlement but also

to protect the garrison from a sudden American attack.

The several hundred Loyalists who settled St. John’s Island (Prince

Edward Island) did not fare as well as their New Brunswick counter-

parts. To attract Loyalist settlers, some absentee landlords promised

THE EMERGENCE OF COLONIAL COMMUNITIES

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

104

grants of land with clear and secure title. However, after the Loyalists

had settled and begun cultivating the land, the landlords were unwill-

ing to grant them freeholder status. While many of the Loyalists left the

island out of frustration, some stayed on as tenant farmers. Squatters

and tenant farmers comprised the majority of the slightly more than

4,000 people who lived in the colony when it was renamed Prince

Edward Island in 1799. The land question would continue to be a

major source of conﬂ ict and a primary obstacle to Prince Edward

Island’s development for the next three-quarters of a century.

Upwards of 10,000 Loyalists made their way to Quebec, mainly from

New York and New England by way of the Lake Champlain–Richelieu

River route. Governor Frederick Haldimand, who had succeeded Car-

leton in 1778, sought to avoid conﬂ ict with the French by arranging to

settle some of the Loyalists along the sparsely populated southern shore

of the St. Lawrence River. These settlements, later known as the Eastern

Townships, laid the foundation for the English-speaking community in

the Province of Quebec.

The majority of Loyalists, however, settled in the western frontier of

the province well beyond the seigneurial lands. These western Loyalists

arrived by land, mostly from the frontier districts of New York, Penn-

sylvania, and New England. They included members of loyal American

regiments and their families; disbanded German, Swiss, and Dutch

mercenaries who had fought in the British army; a small group of

Quakers and Mennonites who had refused to bear arms due to religious

conviction; aspiring frontier farmers; and Native Americans led by

Chief Joseph Brant of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. Since most

of the western Loyalists were already familiar with the rigors of pioneer

farming, they were better prepared for the backbreaking work of clear-

ing the virgin forest, building crude shelters out of logs, planting their

ﬁ rst crops, and coping with food shortages and severe winters. Despite

the hardships of life in the wilderness, Quebec Loyalists were less

inclined than Nova Scotians to consider returning to the United States

or Britain because of the abundance of fertile land available to them

(Wilson 1981).

To accommodate the initial wave of Loyalists, Governor Haldimand

arranged for the purchase of land along the upper St. Lawrence River

and eastern Lake Ontario as well as in the Niagara Peninsula from the

Mississauga in 1783–84. Into these areas he relocated some 6,000 civil-

ian refugees and former militia, granting them land on the same scale

and terms as in Nova Scotia. Haldimand also reserved the Grand River

valley for settlement by the majority of the 2,000 Iroquois Loyalists

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under Chief Brant. During the 1780s Loyalist settlements also spread

along the northwestern shore of Lake Erie and up the Ottawa River.

As more successful Loyalists wrote back to friends and relatives in

the United States about how they had been able to secure a grant of

land merely by swearing allegiance to King George III, many aspiring

American settlers who had taken little or no active part in the Revolu-

tion were prepared to denounce republicanism in return for a farm. For

their part, imperial authorities were quite willing to grant land to new

colonists renewing their old allegiance on the same terms as the origi-

nal Loyalists. Within a few years, it was difﬁ cult to distinguish between

those “United Empire” Loyalists who truly sought refuge in a British

colony and those “Late Loyalists” who were attracted by the prospects

of free land. The steady ﬂ ow of American immigrants into the western

frontier of the Province of Quebec during the 1780s and 1790s coin-

cided with the natural expansion of settlement from the Atlantic sea-

board into the interior. In their quest, land-hungry pioneers were

inclined to be oblivious to national borders, with the result that the

fertile upper St. Lawrence Valley and Great Lakes basin were regarded

as a northward extension of the United States’s western frontier. Late

Loyalists soon outnumbered the original Loyalists as the population of

western Quebec exceeded 20,000 by 1791.

The Constitutional Act of 1791

Whether they had been actually driven from their homes because of their

expressed loyalty to British rule or whether they were merely opportunis-

tic land-seekers, the American immigrants expected to enjoy the consti-

tutional and legal rights of British subjects. But by providing for only

seigneurial tenure and appointed legislators, the Quebec Act effectively

denied them the rights to freehold land tenure and representative govern-

ment to which they had become accustomed in the American colonies.

Because they were more likely to be too occupied with the daily routines

of farming and coping with the hardships of the wilderness to think

about the problems of government, the overriding concern of American

immigrants, once they had acquired, cleared, and cultivated their land,

was to secure legal title. While the Loyalists were not about to relinquish

their right to representative government, they tended to be less support-

ive of the democratic political aspirations of the British merchants of

Quebec. For those settlers who had been victimized in their former

homeland by excessive self-government, democracy raised memories of

armed rebellion and mob violence (Craig, Upper Canada, 1963).

THE EMERGENCE OF COLONIAL COMMUNITIES

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

106

The presence of a sizable contingent of English-speaking Protestants

renewed the hope of the British merchants that the Quebec Act could

be repealed and that the French would eventually be assimilated.

Believing that they deserved political power commensurate with their

contribution to the economic growth of the province, the English-

speaking merchants of Quebec continued to demand an elected assem-

bly. While the seigneurs were concerned that an assembly might tax

land and make their tenants their political equals, the French mercan-

tile and professional classes were becoming more favorable to the idea

of an elective body over which the cultural majority could exert greater

political inﬂ uence. The stage was therefore set for political change in

British North America.

Upon his return as governor in 1786, Carleton, now Lord Dorches-

ter, was more receptive to English demands in view of the disappoint-

ing French response to the American invasion a decade previously. He

appointed as his principal advisor and chief justice William Smith, a

Loyalist from New York, to review the constitutional affairs of the col-

ony. Smith’s proposed union of all of British North America under a

federal system of government in 1790 was prophetic, but the scheme

was dismissed as impracticable by the imperial authorities, which con-

sidered the colonies to be too separated by distance and too divided in

interests. In contrast to Smith’s desire for a wider unity, the imperial

authorities were convinced by their American experience to proceed in

the opposite direction. Imperial authorities concluded that the Ameri-

can colonies had been allowed to grow too large and too strong; and

most important, they had been allowed too much self-government. To

prevent a similar occurrence in British North America, an imperial

policy of “divide and rule” was adopted whereby colonies were to be

kept small and dependent, thereby thwarting the rise of nationalism.

The division of New Brunswick and Cape Breton Island from Nova

Scotia in 1784 (Cape Breton Island was reunited with Nova Scotia in

1820) was further manifestation of this thinking. This imperial reorga-

nization focused on averting what British ofﬁ cials perceived to be the

principal constitutional weakness of the American colonies—the dem-

ocratic elements of government had been allowed to prevail over the

monarchical and aristocratic elements. A truly British constitution

would maintain a balance between the interests of monarchy, aristoc-

racy, and democracy.

Accordingly, the British Parliament passed the Constitutional Act in

1791, which provided for the division of Quebec into two distinct prov-

inces. Beyond the farthest western seigneury, in the vicinity of where

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the Ottawa River meets the St. Lawrence River, the new province of

Upper Canada was designed to accommodate the Loyalist immigrants.

The remainder of the Province of Quebec was renamed Lower Canada

and would continue to be governed under the terms of the Quebec Act

with a few important modiﬁ cations. The provinces were given the

option of maintaining French civil law or introducing English civil law,

and naturally the ﬁ rst legislature of Upper Canada opted for the latter.

Although the existing seigneurial system of Lower Canada was left

untouched, the Constitutional Act did permit freehold tenure where

desired. The rights of the Catholic Church under the Quebec Act were

speciﬁ cally reafﬁ rmed. But the desire to strengthen Protestantism was

reﬂ ected in provisions that assigned to the provincial government the

right to collect tithes from Protestants and the obligation to set aside

one-seventh of future land grants for the “support and maintenance of

a Protestant clergy.”

A watercolor by Phillip John Bainbridge depicting a buttonwood tree, 18 feet in circumference,

in the bush near Chatham, Upper Canada, ca. 1840. The pioneer settlers faced the daunting

task of clearing the primeval forest with only a primitive ax.

(Library Archives Canada C-01883)

THE EMERGENCE OF COLONIAL COMMUNITIES

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

108

The Constitutional Act modiﬁ ed the Quebec Act most signiﬁ cantly

in terms of the structure of government. Upper and Lower Canada were

each to be governed by a lieutenant governor who was responsible to

the governor-general of all of British North America and who repre-

sented monarchical or executive authority. Because his tenure in ofﬁ ce

was short-term and because he knew relatively little about the province

when he arrived, the lieutenant governor relied on the advice of leading

citizens whom he appointed to the Executive Council, which func-

tioned like the British cabinet. The lieutenant governor also appointed

members to the Legislative Council, which served as the upper house

or the aristocratic branch of government. An early draft of the consti-

tutional bill intended to grant members of the Legislative Council

hereditary titles was modelled after the British House of Lords. How-

ever, the thought of a pioneer nobility in the colonial backwoods was

greeted with laughter when introduced to the British Parliament, with

the result that the idea was discreetly dropped. Like the British upper

house, the Legislative Council approved, amended, or rejected legisla-

tion passed by the democratic branch, the Legislative Assembly, the

equivalent of the House of Commons in Britain. Even if the Legislative

Council approved a measure passed by the popularly elected Legislative

Assembly, it could still be subject to the veto of the governor and the

British Crown. Such severe restrictions to self-government were

designed to reduce the colonial assembly to little more than a debating

society.

Nevertheless, in their effort to limit democracy, imperial authorities

were no longer as willing to suppress representative government as

they had been when conceiving and implementing the Quebec Act of

1774. Elected assemblies were deemed essential in order that the colo-

nies might levy taxes to meet their own expenses. In an unsuccessful

attempt to conciliate the rebellious American colonies, the British gov-

ernment had relinquished its power to raise revenue within any of its

colonies in 1778. By 1791 the American revolutionary demand of “no

taxation without representation” had become a common colonial

expectation, and British taxpayers were more reluctant to bear the

expensive burden of maintaining overseas colonies. But while conced-

ing the practical necessities of democracy, imperial authorities further

undermined the inﬂ uence of the elected branch of government by set-

ting aside one-seventh of all lands as Crown reserves. The revenues

from the sale or lease of these lands were to be used to support the

colonial administration, thereby making it less dependent on the taxa-

tion power of the Legislative Assembly.

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The Constitutional

Act of 1791

Anno Tricesimo Primo

GeorgII III. Regis.

Cap. XXXI.

An Act to repeal certain Parts of an Act, passed in the Fourteenth

Year of His Majesty’s Reign, intituled, An Act for making more effectual

Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec, in North

America; and to make further Provision for the Government of the

said Province. . . .

II. And whereas His Majesty has been pleased to signify, by His

Message to both Houses of Parliament, His Royal Intention to divide

His Province of Quebec into Two separate Provinces, to be called

The Province of Upper Canada, and The Province of Lower Canada;

be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That there shall be within

each of the said Provinces respectively a Legislative Council, and an

Assembly, to be severally composed and constituted in the Manner

herein-after described; and that in each of the said Provinces respec-

tively His Majesty, His Heirs or Successors, shall have Power, during

the Continuance of this Act, by and with the Advice and Consent of

the Legislative Council and Assembly of such Provinces respectively,

to make Laws for the Peace, Welfare, and good Government thereof,

such Laws not being repugnant to this Act; and that all such Laws, being

passed by the Legislative Council and Assembly of either of the said

Provinces respectively, and assented to by His Majesty, His Heirs or

Successors, or assented to in his Majesty’s Name, by such Person as His

Majesty, His Heirs or Successors, shall from Time to Time appoint to be

the Governor, or Lieutenant Governor, of such Province . . . shall be

. . . valid and binding to all Intents and Purposes whatever, within the

Province in which the same shall have been so passed. . . .

XLIII. And be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That

all Lands which shall be hereafter granted within the said Province of

Upper Canada shall be granted in Free and Common Soccage, in like

Manner as Lands are now holden in Free and Common Soccage, in that

Part of Great Britain called England; and that in every Case where Lands

shall be hereafter granted within the said Province of Lower Canada,

and where the Grantee thereof shall desire the same to be granted in

Free and Common Soccage, the same shall be so granted. . . .

Source: Shortt and Doughty 1918, 2: 1031–48.

THE EMERGENCE OF COLONIAL COMMUNITIES