Riendeau A Roger E. Brief History of Canada

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF CANADA

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leading ultimately to violence was intensiﬁ ed by passionate divisions

between two peoples of different languages, religions, economic inter-

ests, and concepts of the provincial destiny (Ouellet 1979). As early as

1801, Jacob Mountain, the Anglican Bishop of Quebec, attempted to

subvert the Catholic Church by anglicizing the provincial system of

education. Whereas his legislative efforts were strongly supported by

the Chateau Clique, they were vehemently opposed by the French

majority in the Assembly. The bitterness surrounding this confronta-

tion led to the founding of Le Canadien, an avowedly nationalist news-

paper that advocated the preservation of French-Canadian rights and

institutions and which became the voice of the newly formed Parti

Canadien.

French-English relations further deteriorated during the infamous

“reign of terror” of Sir James Craig, governor from 1807 to 1811. In

addition to dissolving the Assembly on two occasions for disagreeing

with him and seizing the press of Le Canadien and jailing its proprietors

for their allegedly treasonous protests, Governor Craig recommended

assimilation of the French through the union of Upper and Lower

Canada as well as large-scale British immigration, subordination of the

Catholic Church to the Church of England, and the abolition of repre-

sentative government in the province. Although he was recalled by the

British government, which was concerned with maintaining French

loyalty on the eve of the War of 1812, Craig’s actions and sentiments

had further advanced the nationalist ambitions of the Parti Canadien.

The Parti Canadien was the political vehicle of the emerging French-

Canadian professional elite of lawyers, notaries, doctors, and journal-

ists based in the Lower Canadian countryside. This new middle class,

espousing liberal, democratic, and ultimately republican ideals, aspired

to replace the seigneurs as the leaders of French-Canadian society. The

French-speaking seigneurs were increasingly being criticized for

exploiting the habitants by charging higher rents and for collaborating

with the English-speaking commercial elite in return for patronage and

preferments. The rising professional elite was also critical of the Catho-

lic Church for its apparent support of the imperialist rather than the

nationalist cause. In essence, the French-Canadian professional elite

were economic conservatives in their defense of traditional agriculture

against the threat of commercial capitalism, but they were political

radicals in their demand for greater provincial autonomy and, if neces-

sary, separation from the empire (Paquet and Wallot 1988).

The liberal nationalism of the Parti Canadien found its champion

and embodiment in Louis Joseph Papineau, son of Joseph Papineau

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who had led the ﬁ ght for the recognition of French as an ofﬁ cial lan-

guage in the ﬁ rst Assembly in 1792. A seigneur and lawyer, the younger

Papineau possessed an oratorical prowess and a charismatic presence

that made him an outstanding popular leader and gained him promi-

nence in the Assembly. He assumed a leadership role in the Parti Cana-

dien after he was elected Speaker of the Assembly in 1815. At this stage

of his political career, Papineau was still a moderate nationalist who

admired British parliamentary institutions and defended the traditional

Catholic feudal society. He endeavored to work closely with a small

group of English-speaking reformers led by Scotsman John Neilson,

editor of the bilingual Quebec Gazette, as well as some Irish Catholic

dissidents, in a common effort at constitutional change that would

make representative government more effective in practice.

Although control of the public purse tended to be the perennial issue

that divided the Assembly and ruling oligarchy, the underlying source

of political friction reﬂ ected sharply divergent concepts of the society

and economy of Lower Canada. The French-dominated Assembly

sought to preserve a rural society in which public funds would be

directed to building roads and other local improvements beneﬁ cial to

an agrarian economy. The English-dominated oligarchy strove to

expand international trade and to promote urban growth through pub-

lic expenditures on canals and other improvements to the St. Lawrence

system of waterways. The determination to limit commercial expansion

and the domination of the English-speaking business community was

also behind French-Canadian opposition to the proposed reunion of

Upper and Lower Canada in 1822. Whereas the Montreal merchants

encouraged the inﬂ ux of British immigrants to develop their Upper

Canadian hinterland and to offset French preponderance in the Assem-

bly, French-Canadian leaders like Papineau were vehemently opposed

to any migration that threatened to overwhelm their culture or ﬁ ll up

agricultural land reserved for future generations of habitants. Likewise,

the passing of the Canada Tenures Act of 1825, which allowed land-

holders to change from seigneurial to freehold tenure, and the charter-

ing of the British American Land Company, which acquired a

substantial portion of the Eastern Townships, were viewed as serious

threats to the survival of the French-Canadian culture.

By 1831 the imperial government agreed to transfer most of the reve-

nues to the assembly without condition, and in a further conciliatory

gesture, Papineau and Neilson were offered membership in the Executive

Council. But the offer was refused as Papineau was no longer in a com-

promising mood, and his nationalist views had become more radical. The

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renaming of the Parti Canadien as the Parti Patriote in 1826 reﬂ ected a

growing afﬁ nity for republicanism and American-style democracy. This

tendency and the implied threat of separation from the British Empire,

by force if necessary, were embodied in the Ninety-two Resolutions of

Grievances that the Patriotes drew up under Papineau’s guidance and

which the Assembly adopted in 1834.

Papineau’s radical rhetoric and the republican tone of the Ninety-

two Resolutions alarmed the moderate reformers (Ouellet 1961).

Although support came from the radical followers of Wolfred and Rob-

ert Nelson, moderate English-speaking reformers led by John Neilson

wanted change only within the context of British parliamentary democ-

racy; therefore they broke with Papineau. Likewise, French-speaking

moderates feared that Papineau was leading them to cultural annihila-

tion by the American republic, while the clergy, aroused by the anti-

clericalism of the radicals, opposed the use of force against a constituted

authority. Nevertheless, Papineau and his supporters scored a decisive

victory in the provincial elections of 1834, in which the opponents of

the resolutions, including Neilson, were soundly defeated.

Viewing the impending political crisis in Lower Canada as a low

priority, the imperial government did not respond decisively until

1837, when the Colonial Ofﬁ ce abandoned the policy of conciliation

and Colonial Secretary Lord John Russell issued the Ten Resolutions

for Lower Canada. The resolutions included a rejection of self-govern-

ment and an elected Legislative Council as well as authorization for the

governor to use local tax revenues to cover government expenditures

without the approval of the Assembly. Despairing of the prospects for

achieving reform by constitutional means, Papineau and his radical fol-

lowers prepared for revolution.

The Reform Movement of Upper Canada

Equally frustrated with oligarchic rule, the movement for political

reform in Upper Canada was heading in a similar direction, although

without the complications of ethnic tensions that plagued Lower

Canada. The basic complaints against the Family Compact were that it

ignored or suppressed public opinion, distributed patronage in a nar-

row and selﬁ sh way, directed economic development for the proﬁ t of

its members and associates, and monopolized much of the public land

for the advantage of one religious denomination. The political griev-

ances that sustained reform opposition to oligarchy had elicited scat-

tered and isolated rumblings of discontent prior to the War of 1812.

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But in the wake of the postwar population and economic growth, the

expression of these grievances became more widespread and more

organized (Craig, Upper Canada, 1963).

The Family Compact was as apprehensive about the hundreds of

thousands of British immigrants who came to Upper Canada in the

1820s and 1830s as it had been suspicious of the American settlers who

arrived prior to the War of 1812. Newcomers such as Robert Gourlay,

a Scottish immigrant driven to Upper Canada in 1817 by the collapse

of his fortunes at home and by the aspiration to promote a grand emi-

gration and land settlement scheme for fellow Britons, felt entitled to

certain rights, privileges, and opportunities within the developing col-

ony and were not reluctant to challenge established authority. Pointing

an accusing ﬁ nger at Compact patronage and tyranny, Gourlay’s statis-

tical study revealed widespread dissatisfaction over the large tracts of

land that remained unsettled as clergy and Crown reserves. Although

Gourlay was a congenital dissident who had little to contribute to the

province, his prosecution and expulsion for seditious libel in 1819

proved to be a serious mistake for the Compact. For as the reform

movement took shape, the “banished Briton” came to be regarded as a

martyr who had been ruthlessly persecuted by an arrogant and unyield-

ing oligarchy.

Another troublesome character in the eyes of the Compact was Wil-

liam Lyon Mackenzie, a ﬁ ery Scottish immigrant who arrived in 1820.

In 1826, his vicious attacks on the ruling elite in his York-based news-

paper, the Colonial Advocate, inspired some of the younger Compact

members to ransack his ofﬁ ce, destroy his printing presses, and throw

his typesetting equipment into Lake Ontario. Mackenzie’s successful

civil suit against the perpetrators was hailed as a victory for freedom of

speech, and the incident launched his political career as a leading

reform agitator. Starting in 1828, he was elected to the Legislative

Assembly four times, and on each occasion, he was expelled for his

unruly behavior. Although Mackenzie became a popular spokesman for

the reform cause, his questionable antics and growing radicalism

tended to distract attention from more concrete political grievances.

As Gourlay’s survey revealed, land policy was at the center of politi-

cal discontent in Upper Canada. Not only was land an attraction for

settlement but also, in a pioneer economy where cash was in short sup-

ply, land was used as a form of currency for rewarding those who had

rendered service to or had a claim upon the government, such as the

Loyalists, retired military and government ofﬁ cials, and surveyors. In

particular, proceeds from the sale or lease of Crown lands had been

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used to ﬁ nance the building and maintenance of public works projects

such as roads and bridges, while the sale or lease of clergy reserves was

designed to defray the costs of maintaining a Protestant clergy as well

as building and maintaining churches and schools. However, by the

mid-1820s vast parcels of strategically located land remained undevel-

oped, either in the hands of speculators or locked up in Crown and

Clergy reserves.

To help resolve this problem, the provincial government sold off the

remaining Crown lands in 1824 to the newly formed Canada Company

in return for an annual payment amounting to nearly £350,000 over a

16-year period. This transaction proved to be economically viable as

the Canada Company brought new vigor to land settlement, not only

by attracting large numbers of settlers to the province but also by

investing heavily in infrastructural improvements. From a political

standpoint, however, the deal was objectionable because the added

ﬁ nancial support it gave to the provincial government reduced the

Family Compact’s dependence on the Assembly. Thus, the rising

reform movement in the Assembly had reason to oppose the govern-

ment’s arrangement with the Canada Company.

As in Lower Canada, the Upper Canadian Assembly was asserting

more control over the appropriation of public revenues and expendi-

tures. Even with the lucrative deal with the Canada Company, the

growing scope of government activity required that the Family Com-

pact cultivate the support of like-minded men in the Assembly in order

to enhance its access to tax revenue. Therefore, by the 1830s provincial

elections featured bitter struggles between the Tories and Reformers,

each seeking to control the public purse. The Tories tended to share

their Compact allies’ interest in using public funds to improve water

transportation for the beneﬁ t of the mercantile community, whereas

the Reformers were more inclined to direct funds to build roads that

could open up more farmland in the interior. On the whole, the Tories

and the Family Compact were more likely to think along provincial

lines of development while the Reformers were more concerned with

local improvements.

Land policy intersected with the contentious issue of religious privi-

lege when it came to the allocation of clergy reserves. By virtue of its

connection with the Compact and as the established church in En gland,

the Anglican Church initially claimed exclusive control over income

from the rent or sale of clergy reserves. Until the 1820s this revenue

was so small that clergy reserves were hardly considered a contentious

issue, other than the occasional complaint that they stood in the way of

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settlement and development. In 1827 Anglican leaders decided to press

for the sale of clergy reserves to meet the competition from the Canada

Company. Because of a legislative stipulation that lots hindering the

progress of settlement be sold ﬁ rst, clergy reserves ceased to be an

obstacle to settlement. However, they became a source of political dis-

content when other religious denominations began to press their claims

for a share of the sales revenue, thereby intensifying the growing unrest

over the favored position of the Anglican Church within the province

(Wilson 1969).

Indeed, British immigration was in the process of changing the reli-

gious face of Upper Canada to the extent that by mid-century about half

of the population was Methodist, and Presbyterians slightly outnum-

bered Anglicans. Fearing that the Church of England was losing its grip

on the religious life of the province, Archbishop Strachan sought to

place education under Anglican dominance by securing a charter in

1827 for a provincial university, King’s College (which became the

University of Toronto in 1850). Led by Reverend Egerton Ryerson, the

Methodists launched a campaign against religious privilege: in 1826

they urged the secularization of clergy reserves, with the proceeds of

their sale being devoted to public education; and in 1829 they founded

Victoria University in Coburg, a thriving lakeport east of York. Inevita-

bly, sectarian rivalry spilled over into the political arena, exacerbating

existing divisions between Tories and Reformers.

The distinction between Upper Canadian Tories and Reformers was

not always clear since they were not organized and disciplined political

parties in the modern sense. Rather, Tories and Reformers were loosely

knit associations or factions of like-minded men whose divergent inter-

ests might require them to disagree with their cohorts on a particular

issue. Certainly, the Reformers were far from united. Moderates like

Ryerson and Robert Baldwin, inspired by the British struggle over the

Great Reform Bill of 1832, favored a government responsible to the

Assembly. On the other hand, radicals like Mackenzie and John Rolph,

inﬂ uenced by the rise of Jacksonian democracy in the United States,

demanded an elected Legislative Council. Mackenzie’s enthusiasm for

republicanism drove Ryerson and other Methodist reformers into the

Tory camp in 1833.

The factional nature of Upper Canadian politics contributed to an

apparent ambivalence among the voters, whose preferences generally

swung like a pendulum between Reformers and Tories. While the

Reformers could claim victory in the provincial elections of 1828 and

1834, the Tories swept back to power in the elections of 1830 and

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1836, with the election of 1832 ending in a virtual stalemate. The Tory

electoral triumph of 1836 featured active campaigning by Governor Sir

Francis Bond Head, who appealed to the British tie and warned against

the perils of American republicanism. The indignity of this defeat fol-

lowed by the repudiation of reform embodied in Russell’s Ten Resolu-

tions incited Mackenzie and his radical supporters to follow the

rebellious course of Papineau and the patriotes.

From Rebellion to Reunion

Political unrest in the Canadas was aggravated by an economic depres-

sion that plagued the Western world in 1836–37. Declining exports and

prices in the agricultural sector were accompanied by a series of crop

failures that seriously diminished the purchasing power of both Upper

and Lower Canadian farmers. The agrarian crisis was particularly acute

in Lower Canada, where overpopulation and soil exhaustion led to the

decline of wheat production for an export market and necessitated a

shift to coarse grains and potatoes for subsistence consumption.

Farmers under economic duress were inclined to be more receptive to

revolutionary rhetoric.

In Lower Canada, mass meetings, ﬁ ery speeches, and outbursts in

the press were signs of an emerging revolutionary spirit in the

autumn of 1837. By late October, patriote leaders had called for a

revolt, issued a declaration of independence, and devised plans for a

march on Montreal. Fearing that an early November riot by French

and English extremists would spread out of control, Papineau and

his associates ﬂ ed Montreal. Anxious authorities mistakenly assumed

that the radical leaders had gone into the countryside to launch a

rebellion and thus issued a warrant for their arrest. When a small

detachment of troops arrived at St. Denis on November 23 to execute

these orders, they were repulsed by armed patriotes, consisting

mostly of young farmers. During this opening clash of the rebellion,

Papineau ﬂ ed to the United States. Two days later, a larger contin-

gent of British troops put down an uprising at neighboring St.

Charles, southeast of Montreal. The most serious confrontation

occurred on December 14, as 2,000 troops crushed a rebel force of

500 led by Dr. Jean-Olivier Chénier at St. Eustache, north of Mon-

treal. The only other ﬁ ghting consisted of a poorly organized revolt

southwest of Montreal, which was easily suppressed in November

1838. Altogether, about 300 patriotes and 25 defenders were killed

in action during the entire Lower Canadian rebellion, and among the

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rebels, 12 were executed for treason and 58 were exiled to the British

penal colony of Australia (Bernard 1996).

Meanwhile, in December 1837, Mackenzie seized the opportunity to

overthrow the provincial government at Toronto (formerly York) when

most of the troops guarding the capital were dispatched to Lower

Canada. On December 5, about 500 men from the surrounding farming

district gathered at Montgomery’s Tavern (then on the northern out-

skirts of Toronto). Armed with riﬂ es, staves, and pitchforks, they

marched down Yonge Street, whereupon they confronted a small con-

tingent of loyal volunteer militia. Mackenzie’s front rank ﬁ red, then

dropped to the ground to let the next rank ﬁ re over their heads. Think-

ing that the men in front of them had been shot down, the men in the

back ranks ﬂ ed in panic. Two days later, a force of 1,500 militia

marched up to Montgomery’s Tavern and dispersed the remaining reb-

els within 20 minutes. During this somewhat pathetic skirmish, one

defender and two rebels were killed, and two of the latter were tried

and executed for treason in the aftermath. The rebellion ended a few

days later when equally disorganized Mackenzie sympathizers led by

Dr. Charles Duncombe were easily dispersed in the western part of the

province.

Duncombe escaped to the United States along with Mackenzie, who

subsequently attempted several unsuccessful border raids with the sup-

port of Americans, some of whom were interested in liberating Canada

from British tyranny while others had little more than a penchant for

looting. This ﬁ nal act of desperation actually involved more ﬁ ghting

than the rebellion itself and caused some tension between Britain and

the United States that brieﬂ y raised memories of the War of 1812. But

the U.S. government, preoccupied with western settlement, was ada-

mantly opposed to these attacks, and peace was restored along the

border by the end of 1838 (Read 1988).

The ill-conceived and ill-fated rebellions of 1837 were more a prod-

uct of historical accident than political design. Less than two years after

the insurrection in Lower Canada, Papineau admitted that the patriote

leadership had drifted into rebellion: “I defy the government to contra-

dict me when I assert that none of us had ever organized, desired, or

even anticipated armed resistance.” The Upper Canadian uprising was

sustained by little more than Mackenzie’s rash judgement and dema-

goguery. Although the greater bloodshed and longer duration suggest

that the rebellion in Lower Canada had more popular support, still a

relatively small number of people—perhaps 1 or 2 percent out of a total

population of about one million in the two colonies—actually followed

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the radicals in their resort to violence. The overwhelming preference

was for reform along constitutional lines and through British parlia-

mentary institutions. From this standpoint, the rebellions did little to

advance the cause of political reform, and indeed may have slowed its

momentum.

The days of oligarchic rule were already numbered by the late 1830s,

inasmuch as the appointed branch of government had lost most of its

ﬁ scal powers to the elected representatives. Furthermore, prior to the

rebellions the Colonial Ofﬁ ce was already instructing Canadian gover-

nors to abide as much as possible by the will of the Assembly and to

avoid undue interference in local affairs. The motivation behind the

increasing imperial willingness to defer to local authority would

become more apparent in the next decade when Britain moved toward

dismantling the old colonial system (Buckner 1985).

The rebellions of 1837 did force the British government to take more

seriously the problems of colonial government in British North Amer-

ica. In 1838, Lord Durham, who had been prominent in the achieve-

ment of the Great Reform Bill of 1832 in Britain, was appointed

governor-general and lord high commissioner of British North America

with sweeping authority to investigate the causes of the political tur-

moil in the Canadas. Durham spent only ﬁ ve months in Canada before

he was forced to resign over his unauthorized decision to grant amnesty

to most of the exiled Canadian rebels. Nevertheless, in 1839, he com-

pleted his famous (or infamous) Report on the Affairs of British North

America, which, in spite of its investigative limitations and its biased

perspective, became a provocative and inﬂ uential analysis of the state

of mid-19th-century Canadian government and society.

Durham devoted most of his investigative and analytical attention to

the political problems of Lower Canada, since the rebellion there had

been deemed serious enough to suspend the provincial constitution. He

was surprised to ﬁ nd “two nations warring in the bosom of a single

state . . . a struggle, not of principles, but of races.” (Craig, Lord Dur-

ham’s Report, 1963, 22–23) The political strife in the province, Durham

surmised, was rooted in the unprogressive nature of French-Canadian

customs and institutions, notably the religious and classical orientation

of the education system, which left people ill-prepared to function in

the bustling world of commerce and industry and easy prey to irrespon-

sible demagogues. On the other hand, Durham was sympathetic to the

English-speaking merchants of Montreal, viewing them as dynamic

entrepreneurs concerned with the economic development of the prov-

ince and exasperated by French opposition to progressive schemes

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such as the improvement of the St. Lawrence canal system and the pro-

motion of British immigration.

Accordingly, he found considerable merit in the merchant-backed

proposal of 1822 to reunite the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.

The combined English-speaking population of approximately 600,000

in the two provinces could politically overwhelm the French popula-

tion of approximately 500,000, thereby clearing the way for economic

progress and eventual cultural assimilation. For the same reasons, Dur-

ham was also attracted to the idea of a federation of all British North

LORD DURHAM’S REPORT (1839)

n a Dispatch which I addressed to Your Majesty’s Principal Secretary of

State for the Colonies on the 9th of August last, I detailed, with great

minuteness, the impressions which had been produced on my mind by the

state of things which existed in Lower Canada: I acknowledged that the

experience derived from my residence in the Province had completely

changed my view of the relative inﬂ uence of the causes which had been

assigned for the existing disorders. I had not, indeed, been brought to

believe that the institutions of Lower Canada were less defective than I

had originally presumed them to be. From the peculiar circumstances in

which I was placed, I was enabled to make such effectual observations as

convinced me that there had existed in the constitution of the Province, in

the balance of political powers, in the spirit and practice of administration

in every department of the Government, defects that were quite sufﬁ cient

to account for a great degree of mismanagement and dissatisfaction. The

same observation had also impressed on me the conviction, that, for the

peculiar and disastrous dissensions of this Province, there existed a far

deeper and far more efﬁ cient cause, – a cause which penetrated beneath

its political institutions into its social state, – a cause which no reform

of constitution or laws, that should leave the elements of society unal-

tered, could remove; but which must be removed, ere any success could

be expected in any attempt to remedy the many evils of this unhappy

Province. I expected to ﬁ nd a contest between a government and a

people: I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state: I found

a struggle, not of principles, but of races; and I perceived that it would be

idle to attempt any amelioration of laws or institutions until we could ﬁ rst

succeed in terminating the deadly animosity that now separates the inhab-

itants of Lower Canada into the hostile divisions of French and English.

Source: Craig, Lord Durham’s Report, 1963, 22–23.

FROM OLIGARCHIC RULE TO RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT