I mean that in language, religion, attachment, and customs, [this people] is completely French, it has no other tie or attachment to us than a shared government; and that it in fact holds us in mistrust […], feels hatred […]. The dividing line between us is complete.
Ross Cuthbert (1776–1861), the long-time anglophone member for Warwick (Lower Canada) and a member of the Executive Council, wrote an account of the Canadians' French character in 1809:
A stranger travelling across the province without entering the cities would be persuaded he was visiting a part of France. The language, manners, every symbol, from vane to clog, join together to lead him astray. […] Should he enter a house, French politeness, French dress, French apparel will strike the eye. Should one of the daughters of the house decide to sing, he'll likely hear the lovely ballad Sur les bords de la Seine, or some other song that transports him to a beautiful valley of Old France. Among the portraits of saints in the guest room he will also notice that of Napoleon. In short, he could not imagine he had crossed the borders of the British Empire.
But this prominent Anglican citizen of Lower Canada saw the situation as an anachronism that would disappear "in the effervescence of a British solvent." On June 6, 1823, Lower Canada Chief Justice James Stuart (1780–1853), who was also a member of the Executive Council and the member for William Henry, submitted a brief on a draft Union that had this to say about the refusal by Canadians to assimilate:
Lower Canada is mostly inhabited by what one could call a foreign people, despite the fact sixty years have passed since the Conquest. This population has made no progress towards assimilation with its fellow British citizens, in language, manner, habit, or sentiment. It continues, with a few, rare exceptions, to be as perfectly French as when brought under British dominion. The main cause of this adherence to national particularities and prejudices is certainly the impolitic concession that was made to it, of a code of foreign laws in a foreign tongue.
In its May 21, 1831 issue Le Canadien wrote,
There is not to our knowledge a French people in this province, but a Canadian people, a religious and moral people, a people at all times loyal and freedom-loving, and capable of delighting therein; this people is neither French nor English, Scottish, Irish, or Yankee, it is Canadian.
Throughout this period, anglophones did not consider themselves "Canadians." They proudly called themselves Britons—meaning English—and bore loyalty only to the British nation, not the "Canadian nation." The term "Canadians" was only used condescendingly to refer to French-speaking Canadiens. This troubled era was marked by conflict between the governor general, backed by English merchants, and the mainly francophone parliament: religious quarrels, threats of assimilation, parliamentary crises, the battle over "subsidies," immigration troubles, the draft political union, and more.
The Policy of Anglicization
In 1810, Governor James Henry Craig sent a dispatch to the British government proposing a series of measures he believed would restore harmony to Lower Canada. These measures included "the need to anglicize the province," "resort to heavy American immigration to submerge the French Canadians," the requirement to own "substantial land holdings" to be eligible for the Assembly, and especially "the union of Upper and Lower Canada for a more certain and prompt anglicization." Below is an extract of Governor Craig's dispatch:
For many years, English representatives have scarcely made up a quarter of the total Assembly, and today out of fifty members representing Lower Canada, only ten are English. One could posit that this branch of government is entirely in the hands of illiterate peasants under the direction of several of their fellow countrymen whose personal importance, in contrast to the interests of the country in general, depends on the continuation of the current depraved system. [...]
The petitioners of Your Majesty cannot omit to note the excessive scope of political rights that have been granted to this population to the detriment of its fellow British subjects; and these political rights, at a time when the population feels its strength growing, have already given birth in the imagination of many to the dream of a distinct nation called the "Canadian nation." [...]
The French inhabitants of Lower Canada, today distanced from their fellow subjects by their particularities and national prejudices, and ardently aiming to become, through the current state of affairs, a distinct people, would be gradually assimilated into the British population and with it merge into a people of British character and sentiment.
For Governor Craig, it was unthinkable for the Assembly to have only 10 anglophone members out of 50 and that they be "in the hands of illiterate peasants under the direction of several of their fellow countrymen." There was already talk at the time of a "distinct nation" and "distinct people," an idea that would resurface 200 years later in the 1990s with the expression "distinct society." In 1836, a movement even pushed for partitioning Montréal Island and the county of Vaudreuil (on the western border near Ontario) to reattach them to English Upper Canada. The outcry from anglophone Townshippers and the City of Québec put a stop to the movement.
Anglophone and Francophone Newspapers
Significantly, newspapers had been bilingual since the start of the British regime. The first newspaper, which was founded in June 1764, was La Gazette de Québec/The Québec Gazette. Of the nine papers published between 1764 and 1806, eight were bilingual, the only exception being La Gazette littéraire launched in 1778 by Fleury Mesplet (1734–1794). Quite often, the English text came first, followed by a French translation, or else the English text ran in the traditionally better left column, with the French on the right. Whatever the case, most subjects were culled from foreign newspapers, nearly all British or American.
Bilingualism in newspapers continued until the early 19th century. Several years later (1808), when Le Canadien devoted 85% of its space to the election, the British and the Catholic clergy reacted with condemnation. On December 4, 1809, the Bishop of Québec, Mgr. Joseph-Octave Plessis, violently attacked Le Canadien for "ruining all the principles of subordination and inflaming the province." Exasperated, Governor James Henry Craig ordered the seizure of Le Canadien's presses in 1810 and the arrest of its senior editors.
Political Parties
In politics, francophone members became increasingly aggressive and formed Le Parti canadien, while anglophones gathered in the Tory Party. Each group had its own newspaper: Le Canadien (Parti canadien) and the Québec Mercury (Tory Party), which vied with each other. Antagonism grew between francophones and anglophones, and debates turned poisonous. In 1805, the ruling British business bourgeoisie, which opposed political concessions for French Canadians, founded a militant newspaper, the Québec Daily Mirror. On October 27, 1806, the Québec Mercury attacked Canadians in these terms:
This province is already much too French for an English colony. To defrancize it as much as possible, if I may use this expression, should be our primary goal.
The Montréal Gazette put forward equally extremist views in 1836: "The time for indecision has passed. The British must either crush their oppressors or meekly accept the yoke that has been prepared for them." Anglophones feared falling under the supremacy of a "French republic." They called for the union of the two Canadas and spoke openly of assimilation, while Canadians denounced favouritism, the governor's corruption and arbitrariness (the "Chateau Clique"), and anglophone control of the councils. Francophones wanted an elected Legislative Council, oversight of government spending, and the maintenance of the seigniorial system and even threatened to join the U.S. Year after year, the abuse continued and even grew worse, profiting a group of the governor's personal friends. In 1827, a petition with 87,000 names denounced the profiteers known as the "Chateau Clique." The Gosford-Gipps-Grey Commission had predicted in 1837 that British settlers "would never consent without armed struggle to the establishment of what they see as a French republic in Canada." T. Fred. Elliott, secretary of the Gosford-Gipps-Grey Commission, seems to have clearly understood the issue of Lower Canadian duality:
French Canadians could not have failed to notice that the English have seized all the riches and all the power in each country where they have set foot. In all parts of the world, civilized or savage, the English have shown, whether as British subjects in the East or as settlers in revolt on this continent, the same inability to mix with others, the same need to predominate. One must admit that this could not be an agreeable thought for the gentle and easy-going race that finds itself caught in the midst of growing institutions and nations of English origin.
For him, the solution was to placate French Canadians and train them to govern themselves with the help of their fellow British citizens. But Elliott was only speaking personally and had little authority as secretary.
Through several strong-arm tactics, Governor Craig succeeded in arbitrarily dissolving certain Houses of Assembly. Francophones and anglophones bunkered down for several years in hardened conflict that totally paralyzed the state. In 1834, French Canadian MPs went to London to present "92 resolutions" designed to update the 1791 Constitution. They called for an elected Legislative Assembly and greater political powers (responsible government and tax administration). Mired in its domestic problems, the British government took its time. In the meantime, as a pressure tactic, the House of Assembly refused to vote on the budget until London accepted its demands. The official response came three years later in May 1837. The British government rejected the proposals of the Parti canadien (which had become the Parti patriote) and flatly refused the House of Lower Canada's requests.
As though to add fuel to the fire, officials authorized the colonial government to dispense with the Assembly's consent for the use of public funds, cemented the privileges of anglophone capitalists, and raised the spectre of uniting the two Canadas. These measures fired up the revolt movement and forced the Patriots' leader Louis-Joseph Papineau to choose between submission and revolt. Once Papineau started to galvanize a population fed up with the economic crisis, inflation, unemployment, cholera epidemics, poor harvests, and political rot, the conflict was ripe for an armed confrontation.
 |
| The battle of Saint-Eustache |
Everybody, said Saint Paul to the Romans, shall be subject to the powers of God. And it is He who has established all those in existence. Therefore, he who opposes these powers disobeys God's order. And those who disobey earn damnation for themselves. The prince is God's minister to do good. And since it is not in vain that he wears the gladius, he is also His minister to punish evil. You must therefore obey him not only through fear of punishment, but also as a duty of conscience. [...] And you must see at present that we cannot, without neglecting our duties and placing our own salvation in peril, omit to purge your conscience of such a slippery step.
However, some historians believe that the 1837 Patriots' Rebellion was staged by Montréal loyalists, who provoked the Patriots to be able to accuse them of treason and thereby fight them legitimately. In any case, this is what Patriot militant Dr. Edmund B. O'Callaghan believed, who compared the situation in Lower Canada to that of his native Ireland:
They wanted, as in Castlereagh in Ireland, to incite the people to violence, then abolish their constitutional rights. In the history of the union of Ireland with England, you will retrace as in a mirror the 1836–1837 plot against Canadian liberty.
For O'Callaghan, the government had knowingly armed volunteers and issued arbitrary orders to inflame the population and then cry rebellion once people were up in arms. During the 1837–1838 rebellion, between 200 and 300 Patriots died. Some 9,000 people participated in the uprising in Lower Canada.
The failure of the 1837–1838 rebellion was key to the development of francophone society in Lower Canada. Bitterly disappointed, French Canadians turned inwards and resigned themselves to their fate. For over a century, they took refuge in obedience, religion, agriculture, and conservatism. There was no Lower Canada Assembly for the next four years, as the main political figures were all in exile. The Catholic clergy filled the political vacuum.
Dispatched urgently by London, John George Lambton (Lord Durham) arrived in Quebec City with full authority to investigate and report on the situation in Canada.
[1] The name of our culture and of the people who belong to it was, since the original forging of our identity, Canadien. That is what the Native Peoples called us and it is what the French called us, but that name was essentially hijacked by another nation and so we eventually became known as French-Canadians. After the long held dream of a truly bi-national Canada died, we became Québécois or Quebecers in English.
From the Site for Language Management in Canada (University of Ottawa)
[1] The name of our culture and of the people who belong to it was, since the original forging of our identity, Canadien. That is what the Native Peoples called us and it is what the French called us, but that name was essentially hijacked by another nation and so we eventually became known as French-Canadians. After the long held dream of a truly bi-national Canada died, we became Québécois or Quebecers in English.
From the Site for Language Management in Canada (University of Ottawa)
