PUBLI
SCHOOL
HIS OIlY
CANADA
TOO NTO
Donated to the
Ontario listorical Textbook
Collection
by the
Legislative Library
March 1966
COMPLIMENTS OF
THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION
tlISTORY OF CANADA
KING GEORGE V.
ONTARIO
PUBLIC SCHOOL
HISTORY OF CANADA
BY
GEORGE M. WRONG, M.A,, LL.D.
PROFESSOR 015 HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
AUTHORIZED BY TFIE MINISTER OF EDUCATION
FOR ONTARIO
TORONTO
THE RYERSON PRESS
DISCOYERY OF AMERICA 3
sible. Africa stretched into the unknoxvn south, and
once round Africa, a ship might sail direct to those
eastern coasts reached overland by Marco Polo. This
was the easier thing to attempt, for there Africa lay
visible, and it was only necessary to press on along its
coast until the mystery should be solved. True, the
coast was dangerous. The hostile followers of Moham-
med held North Africa, and they were likely to slay
Christian intruders. Farther south there was the savage
barbarism of the black man. Nature herself seemed to
bar the way, for shoals, rocks, and adverse xvinds made
the coast difficult. But the problem was vell worth
effort. In Portugal, Prince Henry the Navigator, xvho
died in I46o, devoted to it much of his life. Year after
year he sent out ships, and year after year they went
southward a little farther than before.
Prince Henry had been twenty-six years dead when,
in 1487, an astounding thing happened. Bartholomew
Diaz, a Portuguese, coasted southward until he reached
xvhat we knew until lately as German South-vest Africa.
Caught there by a storm, he was for thirteen days
swept into unknown seas. When the storm was over
and he sailed northward, he saw land, not at his
right hand, as he expected, but at his left. Without
knowing it, he had unfolded the stubborn secret, for he
had rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian
Ocean and was sailing along the east coast of Africa.
He was ill and so did not go on, but turned homexvard.
From time to time he landed and reared stone monu-
ments to record his wonderful voyage. One of these he
left apparently where now stands Capetoxvn. When he
reached Portugal, he told a glowing tale which aroused
great interest. Eleven years later, a Portuguese ship,
under a famous captain, Vasco da Gama, sailed all the
way to India. Da Gama attacked Calcutta and followed
this up by a horrible massacre of the natives. Such was
6 HISTORY OF CANADA
scientific mind, who brooded over the mystery of the far
East. He had spent a year at Madeira and must often
have looked out over the encircling sea and pondered its
secrets. If the earth was round, clearly by going on
westward one could reach the far distant shore of Asia.
The only way to verify this vas actually to sail there.
The effort would be costly. On such a voyage little
profit could be expected from trade. Coltmbus wett
to I'ortugal, which was so interested in the route by vay
of Africa. He demanded high rewards and honours
if his plan should succeed. He must, he said, be made
the ruler of any heathen regions found and receive at
least a tenth of all profits. \Vhen he failed in Portugal
he turned to Spain.
Queen Isabella of Castile was the most enlightened
ruler of her time, and she promised aid. Some of her
courtiers jeered at the dreamer who talked in so con-
fident a manner of the rew eastern realms which he was
to discover and to rule. But in 1492 three small ships
were placed at the disposal of Columbus. It was not
easy to secure crews, and the queen gave him aut.hority
to take men who would be released from prison on con-
dition of facing the perils of the voyage. They were
not very promising material. These ignorant men were
haunted by the fear of meeting demons in the vast
unknown. But on August 3rd, 1492, the little squadron
set out from the port of Palos. They made a long halt at
the Canary Islands, and then, early in September, sailed
out into tle west. efore a week had passed, the sailors
were expecting to see the coasts of Asia. Every fresh
vind which carried them farther from home made them
nervous about their return. To quiet their fears, Col-
umbus concealed from them the extent of the distance
covered; but each day had its new alarm to be quieted.
They vatched eagerly for birds and floating wood or
weeds as evidence that land was near. Not nmch longer
DISCOVERY OF AMEItLA 7
could Columbus have held their obedience when, after
five anxious weeks, he and other watchers in the night
saw far ahead a moving light which meant the presence
of man. Keen eyes vere alert at daybreak, and there,
quite near, lay a
tree-clad coast,
with naked human
beings moving
about in the open
spaces. .As soon
as possible Colum-
bus roved ashore.
He thought he was
in .Asia, on one of
the islands inhabit-
ed by the savages
described by Marco
Polo. The people
seemed poor and
barbarous. They
wondered at the
new-comers as if
they had dropped
from heaveu,
and were ready
to worship them.
JOHN CABOT AND IIs SON SEBASTIAN
From a model by John Cassidy
3. John Cabot on the Coast of Canada.--Such was
the beginning of that long process of discovery which led
to the founding of Canada. There were others as eager
as Columbus to find a short route to the East, and
Italians were still in the race. Giovanni Caboto, whom
we know as John Cabot, though, like Columbus, born
at Genoa, was, by adoption, a Venetian, a countryman
of Marco Polo. He had traded to the Red Sea and had
even reached, we are told, the sacred city of 1lecca.
8
HISTCRY OF C.NADA
Cabot. like Columbus, brooded over the mystery of the
far East. Long before Columbus won his success, John
Cabot was planning a similar effort. He asked aid from
Portugal and from Spain, and in both cases failed.
Then he settled in England and there reared a consider-
able family, lie lived in t3ristol, then, next to London,
the most important port in England, and, Since it lay on
the west coast, an easy starting-point for an adventure
out into the Atlantic. Cabot had slender means, and
every effort of his to secure help met with sickening
failure. But there was a change when Columbus re-
turned from his first voyage. \V'hile, in truth, he
brought back very little gold, he had heard stories of
natives who wore bands of gold rouud their arms, legs,
and necks, and of an island composed of solid gold,
which, men thought, must be the Japan of Marco Polo.
On the throne of England sat Henry VII, wary, astute,
and greedy for wealth. No doubt the reports from
Spain made him envious. But the door was quickly
closed. In 1494 the Pope issued a Bull under which
only Portugal and Spain were to share the new-found
regions, and Henry VII obeyed this mandate. John
Cabot saw the king, and found him ready to take a share
of any profits but woefully unready to aid with money.
To sail into the north-west was not to defy the Pope's
Bull. and this the king allowed Cabot to do. He might,
said I lenry, occupy and rule any heathen towns which
he should reach; he might bring back to England goods,
and they should be free of duty. But not a penny would
Henry risk, and yet he was tc have a fifth of all profits.
Cabot did his best. He fitted out a small ship, got
together a crew of eighteen men, most of them English,
and then, in the summer of 1497, taking with him, bv
some accounts, his son Sebastian, aged twenty-two, he
sailed out boldly past Ireland and disappeared in the
great northern stretches of the Atlantic Ocean,
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 9
Three months later he was back with a tale which
sirred men's hearts. His seamen had been steadier than
the Spaniards of Columbus, for xve do not hear of any
murmurings as he sailed on day after day into the
unknown West. And he reached land. It must have
been some part of what is now Canada or Nexvfound-
land. As the little ship, its crecy watching vith eager
eyes, sailed in those chill waters, they saw great quan-
tities of fish. Cabot had always intended to make only
a hurried voyage and to follow it up in the following
year. Once he stopped and went ashore. N'o human
being" did he see, but he found trees notched as if by an
axe, and also snares for game. Cabot nailed together a
cross; then he dug a hole, planted in it the cross, and
placed by it the banner of England side by side with that
of Venice. He vas, in truth, making England's first
claim to dominion overseas, and the British flag floats
still over the regions which he saw. Cabot declared that
he had reached the Khan's country and would next year
go to Japan. When Henry VII heard the story, he was
delighted. Now, he said, Cabot should be provided with
both ships and men. He might, like Columbus, enlist
prisoners from the jails. The careful king even opened
his purse and gave Cabot ten pounds, and, later, a pension
of twenty pounds, equal to tvo hundred pounds in our
day. Cabot took on the swagger of a great man. He
boasted that he had found a route to the treasures of
the world in jewels and spices. A man's dress was then
the badge of his rank, and Cabot now robed himself in
silk. People crowded about him, begging to be allowed
to go vith him on his next voyage. To his Genoese
barber he promised the grant of an island; and Italian
reprobates who paid him court already considered them-
selves equal to nobles in rank. He made his projected
second voyage, along with his son, but he achieved noth-
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 11
Magellan, in the service of Spain, entered the tortuous
strait which we know by his name. It is more than
three hundred miles long, but through its mountain-lined
stretches he made his way, and at last he floated on the
broad bosom of the Pacific. His was the first ship from
Europe to reach those waters. He struck out boldly
across that mighty sea, and at last reached the Philippine
Islands. Here, in a quarrel with the natives, he was
killed, but his lieutenant, del Cano, went on. One only of
the five ships reached Spain, and only eighteen of the
original company had survived. But the great thing had
been done. A ship from Europe had sailed round the
world.
JACQUES CARTIER IN CANADA 19
3. The Temporary Failure of French Effort.--
The Canadian adventure vas nearly ended, and little
fruit did it bear. Some sicklv Indians told Francis I
vhat they could of Canada. ;I'hey vere the first-fruits
of missions to Canada, for soon they were baptized, and
then, one by one, they died--pathetic victims of the con-
strained life of civilized France. Their tales of riches
in Canada led Francis I to resolve on creating a real
colony, and he found its ruler iu that valley of the
Somme destined long after to be moistened in the Great
War xvith the best 1,1ood of Canada. The governor
chosen was the Sieur de Roberval, a great man in his
own part of France. lie was given wide poxvers. He
might take out colonists, make laws, build tovns and
forts, xvage war, aud have a complete monopoly of trade.
Cartier, the rugged sailor, vas to go as captain-general
and master-pilot, whatever these titles might mean. lie
was not a noble, and, in- the view of the time, only a man
of rank should be a governor. Clearly Cartier was
restive at having a governor over him. IIe completed
his plans quickly, and in May, 1541, leaving Roberval to
follow, set out with five ships.
Storms delayed him, and not until August 23rd did
he reach Stadacona. To the inquiring Indians he told
the cheerful lie that Donnacona and the others preferred
to remain in France, where the), had becolue great lords.
In truth, all but a little girl had died. Cartier did not go
back to .the "St. Charles with its grim memories. Instead,
he chose a beautiful site at Cap Rouge, above Quebec,
the point where nov a gigantic hridge crosses the St.
Lavrence. There, among fine trees at the top of the
cliff, the French built a fort. They gathered eagerly
little sparkling stones which they took to be diamonds.
In the veins of the rocks they saw, they werc sure, gold
and silver. The outlook seemed rosy. Cartier went
again up the river to I Iochclaga, and was convinced anew
20 HISTORY OF CANADA
that beyond it lay a land of riches. Winter with its
hardships drew near, but they were hopeful because they
had found gold. '
It all came to nothing. In the spring Cartier decided
no longcr to wait for Roberval, but to sail back to France
vith the good news that .he had found gold. But in the
harbour of what is now St. Jchn's, Newfoun.dland, he met
Roberv:.l with " three tall ships," on the way to Canada.
Roberval expected Cartier to turn back with him, but
Carticr wished to be his ovn master. They now tested
the ore from Cap 1Rouge and pronounced the yellow
metal x-hich it contained to be good gold. Cartier was
eager to be the first to tell the story in France, and he
slipped away in the night to carry his gold to his king.
There the story seems to end. Roberval went on. and,
after a troubled winter at Cap Rouge, he, too, dropped
out of history. \Ve get glimpses of both him and Cartier
latcr in France. ]ut they founded no French colony;
and for nearly a century still, barbarism, unsoftened,
ruled in that realm of.(anada which still guarded the
secret of its wealth. Cartier and Roberval seemed to
have f:ffected little. One thing, however, they had done.
They had estahlished France's claim, not disputed for
nearly a hundred years thereafter, to the region of the
St. Lawrence.
24 HISTORY OF CANAI3A
Golden Hind. She knighted him, and, true grandchild
of Henry VII. who had encouraged John Cabot, she
claimed and received her share of the booty.
2. Frobisher and the North=West Passage.--\Vhile
Drake was planning to reach the Pacific and to sail back
by a supposed northern passage, other Englishmen xvere
trying to sail directly to the East by passing to the
north of Canada. The north-west passage had been
much talked of. Michael Lok, the son of a great Lon-
don merchant, had made eager inquiries, and at heavy
cost had gathered a library on the subject. He had him-
self commanded a huge ship trading to Turkey. Having
tasted adventure, he was certain that ships could sail
through to Asia by the route north of America. A sea-
captain, Martin Frobisher, was fired by a similar con-
viction. The two men worked busily, with the result
that in June, 1576, three little ships, the largest of only
twenty-five tons, sailed to the north-west with Frobisher
in command. ]3efore two months passed they had re-
turned, and Frobisher reported the startling news that
he had found the passage by sea to Asia. He had sailed,
he said, up a long strait with Asia on his right in full
view, and America on his left. His hurried return while
still it was summer, was made, he said, in order that
England might learn quickly the great news. No doubt
Drake heard it, and thus had reason for his belief that
he could easily get back to the Atlantic from the North
Pacific.
One of Frobisher's sailors had brought home with
him a black stone, and now this stone caused more excite-
ment than even the supposed nexv-found route to Asia.
An Italian goldsmith tested a piece of the stone, and
after three days produced a gold powder which, he de-
clared, he had extracted from the stone. Some wise
people still doubted, but even Queen Elizabeth was con-
vinced that in this ore was vast wealth. The search for
THE ENGLISH IN THE NORTH 27
stretches so far into the heart of Canada that its western
shore is nearer to Vancouver than it is to Halifax. On
the strength of his voyage the English never ceased to
claim the xvhole vast region which makes up the present
Canadian West, and the claim holds to this day.
CHAPTER IV
CHAMPLAIN, THE FOUNDER OF CANADA
!. The French in Nova $cotia.--The dream of the
French and the English who first reached America was
either to get riches by finding gold or to reach the far
East by a new route. The real riches of Canada were
in things more commonplace, which demanded, hmvever,
hard and steady vork. There was wealth in the fish of
Canadian waters, in the fur of Canadian wild. animals,
and in the timber of Canadian foresls. From the lime of
Cartier, French fur-traders had haunted the St. Lav-
fence. Into it the river Saguenay flows about a hundred
miles below the Stadacona of Cartier's lime. At the
mouth of the Saguenay lay the Indian village of Tadous-
sac, and to this point the French furraders came. The
Indians of Canada vere eager to trade. Before the
coming of the Europeans, the life of the nafives was
poverty-stricken. They had none of the domestic animals
without which the life fo-day of those who live on 'he
land would be poor indeed. No horse, nor co,v, nor .sheep,
nor pig was to be found in their villages. They had no
iron tools and no firearms. They fought with stone
tomahawks and with clubs. They cut down trees with
an axe of stone and hunted xvild beasts with bows and
arrows. \Vhen they made their beautiful canoes of birch-
bark, they had no better tools than implements of stone
or of soft copper. We wonder that with such tools they
could do so much. When they saw the implements xvhich
came from Europe, they vere eager to exchange furs
for steel knives, hatchets, and axes. We may be sure
that the advantage of trade lay vith the more practised
Frenchmen. The guile of Europe came nmv into touch
with the ignorance and inexperience of the Canadian
28
CHAMPLAIN, THE FOUNDER OF CANADA 29
natives. These natives learned from Europeans some
good things, but also many evil things. They now tasted
brandy--the deadly " fire-water" destined in time to
work among them such desolation. They learned
quickly the vices of Europe. Its virtues they acquired
so slowly that for long )'ears they remained, in spite of
Christian teaching, at heart still savages.
More than half a century after Carrier's failure,
France was thinking again of planting a colony in
Canada. No more raeed she fear the jealousy of Spain,
whose power had declined, tIenceforth England xvas to
be her active rival. In the year 1603 there was a strange
scene at the court of Henry IV, king of France. Eleven
rough, uncouth men, with shaggy beards, and dressed in
seal-skins, were brought to the king. Though fickle
and easy-going, Henry had a charm of manner which
won deep devotion, and he was eagerly curious for xvhat
was new. The men told a tragic story. They had been
members of an expedition sent out in 1598 to colonize
Canada. Its leader was the Marquis de la Roche, who
had received authority to rule Canada on behalf of the
king of France. The better class of Frenchmen were
not eager to leave their loved land of France, and La
Roche had recruited most of his men from the prisons.
They were a disorderly crew. His one little ship was so
small that the men could lean over the sides and vash
their hands in the sea. The vessel was very crowded.
When La Roche had crossed the Atlantic, he had still to
find a spot for his colony. In order to have more room
in the ship while he looked for a site, he landed fifty con-
victs on the desolate sand-bar which we know as Sable
Island, near the coast of Nova Scotia. A storm blew up,
and La Roche ran before it back to Europe. The forty
men who were left behind had to do their best. They
fished for cod and they killed seals. Strange to say, they
found some wild cattle on the island, washed ashore, no
doubt, from some earlier wreck. They secured priceless
CHAMPLAIN, THE FOUNDER OF CANADA 31
region. Some authority must be set up to stop these
things. The easiest way was to end the rivalry by grant-
ing a monopoly in trade to one person and by looking to
him to correct abuses.
Thus it happened that Henry undertook to rule
Canada. He named as Governor Avmar de Chastes, one
of his tried friends. De Chastes had fought on the sea
against Spain and on land for Henry xvith such courage
that Henry called him the saviour both of himself and of
France. He was now an old man, but he had the spirit
for a chivalrous adventure, and he was ready to give up
comfort in France in order to build for her a new
empire in America. It was time for France to make a
beginning. There was a stirring in Europe. England
was soon to plant her foot in Virginia, but France
made the first start in America. On March 15th,
1603, two ships sailed for Canada from Harfleur. On
board one of these ships was Champlain, going o
Canada to spy out the land. His keen eyes marked every-
thing. We still have his notes of xvhat he had seen on
his previous voyage to Panama, with rough pictures by
his own hand. With him now were txvo savages carried
to France by some earlier traders, and from them he
drew all that their dim minds comprehended. At
Tadoussac he made acute observations--the, infertile
land, the poor trees, the disgusting gluttony of the sav-
ages, the barbarous puffing of the smoke of tobacco from
their mouths, the wild dancing of their naked women,
the silence of nature in that northern scene. He went
up the St. Lawrence. At Stadacona and at Hochelaga,
where Cartier had found large Indian villages, there vas
now no life. Savage xvar had devastated the villages.
But nature was here glorious with a rich soil and mag-
nificent trees. The power of the majestic river as it
poured down the rapids at Montreal startled Champlain.
Beyond that no ship could pass. As he lay by the camp
fire and talked with the bronzed natives, he was told of
32 HISTORY OF CANADA
the awful perils of the wild, of the " Gougou," a mon-
ster in the form of a voman so vast that the masts of a
ship came barely to her waist, who carried human beings
in her pocket and ate them at leisure as we eat an apple.
Champlain believed that some mysterious devil tormented
the natives of Canada. Yet he was ready to go on and
meet the monster.
When Champlain returned to France from this sum-
mer voyage, he found that his fine old leader, De Chastes,
xvas dead. IIis monopoly of trade xvas given by the king
to the Sieur de Monts, another tried friend. De Monts
took his privilege seriously and gave notice in the French
seaports that no one might trade to New France xvithout
his leave. New France was a wide term, including more
than the region about the St. Lawrence. French ships,
engaged in fishing and in the fur-trade, had gone to
Acadia, noxv Nova Scotia, and it xvas to this region that
the French now turned. De Monts himself went out,
eager to found a real New France, which should be a
copy of the old. Champlain went xvith an order from
the king to make charts and maps of the region. The
summer of 1604 was joyous with fresh and vivid
labours. There were, as Champlain declares, fishing and
shooting beyond anything he had imagined. Some
of the French drove off traders defying the monopoly of
De Monts. Others had the fascinating task of. explor-
ing the inlets and rivers of the coast. They sailed up
the great Bay f Fundy, wi,t'h its rushing tide rising more
than fifty feet. _As autumn drew near, they decided on a
spot where they should spend the winter. At the broad
mouth of a river, which they called the Sainte Croix, they
found a small rocky island with a good landing-place.
The sea seemed full of fish. The island was well woode:l.
Down the river they hoped the savages would come to
trade. So here they built rough houses and settled down
well content.
CHAMPLAIN, THE FOUNDER OF CANADA 33
They did not knoxv the Canadian winter. In their
pleasant land of France xvinter was short. It had but
few degrees of frost, and the ground was rarely frozen
hard. But here, as Champlain says, the grim cold lasted
for six months. The French had dug no cellars, and
all their liquids but the sherry vine became solid. Drift-
ing masses of ice made communication with the shore
difficult. The French had no vater and had to use melted
snow. Soon most of the trees on the island were burned
for fuel, and there was bitter suffering from cold. Then
disease broke out--the dreaded scurvy. The cure,
found long ago by Cartier, had been forgotten, and day
after day death came to the sufferers, until, of a com-
pany of seventy-nine, thirty were dead and twenty des-
perately ill. Spring brought relief. At mid-June a ship
arrived from France. " God helped us better than we
hoped," says the devout Champlain. IIe went in a small
ship to continue his survey of the coast, and we have
still his notes. Southvard past Mount Desert, now
alive in summer with fashionable pleasure-seekers, past
lands dotted with great trees and park-like in appear-
ance, past the bay on vhich now stands Boston, the visit-
ors vent, looking for a good point for a colony. But
they found nothing better than one already in their
minds, and they turned back to a beautiful spot which
seemed to offer vhat they desired.
That attractive spot was on the Digby Basin of the
present time, on the east coast of the tay of Fundy.
De Monts and Champlain had visited it in the previous
year. V'hen they had sailed in through the narrov en-
trance, there before them lay the vast bay. Tvo thousand
vessels might anchor there securely, said Champlain, and
he called it the royal port--Port Royal. The French nov
decided to move to this place. The timber used at Sainte
Croix was loaded on two barques, which sailed across
the bay. Soon on the north shore there was a busy
H.C.3.
34
HISTORY OF CANADA
scene. Houses were built, and every one was cheerful.
Champlain says that even the little birds varbled so
pleasantly as to seem gla.d Chat the French had come
among them. The wirrter passed well enough, and Cham-
plain spent the following summer in charting what is
/
THE " ORDRE DE BON TEMPS" (ORDER OF GOOD
FOUNDED BY CHAMPL...IN
nov the coast of New England. Then the company faced
their third winter. They had learned how to fight the
cold. "\Ve spent the winter very agreeably," says
Champlain. There was an abundance of game, and man
is naturally a hunter. Champlain aroused the spirit of
rivalry by founding the " Ordre de Bon Temps." Each
CHAMPLAIN, THE FOUNDER OF CANADA 35
member must take his turn in going out to hunt for
supplies, and each one was jealous to surpass the record
of the others.
Then suddenly the blow fell. The colony had iu-
volved great outlay, to be met only by profits from the
monopoly of trade, t3ut the rival traders in France had
continued clamorous. They were rich, for the trade was
profitable, and they had bought the iufluence of a great
personage at court. In the ,spring of 1607 these rivals
were successful. Suddenly the monopoly of De Morns
was cancelled by the fickle Henry I\ T, and the colony
was ruined. The colonists drifted back to France, and
Champlain offered a bitter prayer that God would pardon
the dead and chasten the liviug who had a share in this
cruel injustice. Port Royal was for a time desolate.
Some French, however, lingered on the spot, and never
since has it been wholly deserted by Europeans. ]But
never did De Monts or Champlain return to .Acadia.
Another leader, Poutrincourt, was left to assert his
rights as feudal lord at Port Royal.
2. The Founding of Quebec.--Again the cetre of
interest shifts to the St. Lavrence, for five years
neglected. Since Henry IV had cruelly abandoned De
Monts, that leader henceforth gave him no peace and
urgently demanded the renewal of his rights. In the
end the king restored the monopoly, but for one year
only. De Monts had come to trust Champlain. In 1608
two ships were fitted out for Canada. Pontgrav, a
trader, was placed in command of one. He was to
make the profits to support the colony which Champlain,
who sailed in the other ship with a small company, vas
to found. For Canada, now, a real beginning had come.
Hitherto Champlain had been a subordinate. Now he
was to command. His mind was full of eager hopes of
seeing the wonders of the interior; of finding a nexv
route to China; of reaching a great northern sea, much
38 HISTORY OF CANADA
delusion that America xvas the outer edge of distant
India. The politics of savage Canada, like those of the
stricken xvorld to-day, centred in the problems of xvar.
With ruthless ferocity the natives attacked one another.
The news of what was happening at uehec had spread
far, and Iudians came for hundreds of miles to gaze m
wonder at the new buildings. Champlain was eager to
explore the interior, but the Indians would not let him
HAMPLAIN'S EXPLOR.kTIONS
AS an aid in tracing the touts, modern names have been introduced
go there except on their ovn terms. He sat loug in
council with them, and they insisted that, if he went up
the river, he must aid the 1 Iuron Indians and their allies
in their war on the Iroquois, who dwelt in the northern
part of what is now the State of New York. These
Iroquois were a powerful federation of five distinct
tribes. The savages who treated with Champlain were
astute. They led him to think that he could sail his
little vessel into the very heart of the Iroquois country.
CHAMPLAIN, THE FOUNDER OF CANADA 39
Since the savages had only bark canoes vith which
to attack his ship, he knew that on her deck he was safe.
Champlain agreed to the terms required, and, in the
summer of 1609, he sailed up the river, the natives
following or leading in their canoes. The vessel turned
southward into the river of the Iroquois, a tributary of
the St. Lawrence vhich ve knov as the Richelieu, and
soon came to impassable rapids. The Indians had lied;
Champlain could not sail to the Iroquois country.
He was troubled, but it vas not in him to turn back.
Those who wished to return vere, he said, free to do so,
and only tvo Frenchmen remained vith him. The three
white men xvere alone with a bronzed horde eager for
blood. They went on, reached the lake which now xve
know as Lake Chalnplain, stretching dimly southward
its long length for, as Champlain believed, three hundred
miles. Scouts went on in advance to give warning of
danger. As the Hurons neared the enemy country, they
lay by day concealed and silent and at night paddled
ceaselessly. The keen Frenchman xvas noting every-
thing. He admired the skilful woodcraft of his friends,
but thought them poor soldiers. They posted no guards
at night and xvere chiefly anxious to make prisoners in
order to torture and even to eat them. They were
victims of a blind.superstition, which caused panic if
some one chanced to have a disquieting dream.
On a July morning of 1609 came the first battle in
which the French took part in Canada. In the night
the rival forces had come into touch on the west shore
of the lake. Until daybreak Champlain's friends danced
and sang and howled boasts and insults to their foe.
The Iroquois, two hundred strong, carrying wooden
shields and with three plumed chiefs at their head. c/me
forxvard in good order. When Champlain's friends
advanced close to the enemy, the three Frenchmen, who
had donned the glittering light armour of the time, were
40 HISTORY OF CANADA
pushed to the front. _At a distance of thirty paces
Champlain raised his musket. One of the lroquois
chiefs fell. The second Frenchman fired, and another
chief fell. Then with a roar of delight Champlaiu's
allies rushed forward. The Iroquois fled in panic, and
a horrid massacre followed. After this success the
victors turned quickly homeward. That night in the
camp Champlain saw with his own eyes what savage war
meant. A prisoner was tortured to death with every
device of brutality, and then the body was hacked to
pieces. The victors offered Champlain the two arms of
a dead Indian to take back as a gift to Henry IV.
France w'as now the ally of the Canadian savages. In
this they exulted. ]ut the same fact stirred in the
Iroquois a relentless passion for revenge against the
French who had aided their foes. In the long years to
come the story of this revene was to be written in the
blood of Frenchmen.
The scene changes rapidly, and Champlain is back
in France with his leader, De Monts, in close attendace
upon Henry IV. The king was uow a grizzled man
of nearly sixty--witty, cordial, charmiug always. He
heard Champlain's story and seemed pleased. ]3ut he
could not, or dared not, renew the monopoly, and now
trade with Canada was declared to be free. When
Champlain left the court, he could not know that he had
looked for the last time on the face of Henry IV. It
was not manv months before the dagger of the assassin
had ended that strange career. In 1610 Champlaiu
returned to Canada. Ie aided again in an attack on the
Iroquois, this time on the banks of the St. Lawrence,
and vas wounded by an arrow. Again was there a
massacre of prisouers. When the fight was over, the
French traders, now free to come and go as they liked,
stripped the Iroquois dead of their furs, amid the jeers
of the savages, who scorned such pillage. One triumph
Champlain achieved. He sent back.- one of his followers
42 HISTORY OF CANADA
water with his feet bruised by sharp stones. At the
portages he carried on his own back a heavy load. and
he xvas tortured by the mosquitoes. He passed the
spot where now stands Ottawa, the capital of Canada,
and into the boiling waters of the Chaudire Falls the
Indians threw offerings of tobacco to the spirit of the
cataract. They crossed Lake Nipissing and paddled
CHAMPLAIN' FIRST IGHT OF GEORGIAN BAY
down its outlet to Lake I luron. A few days earlier a
Rccollct priest, Lc Caron, had reached its shores. .As
far as we know. hc and Champlain were the first Euro-
peans to see one of the Great Lakes. The vast sea
looked like the ocean, but the vatcr was fresh. On what
wc knoxv as the Georgian Bay, Champlain found popu-
lous Indian villages. He spent the xvinter among the
savages, bearing the fleas, the smoke, and the stench
of t'he wigwams, and with the savage manners of the
Indians, for the sake of learning, ever learning, to solve
44 HISTORY OF CANADA
it large powers. There were to be one hundred share-
holders, and the head office must be in Paris, where
Richelieu could watch it. Thus was formed in 1627 the
Company of New France, called also the Company of
One Hundred Associates, or partners. It was made
owner of the whole valley of the St. Lawrence, and it
was pledged to bring out in each year at least three hun-
dred colonists, who must be all Frenchmen and Roman
Catholics. Hitherto France had had such slight pover
on the sea that the current nickname for her ships of
war was the " sardines of the ocean "---the minnows
among whales. Now, declared Richelieu, France must
become powerful on the sea and the leader of Europe.
$. The English at Ouebec.--England, the neighbour
and enemy of France in the old xvorld, xvas now
in the new world, also, her neighbour and enemy.
In the year before the founding of Quebec, she had
founded the colony of Virginia. One day in 1613, the
renmant of the French who lingered at Port Royal in
Acadia, after De 3lonts had failed there, were startled
by the arrival of an English force from Virginia, which
destroyed nearly all that vas left of the settlement. In
1620, a company, chiefly of English peasant people,
landed from the ship Mayflowcr on a hard coast south
of Canada, and called the colony Plymouth, since Ply-
mouth was the port in England from which they had
sailed. Thus xvas founded New England. During the
following vin.ter half of these poor people died of priva-
tion ad disease. ]3ut since they had no other home, they
made the new land the centre of all their hopes and
efforts, and the colony which they founded grexv at last
into a great state. I1a 1621, just after New England
was founded, James I gave a charter for the founding
of Nova Scotia or New Scotland. Iu this Sir \Villiam
Alexander. a scholar and a poet. vas to be leader, and
each of the chief holders of land was to have the rank
46 HISTORY OF C.ANADA
helpless. Accordingly, when the English promised the
honours of war to the little garrison and to carry them
to France, Champlain surrendered, and soon again
crossed the sea, this time a captive. That day the
English flag vas raised over Quebec. There, one hun-
dred and thirty years later, it was again raised; and
there it floats still.
Quebec had fallen, and New France seemed doomed.
ut far across the sea England and France had already
agreed upon peace. Less than five years had passed
when, on a May day in 1633, Champlain returned to
Quebec. There was joy among the few French already
there, joy among the savages, who had found the English
stern and cold, joy on all sides because of the loved
leader's return. ]3ut time had left its mark upon him.
I-te resumed his work, but for aim there were to be no
more rough journeyings. Not long after, on Christma
Day, 1635, sorrow reigned at Quebec, for Champlain vas
dead. Somewhere, it is said, under the pavement of the
]asilica at Quebec his ashes lie, and on one of its pillars
the visitor of to-day is reminded that the first, perhaps
the greatest, hero of New France was here laid to rest.
48 ' HISTORY OF CANADA
priests had begun their long labours for the Indians. It
was not their first experience in vhat is now Canada.
They had toiled in the little struggling colony at Port
Royal. Now they were planning work for 'half a con-
tinent.
Their foander, Ignatius Lyla, had been a soldier;
and the one great principle of the Order was that the
members should obey, as the soldier obeys, vithout
question. Its head, like the head of the modern
Salvatiou Army, took the military title of General, and
the members had a long training in obedience. \Vheu
the command should be given, they were prepared to go
to any part of the world. The age vas one of fierce
religious strife. Ou some of the ships sailing to Canada
in Champlain's time there had been Protestant crevs,
and these sang lustily in the very harbour of Quebec
JESUIT MISSIONS AND THE IROQUOIS 49
their Protestant hymns, in defiance of their Roman
Catholic rivals. In France the struggle betxveen the
Roman Catholics and the Protestant Huguenots had been
long, but the Catholics had triumphed. In winning this
victory the Jesuit Society had played a great part. Its
missionaries were full of fiery zeal and were resolved
to win the world for their faith. When Champlain died,
they were in control at Quebec, with a savage continent
as their missiou field. "
The field was all their own, for no Protestant was
allowed to settle in Canada; during a hundred and fifty
years Nev France was wholly Roman Catholic. When
Champlain's successor, the devout Montmagny, a knight
of lIalta, arrived at Quebec, one of his first acts was to
show his missionary zeal by standing as ge, dfather to an
Indian convert of the Jesuits. The colony had become
iu reality a mssion. In religious circles iu France it
excited eager interest. The yearly reports of the
Jesuits, the Rclatlons, which are still preserved and fill
many volumes, were printed and scattered widely. Men
of noble birth volunteered for the hard and perilous
vork of the Canadian wilderness. Refined and gentle
women sailed for Canada. The voyage itself vas a great
adventure, lasting sometimes for three or four months.
Among the most conspicuous buildings in Quebec to-day
are the Convent of the Ursulines, a school for girls,
and the H6tel Dieu, a hospi.tal. Both were founded in
eager religious zeal within five years of the death o
Champlain, and since then their activities have never
ceased. From the first the nuns lived busy lives. Scores
of Indian children, dirty, neglected, and half-starved,
were placed in cheir care. When the dread disease of
smallpox spread among the Indians, many dragged them-
selves to Quebec. From contact with their dirt and
squalor the nuns did not shrink, and they spent sleepless
nights among the sick and the dying. To the helpless
H.C.4.
52 HISTORY OF CANADA
led them to agree to peace. ]ut the leaders could not
control the young warriors. It was a point of honour
in savage life to avenge in blood the slaying of a relative,
and the fierce feud was alvays breaking out, no matter
what agreement leaders might make. Two things might
stop the wars of the savages. One was the destruction
by one side of all its foes, so that there should no longer
be an enemy to fight. The other was to brin. to the
Indians the spirit of peace inspired by the Christian
religion, and to end the thirst for blood. The first tragic
method was that of the Iroquois. The Jesuits tried the
second. They died as martyrs in the effort to convert
the sava,es, and they failed: but they xvrote a chapter of
agonizing interest in the historv of Canada.
The Jesuits hoped to keep the tribes isolated in their
villages and there to teach them to be good Roman Cath-
olics. To the Jesuits the trader was a menace. He
would carry brandy to the savages; he would cheat them;
he would bring to them, not the best, but the worst, things
of Europe--its vices and its diseases. \Vhat the Jesuits
desired was to keep the Indians remote from the traders
and under their own guidance, and to lead them to give
up their brutal savagery, their lust for war, their torture
of their enemies, their cannibalism. The influence of
the Jesuit Society was, therefore, exerted to give to the
priests aaad their helpers, and to these alone, free access
to the Indial villages. No doubt the Indians needed the
goods of Europe--axes, muskets, and blankets. ]3ut, as
the Jesuits thought, it was enough that the Indians
should go down once a year to 5Iontreal or Quebec,
taking their furs to barter with the traders: there was
no need for the traders to go farther inland. To bring
colonists to Canada, to clear the forest, and to build up
towns and villages on the European model, was no part
of Jesuit policy. They were thinking of saving the souls
of the darkened natives, of 'helping them to be docile
JESUIT MISSIONS AND THE IROQUOIS 53
sons of the church. There xvas urgency, for the Jesuits
believed that vivid torment in eternal flame axvaited every
one who died a pagan. To baptize the savages was the
first step in making them Christians. Zealous priests
would sometimes secretly put even a drop of vater on
....... ..... ,1 ,
_ ..,
A MOHAWK INDIAN FAMILY GATHERED IN FRO'T OF THEIR
ELM-BARK DGE
From a group at tbc Royal Ontario Iuscum
the head of a child or of a sick person and murmur the
formula of baptism. The baptized were then members
of the church and sharers in its spiritual privileges.
3. The Huron Mission.--It was from the Hurons,
allies of the French, that fhe Jesuits hoped most. Some
of the Indians, and especially those nearest Quebec, lived
only by hunting and had no villages or cultivated fields;
but the Hurons had settled homes and practised a
primitive agriculture. On the banks of a small stream,
flowing into what is now Matchedash Bay, a minor inlet
of the great Georgian Ba', the Jesuits founded the
mission of Sainte Marie. or safety, a wall, partly of
masons, surrounded the inclosure, and at each corner
JESUIT MISSIONS AND THE IROQUOIS 55
set the bark on fire, and went off vith the shrieks of the
tortured in their ears. For the txvo Jesuit priests they
reserved special cruelty. During a xvhole afternoou and
through the long night the torture continued. Br6beuf
vas a man of noble birth.
He had a poxverful frame
and an indomitable spirit,
but Lalemant had been
sickly from childhood.
The torture vas unspeak- _
ably savage. A neck-
lace of red-hot hatchets -"
was hung" round Br6beuf's -
neck. Boiling xvater, iu
mockery of baptism, was
poured over the martyrs, ""
and they died in agony.
From this axvful blov the
Hurons did not recover.
Some of them fled to the Jr^N DE 13RBEUF
far west, others vent eastvard with the French. The
visitor to Quebec to-day will fiud in the neighbour-
ing village of Lorette the well-marked features
of the Canadian Indiau. To this point the French
guided most of the remaining Hurons, and still, nearly
three centuries later, their descendants live at Lorette,
taught, as of old, by the church which vent to them iu
their days o[ savagery. Even to the Iroquois ill their
own villag"es the Jesuits dared to go, and some o[ them
perished by brutal torture.
4. The Failure of the Company of New France.-
During this period o-f trial Canada did not prosper
in trade and industry. The Company of New France
failed to carry out its obligations. It was pledged to
bring to Canada and to establish on the land some four
thousand colonists during the first fifteeu years of its
JESUIT MISSIONS AND THE IROQUOIS 59
xvere obliged to turn back without striking an effective
blow. Sixty men perished on the return march. It
looked like a defeat. But the Iroquois had found that
the arm of France was long enough to reach far, and
vere more ready to talk of peace.
To make peace assured was not, however, easy. At
the moment when it might seem near, some reckless
savages would commit outrages and murder. Accord-
ingly, the French decided to end the danger. In the
autumn following the winter failure, there was a warlike
pageant on Lake Champlain and Lake George such as
those lakes had never before seen. Three hundred boats
dotted their surface. Half a century earlier Champlain
had here startled the savages by the deadly effect of fire-
arms. Now more than a thousand men had come to
end the Iroquois threats, which had never ceased since
Champlain's encounter. It xvas a difficult march. There
were deep raines. The forest paths were rough, the
rivers were unbridged, food vas scarce, and danger
lurked in the enticing shade. The Marquis de Tracy,
elderly, stout, and in failing health, was with the force,
and sometimes had to be carried. It was a new ex-
perience for the gilded youth of France to have their
shoulders blistered from carrying packs on their backs.
But the autumn air was exhilarating, and at no time is
the forest more beautiful. Above all, the expedition
succeeded. The French reached the 3lohavk villages
and were surprised at what they found. One village
was surrounded by stout palisades twenty feet high.
There vere excellent wooden houses and great stores of
Indian corn, reaped from well-cultivated fields. But the
confing of the French host had created a panic, and the
defenders had fled. The French destroyed the Mohawk
villages and burned even the crops in the fields. One
thing more they did. Vqth solemn formality they took
60
HISTORY OF CANADA
possession of the country of the Mohawks in the name
of the King of France. Iad that claim been made good,
French xvould now be the language of a great part of
the State of New York.
IkDELEI DE ERCHPF-
lrom the statue by Philippe Hbert
The long strife xvith the
Iroquois lies in the back-
ground of the vhole history
of France's effort in Canada.
At the beginning, in 1609,
the Iroquois fought the
French; and at the end, a
century and a half later, in
1760, Iroquois allies were
with the British army which
finally struck doxvn the power
o[ lrance in Canada. In
the cottages of French-Cana-
dians to this day are retold
heroic incidents of the long
struggle. In 1660 Montreal
was in deadly peril. Seven
hundred Iroquois warriors
had spent the winter on the.
Ottawa, which flows into
the St. Lawrence, and vere
planning a descent on the
little frontier town. Adam
Daulac, or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, and sixteen
other volunteers, showed the spirit of the Jesuit mission-
aries who braved martyrdom. They feared they vould
perish, and, in the presence of the awe-struck inhabi-
tants, they took the sacrament and devoted themselves
to the task of checking the Iroquois. At the foot of
the Long Sault Rapids on the Ottawa, they made their
stand behind a palisade, and were joined by some forty
Huron Indians. The Iroquois came, at first two hun-
JESUIT MISSIONS AND THE IROQUOIS 61
dred, and for three or four days the dauntless band
held them at bay. Then five hundred more Iroquois
arrived. The French fought on for more than a week,
starved and thirsty, until at last they xvere overxvhelmed
by mere numbers and perished to a man. The explorer,
Radisson, passing the spot later in the year, found the
charred remnants of these heroes. They had saved
Montreal, for the Iroquois retired.
The story of Madeleine de Verchbres is less tragic.
About txventy miles beloxv Montreal stood the fort and
blockhouse of Verchbres. In late October, 1692, the
seignior was absent, and his daughter Madeleine, a girl
of fourteen, was the oldest member of the family at
home. Suddenly forty or fifty Iroquois appeared. The
only txvo soldiers in the fort hid in terror. Somehoxv
Madeleine closed and barred the gate of the fort, and
then for a xveek she held out. She kept the fexv people
with her busy in firing off guns and shoutin to one
another, as if they xvere a large company, and at last
rescue came, and the savages were baffled.
LAVAL AND FRONTENAC 63
and in due time was ordained a priest. He adopted a
rigorous mode of life in imitation of his model, St.
Francis. Even when he had become a bishop, he still
wore a coarse hair shirt next his skin, and, like the saint
of an earlier age, suffered torture from the irritation.
He slept on a hard bed, sometimes haunted by vermin,
ld he ate sparingly of the mealest food. His clothing
was worn ad shabby; and, poor as it xvas, he received
it at Quebec, like a beggar, as a gift from the seminary
for priests which he himself had founded. He had an
iron constitution, and for forty years during summer
and winter rose at two in the morning. His portrait
reveals in every feature the ruling prelate. If his life
of self-denial was based on the example of St. Francis,
his spirit of mastery was that of Ignatius L6y61a, the
founder of the Society of Jesus.
It was in 1658 that Laval arrived at Cuebec, after a
terrible voyage which occupied four months, lie was
already a bishop in rank, but not yet had he bee given
the see of Quebec. The rival town of Montreal resented
the idea of a bishop at Cuebec. To-day the two dioceses
are quite independent of each other. Laval showed at
once the resolve to briag all New France under his
authority. The day came when New Orleans, at the
mouth of the Mississippi River, was subject to the
Bishop of Cuebec. Always the Jesuits were zealous
supporters of the ]3ishop. At Montreal was entrenched
the rival Order of St. Sulpice. It had secured the grant
of the whole island, and its priests did not always give a
docile obedience to the policy dictated from .Quebec. .t
first Laval and the Governor of New France worked in
harmony. ]3ut in time friction arose. The colony was
ruled by the Governor, the Intendant, and the Bishop.
The Governor was the official head of the colony and
was usually a noble, who kept up the ceremony due to the
representative of the king. Not he, however, but the
66
HISTORY OF CANADA
one twenty-sixth, and it was levied on grain only. Crops
such as beets, potatoes, and cabbages did not pay it. To
this day it is levied, but it has never provided a very
large income for the clergy. At first the tithe was paid
into a central fund controlled by the Bishop, but later
the Governor, Frontenac, declared that it should be paid
directly to the priest in charge of a parish, and this was
done as parishes were created.
2. Feudalism in Canada.--The granting of land in
Canada, like the church system,, came from France. In
older days in Europe, when a successful conqueror was
able to secure a great tract of land, he granted holdings
to his chief folloxvers. He xvould protect them in
the possession of their land if they xvould swear to come
to his help in time of need. 'l;he system was called
feudalism. It was on feudal terms--seigniorial tenurew
that land was granted in Canada. There was a pictur-
esque ceremony at uebec whenever a lord, or, to use a
word from the French. a seignior, acquired a grant. The
seignior with his head bare and his sword and spurs re-
moved, knelt before the governor, swore homage to the
king, and p!edged himself to obey him and to perform
the service called for by the terms of his holding. To mili-
tary officers, to leading civilians, even to religious orders,
larger grants of land were made. In time there were
some three hundred seigniors in Canada, and they were
expected to be active in securing settlers, in clearing the
forests, and in efforts for the well-being of the country.
The system was not ill-suited to a new country.
Little of the pomp of lordship was there, in truth, about
the seignior. He was usually poor, and, at first at any
rate, he lived as simply as those to whom he made grants
of his lands. His holding was extensive. There were
seigniors xvith as many as twenty miles of frontage on
the St. Lawrence River. The smaller seigniories had
hardly less than six or eight miles of river frontage. At
first dense forest covered these immense tracts. To the
LAVAL AND FRONTENAC 67
king the seignior paid no money for his grant. He sxvore
only to do his duty faithfully. If his holding should be
sold to some one else, the king was to receive one fifth of
the selling price--a right xvhich was in f.act usually
waived. The actual settlers received lands from the
seignior in holdings of from fifty to a hundred acres.
Canadian feudalism certainly favoured the man xvithout
capital. The settlers paid doxvn no money for their land.
A ,EGORAL IhLL AT VERCHRES ON THE
ST. LAWRENCE RIVER
Usually for the first five years, until they had built their
houses, they had no annual dues to pay. The seigior
was generally regarded by the settlers as their social
superior. He had usually the authority of a magistrate
and could try them in his court. Some seigniors had
even nominal power to impose the death penalty, but in
Canada the seignior never exercised this power. The
settler in French Canada, moreover, xvas not willing to
7O
DEPT. 0
HISTORICAL CbLLI:.CIION
HISTORY OF CANADA
Every year there arrived at Quebec large quantities
of xvine and brandy. For what purpose? Laval pic-
tured the tragic scenes in an Indian village when brandy
was to be had. The answer of Talon was that without
brandy French trade xvith
the Indians xvould languish.
The English and the Dutch
traders sold brandy, and the
savages had an eager desire
for it and would trade only
xvith those who supplied it.
If the Iiadians traded xvith
heretics, they would have the
added danger of religious
error. The French must
trade in the fiery liquid if
Canada xvas to prosper. The
reasoning was, of course,
challenged. The savages," it
was said, knew their weak-
hess and that brandy was
their destruction, and xvould
prefer to trade with those
who did not bring a deadly temptation. Both sides
agreed that the traders, if left free, would ruin the
savages. Accordingly, any Frenchman remaining in the
woods for even twenty-four hours without a license from
the government was to suffer the penalty of death. But
this forest life xvas alluring. Young men from France
preferred, to the humdrum of garrison life, or a primi-
tive farm, the adventures of the fur-trader. It was a
free life; the restraints of civilized society xvould be
throvn off; there xvas sport, for game was abundant;
and fortune was to be found in the profits of trading.
These " runners of the voods "--coureurs de bois--
LAVAL AND FRONTENAC 71
became a problem to the rulers of New France. They
were often bold. reckless men. not easily restrained,
and most of them, of course, traded freely in brandy.
3. The Rule of Count Frontenac.--The world of
fashion at the Court of
Louis XIV shoxved keen
interest when, in 1672,
it vas announced that
Louis de Buade, Comte
de Frontenac, was about
to go out to Canada as
Governor. He was a
famous soldier, who had
been a general at the
early age of twenty-
seven. On many a bat-
tle-field in Europe had
he fought, and, when a
general specially able
had been needed to war
on the Turk, Turenne,
the greatest soldier of
his time, had selected
Frontenac for the task,
and Frontenac had dis-
charged it with credit.
He was married to a
lady of fashion, and the
world had it that the
union was not happy.
Frontenac had always
lived in the brilliant
circle of the Court. He
had fine manners and
polished wit, but he had
also a hot and jealous
FRONTENAC
From the statue by Philippe YI6hert,
R.C.A., at Ouebee
LAVAL AND FRONTENAC 73
would find no curb on his authority. When he saw the
superb position )f Quebec on a high rock overlooking
the mighty flood of the St. Lawrence, his mental note
was that the place was suited to be the capital of a great
empire. A great empire--of that Frontenac was alxvays
thinking, with himself the high and mighty ruler on
behalf of the king. Yet, while bearing himself with
great dignity, ,he met and talked, with all classes. One of
his first acts was to summon the leading people of the
colony to meet him in what he called the States-General.
In France tl-ie clerg-y, the nobles, and the Third Estate,
consisting of the professional and trading classes, made
up the three Estates, and their representatives were
occasionally called together in the States-General to give
advice to the king. It was not easy to find an order of
nobility in Canada, but Frontenac summoned the chief
holders of land. He welcomed the assembly with
stately pomp, and in a fatherly address exhorted the
members to be good Christians and to serve the king
faithfully. Talon, the retiring Intendant, frowned on
the meeting and refused to attend. Soon, too, word
came back from France that the king desired no such
semblance of a parliament, but would imself be sole
master.
Frontenac was keen to see the colony for himself.
Behold him then in the summer of 1673 setting out on a
great journey. To crouch motiouless in a canoe of birch-
bark was not, as he said, quite a regal posture in travel,
but he adopted it and came in time to like it. It was
nearly two hundred miles to Montreal, and here he was
received with military parade. But he intended to go
much farther. ]3eyond 5Iontreal was still only xvilder-
hess, but the region had vast promise. Since Tracy's
time there had been peace with the Iroquois, and now
Frontenac was resolved to build a fort at the gateway of
the Iroquois country. The site was at the head of the
St. Lawrence, .here the city of Kingston now stands.
LAVAL AND F1RONTENAC 75
one taking the deadly liquor to the Indians. Both sides
appealed to the king. The question of the brandy was
solemnly debated in France, and at last the king decided
that it was a matter for the state, not the church, to
settle in Canada; and Frontenac had really won.
Frontenac's temper was such that he must rule. The
French governors of Acadia and Newfoundland had
been ordered to report to him, but he fouud that Perrot,
Governor of Montreal, disputed his authority. One of
the great privileges to be secured iu Canada was a
license to trade in the interior. Perrot had granted such
licenses and dened Frontenac's right to check him. T, he
ansxver of Frontenac xvas to summon Perrot to Quebec
and to keep*him in prison for nearly a year. The penalty
of trading with the Indians without a proper license was
death, and Frontenac hanged, in full sight of Perrot's
prison xvindow, a coureur de bois who had dared to defy
the Governor' authority. In the Sovereign Council at
Quebec, which Louis XIV now ordered to be called the
Superior Council, since none bnt he was sovereign, sat
the Governor, the Bishop, ad the Intendant, with seven
other persons of little authority. According to French
usage the Intendant had been ordered 'by the king to pre-
side, but when Duchesneau claimed this right, Frontenac
burst out in furious protest. The Bishop stood with the
Intendant. The quarrel spread through the little capital,
and rival partisans even feught in the streets. Frontenac
declared that spies invaded his own house. Duchesneau
barricaded his doors against possible attack. He charged
Frontenac with a corrupt share in the fur-trade; Fron-
tenac ansvered with a similar charge; and both probably
were right. The odd thing is that the king alloxved the
quarrel to go on for five years without saying the
decisive word to settle it. Then, at last, in 1682, he
took strong action. He dismissed both Governor and In-
tendant and recalled them to France.
76 HISTORY OF CANADA
Frontenac, recalled in disgrace, seemed to be a ruined
man, but this, as we shall see, vas not the case; his day
came again. He had been engaged in the age-long
quarrel between church and state. Few will deny that
Laval was right in trying to save the natives by checking
the trade in brandy. But Frontenac had gained the
point that it vas the state which should have control in
the matter. He had also carried out a policy, hateful to
the. missionaries, of creating forts and trading-posts in
the interior, and Fort Frontenac vas the monument of
his victory. He had so awed the Iroquois that peace
endured while he was in Canada. VVhen he vas recalled
Canada had about ten thousand inhabitants. The num-
ber is small, but from them are descended most of the
three million French-Canadians dvelling to-day in the
United States and Canada. Frontenac had inspired a
nev zeal for discovery. La Salle, the great explorer, a
remarkable man, of vhom we shall hear presently, was
Frontenac's ardent friend and took command at Fort
Frontenac. He, like Frontenac, dreamed dreams of
France's ,nighty empire, to be based on the work of the
hardy discoverers to whom we noxv turn.
CHAPTER VII
THE EXPLORERS
I. The Discoveries of Radisson and the Founding
of the Hudson's Bay Company.--France xvas fortunate
in holding the gateway of the St. Lawrence. That
mighty river drains nearly half a continent. It springs
from remote sources in the far West, and its lure to
explorers is the romance of the early history of Canada.
Eager minds were asking about the regions which lay
beyond the Great Lakes. To the north and to the west
of these vast bodies of fresh water, fed by many rivers,
stretched great open plains and lands covered with forest.
The region offered a fascinating problem. Was this
western land the outer edge of Asia, and, if one advanced
into it, might he find the peopled cities, the rich temples
described by Marco Polo, and, instead of brutal savages,
the staid pomp of life kept up by mandarins in China?
No man seemed to know. Champlain had heard of a
sea to the north and had spent a toilsome summer trying
in vain to find it. Later, in 1634, when he was near his
end and could no longer go himself, he sent Jean Nicolet,
who had lived among the savages for many years, to
find out more about the West. Nicolet reached the river
which flows from Lake Superior into Lake Huron, at
Sault Ste. Marie, where many Indians came to fish
and might be induced to trade. He passed through a
narrow strait into Lake Michigan and found another
fishing ground at Michilimackinac. He wandered about
in what is now the State of Wisconsin. He heard of a
mighty river sweeping southward in a great flood. This
river, the French thought, might carry them to the
Pacific Ocean. The prospect was alluring, the desire to
know more was keen. But exploring was costly. The
77
THE EXPLORERS 79
as of men. The slow agony of Radisson had begun, when
again he was saved by the great chief. For safety he now
smeared his face with paint and li-ed and acted like one
of the Iroquois. The life had its fascination, but when, as
an Indian brave, he fiad visited the Dutch at Fort Orange
(now Albany), he had felt again the desire for civilized
life. He was young and strong, and one morning early he
set out to run from the Iroquois village the long distance
to Albany. All day and all night he ran, and there vas
no one swift enough to follow. On the late afternoon
of the next day the slim, exhausted youth was safe with
the Dutch. \Vithin a few months he was back in France.
His family was, however, in Canada. He had felt,
moreover, the charm of the Canadian forest. Soon he
was again at Three Rivers. From there he made trip
after trip to the interior. For a time he was once more a
captive of the Iroquois. But the alluring West was call-
ing him. No European knew as yet what lay beyond
the Great Lakes. The spring of the year 1659 saw
Radisson and his brother-in law, Groseilliers, crossing the
country west of Lake Michigan. They reached at last
the object of their desires--a great, swift river vhich
reminded them of the St. Lawrence. They knew not
whence it came or into what sea it flowed. For years
still the French believed that it flowed into the Pacific
Ocean. No doubt it was the Mississippi River. France
had reached out to another great water highway, and
Radisson is the first to tell us of the mighty stream which
rolls its turbid flood to the Gulf of Mexico. He crossed
the river, and, brave man that he was, moved freely
among the savage and fickle tribes. He called the
co.untry pleasant, beautiful, fruitful. \Vhy, he asked,
should the people of Europe live in crowded misery
and poverty when here such riches were offered to them ?
80 HISTORY OF CANADA
He is the first to speak of the wonders of the Great
North-West, of the boundless prairie land, xvhich to-day
millions have made fruitful by their labour.
Radisson's eager desire was to find the sea at the
north--the sea, as we know, where Hudson had per-
ished. He was back at Quebec in 1661. By this time
the governors were chary about giving licenses to
coureurs de bois to go to the interior. Most governors
insisted on a large share of the profits of trade. Accord-
ingly, when Radisson and Groseilliers asked for a license
to trade with the Indians, they were refused, except on
terms which they scornfully rejected and which would
have robbed their trading of profit. They defied the law
and went to Lake Superior without a license.
The life was exciting. There was fighting with
Iroquois, who tried to ambush them. By November
they had reached the west end of Lake Superior. The
txvo men, alone and half starved, built a tiny fort in that
remote land, where never before had a white man been
seen. They had to watch closely. The region was popu-
lous with savage tribes, and the nexvs spread xvidely of
the arrival of these strange beings, \\'hen Radisson
went out to hunt, Groseilliers, the older man, stayed to
guard the cabin. In all their wanderings they had man-
aged to keep their stores--hoxv, it is hard to say. They
had goods for trade, Above all, they had firearms,
which aroused wonder and led an old Cree Indian to
declare, in a great council, that they were terrible men
who could make the earth quake. It was as easy, how-
ever, to consider them devils as gods, and to try to kill
them. The savages coveted the kettles and other things.
from Europe. For the long months of winter the two
white men lived among Cree and Sioux Indians. We
have a grim light on the wandering life of the savages,
when we learn that as food became scarce, many Indians
starved to death. But these brave Frenchmen kept thei
THE EXPLORERS 83
way; but in June, 1671, he was the central figure m an
imposing ceremony at Sault Ste. Marie. A huge cross
had been prepared, and now it was planted in the ground
with solemn ceremony. Beside it were raised the arms
of France. A crowd of Indians stood about when, in a
loud voice, Saint-Lusson proclaimed that all that region,
including both what was discovered and vhat remained
to be discovered, belonged
to the king of France. A
priest addressed the gaping
Indians in a harangue in
which he dwelt upon the
greatness of Louis XIV.
He adjusted his words to
the taste of the savages. [ , ---
Louis XIV has no equal .
on earth; he possesses
cities and storehouses of ..
vast extent; great armies
serve him; he fights in
the midst of his xvarriors, -
and is covered with the
blood of his enemies, JACQUES IARQUE'YrE
which flows in streams at From a Portrait in the Chateau
his blows. Charles II de iRamezay. Montreal
claimed an empire by the scratching of a pen; Louis
XIV by this dramatic ceremony. It is the title given by
Charles II which holds good to this day.
Late in the autumn of 1672 there arrived at
Michilimackinac a hardy young man named Louis Joliet,
the son of a wagon-maker at Quebec. At the fort avait-
ing him vas a Jesuit priest of delicate form but of in-
domitable spirit, Jacques Marquette. B)r orders of the
Governor of Canada the two men vere to explore the
great river. In the spring of the next year, with all
eagerness, they started down the west shore of Lake
84 HISTORY OF CANADA
]lichigan, and a month later they had paddled down the
Wisconsin River and were sweeping southward on the
broad flood of the Mississippi. V'hither did it lead?
Da, after dav they drift vith flae current, hoping that
ULF
EXPLORATIONS O1 THE I1881881PPI I:{IVEIt
it would bring them to the waters of the Pacific. The
scene was fascinating. They saw feeding on the shore
deer and immense herds of buffalo. There were many
birds, and the summer warnYth was pleasant. For long
da.ys they saw no human being, but when at last they
THE EXPLORERS 85
came in view of an Indian village and ventured to land,
they heard nmch to disgust them. The people were
barbarous and declared that the regions farther on were
haunted by savage men and demons, who would kilt
strangers at sight. The peril from man, at least, xvas
real. But the explorers went on. One day they found
their canoes heaving in a swift current dotted with
floating trees. They were passing the mouth of the Mis-
souri. They passed the Ohio and the Arkansas. But
after a month they decided to turn back, fearing less the
savages than the Spaniards farther south. Of one thing
they were now persuaded--that the waters of the great
river reached, not the Pacific, but the Atlantic.
3. La Salle's Journeys to the Niississippi.--Such
xvas Canada's first exploring of the Mississippi. Mar-
quette, a saint in character, soon died. Joliet became
seignior of the great island of Anticosti in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence and stayed in the east. As yet no one had
followed the Mississippi to its mouth. It was a man
from Canada vho solved this great mystery. Ren
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, a member of a rich
family of Rouen, vas only twenty-three when, in 1666,
he reached Canada, drawn there by the fact that his
elder brother was a Sulpician priest at Montreal. The
Sulpicians, ovners of the island of Montreal, a great
part of which they retain to this day, saw character in
the remarkable young man and made him a large grant
of land. La Salle talked so much about reaching the far
East by going up the St. Lavrence that his seigniory
was called in derision China--Lachine--a name still re-
tained. Not for La Salle was the monotony of a settler's
life. He was eager and ambitious, and soon he sold his
.seigniory to work at the fascinating task of discovery.
In 1669 ve find him at the mouth of the river Niagara.
He heard the roar of the great cataract, but did not
pause to see it. Instead, he pressed on to the south-west,
THE EXPLORERS 87
expense, and he was to have a monopoly of the trade in
buffa.lo 'hides. Late in 1678 La Salle, in a small vessel,
sailed away from Fort Frontenac for the West, his mind
filled xvith plans to create a great empire for France.
His ship was wrecked near Niagara. In any case he
could not have taken her farther, for the mighty cataract
barred the way. A priest
xvith La Salle describes the
torrent, foaming over a
precipice, more, as he de-
clares, than six hundred
feet high. La Salle decided
to build a new vessel above
the cataract, and he spent
the winter eagerly occupied
in this task. The Griffin,
of some forty-five tons
burden, xvas launched in
the spring, and La Salle
sailed in her the length of
Lake Erie, and on from
there to Lake Huron and
to Lake Michigan. Here
in the tutumn he loaded the
ship with furs and sent her
Caw D
After an enravin in the Libra., Rouen,
reproduced b Gtaver in his 'Lifc '
back to sell the precious cargo at Montreal. .\ disaster
folloxved. Never again xvas the ship heard of.
Soon La Salle, anxious about the fate of the ship
and also about .his own fortunes, left his party behind in
what is now Illinois, and set out to walk in the dead of
xvinter a thousand miles to Montreal. in order to get
needed supplies. The courage of the man is seen in this
killing work. Discontented men tried to murder him;
rivals, jealous of his trading privileges, tried to ruin
him: his country gave him no effective support. None
the less, in 1680. he went again to the \Vest, this time
88 HISTORY OF CANADA
ly a route leading from vhat is nov Toronto to Lake
Simcoe and Lake IIuron, and, late in that year, he
reached, by way of the Illinois, the great flood of the
Mississippi. No farther then did he go, but early in
the spring of 1682 'he vas afloat ou the Mississippi, and
he paddled along its length to its mouth. On a low,
m,arshy shore, near the salt water )f the Gulf of Mexico,
La Salle held a solemn ceremony. He proclaimed
Louis XIV sovereign of the vast region extending from
the mouth of the ()hio to that )t the Mississippi. The
land was to be knowu as Louisiana, in honour of King
Louis. For five years still La Salle laboured to found
a colony. He had effected little when he xvas treacher-
ously murdered by one of his owa men. But France
soou made good her claim, and in Louisiana her tongue
is still spoken though her political authority is gone.
4. La V6rendr.ve in the Far West.--There still lay
an undiscovered country--the far western land stretch-
ing to the Pacific. That there were difficulties in the
path of explo.ratiou we realize, when we find a stretch
of three hundred years after Columbus before Euro-
peans vere able to cross lX,'orth ,merica from sea to sea.
From the lXIississippi the natural route was by way of
its tributary, the Missouri, which flows its long length
eastward from sources in the Rocky Mountains. But
savage tribes dwelt about the mouth of the Missouri,
and the French explorers xvere forced o svork farther
north. From Three Rivers had come the first known
explorer, Radisson, to see the Mississippi, and it was
the son of a governor of Three Rivers, the Sieur de la
V6rendr3"e, who first made known the far \Vest. Forty
yeaa's after the murder of La Salle, in 1687, xve find La
V6rendrye in the region north of Lake Superior. An
old Indian told him that he had himself paddled down
a river, rolling its tide westward, and at lst reach-
ing a great sea, on the shores of "hich dwelt many
THE EXPLORERS 89
people. To La \r6rendrye's eager mind, this sea could
be none other than the Pacific. His king gave him a
monopoly of trade in the region to be explored, but no
penny of money. To pursue his work of discovery, he
had to engage in the fur-trade and to induce merchants
in Montreal to furnish the needed capital. Rival leaders
disliked his monopoly and vhispered libels about him,
and it vas costly to keep up the large company which
he needed.
In 1731 La V6rendrye stck westvard from Lake
T PRATIONS OF LA VNDR
Ax His Soxs
Superior. Game.was abundant. It was easy to secure
furs, and it was necessary to build forts in which to
guard them. In 1732 La V6rendrye was on Rainy Lake
and there built a small fort. A stream flowed out of
the lake westward, and he floated down Rainy River to
the Lake of the Woods. Here he built a second fort, a
hundre ft square, with a apel an a watch-tower.
He cleared some land about the fort and planted wheat
the first wheat of which we hear in what was to prove a
great granary of the world. When winter came, some
00 HISTORY OF CANADA
of the party contilued on snow-shoes the task of ex-
ploration. They followed a river, the Winnipeg, flowing
westward, as they hoped, to a populous land on the sea.
Day after day, through the silent forest, over the creaking
ice and the deep snow, the party pressed. The way
seemed long. They thought they had gone more than
four hundred niles, when at last they stood on the shore
of a vast body of water, its shores piled with ice, its
aspect chill and forbidding. The water was fresh. It
was not the sea: it vas the shallov waters of Lake
Winnipeg which they saw.
Such is the beginning of the story of La Vrendrye
in the North-West. Like La Salle, he had to make
hurried, toilsome journeys to Montreal to steady his
support there, and he was always sending down furs to
appease his clamorous creditors. Three sons went with
him to the West. One, to his bitter grief, was murdered
by the Sioux Indians. But on, ever westward, he pressed,
engaging in trade, though above all eager to reach the
western ocean. Where now stands Winnipeg he built
the tiny Fort Rouge. tie pushed up the Assiniboine
River, and near where now stands Portage La Prairie
built Fort La Reine, named in honour of the queen of
France, who might give him needed support. He found
no great river flowing westward. That western land
is in truth tilted to the north aud east, and great rivers
could not flow to the west. Since he could not paddle
westward, at last he decided to advance on foot.
In October, 1738, with a company of about forty,
half of them Indians, La Vrendrye set out south-
westward from Fort La Reine. The Indians told him
of a remarkable people, dxvelling on the banks of a great
river, and it was chiefly the river that he sought--the
river on vh[ch he hoped to float to the Pacific. He
reached the villages and found much of interest, but,
two months later, ill, and in the bitter cold of the
92 HISTORY OF CANADA
Because the savages were at war with one another, the
two brothers could not go on, and, with regret, they
,ave up the plan to find what lay beyond the nmuntains.
Thev did not know that to reach the shores of the
western ocean many weeks of laborious effort across
mountain passes and turbid rivers would be necessary.
\Ve are not sure, indeed, that they had even reached the
Rocky Mountains. It may be that they saw only what
we know as the Black Hills. They spent the rest of the
winter in the lands bordering on the Missouri. Before
the brothers turned homeward, they performed a cere-
mony which meant that they claimed that country for
France. On a hill by the Missouri River they built a
pyramid of stcnes, and in it they buried a plate bearing
the names of the king of France and of the governor
of Canada. In 1913, a school-girl in Pierre, South
Dakota, stumbled upon this plate, dated April 2, 1743,
which had lain untouched for one hundred and seventy
years.
\Vhen the brothers were back with their father at
Fort la Reine, in July, 1743, all saw clearly one thing--no
river flowed from the prairie country into the western
ocean. Spain had long known about the great range of
mountains in California, and it was clear that this moun-
tain barrier extended to the far north. Though the date
is uncertain, it was probably French fur-traders, going up
the great Saskatchewan River, who first reached that
might)" range of ,mom:tains. La V6rendrve carded on a
vigorous trade with tho Indians_ and it was not long be-
fore the British at their posts on Hudson Pay became
aware of a change. The Indians, they found, were not
going to the Bay as once they had gone. They were secur-
ing supplies from the French and vithout taking the
long journey to the sea. The matter must be looked into,
the Hudson's Bay Company said, and in 1754 a certain
Anthony Hendrv went from Hudson Bay into the \\rest
to see what the lrench were doing. He found them doing
CHAPTER VIII
THE RI\ALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND
I. The Alliance of the English with the Iroquois.--
During the many years in which the French were taking
the risks of adventurous discovery in the West, the great
problem of the mastery of the continent was unfolding
itself. Was it France or was it England which should
hold North America? If we ask why they could not
divide it between them, the answer is that no one seems
to have thought this possible. Century-long enemies in
Europe, divided now in religion, the two states were
relentlessly hostile. At first the Dutch had been the
neighbours of the French in the Iroquois country. It
was a dark day for French power when the English
secured New York. They had long denied the right of
the Dutch to the Hudson valley. In 1664, xvhen the two
nations were at peace, rugged Dutch Peter Stuyvesant,
in command at Nev Amsterdam, which is nmv Nmv
York, had a startling experience. An English squadron
sailed in and demanded instant surrender. Resistance
was useless, and the English secured tha great colony of
New York without firing a gun. The beautiful Hudson
River was theirs; so also was the vast region bordering
in the north on Lake Ontario from the Niagara to the
St. Lavrence. iNever xvas an empire won more easily.
Had the Dutch remained, they, like the French, would
have been rivals of the English. Now France had to
face her enemy alone. The far-seeing in Canada urged
that France could seize New York. The inhabitants of
that place, absorbed in trade and industry, xvere not war-
like, and French military opinion held that they could
94
96 HISTORY OF CANADA
they deserved to die." Clearly the Iroquois might come
to think that the French, too, deserved to die. La Barre
asked their chiefs to meet him at Fort Frontenac, but
they refused to come to him and said that he must go
to them. He yielded and went to a council in the
country of the Iroquois. There was much high-flown
oratory in the Indian style, but, in effect, they told him
that his threats and bluster did not dismay them.
Clearly he was not the man for a difficult part, and
Louis XIV soon recalled him.
The Marquis de Denonville, his successor, vas no
better and stooped to base treachery. There were two
friendly mission villages of Iroquois near Fort Frontenac.
Louis XIV had found that the Iroquois captives made ex-
cellent galley slaves in France, and Denonville xvas
anxious to win favour with his royal master by sending
him some lusty red men. He im-ited the friendly
Iroquois to a banquet and then seized them. The elder
Iroquois were killed: the younger were made prisoners.
A French officer, the Baron Lahontan, .tells us wit'h
what horror he saw these victims of treachery at Fort
Frontenac. They were tied helpless to stakes and their
naked bodies were pestered by flies. He saw their tor-
mentors burning the fingers of the captives in the bowls
of lighted pipes. Some of them were tortured to death;
others went as slaves to France. Such xvas the treatmet
by a stupid governor of Iroquois friends; Iroquois
enemies noted it all and in due time exacted a ghastly
vengeance. On an August night in 1689 they fell upon
the village of Lachine, near Montreal, massacred men,
women, and children, and carried off many prisoners,
whose fate would be sloxv torture by Iroquois camp-fires.
A thrill of horror ran through the colony. Denonville
was panic-stricken: 'he had found'ed a post at Niagara,
and both this and Fort Frontenac he now abandoned and
destroyed, and for safety he recalled his people to
Iontreal.
98 HISTORY OF CANADA
deadly struggle destined to end in the ruin of France's
power in America. In 1689 the English drove out their
Roman Catholic king, James II, and put on the throne
the Protestant, William of Orange. Louis XIV, the
steadfast friend of his cousin Janaes, refused to recog-
nize William as king. and war broke out. It is a striking
fact that, for more than a hundred and twenty-five years
after this, every great war, no matter hoxv begun, ended
in a struggle between England and France. During that
time the two nations xvere in bitter rivalry for supremacy
in Asia and America. Frontertac had been charged to
destroy English power in America, root and branch. On
reaching Canada, when he returned in 1689, he was to
go with sixteen hundred men to capture Albany. Then
he was to advance down the Hudson. At its mouth a
squadron of French war-ships would be in waiting to
seize New York, then little more than a village. Had
not a fexv English ships taken it from the Dutch a few
years earlier? The English, themselves recent intruders,
were to be deported. Those of them who were Roman
Catholics mighet, indeed, remain if they would become
subjects of Louis XIV; but all the Protestants were to
lose their lands and to be removed. After New York,
New England xvas to be overrun, and in North America
France and her faith xvere to be supreme.
Such was the French policy in 1689. Frontenac soon
realized that the plan to take New York was visionary.
There were nearly twenty thousand Dutch and English
in the colony, and he had not half as many people. But
he struck hard blows. From the borders of Maine to
the heart of Nexv York, French and Indian raiders
haunted the outlying English settl,ernents. In Frontenac's
first winter three raiding expeditions, one from lIontreal,
one from Three Rivers, and one from Quebec, set out,
and grim terror spread among the English. The raiders
all told on their return the same story. They had
marched on snow-shoes through tle forest and crept
100 HISTORY OF CANADA
By the middle of August Iris squadron had sailed for
Quebec, with twenty-two hundred men on a Puritan
crusade against a Roman Catholic people. He set out
late. and it vas mid-October when the startled watchers
in Quebec counted thirty-four English ships appearing
under spreading sails in the broad Basin. Phips sent
ashore an envoy to demand surrender. Froutenac's
answer was to take the envoy from his boat before he
could reach shore, to blindfold him, and to cause him to
be led through streets noisy with the beating of drums
and the blowing of trumpets, so as to make a few men
appear to be a great garrison. When the bandages of the
messenger were removed, he found himself before Fron-
tenac and his officers in the castle of St. Louis. Taking a
watch from his pocket, the envoy said that he was
ordered to give Quebec an hour to surrender. Fron-
tenac's answer was to order that tbe man should be
hanged, since his leader, I'hips, was a pirate and his
alleged king, \Villiam, was a usurper. \Vhen those about
the Governor pleaded for mercy, he seemed to yield, and
at last he sent axvay the messenger with the word that he
would answer from the mouth of his cannon. Phips,
unlike the English sixty )'ears earlier, did not take
Quebec. During a week he planned various attacks, but
he had come too late in the season. \Vinter was near,
and he had no pilots for the difficult river. Soon he
sailed away, and, after much buffeting by the sea, he
reached Boston, which mourned over the defeat as a
scourge of God.
4. The Success of Frontenac.--For the time New
France was not only safe but aggressive. Frontenac
had in his service a man whose exploits, had they been
in the old world, would have given him wide fame.
Charles Le Moyne of Montreal had eleven sons, every
one of whom either died young in battle or won dis-
tinction. The third son, Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville,
was a sailor, trained in the French navy, but he also
RIVALRY OF FR,NCE AND ENGLAND I01
delighted in the rough life of adventure on land. In
1686 he had joined an overland ex0edition to Hudson
Bay to attack the posts established by the I Iudson's Bay
Company. England and France vere then at peace, but
this did not matter. The French regarded the English
as interlopers, and Louis XI\ r had ordered that their
forts on Hudson Bay shouhl he swept away completely.
One hundred meu set out in ][arch on snowy-shoes from
Montreal. Up the Ottawa,
past the spot where the
capital of Canada now
stands, and on over Lakes
Temiskaming and Abitibi
they marched. "Vhen spring
came, they had to make
canoes to descend by water
to lludson Bay. The
English were expecting no
attack and deemed them-
selves alone in those remote
solitudes, when suddenly,
on a June night in 1687, the
French. after their march
of six hundred miles,
dashed in on the fort at .-Xtoose Factory. In a few min-
utes all vas over. The French took in succession all the
five posts stretched along Hudson Bay. Iberville sailed
to Quebec in an English ship, vith a rich cargo of furs
as booty.
When open war broke out in 1689, Iberville was a
member of the raiding party sent by Frontenac to the
heart of New York. Later he overran the English
settlements in Newfoundland. He went often to Hudson
Bay. In 1697, in his single ship the Pelican, he was
attacked there by an English squadron of three ships.
The cannon echoed over the silent saores of the great
102 HISTORY OF CANADA
]3ay. One English ship fled, one sank, the third Iberville
captured; and soou he sailed away to France with an
immense booty of furs. Later he founded the French
colony at the mouth of the lklississippi. When he died
at the age of forty-five, he had not only seen thrilling
adventures but had linked Louisiana with Canada. In
the annals of the English colonies there is not his like.
Fhese colonies were weak because they would not unite.
They sowed and reaped, traded, wrangled in their petty
politics, and had no thought of the wider policy of
empire. Men like Iberville, on the other hand, had
plans to win for France the best part of what is now
the United States and Canada. Yet in the long run the
English were to triumph because, wherever they went,
they took root firmly by tilling the soil, while in many
places the French only traded in furs and passed on.
It was some years before Frontenac could teach the
Iroquois the needed lesson, but in the end his skill did
not fail him. The 'horror at Lachine had .happened in
1689. Cruel warfare on both sides, with the massacre
by the Iroquois of helpless settlers, then swayed to and
fro for years. The Iroquois became the scourge of
Canada, and the embittered French sometimes made a
public festival of burning Iroquois prisoners; Fron'enac
himself issued invitations to see an Iroquois roasted;
soldiers and civilians of Iontreal turned out to the
torture of four Iroquois by burning. The French
offered bounties for Iroquois or English scalps. When
all efforts at peace failed, Frontenac decided, in 1696, to
strike a heavy blow. He was now an old man of
seventy-six, but still fiery and masterful. His forces
gathered at Fort Frontenac, and at last, with some two
thousand men, he marched from the south shore of Lake
Ontario to smite the most relentless Iroquois tribe, the
Onondagas. His strength had failed him so that he
could not walk over the hard trail, but fifty of his allied
Indian warriors carried him on .their shoulders, seated in
RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND 103
a great war canoe. The Onondagas did not wait to fight
this crushing force. They burned their chief village
and fled. There was nothing for the French to do but
to return. But the Iroquois had been humbled, and trade
with the interior was soon safe. Yet just at this moment
Frontenac seemed to have failed. The clergy had won
at Court. He was ordered to permit no traders to go to
the savages, who must visit Montreal to trade. Only
the missionaries were to live among the Indians. Fron-
tenac did not obey the order. He began to rebuild Fort
Frontenac, and he allowed the traders to go on as usuaI.
The Peace of Rysvick, signed in 1697, settled nothing
finally. The Iroquois refused to be bound by it, and
not until three years later did they agree to peace. By.
that time Frontenac was gone. Full of years he died at
Quebec in 1698. Checked, as it seemed, by his enemies,
he had yet triumphed. Before .long France was re-
building her abandoned posts and founding new ones.
At Fort Frontenac and Niagara fluttered again the
fleurs-de-lis. Detroit was founded, controlling the route
from Lake Erie to Lake Huron ; Sault Ste. Marie guard-
ed the entrance zo Lake Superior, a's did Michilimac-
kinac that to Lake Michigan. In the far south New
Orleans was soon to become a vital French centre: and
there to this day flourish the language and the manners
of France. It seemed that the St. Lawrence and the
Mississippi, the Great Lakes and the far \Vest, the land
from Hudson Bay in the north to the Gulf of Mexico
in the south---all, all were to be French.
CHAPTER IX
THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF FRENCH RULE
I. The British Conquest of Nova Scotia.-- From
time to time great rulers have loved to think of them-
selves as becoming masters of the world, in our owu
time it was a German Emperor, a century ago it xvas
Napoleon, and two centuries ago it was Louis XIV.
Louis had yielded to England's demands .that he should
"not try to put his grandson on the throne of Spain, and
that he should recognize William III as lawful king of
England. Yet in 1700 Louis put his grandson on the
forbidden throne, and a year later, when the deposed
James II lay dying, Ltuis went to his bed-side and there:
iu pity, as it seems, for fallen greatness, he promised
James to acknowledge his son as king of England. This
was to flout England, and it meant war. Just at this
time \Villiam III was killed 'by a fall from his horse.
The dull. good Queen Anne came to the throne, and war
began in 1702. x, Villiam had led his own armies. Those of
Anne were led by John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough,
one ot the greatest soldiers whom England has pro-
duced. Louis XIV had believed that he could defy
England and master Europe. For fifty years his armies
had been victorious. Rut now on many a bloody field
Marlborough defeated the armies of France, and Louis
lived to rue this, his last war.
The war brought the beginning of the end of France's
power in America. No sooner had it broken out than
again began horrors ou the frontier. In August, 1703,
Indians crept in on the village of Wells, in Maine, and
butchered or carried off even its women and children.
104
BEGINNING OF THE END OF FRENCH RULE 105
In February of the following winter, a young member
of the Canadian noblesse, Hertel de Rouville, led silently
at night on snow-shoes a party which burst in on Deer-
field, a village in Massachusetts, killed forty or fifty me,
women, and children, ad dragged away captive more
than a hundred miserable people. This vas vhat Louis
XIV's defying of England.meant on the frontier of the
English colonies, an it stirred resentful passions, which
glowed until France s power fell. Nev York was still
a weak English colony, but Nev Englad nov had tradi-
tions stretching back for nearly a hundred years and was
ready for a stiff fight. From the pulpits of Boston came
fiery denunciations of France, and Boston struck the first
effective blow.
The French region known as Acadia included what
are now New ]3runsvick and Nova Scotia. As we have
seen, it was at Port Royal in Acadia that, nearly twenty
years before the founding of New England, France had
begun a colony. This colony English from Virginia
had destroyed in 1613. ]3ut the French held on irt
Acadia. It did not matter that the English called the
land Nova Scotia, and that James I had granted it to
his well-beloved Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling,
and founded an order of Baronets of Nova Scotia, who
were to be the feudal settlers of that domain. France,
in the end, held Acadia and made Port Royal its capital.
The Acadians were simple farmers, who lived contented,
ignorant, and remote from the world. Their farms vere
scattered over the beautiful district which we now know
as the Annapolis Valley. There followed a confused
period in Acadia. Two Frenchmen, Charnisay and La
Tour, claiming great feudal grants from the French king,
engaged in rivalry so acute that it ended in civil var, and,
to make matters worse, the English took a hand in the
strife. In 1667, however, England admitted France's
right to Acadia, and that land settled dwn to its remote
BEGINNING OF THE END OF FRENCH RULE
of Queen Anne's favourite, Mrs. Masham. In command
of the fleet was an admiral little known--Sir Hovenden
Walker. By a turn in politics Marlborough was in
disgrace, and Hill and Walker were not the type of men
whom he would have chosen. At the end of July some
seventy ships sailed from Boston with nine men-of-war
at their head. Their destination was Quebec. The
CHURCH OF NOTRE I)AME DES VICTOIRES, QUEBEC
admiral was nervous, for he knew little of the dangerous
waters of the St. Lawrence in which he was to sail. He
had heard startling accounts of the cold of Canada, of
rivers freezing solid to the bottom, of mountains of
snow, and of men starving to death in that hard land.
The weather proved good, but it took three weeks to
108 HISTORY OF CANADA
reach a point west of the great island of Anticosti in
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Trouble began when an east
xvind with fog blew up, and Walker lost his bearings.
He xvas nearing the north shore when he thought his
ships were near the south shore. On the dark night of
August 22nd wrong orders xvere given, so that the ships
were headed straight for the shore. Son)e of them struck
the rocky Isle aux Oeufs, and no fewer than eight trans-
ports carrying soldiers broke up. The night xvas made
awful with the cries of drowniug men. Nearly a thou-
sand perished. This was enough for the timid admiral
and the incompetent general. They might still have
gone on to Quebec. All the war-ships and eleven thousand
soldiers and sailors relnained, but the leaders decided to
abandon the expedition, and the great fleet scuttled back
to England. Not for two months did Quebec learn vhat
had happened. Then the hundreds of dead decaying
on the shore of the desolate island revealed the tragedy
to some chance visitors. To this day the little church
of " Notre Dame des Victoires " at Quebec, so named in
thanksgiving for the deliverance, is a monument to the
belief that God had saved Canada. Boston, on the other
hand, mourned as once more disciplined by a divine
chastening.
None the less did the French power now receive a
telling blow. Both sides were weary of war. Marl-
borough's victories had humbled France, and Britain
demanded, in America, at any rate, the fruits of victory.
France, she declared, must give up all claim to Hudson
Bay, to Newfoundland, and to Acadia. To retain
Acadia, at least, France struggled hard. But on this
question New England was-aroused. Already the
British flag floated over Annapolis, and New England
said that not again should that place harbour the hostile
ships which made even a New England fishing-boat
insecure when it put to sea. France had to yield, but
she did so with the resolve that she would later recover
110 HISTORY OF CANADA
began to build the great fortress of Louisbourg. It had
a spacious harbour, easily defended, and it could be made
a terror to the trade routes of the North Atlantic. To-
day it lies in ruins because it became such a terror.
While it stood, New England did not breathe freely.
Upon it France spent vast sums; the very bricks which
we see now in its roofless walls were made in France
and carried at great cost across the sea. Louisbourg
threatened New England. Fort Frontenac threatened
the colony of New York. France held the hlississippi,
and she claimed the Ohio. She pushed into the North-
\\rest and threatened the trade of the English on Hudson
Pay. The elements of acute strife were active and
menacing. Yet for a long time vas there peace. Dur-
ing most of this .time England was ruled by Sir Robert
\Valpole, a bluff squire who hated the loss and carnage
of war and cultivated the friendship of France. In the
end it was vith Spain that war broke out in 1739.
France became Spain's ally, and ila 1744 joined in the
war after thirty-one years of peace.
Early in 1744 Louisbourg had news which led to the
quick fitting out of two armed vessels and the hurrying
on board of six or seven hundred fighting men. \Var
with Britain had broken out. The ships sailed westward,
and a few days later the eighty men in the weak little
British fishing-station of Canseau were sternly sum-
moned to surrender. They did not know of the war
and were forced to yield, but the French agreed to send
them to Boston and meanwhile took them to Louisbourg.
There, with eyes and ears alert, the prisoners came to
see that Louisbourg was not so strong as it seemed.
\\'hen they reached Boston they told of strife and even
mutiny in the garrison. Shirley, the Governor of
hlassachusetts, was a man of ideas, and now he resolved
to attack Louisbourg. A colonial army under a Maine
trader, William Pepperell, was to assault it by land and
was to be aided from the sea by a British fleet under
112 HISTORY OF CANADA
Great was the anger of the New Englanders. They
cared nothing for Madras ; yet to save that place for
England, the old menace from Louisbourg to their trade
was restored. :Britain, they said, had betrayed :hem,
and that cry was an ominous portent of the later cleav-
age of the American Revolution.
HISTORY OF CANADA
At almost the moment when Halifax was begun, an
expedition set out from Montreal to assist France's claim
to the xxhole \\rest. .She iheld the region about the Great
Lakes, she held the ]\ississippi, but her hold on the Ohio
was doubtful. The two English colonies, Virginia and
Pennsvh-ania, claimed lands watered by that river. So
THE FOUNDING OF ]:[_ALIFAX
now France decided to end all doubt. A company of
about two hundred men passed from Lake Erie to the
upper waters of the Ohio, saying to all who heard that
the Ohio and i(s bordering lands belonged to the French.
The Indians, so ran the boastful talk, could no more stop
this than could flies or mosquitoes. The French would
come in numbers as the sand of the sea-shore. Soon the
French xvere building forts to secure the Ohie coun-
try. When news of these doings reached Virginia, the
annoyance and alarm were great. Dinwiddie, the Lieu-
THE END OF FRENCH RULE 115
tenant-Governor, a rugged Scot, chose the best man he
could find to warn the French that armed forces from
Canada must not invade the Ohio country. The man
was a young Virginia colonel named George \Vash-
ington, in time to be much heard of in the vorld. The
French brushed his protests aside, took him prisoner,
and sent him back to Virginia. In the spring of 1754,
five or six 'hundred men from Canada built, xvhere now
stands the great city of Pittsburgh, Fort Duquesne, so
named in honour of the Governor of Canada. France
was taking her last decisive step to shut in the English
to a strip of the Atlantic coast.
.All this meant var betxveen France and Britain.
Neither, however, wished to be the first to declare war.
Each delayed in order to secure allies in Europe, atd
war began long before war was declared. The summer
of 1755 saw active warfare from Halifax to the Ohio,
though each side still protested an eager desire for peace.
In the Ohio country, when General Braddock, with an
army fresh from England, marched on Fort Duquesne,
he vas attacked in the forest and killed. George \Vash-
ington rallied the forlorn remnants of his force and led
them back to Virginia. This success of the French von
them the support of the Indians in the west, and from
the Ohio to the Saskatchevan the star of France xvas in
the ascendant. Two months later in the east, on the
borders of Lake George, French and English had an all-
day battle vith losses of some tvo hundred ou each side.
The Iroquois fought vith the English, and vheu Dieskau,
the French commander, was taken prisoner, only with
difficulty did the English keep their allies from boiling
and eating him. On the high seas Admiral 13oscaweu,
vith a strong squadron, attacked French ships trying to
reach Canada. At Halifax a deadly pestilence carried
off many of his men, and he lost two thousand before he
reached England. And all this still in a time of supposed
peace.
THE END OF FRENCH RULE 119
they intended to torture and kill at leisure. We have a
terrible picture of them sitting around a camp-fire, roast-
ing on long sticks the flesh of an Englishman, and then
eating it. At Montreal they boiled and ate an English-
man, with the whole town looking on, and also com-
pelled some of his fellow-prisoners to partake of this
horrid food. In the next year, 1758, Montcalm won his
third great victory. With fewer than four thousand men
he lay at Ticonderoga, between Lake George and Lake
Camplain, when the British general, Abercrombie, a
leader, as was said at the time, " infirm in body and in
mind," attacked him with fifteen thousand men and was
driven off with the loss of two thousand.
4. The Revival of British Efforts under Pitt.q
Assuredly the war was not going well for ]ritain, and
of this 'the nation became
keenly aware. It knew,
too, that its politics were
corrupt. Now, in their
need, the t3ritish people
turned tc a man whom
they trusted fully. \Vil-
liam Pitt had many faults,
but every one felt that he
loved his country and that
no one could corrupt him.
In 1757 he became Secre-
tary of State for War.
Honourable war, as he
said, he loved. He had
been a soldier, and he knew how a campaign should
be carried on. His fierce energy and the astound-
ing vigour of his speeches made him a terror to slack-
ness and stupidity. Hitherto generals had been chosen
by favour. Pitt chose them for competence. Younger
120 HISTORY OF CANADA
men suddenly came to the top. General Amherst, just
past forty, vas made Commander-i.n-Chief in America,
and his second in command was James Wolfe, aged
thirty. In May, 1758, there was an animated scene in
the harbour of Halifax. Forty var-ships and scores
of transports were there with an army of twenty thou-
sand men--the greatest yet .seen in America. Nearly
tvelve thousand of them were British regulars, and
most of the rest vere raised in America. When this
great array sailed for Louisbourg, that place was doomed.
The defenders fought vell, but the fortress fell
at the end of August, and the English took six thousand
prisoners. In due 6me they destroyed Louisbourg utter-
UINS OF THE FORTRESS OF LOUISBOURG AS
THEY APPEAR AT THE PRESENT DAY
ly, and to this day it remains in ruins. In 1758 there
was a similar story in other quarters. In August Fort
Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, fell to the British: in No-
vember Fort Duquesne in the Ohio country. All that
remained to France was the St. Laxvrence region, xvith
Quebec and Montreal as its keys.
Montcalm's successes had not blinded him to the
gravity of his position. He spent the winter of 1758 at
Quebec, content to be far from Vaudreuil, xvho remained
at Montreal Those were Quebec's last days under
French rule, and Montcalm saw much to disquiet him.
122 HISTORY OF CANADA
leader was the Intendant, Francois Bigot. in whose hands
was the civil government of Canada. He had polished
manners; he was clever and agreeable; above all, he was
competent. Montcalm liked him, but he came to under-
stand that this man, over whom he had no control, was
carrying out a gigantic system of plunder. He was rob-
bing government stores, drawing pay fraudulently for
scores of people who rendered no service, getting ex-
travagant prices for contracts given to his accomplices,
and issuing paper money, for vhich France was liable, to
secure commodities used chiefly for his own profit. All
the time he was able to deceive his superior, the fussy
Vaudreuil, and Montcalm could do nothing.
$. Wolfe's Victory at Quebec.--A deadly peril was now
coming from the sea.
In June, 1759, the great-
est fleet hitherto seen in
American waters was
.- steering a careful course
- up the St. Lawrence.
There were forty-nine
men-of-war and more
than tvo hundred other
ships, and they carried
about thirty thousand
men. The great array
spread out for miles,
and ve can imagine the
wonder and alarm in the
Canadian villages as this
mighty armada, under
its snowy sails, filed
13EN'EIL WOLFE slowly up the river in
full view. The British had a far-reaching plan. Three
forces were to invade Canada; one under Amherst
against Montreal, by way of Lake Champlain; a second
THE END OF FRENCH RULE 123
by way of the Upper St. Lavrence; the third, this great
force, was to assault Quebec. Admiral Saunders was
in commard of the fleet, young General Wolfe led the
army and confronted Montcalm. History has linked the
names of Wolfe and Montcalm in permanent union.
Wolfe was the younger by fifteen years, and his tall,
spare form, wasted by disease, stands in vivid contrast
vith that of his smaller but vigorous rival. Yet were
the two men alike. ]3oth were deeply learned in military
science, both were skilled and tactful leaders. Genius
was pitted against genius. Montcalm defended while
Wolfe attacked. Montcalm had forces much inferior,
many of them so ill-trained that Volfe derided them:
" Five feeble French battalions mixed with uudisciplined
peasants," he said, but led by a "" cautious and wily old
fox," vho knew better than to offer open battle.
The two leaders played skilfully the great game of
war. "Volfe, Montcalm decided, might land his army
anywhere he liked, except on the north shore near
Quebec, where an assault might quickly shatter the feeble
defences. \Volfe landed part of his army on the island
of Orleans five miles across the ]3asin of Quebec, but
that did him no good. He landed an army on the north
shore seven miles east of Queb-c, but could ot advance
on the city past the great gor.e of the Montmorency
River. He tried a frontal attack on the ]3eauport shore
tvo or three miles east of the city. but vas driven off
with heavy loss. He landeld an army at Point Lvis
opposite Quebec, and from there shattered the houses of
the town with his cannon. But Montcalm held on amid
the ruin, and Wolfe was beaten if he could not enter
Quebec. When September came he was almost in
despair, for the fleet must soon get out of a river vhich
wotfld be ice-bound in winter. At last a bold ruse suc-
ceeded. Part of the fleet, laden with soldiers, sailed up
for miles past Quebec. On the night of September 12th,
THE END OF FRENCH RULE 127
lish closed in. Slow, deliberate Amherst had lingered
too long on Lake Champlain in the previous year. Now
he brought his army down the St. Lavrence from
Oswego; lurray took his army up the St. Lavrence
from Quebec; and a third army advanced by way of
Lake Champlain. Early in September the three armies
were united before Montreal.
The Chevalier de Lvis had now fewer than three
thousand fighting men. The British had more than
WOLFE'8 I,IoNuMENT AND THE PLAINS OF A_BRAHAM
twenty thousand. To surrender was the only possible
conrse for the French. On one point Amherst was
inflexible. The outrages by the savages on the French
side had stirred his deep anger, and for the outrages he
held the French army responsible. He had, he said, so
restrained his own Indians that they had committed not
one lawless act. Now, because of the barbarities of the
CHAPTER XI
THE FRENCH IN CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE
I. The Conspiracy of Pontiac.--To the French gen-
tleman in Canada, steeped in the traditions of France, it
must have been a strange experience to find himself by
a turn of fortune a subject of the British king. For a
few, possibly half, the change was too much, and they
returned to France. But the habitant remained. Not
for him, poor and ignorant, xvas there a migration across
the sea because France's cause was lost in America. His
spirits were not greatly affected by the change. He
longed for peace. \Vhile France ruled he had had
many years of war; led by the captain of militia of his
village, he had been called away to fight. It was per-
haps a century since his ancestors had come from
France. He had no direct ties xvith the home land of
his race. He was Canadian and Canadian only. Dur-
ing the war it was the gossip of the camp that Vaudreuil,
the Governor, a Canadian, and Montcalm, the General, a
Frenchman, had quarrelled. The habitant was likely
to take sides with his countryman, the Governor.
The Canadian officers, he knew, resented the airs of
superiority of the officers from France. She had proved
'ather a step-mother than a mother, and now, when he"
power had fallen, and the British were without a rival,
he could at any rate have peace under the new regime.
It was thus not long before the habitant tilled his farm
and smoked his pipe with content under British rule.
He was freer than ever he had been before. There
was no longer the corrupt Intendant, Bigot, to plunder
him.
129
132 HISTORY OF CANADA
began; and there he sav with his own eyes horrible
Indian treachery and massacre. One day the chiefs in-
vited the British at the fort to watch a match between
two tribes at the Indian game of lacrosse. The match
was outside the fort. Near the gates hovered Indian
onlookers, some of them squaws, well wrapped up in
flowing blankets. The players on both sides in the ex-
citing game gradually edged up to the gate. Suddenly
the ball was thrown over the palisade into the fort. The
Indians grabbed the weapons concealed under the-
blankets of the onlookers, and a hideous massacre of the
British followed. Only by great tact did Henry manage
to save his own life.
Similar incidents happened elsewhere. At Detroit,
the Indians, led by Pontiac, made a determined effort.
But they were confronted by an able officer, Major
Gladwyn, who, in some secret way, managed to know
what they were plotting. Pontiac, with treachery in his
mind, came by agreement on a certain day for a friendly
conference within the fort. Gladvyn was on his guard.
He knew that among Pontiac's followers there had been
much filing off of the long barrels of their weapons, and
that each warrior carried a shortened musket. At the
fort on the appointed day Pontiac found guards stationed
everywhere. When he asked the meaning of this,
Gladwyn charged hi-n with his intended treachery and
defied him. Pontiac went away, still with murder Jn his
heart. Soon Detroit was surrounded by the savages.
They murdered Gladwyn's agents who went out to treat
with them. Help was slow in coming. For nearly a
year Gladwyn held on and so suffered from lack of food
that destruction seemed at times to be inevitable. When,
at last, rescue came, the savages professed a change of
heart and were anxious to be received as friends.
Pontiac himself, who had dreamed of checking the
might of Britain, was treacherously murdered by one of
his own people.
"138 HISTORY OF CANADA
to them. They laad quarrelled among themselves for the
ownership of the lands north of the Ohio; this Act
annexed them to Canada. They clung to the right of
their people to vote, and to the power of their legisla-
tures; this Act yielded nothing of the kind in Canada;
and agitators in the English colonies were saying that the
next step would be to take away their own self-govern-
ment. Already feeling ran high about Britain's claim to
tax the colonies, and the American Revolution vas near.
It is not clear that the Canadian 'habitant had any en-
thusiasm for the Act. He had been exulting in a nev
freedom from the rights of seignior and priest. Now
he found restored the old land system and the church's
pover to tax him whether ,he wished or not to pay.
The English traders disliked the Act, because it seemed
to hand Canada back again to the French. It entrenched
in Canada the language, the religion, the laws of France.
There was much grumbling in the warehouses of Quebec
and Montreal at soft kin.dness to a conquered enemy.
From the day of the passing of the Act there has
been no doubt of this at least, that French Canada, be-
come, by a turn of fortune, a British colony, vould pre-
ser-e its French character. To this day the Canada
settled'by France remains French, with the English-
speaking element in the nainority. English is not often
heard in the Legislature which sits at Quebec. The laws
of Quebec, alone of Canadian Provinces, are still modelled
on those, not of England. but of France. Religion in
Quebec is what it was in France when that land was still
the devout daughter of the Church of Rome. Nearly
two million people in Canada of French origin still cling
with enduring tenacity to the language, the lavs, and the
religion which were learned from France. They remain
a nation vithin a nation. But this is not really the fruit
of the Quebec Act. It vas inevitable. No force known
to man could have compelled the conquered people to
FRENCH IN CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE 139
abandon their religion or their language. If they had
been bullied and coerced, they would only have clung the
more tenaciously to these things. They might have been
driven from their homes and scattered far, as were the
Acadians, and as Louis XIV would have scattered the
English in New York. t3ut this vould have violated
solemn pledges given by Great Britain. The truth is that
France had planted in the valley of the St. Lawrence
seeds of her own social life, and there the fruit flourishes
to this day.
144 HISTORY OF CANADA
ject, but he had no love for Britain, the ancient enemy
of his country. He wished to remain neutral, as the
Acadians had wished to remain neutral, and to join
neither side. But the leaders of the French-Canadians
were of a different mind. The seigniors and the clergy
had no desire to join the revolted colonies. They were
well content with the Quebec Act, which restored to
them their old privileges. Yet this Act was bitterly
attacked by the Americans. In the Continental Congress
at Philadelphia in 1774, and again in 1775, the Act
was denounced as threatening freemen with the despot-
ism of French law and what was called the odious
tyranny of the Roman Catholic Church. Seigniors who
held their privileges under French law, and priests who
clung to their church, turned a deaf ear to appeals to
attack Great Britain, when invaders so alien to the Cana-
dians in outlook attempted to seduce them.
2. The American Invasion of Canada. and the Fall
of M o n t re a I.--The English colonies never doubted that
Canada would join them. They had made up their
minds that Britain was a tyrant, and that every land
ruled by her was eager to throw off an intolerable yoke.
This would seem especially true of the French in Canada,
made British subjects against their will. Hitherto the
New England colonies had borne the brun.t of the dispute
with Great Britain. It was the New England men who
fought at Lexington and who held General Gage shut up
in Boston. It was New England men who on June 18th
occupied Bunker Hill, from which they could pour a
deadly fire upon the British in Boston itself, and who,
before they were driven from that point, shot down one
third of tile trained British regulars attacking them.
New England, however, could not carry on the war alone.
The other colonies must join in che tasl, and they must
have a common leader. So, a few days before Bunker
Hill, John Adams, a member from Massachusetts of the
146 HISTORY OF CANADA
Carleton faced a critical situation. The year before
he had sent tvo ]3ritlsh battalions to aid Gage at Boston
and had left himself with only about a thousand men.
He xvas helped by divisions among his foes. To them it
was a new idea that a colony should not control entirely
its own forces. Here now was \Vashington, a Virginian,
claiming the right to direct Nev Englanders in the effort
against Canada. Ethan Allen was a Vermont colonel
and in no way disposed to be ordered about by one who
until yesterday was only a Virginia colonel. The volun-
teers who came in to join the Americans at Ticonderoga
were of all types. Few of them had uniforms, and those
from the more cultivated centres of New England were
prone to deride the frontiersmen, who seemed less like
soldiers than like the savages against whon they had
waged war in their remote settlements. It took three
months--from May to August--for the colonial force to
pull itself together. ]3ut by the end of August it vas
time for Carleton to look out. Richard Iontgomery
commanded the Americans. He was an Irishman,
known to Burke and Fox, the leading \Vhig statesmen in
England. As a British officer he had taken part in the
British conquest of Canada. Now, not without search-
ing of heart, he had taken the colonial side, and he in-
tended to have both Montreal and Quebec.
Montgomery advanced on Montreal. To that place
Carleton went when, late in August, he could get free
from his business at the Capital. Quebec he thought
safe. Tvo small ships of war lay there, the British had
command of the sea, and there seemed no other line of
attack than that by way of Lake Champlain, which he
vas defending. He did not know the resourcefulness of
the American mind soon to be revealed. Meanwhile, at
Montreal the outlook was heart-breakin.. Most of the
traders seemed to favour the invaders. The Indians, still
a factor in war, were holding back or even joining the
CARLETON, AND AMERICAN REVOLUTION 151
pause before the barricade. Suddenly from the barricade
the cry rang out: " Fire!" and guns and muskets shot
into the advancing column a first and then a second time.
The five hundred assailants turned and fled. At the same
time, on the other side of Quebec, Arnold led an attack.
There was stiff fighting in the streets of the Lower Town,
but the Americans were beaten at a cost to them of three
hundred casualties and four hundred prisoners. With
daylight the question ran--Where was Montgomery?
The answer came when Carleton sent out parties to
rescue the wounded and find the dead. A frozen hand
was seen as if beckoning from a snow-drift before the
western barricade. It was the hand of Montgomery.
In spite of defeat the Americans did not abandon the
siege. Wild storms piled up against the walls of Quebec
snow-drifts so high that it was almost possible to walk in
on them. Carleton had to keep digging his defending
ns clear of the snow. He burned the suburbs of
Quebec in order that the enemy might not creep in under
th.r protection. The Americans never again tried an
assault, but they threw shells into Quebec, and within the
wal.ls they 'had on foot plots to aid them to capture the
city. Carleton knew that if he could hold out until spring
a British fleet would come, and that the Ameridans were
helpless to do anything against sea-power. He let his
men indulge their humour, ar, d one day they put on the
walls a conspicuous xvooden ho'se before a bundle of
hay, and the enemy could read the lettering--that when
the horse had eaten the hay Quebec would surrender.
Meanwhile, the American Congress was deeply moved
by the death of Montgomery. To the Canadians, still
supposed to be ardent for the American cause, Congress
sent word: " We will never abandon you to the unrelent-
ing fury of your and our enemies." They decided to
instruct the Canadians in the true principles of the patriot
cause. So behold, in the spring of 1776, three Americar,
152 HISTORY OF CkNADA
commissioners on the way to Montreal. There was
Benjamin Franklin, the most astute man of his time, and
with him a small printing-press for the circulation of
news and ideas among the Canadians. There was Mr.
Chase of Iaryland, a colony in which the Roman Cath-
olics vere strong, and there was a great Catholic land-
owner, Carroll of Carrollton, suave and genial, to im-
press the Canadian seigniors. To aid him came his
brother, a Roman Catholic priest, in time to become an
archbishop, vho could appeal to the clergy. The Ameri-
can cause was hampered by lack of money. The Congress
had no power to raise taxes. In Canada the British paid
for supplies in hard coin, while the Americans had to
use paper money. The habitant well understood the dif-
ference. "Vhen Franklin's party offered paper money
to the ferryman to carry them across the river to Mont-
real, he refused to move until he was paid in good coin.
The same thing happened when the party ordered cabs
in lXlontreal. Under Bigot Canada had had more than
enough of paper money which proed worthless, and
the continental dollar was already of dubious value.
Franklin found that he could do little in Canada.
The Canadian Bishop Briand was iron against appeals to
join the Americans. He knew that no other rule would
yield to his church rights which the British had yielded
in the Quebec Act. The habitants were no more willing
to fight for the Americans than for the British. And
then came the decisive event vhich settled the long future
of Canada. At Quebec, on 3Iay 6th, it was reported to
Carleton that gun-fire could be heard down the river.
Every one vas on the alert, for this might be the long-
hoped-for deliverance from the sea. Hundreds of sol-
diers and civiliaus watched from the ramparts of Quebec,
and there, sure enough, could be seen over the intervening
land the masts of a ship. She sailed out into the Basin
of Quebec. Fears there had been lest she might be an
, CARLETON, AND AMERICAN REVOLUTION 153
enemy sh.ip, but noiv she ran up the ]3ritish flag. Quebec
went vild with joy. \Vithin a few hours more ships
arrived. Among the ships vas one which had brought
relief to Murray when ,besieged at Quebec in the spring
of 1760. For the second time British sea-power had not
failed Canada.
There was xvork to do quickly. The American army
on the Plains of Abraham had watched with dismay what
was happening. Carleton calle.d for volunteers to go out
to attack the Americans, and he sent with them some of
the newly arrived troops. They found the American
camp deserted. In the panic, dinners had been left cook-
ing, arms had been thrown away, letters and clothing had
been scattered about. The news was carried quickly to
Montreal, and Franklin hurriedly left to report to the
Congress at Philadelphia. The American army, flying
from Quebec, in time pulled itself together, and a month
later fought a brave but fruitless fight at Three Rivers.
But its efforts were hopeless. The habitants were nov
unfriendly. Smallpox was carrying off many soldiers,
and there vere few doctors and medical stores. In
nearly every American tent vas a dead or a dying man.
There vas only one route southward. Ten thousand
Americans had come, and the adventure cost them half
of this number. And they did xvell to go, for thousands
of disciplined troops had arrived at Quebec.
Not an American soldier was left in Canada, and
sound policy dictated, that the Americans should be
harassed in their retreat. But they had gone up Lake
Champlain, and Carleton 'had no ships in xvhich to follow
them. On Lake Champlain xvas the most resourceful
of foes. Benedict Arnold. His aim was now to gain time
and to keep the great British force from invading New
York dtrring that summer. He had some ships, and he
had built more. Carleton used every resource he could
to collect and to build ships to carry his army on the lake.
156 HISTORY OF CANADA
France who saved the American cause. V'hen, in 1781,
by a brilliant march from New York to Vi,rginia, Wash-
ington shut up the Britisll General Cornwallis in York-
town, there were two French soldiers to one American
under "Washington's command. A French fleet cut off
Cornwallis from rescue by the British fleet, and he sur-
rendered with his whole army. It was one of the de-
cisive events of history. When the British Prime Min-
ister, Lord North, heard the news, he cried out with
truth: "O God, it is all over !" and all over it was. The
British Empire had broken up, and the United States took
its place among the nations.
It was surely by a strange turn of fortune that the
colonies which Britain had founded should break away,
while to her remained New France on which she had so
long warred. The die was cast. Canada had withstood
the Revolution. It was British, and was destined so to
continue. It became now a refuge for thousands of un-
happy people, exiled from their former homes in the
English colonies because they had opposed the war for
independence. The story of the Loyalists is one of
sorrow and suffering. The most ruthless kind of war is
civil war. There could be no hedging. Those who stood
for the king's cause were angrily denounced as enemies
of liberty. Edward Winslow, of ]3oston, who was forced
into exile, said that he " received every species of insult
and abuse which the utmost rancour and malice could
invent." It is likely that the sympathies of at least one
third of the colonists were with the British side. But
when, in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was
made, every one xx'ho would not support it was liable to
the stern pen.lties of 'reson. Committees watched
every move of suspetel Loyalists. "Ve 'hear f Loyalist
clergymen dragged from their pulpits and maltreated: of
Loya.lists who were whipped through the streets and had
their ears cropped; of other Loyal.ists covered with tar
THE EXILED LOYALISTS 157
and then rolled in feathers taken from their own beds,
or held astride of the sharp edge of a rail and made to
take a rough ride xvhich involved acute pain; or held
under the water and brought to the surface to breathe
and then ducked again; or tied roughly to a post, with
some dead animal dangling by them. Charles Lynch, of
Virginia, led in inflicting the type of dread punishment
on Loyalists vhich xve still knov as lynching. Decent
people did not encourage these barbarities, but even the
mild Washington said that the best thing the Loyalists
could do was to commit suicide. John Adams, who be-
came the second president of the United States, said that
they ought to be hanged. Benjamln Franklin, the grave
philosopher, had no pity for them.
2. The Migration of the Loyalists.--Such are the
passions of civil war. When fhey could, the Loyalists
retorted in kind. Their opponen.ts, they said, xvere the
scum of the earthquacks, cobblers, barbers, convicts,
hardy knaves, stupid fools. In the south, in particular,
each side was guilty of horrid massacre. But the Loyal-
ists, vho had promised themselves a day of vengeance
when they should be victors, lost the war and had to
suffer the dire penalties of the defeated side. Even after
the war the bitterness against them was frantic. In hell,
wrote one versifier, the most evil spirits vould turn in
loathing from an Englishman; George III, to whom the
Loyalists adhered, was a crowned ruffian, his statesmen
were scoundrels., his sailors vere pirates, and his people
were degraded slaves. In the early days of the war
Boston had been held by the British, and the Loyalists
were then on the stronger side. But even before the
Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776, the
British were forced to evacuate Boston, and they dared
not leave the Loya'lists to the fury of heir foes. On
M-arch 17th, 1776. there were stirring scenes. The Am-
e.rican arm), surrounded. Bost.on on the landward side, and_
158
HISTORY OF CANADA
the Loyalists had to get axvay by sea. In the harbour lay
many British transports, and in these General Hoxve, the
British commander, collected bo'ch his army and the
Loyalists. There were at least eleven hundred of the
latter, and many of them belonged to the most honoured
families in Massachusetts. They xvere hurried down to
the ships. Those were happy who could secure a horse
and cart to carry t'heir effects. Many trundled theirs in
LOYALIST FLEET LEAVING BOSTON, II.RCH 17TI, 1776
wheel-barrows or carried their belongings on their backs
to the vater-side. Soon the laden ships sailed away with
the sorrowing exiles. Never before, said an observer,
had so ninny ships sailed at one time from Boston. The
Loyalists had to abandon their houses and lands.
Families like the Pepperells, descended from the con-
queror of Louisbourg, lost vast estates. The exiles were
carried to Halifax, and fev of them ever again saw their
former homes.
THE EXILED LOYALISTS 159
The British government found Sir Guy Carleton a
handy man when any hard job was to be undertaken,
and in the last days of the war he again crossed dae sea
to take command in America, with headquarters at New
York, securely held by the ]3ritish since 1776, oving to
their command of the sea. During the seven years of
war Loyalist property had been scattered to many
owners. Great estates had been broken up and sold in
small lots. Greedy neighbours had sometimes informed
on Loyalists Jn order to get their property. Some of the
States had secured large sums from confiscations. The
]3ritish demanded, as oue of the conditions of peace,
amnesty to the Loyalists and the restoration of their
property. ]3ut to this Franklin and the other peace-
makers on behalf of Congress vould not consent. \Vas
it not ]3ritain, they asked, who had begun the var?
\Vould she pay for the death and ruin she had caused?
\Vould she even pay for property destroyed by Loyalists
in many a destructive raid? In any case it is always
difficult to restore property ouce scattered and sold. This
Loyalists had found in England when their king, Charles
II, cam back and failed to recover for them property
seized under Cromxvell. Franklin noxv said blandly that
Congress had no attthority in respect to the Loyalists.
It was a matter for each individual State to decide.
None the less, in Article VI of the Peace of Paris, signed
in 1783, the United States definitely promised the release
of Loyalists still held as prisoners, and that there should
be no further seizure of Loyalist property. It was pro-
mised, too, that the States would be rgec .to restore the
property taken from the Loyalists. Nothing, hovever,
was done.
Thus it happened that peace brought no relief for the
Loyalist.s. A Loyalist, it was said, was "a thing vith
its head in England and its body in America, and its neck
ought to be stretched." We can imagine the feelings of
160 HISTORY OF CANADA
the people of Stamford, Connecticut, at the prospect of
the return of a Loyalist named Frost. During the war he
had been driven from the town under penalty of death if
he should return. He took refuge in Nexv York. but in
due time came back. One Sunday morning the meeting-
house of the Reverend Dr. Mather was surrounded by a
party led by Frost, and some fifty of the congregation
were hurried to boats and carried as prisoners within
the British lines, to be jeered at by former friends whom
they in their day had driven out. The signing of peace
would not make it possible for Frost to return to Stam-
ford. The story of one Loyalist who ventured to return
to his former home to see his parents is the story of
many. He was arrested, his head and eyebrows were
shaved, he was covered with tar and feathers, with a
special lump of oozing tar on his shaven head. Then he
was paraded through the town with a pig's yoke about
his neck to which was attached a tinkling cow-bell.
Boston, the centre of the culture of New England.
declared that no Loyalist should ever have "'lot or
portion " there, and invited other towns to take similar
action, which they did only too readily. \Vorcester de-
clared that Loyalists were criminals who had revelled in
" tumult, ruin, and blood. " \\'hen not expelled, the
Loya!ists were uwaa.lly social outcasts. They had to pay
special taxes. They could not vote or hold land. or sue a
debtor, or keep arms. or serve on a jury, or be lawy-ers or
physicians or schoolmasters. And only slowly did the
passion against them die out.
Every colonist who had served in any way on the
British side was branded as a Loyalist, and the sorrowful
task of Carleton was to get these people safely away.
From all directions they drifted into New York. Some
came by sea from the far South. )Iany were forced to
set out by land on the dreary way to exile. Some of
t.hem were educated and formerly well-to-do, while 0ther_s
THE EXILED LOYALISTS
161
were ignorant and poor. Congress tried to hurry
Carleton, but he said sternly that he should hold New
York until he had placed on board a ship the last Loyal-
ist to claim his protection. More than thirty thousand
refugees crowded into New York. What vas to be done
vith them? Whither should they go? They must, in
truth, scatter far, since no one British colony could re-
ceive suddenly so great a number. The only territory
left to Britain on the mainland, with English-speaking
people, was Nova Scotia. It was easily reached by sea,
and naturally thousands of the refugees turned their
faces tovard Nova Scotia. Halifax was soon over-
crowded. At Annapolis, the scene of the first French
colony, there was on one day a quiet village with about
a hundred people; shiploads of Loyalists arrived, and on
the next day Annapolis was overcrovded with six hun-
dred people.
On the opposite side of the Bay of Fundy the fine St.
John River drained an unsettled region, and thither came
thousands of Loyalists. The small sailing-ships from
Nexv York were usually more than two weeks at sea. Of
tvo hundred and nine people on one ship, one hundred
and seven vere children. The sea vas often stormy, and
the discomfort was great. There vere two log huts at
the mouth of the r:,ver where nov stands the city of St.
Jchn. The Loyalists vere landed amid the rough stumps
of trees recently felled. When the ships sailed away,
says one of these exiles, " I vatched the sails disappear-
ing in the distance, and such a feeling of loneliness came
over me that, although I had not shed a tear through all
the var, I sat down on the damp moss with my baby in
nay lap and cried." For many the first vinter was ter-
rible. \Ve are told that even " strong proud men cried
like children, and, exhausted by cold and famine, lay
down in their snow-bound tents to die." On the other
hand, we have glowing accounts from some of the beauty
II.C.I 1.
THE EXILED LOYALISTS 163
is to-day a quiet little seaport with a fine harbour.
Chiefly because of this harbour, imagination pictured the
rising on its shores of a city which should rival Halifax.
Hither, in the autumn of 1782, came one hundred and
twenty Loyalist families with hearts beating high. The
government helped them, gave them all the land they
needed, supplied lumber for their houses, and agreed to
furnish them with food for a year on the same basis as
that of supplies to the army. In the next spring four
thousand settlers arrived, enabled to do so by Carleton's
protecting hand at New York. They were joyous at
being again free to make their own homes and live their
own lives. " \Ve knelt down," said one of them, " my
wife and I, and my two boys, and kissed the dear ground
and thanked God that the flag of England floated there."
Such xvas the passion of patriotism of these harried
people. A tovn xvas laid out. Each settler was to have
a farm of fifty acres in the country, a site for a house in
the town, and also a lot on the harbour, for fishing and
shipping were to be among the chief industries. Soon
there xvas the clatter of building. The government sup-
plied skilled workmen, and in a single summer a con-
siderable town of wooden houses sprang up.
It took the name of Shelburne from the British Prime
Minister of the day. \Vithin a year or txvo the place
bad ten thousand people. Never, even in our own day,
did a new town grow up more rapidly. Ships were build-
ing. There was a good trade in fish and timber. No
fewer than three newspapers appeared. Some regular
soldiers vere stationed there, and a gay croxvd listened to
the military band on summer eveninffs. There vas wine
in the stone cellars over xvhich stood the houses of wood,
and with this the dignified hospitality of men and xvomen
who knexv the xvays of the great xvorld. Then sloxvly the
truth became clear. This xvas not the spot for a city.
The farming land xvas poor. The fishing xvas disappoint-
166 HISTORY OF CANADA
of them had to hexv their furniture t?rom the rough xvocd
of the forest. The flat top of a tree stump sometimes
served as a table. From docile Indians who loved to
lounge about the cabins of the new-comers, these learned
to make of deer-skin durable clothing for men and xvomen
alike. They wore home-made boots. They spun linen
for themselves. They had to cut roads through almost
trackless wastes. Sometimes it was from fifty to a hun-
dred miles to the nearest place where they could sell
their produce or buy their supplies. It was hard to edu-
cate their children, for schools vere few. But they per-
A PIO1VEER ,qOB'ING GRAIN IN HIS NEW CLEARING
formed their tasks, and many of them. made strong and
not weak by hard labour, lived to a ripe old age. The
Loyalists are the chief strain in the ancestry of the people
who to-day inhabit Nova Scotia, Nev ]runswick, and
Ontario, and from these provinces their descendants have
passed to play a leading part in the life of the Canadian
West. One of their enduring memories is that their
THE EXILED LOYALISTS 167
ancestors vere exiled from the United States. The old
bitterness is gone, but the resolve remains that Canada
shall always be a British state.
The Quebec Act had so enlarged the Province of
Quebec that it extended as far west as the Mississippi
River and included xvhat is now Ontario. In this vast
region the civil law was French law, the privileged
church was the Roman Catholic Church, and the type of
government was arbitrary. T,his might do, when nearly
all the people of Canada were French, with no experience
of self-government. But the new-comers had long en-
joyed in their former homes full political freedom, and
obviously the Quebec Act did not give them the kind of
government which they required. Action was not long
delayed. Again Sir Guy Carleton proved the handy man
for the ]3ritish government. He understood Canadian
problems thoroughly. He knev the French. He knew
the Loyalists, for he had been their chief protector and
friend. He was the one leading ]3ritish general in the
American war who had met with no failure. So it xvas
fitting that, with his experience, he should be sent to
solve the nev problem. He now became Lord Dorchester,
and in 1786 he returned to Canada.
CHAPTER XIV
THE SETTING UP OF TIlE TWO CANADAS
!. Loyalist Discontent with the Quebec Act.--
During the period of French rule in Canada the Iroquois
Indians had ahvavs been so hostile that it was perilous
to live far from the protection of a fort. V'est of Mont-
real there were but few settlers, and only a few miles
away lay the primeval wilderness. Fortified trading-posts
France had, indeed, established at points of vantage reach-
ing to the remote west oI the prairie country. But in the
vast region north of the Great Lakes, apart from the Iew
spots where fluttered the ]lcurs-dc-lis, the forest was still
almost unbroken. Indians, hunters, and traders threaded
their way along forest pathways. Here and there might
be seen curling upward the smoke from some lonely
camp-fire or rough cabin. But the whole land was really
untouched. The rivers were the highways; the vehicles
of travel were the bark canoes of the Indians; man him-
self was but a pigmy in the forest solitude. Champlain
had once made a winter journey in the region betwee:
the points where Toronto and Kingston now stand. He
describes the park-like lands dotted-with noble trees.
But the region was only a hunting-ground for the
savages, and a hundred and fifty years after Champlain
it remained unchanged. Now, hoxvever, the day had
come for settlement. Along the great stretch of river
and lake from .Montreal to DetroPt came the families of
exiles from the United States. The drift to Canada con-
tinued for years after the signing of peace. Before the
American Revolution, only a few hundred people were
18
170 HISTORY OF CANADA
everything in order to cling to the traditions of British
rule, should not wish to have in their new homes the
]3ritish type of society. The French, for their part, de-
sired no change. Thus it seemed wise to set up two
governments. The French in Lower Canada might retain
their own system. For the English in Upper Canada
might be created a system in harmony with their
traditions.
From all this came the creation of two Canadas, one
to be prevailingly French, the other English. Haldimand,
who was Governor when the Loyalists began to grumble
about being under French law, had told them that the
(Quebec Act was "' a sacred charter " which would not be
changed. They demanded a legislature ; but why, he asked,
should they wish one? IIad they not suffered enough
from legislatures which had hounded them away from
their former homes? The Loyalists, however, made
their voices heard. \Vhen Carleton returned to Canada
in 1786 to take tlaldimand's place, he, too, thought that
what Canada chiefly needed was one strong government
which could hold its own against the peril rom the
Indians and from the designs of the United States. But
in London there was a different opinion. There both the
English traders from Quebec and the Loyalists xvere
clamorous for creating in Canada a system modelled on
that of Britain. Clearly out-of-date was Carleton's idea
that only people of French origin would remain in
Canada. English were coming in, and the more of them
the better. But, if they were to be contented in Canada,
they must have the lavs which they liked. By 1791 the
British government had decided to divide the Province of
Quebec. Since Upper Canada must have a legislature,
the same liberty must be given to Lower Canada, and
this would carry with it, of course, the right of the
French both to vote and to have seats in the legislature.
This thought was not pleasing to the Quebec traders.
They would bare preferred an undivided Canada, with
SETTING UP OF TWO CANADAS 171
a legislature in which only the English element might sit,
until the day should come when it was no longer a
minority.
2. The Creation of Upper and Lower Canada.-
On Friday, Iarch 4th, 1791, the Canada Act was laid
before the British House of Commons by the British
Prime Minister, William Pitt, still only thirty-two years
of age, though he had been Prime Minister for seven
years. Confronting Pitt, in keen criticism of the Bill,
was his old rival, Fox, who had also attacked the (uebec
Act in 1774, seventeen years earlier. Then the British
Empire had been on the verge of the disastrous revolution
which broke it up, and nov again, in 1791, was revolu-
tion in the air. Across the Channel, in France, there
vere momentous happenings. The monarchy was in
danger, anc[ it was not long before hapless Louis XVI
and his queen were to lose their ,heads by the guillotine.
The great orator, ]3urke, speaking on the Canada Act,
could not keep his mind axvay from France, and he
attacked his friend Fox for favouring the changes in
that coun.try, which to Burke seemed " born of hell and
chaos." \Vith a terrible political storm brewing, Burke
vas all for liberal concessions to the French in Canada.
The old France, wil:h the king and the church of its
ft.herrs, was facing revolution. Under Britain's
generous policy was now to dawn in Canada without
revolution a new day of liberty for the, French in-
habitants.
The Canada Act, known usually as the Constitutional
Act of 1791, set up txvo Canadian provinces, each with a
I,egislature having two Chambers. The Act left undis-
turbed the rights of the church in the French province.
t3ut it took steps for the further support of religion, by
providing that one seventh of the surveyed lands should
be reserved to maintain "a Protestant clerk,." Fox
asked Pitt to state clearly what was meant by "a
172 HISTORY OF CANADA
Protestant clergy." There were, he said, many Roman
Catholics and Presbyterians in Canada. Did Pitt mean
that state aid should go only to the Church of England,
which then had but a few thousand a.d'herems in Canada ?
Pitt replied that by " Protestant clergy" he meant the
clergy of the Church of England. He irtended, he said,
to send a bishop to Canada and ,to set up and endow
rectories. Pitt insisted, too, on a Second Chamber in
each province, with members who should not be elected,
as Fox desired. Pitt declared his conviction that " the
habits, customs, and manners " of Canada were peculiarly
suited to the working of an heredltarv c'ham'ber--a House
of Lords--thot,gh fcr a time the members must be
appointed instead of being legislators by right of birth.
Thus, could Pitt have had his way, each of the Canadas
would have had for ever a copy of *he established Church
of England and of the 13ritish I [ouse of Lords.
3. The Setting Up of Parliaments in Canada.-
Sitting in the ]Iouse of Commons and taking some part
in these dehates was a new member, John Graves Simcoe.
l Iis sailor father had gone to Canada with Wolfe, but
had died just before his ship reached (uebec. The son,
now just short of fort)', had seen hard military service.
During the American Revolution he had commanded the
Queen's Rangers, a regiment of light horse; he had
fought in many engagements, and had been wounded and
twice taken prisoner. His deepest conviction was that
]3ritain had been right in what she had done in America;
and he had a profound contempt for all on the American
side, from \Vas'hilagton down, as men who had failed in
loyalty to their sovereign. He loathed the republican
system which they created. Simcoe's temper was not,
indeed, a happy one, but it was well stilted to the mind of
the Loyalists of Canada. He was a fierce patriot, a man
of honour, vith a fine integrity, a high sense of duty, and
great energy and persistence. Who mre fitting to send
5ElllNb Ut' Ul IwU tANADAS 173
to Upper Canada than this man of wide experience, who
knew the dangers to which Canada was exposed, and
would be in sympathy with the ideals of the exiled
Loyalists? Thus it was that
Colonel Simcoe became the
first Lieutenant-Governor of
Upper Canada. To-day his
statue in the uniform of the
days of George III, with
knee-breeches and with his
hair in a queue, stands before
the Parliament Buildings in -
Toronto, and his name is , ,.
borne by a lake, a county, and :
a town in Ontario. . :..-
Dorchester was continued ...
as Governor of Lower Can-
ada, and he was to be the
Commander-in-Chief of the JOtlN (;HALES IICOE
forces in the two Canadas. The new plans did not wholly
please him. The appointment of Simcoe was unwelcome
He had wished to see in Simcoe's post some leading
Loyalist in Canada, who would more readily accept the
authority of a chief at Quebec. Simcoe, he knew, would
have his<)wn way. This, indeed, was thecase, for Simcoe
had already nmde it clear in London that he must be
independent in civil matters, though Dorchester was to
have the supreme military command. There was talk
already of uniting all the British Provinces in a great
federation, like that just created in the United States.
Had the Iaritime Provinces been joined with Canada,
the French and the English elements would have been
about equal in numbers. But it vas to be scores of years
still before this union should come about, and, meantime,
the drift was toward separation. New Brunswick, and
even Cape Breton Island, had set up a government
176 HISTORY OF CANADA
so memorable a reign. Quebec, long used to ceremonies,
could make a braver shov than Niagara. There were
ladies in brilliant costumes, there xvere gentlemen ushers,
there was all the display of a great occasion. The cere-
monies had deep meaning, for nov the root of British
free institutions under a monarchy was planted on the
northeru frontier of the United States. If A'ashington
was President in the United States, George III was King
in Canada, and firmly entrenched were the British tradi-
tions of monarchy, in contrast with those of the neigh-
bouring republic, so suspicious of kingship.
NEWARK AN'D THE 5IOUTH OF THE NGARA RI ER IN 1792
From a Sketch made b}" M. Simeoe
For some years the tiny Parliament of Upr Cada
held its sessions in what was only a shed at the barracks.
At the opening of one session ouly tvo members of the
Upper House and five of the Lower House were in
attendance. If, in the young republic, it was a reproach
to believe in monarchy, no less to Simcoe in Canada vas
it the sin unpardonable to be a republican. To him
every settler who came into Canada was by that act
renouncing democracy, and there were free grants of
land for those who would do . Such an offer seemed
alluring to others than Loyalists, and many a settler
5LI liblia Uk' UI--I ,VU NADAS 177
crossed che fromior from the United States, caring for
little but the securing of good land. The day was to
come when, under the stress of war, some of these new-
comers should prove a danger and not a strength to the
British cause. But Simcoe's eagerness made them all
Loyalists. On the road he meets an American family
coming, like a party of ,psies, with their own cattle
and effects, to see the land. He greets them gladly,
since they have come to be again under their "old
father" the king; they are, he sees, tired of the rule of
the many-headed mobs; " we love such good royalists
as you are, we will give you land."
4. The Settlement of Upper Canada.--The Legis-
lature lost no time in making clear that Upper Canada
was not under French law. One of its first Bills
brought into operation the whole bod, of English law.
Lower Canada made no change of this kind, and the
)ttawa River, which was the line between the two
I'rovinces, was the line also between two systems--the
one French, the other English. \Vest of the Ottawa
there were to be no seignior and no priest with the right
to collect the tithe from his people. Another thing must
not be in the region ruled by Simcoe. From almost the
first, a newspaper, that inevitable expression of modern
life, had appeared at Newark, and in its columns could be
read this notice of sale: "A negro wench, named Chloe,
twenty-three years old, who understands washing, cook-
ing, &c." Simcoe had seen slavery in its worst form.
During his campaigns in the Southern States the march-
ing column would sometimes pass on the roads groups of
staring negroes, some of them stark naked, despised, and
brtltalized slaves. This, he was resolved, should not be
in Upper Canada. There, he said. natives of Africa,
America, and Europe---the negro, the Indian, and the
white man--shotId receive equal treatment. Some of
the settlers, familiar in their former homes with negro
H.C. 12.
178 H1STORY OF CANADA
labour, desired to have it in Canada. But Simcoe's Par-
liament passed a Bill prohibiting the bringing in of negro
slaves.
The conditions of life were crude. Hitherto the chief
means of transport had been by lake and river, in boats
which were either sailed, or rowed, or paddled. If
settlers were to take up land, roads must be provided,
and to this task Simcoe devoted great energy. He
began the great road called Dundas Street, named after a
t3ritish minister of the day, which was to lead from Lake
Ontario westward to the Detroit River. He built, too,
a road from Lake Ontario to a lake some foa-ty miles to
the north which, in honour of his father, he called Lake
Simcoe. The road was named Yonge Street, after a
forgotten min.ister of the time, and it is to-day the most
important thoroughfare in the great city of Toronto.
Simcoe soon found that, for the capital of Upper
Canada, destined, as he never doubted, to become a great
British state, the village on the Niagara River was un-
suited. ]t could be easily destroyed by artillery, from the
fort on the other side of the river, if in American hands.
He desired to have the capital inland, safe from a hostile
navy on the lake, and he selected the site where now
stands the city of London, Ontario, for the future capital,
but in this he was overruled.
(3n the north side of Lake Ontario, where tvo rivers,
now called the Don and the Humber, enter the lake, and
where their silt had thrown up a semicircle of sand which
protected a secure harbour, there had long been a trading
post called by the Indian, name of Toronto. The fort
which had been built there in 1750 was knoxvn as Fort
Rouill. llajestic trees lined the shore, the two clear
streams added to the beauty, and variety of the scene, and
at their mouths the sportsman could, in half an hour,
load a Calloe with sahnon. The harbour was magnificent;.
Here Simcoe would have had the naval station protecting
SETI'ING UP OF TWO CANADAS 179
the commerce of the great lake. But it was to be more.
Under Dorchester's pressure it was selected as the site of
the future capital. Living in a canvas house -llicb once
had belonged to the great navigator, Captain Cook,Simcoe
spent here the xvinter of 1793-94. Trees were cut down,
and streets and xvharves were begun. Simcoe, true to his
military tastes, named the place York, after one of the
sons of George III who 'happened at the time to occupy
SIMCOE LANDING AT TORONTO HARBOUR
Based on a drawing made by bits. Simcoe in 1793
From the Dary of Mrs.
a high military position. York it remained for forty
years, and then, xvhen a city had groxvn up, the beautiful
name of Toronto was revived.
Surroundiug Simcoe was an oNcl group of pple
who knew the best of the culture of the times. He could
entertain with diguity the royal prince, Edxvard, Duke
Kent, who visited him in 1792, American envoys, who
came to treat with him on great issues, a French duke,
exiled from a land tortured by revolution, and other per-
180 HISTORY OF CANADA
sons of rank. There vere " fair women and brave men "
at Simcoe's little court. He himself had been educated
at Eton and Oxford. He wrote tolerable verse and prose
vhich may be read still, and he played vell the part of a
great gentlenaan. Sonaetimes he was brusque and pas-
sionate to the point of rudeness. Grave old Dorchester
at Quebec hkd to bear much from Simcoe's quick
temper. ]3ut every one knev him to be a man of deep
faith and of noble integrity. He was, he said, trying
" to form a nation obedient to the laws, frugal, temperate,
industrious, impressed with a steadfast love of justice,
of honour, and of public good." "" This nation," he said,
" should honour the king, and it should fear God and
thank Him for His good gifts."
Simcoe's material was intractable enough. Upper
Canada was a refuge for the oppressed and the poor.
They came straggling in from regions widely scattered.
Hard drinking was a habit of the time, and degrading
drunkenness was common. As of old in French Canada,
the Indians had a feverish eagerness for drink. Un-
scrupulous traders carried it to the Indian villages, and
the destroying fire-water wrought terrible havoc. Sim-
coe, like Frontenac, would have put a stern control on
the traders, but he had less power .than had had the fiery
French Governor, for the settlers who came in lacked
the training of the French in obedience. They held
every variety of religious faith, and many of them be-
longed to obscure sects which have long since died out.
Nothing of the stately ceremonial of the Church of
England did many of them know. \Vandering preachers
went by forest pathways to the settlers, and. with noble
zeal, not always chastened bv knowledge, preached what
of Christian truth they knew. The life of the settlers
was, at most times, lonelv. Often two years would
elapse between the sending of a letter to England and
SETTING UP OF TWO CANAD:kS 181
the receipt of a reply. The nevs of the colony was
learned from pedlars, xvho retailed the latest gossip vith
their wares.
\Vith this freer side of the life of the people Simcoe
had little sympathy. The staid English village vas his
model. He took steps to secure a bishop for Upper
Canada, and offered one quarter of his own salary for
the purpose. The Church of England was to be the
State Church, and to it nmst go the lands set apart by
Parliament for the support of a " Protestant clergy."
Simeoe was 'angry xvhen it was claimed 'that the clergy
of any other church possessed the riffht even to cele-
brate marriage. In all this, as we shall see, was trouble
for future days, since only a fraction of the people
adhered to the Anglican Church. In each coumy Simcoe
would have had the equivalent of the lord-lieutenant
in an English county, who should have a special pev in
church and receive the deference due to his position.
The great land-owner should play the leading part in
rural Canada, as did the squire in E1agland, and he would
be the fit person to send to Parliament and to rule the
cotmtry. The contrast is amusing, between Simcoe, in-
sistent on an aristocracy as the warrant of steadiness in
society, keeping up in the wilderness stiff military pomp,
arrayed in silk and plumes to meet his Parliament, and
the studied lack of pomp shovn by Jefferson, who a fev
years later became the third President of the United
States. He rode alone without guard or servant to the
Capitol at \Vashington to be inaugurated, dismounted,
and tied his horse to a fence ; and he received in dressing-
gown and slippers a foreign envoy who xvent to t-.m
arrayed in a ceremonial dress and carrying a sword.
WAR wlll- lr-le, ul"llED STATES 187
had been one of gratitude to Britain for the liberties
xvhich she had conceded to them. George III was the
best of kings. \\'hen xvar xvith France began in 1793, the
French seemed as hearty as the English in its support.
France, which executed its king and persecuted the
church, could no longer claim their reverence. They sang
Te Deums for Poritish victories. But none the less was
their social system French. They read French books. Their
traditions were French. They would not be absorbed
by a society English in type. tlad not their Norman
ancestors once conquered England as England had now
conquered them? \Vas not France the leader of the
world in the refinements of life? If arrogant English
officials seemed to despise them as a conquered people,
they, in turn, looked upon these nexv-comers as alien in-
truders who had no real stake in the country. It was
the French xvho had first settled Canada, there to remain
for ever rooted.
Prolonged war with France dd no; make easier the
governing of the French in Canada. They had, it is
true, little sympathy with the extremists in France. But
on the banks of the St. Laxvrence was growing up a
society xvith the advanced views of the people's rights
which had overturned the monarchy in France. In 1806,
the French leaders founded a newspaper--Le Canadien.
The few British of an earlier day had made arrogant
attacks on the French as spoiled by an indulgent Gov-
ernor, and noxv the French attacked the English for the
same reason. T.he Governor, flaey said, was a stranger
from England, he was surrounded by an official clique
who hated everything French. The result xvas that the
French put iaa the forefront of their policy their lan-
guage, their religion, and their laws, as things to be
fought for to the death. No quarrels are fiercer than
racial quarrels. The French had the rae and vehemence
of a people free to speak but not in contro! of power.
188 HISTORY OF CANADA
The English, more than the French, have a genius for
trade, and it thus happened that it was chiefly the
French who tilled the soil and the English who carried
on the trade of Lower Canada. When the problem of
taxation was faced, the trader wished to lay the chief
burden on the owners of land, while these in turn wished
to put it on the traders in the form of increased import
duties. The Assembly was acutely divided on the ques-
tion, with the French majority on one side, the English
minority on the other. The majority had had no experi-
ence in politics and thought to repress opposition by
coercion. In 1805, xvhen the Montreal Gazette reported
a speech at a public dinner in which the proposed duties
were condemned as unsound, the Assembly ordered the
arrest of the printer and the publisher for " false, scan-
dalous, and malicious libel."
It was always soldiers whom ]3ritain sent to Canada
as Governors-General. Usually the Governor had a long
record of service. General Prescott, who succeeded
Dorchester, had fought xvith Wolfe forty ),ears earlier.
Sir James Craig, his successor in 1807, had been wounded
in the assault on ]3unker Hill in the first days of the
American Revolution, and, in the following year, had
helped to drire the Americans from Canada. He had
served in South Africa at the first British occupation,
and later in India and in Italy. An officer passing, like
Craig. from one scene to another, each of them with its
own intricate problems, was forced to reh- on the officials
about him. with minds often clouded by prejudice and
resentment. This happened to Craig in Canada. He
was accustomed to military pomp. and he had the per-
emptor3_" ways of a man with the habit of command: but
his mind was keen and his temper generous. \Vhen he
arrived in 1807, he saw that war xvas imminent with the
United States. And just at this time the new French
paper, Le Canadien, was making ferocious attacks on all
that he. as Governor, did. Officials about Craig persuaded
190
HISTORY OF CANADA
Stripes, said American leaders, should float triumphant
from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. To this, it
was said, pointed inevitable destiny. All North America
was to become one vast republic. Many Americans were,
therefore, ready to make use of any dispute with Great
Britain to bring on war, so as to secure Canada.
There were nexv causes provoking war. While the
armies of Napoleon vere supreme on land in Europe, the
fleets of Britain were ererwvhere supreme on the sea.
At Trafalgar. in 1805. Nelson struck the final blow to
French naval power. Yet all was not well in the British
fleet. The discipline was cruel; brutal officers ordered
needless floggings; bad food was supplied by corrupt
contractors; the rate of pay had not been increased dur-
ing a century and a half. .\ great evil xvas the recruiting
of the navy by seizing men in the streets of English
towns and carrying them off against their wills to the
remotest parts of the world. In American ships the sam,,
English language was spoken, and the pay was better.
The result was that, whenever there was a chance for
]ritish sailors impressed against their wills to desert to
an American ship, off some of them xvere sure to go.
How could this be stopped? The British said. by using
the right of search. Accordingly, British men-of-war
stopped American ships on the sea, ordered the muster-
ing of the crew, and c'rried off what deserters were
found. Sometimes mistakes were made. and Americans
were taken. To the United States this claim to searci
its ships seemed like arrogant tyranny. The flag, saia
the Americans. protected the crew, and the dignity of the
young nation must be respected.
This was not the only cause of trouble. Xapoleon,
engaged in deadly struggle xvith Britain, thought to ruin
her by destroying her trade. She was only, as he said,
"a nation of shop-keepers." Accordingly, in 1806, he
issued the Berlin Decree. No British trade was to be
stantly seized the offenders, and four of them were exe-
cuted. "I have never felt grief like this," he told his
men; but he was relentless in such a crisis. In 1812 he
was not only in command of the troops in Upper Canada,
but also acting as Lieuten-
ant-Governor, and this was
of good omen.
When the British con-
quered Canada, they had
made their chief attack by
;k way of the sea, knowing
that if they took Quebec
they could quickly master
, the rest of the country.
]3ut noxv the Americans
had no fleet for such a
- task. They could strike
8ra ISAAC BocK only by land and at two
vital points--Montreal and
the frontiers of Upper Canada. The first blow came
from Detroit against Upper Canada. Villiam Hull, the
American leader, was a well-to-do lavyer in Massachu-
setts, lie had been an officer in .the victorious American
army which received the surrender at Yorktown, in
1781, of Lord Cornwallis, the British commander in
the south. This had been the crovning disaster
to the ritish cause: and every American officer vho
had shared in the triumph was in popular esteem a
hero. Hull was a poor soldier, but he vas given com-
mand of the north-vestern army, with headquarters at
Detroit. He shared the belief that his raw militia could
quickly overrun Canada. At once he crossed the river
into Canada. He had come, he said in a proclamation,
to emancipate the Canadians from British tyranny and
to give them the dignity of freemen. If they failed to
respond, they would su____ffer all the horrors of war. The
196 tIISTORY OF CANADA
bi,tter figlrt at Tippecanoe, in Indiana, in 1811. The
Indians defeated by the American general, l|arrison,
held more eagerly than ever to the British side. Near
Detroit Tecumseh and Brock now met for the first time.
The Indian was the younger by seven or eight years.
Brock, in the uniform of a British general, xvas the model
soldierly leader; Tecumseh, in tanned deer-skin and moc-
casins, was the last of the Indian warriors to play the
]EENG OF BROCK AND TECUMSEH
part of a diified ally. Brock asked the Indian chi for
counsel. XVith the point of a scalping-knife, Tumseh
drew on a piece of elm-bark a milita map showing how
Detroit might be attacked. When he turned to the chiefs
198 HISTORY OF CANADA
against the four hundred thousand of Canada, it seemed
as if the Americans could throw crushing forces into
Canada, but their untrained militia proved of little use.
Armies fight vell only for a cause in which they believe.
On both sides there was excellent fighting material, but
the Northern States did not believe in the war. Militia
of New York, ordered to cross the Niagara River into
Canada, more than once balked. They would, they said,
defend their own homes, but it was no part of their duty
to invade the lands of their neighbours. In some measure
the war was for the Americans a game in party politics,
and inferior leaders were given important commands.
They were slow in getting ready. The British were
better organized. For years they had faced the astound-
ing military genius of Napoleon, and their generals knew
the realities of var. Tied as Britain's hands still were
by this stupendous struggle, she yet sent twenty-five thou-
sand men to Canada. Canada raised fourteen thousand
men as good as regulars, and some of her militia also did
great service fighting a defensive war. There were with
the Canadians about five thousand Indians. During the
war the Americans raised at least seventy thousand regu-
lars. The forces vere widely scattered. No leader on
either side had more than five thousand men in the firing
line in any engagement.
Had Brock lived he would probably have made a
great reputation as a soldier. But his career was short.
From his success at Detroit he hurried back to the
Niagara frontier. There an American force was gather-
ing, to cross .the swift river into Canada. On. the long
front of forty miles above and below the mighty
cataract, the British had to watch anxiously. They knew
not where the great effort might be made. On the morn-
ing of October 13th, 1812, Brock was at Fort George at
the mouth of the river. Before dawn he heard a heavy
cannonade. In the darkness the Americans had crossed
at Queenston, some eight miles up the river. Brock
202 HISTORY OF CANAD
six, with ouly the few seamen whom lie could pick up in
Canada. After a fight of two hours the British squadron
surrendered. Never again during the xvar was the British
flag seen on Lake Erie. General Harrison, with an
army of Kentuckians in verwhelming force, advanced
into Canada and overtook Procter at Moraviantown, near
Chatham. One thousand British and Indians faced
three thousand Americans. Harrison's cavalry broke the
II.P OF IN'I..,;.RA FRONTIER, 1812-1815
British line. Procter was able to ride avay, but
Tecumseh fell. It is said that the men of Kentucky,
enraged at the earlier Indian massacre, made razor
strops of his skin.
On Lake Ontario and the Niagara River there was
for a time a similar story of ]3ritish disaster. The
Americans had a vigorous naval leader in Commodore
Chauncey. In April, 1813, his fleet descended suddenly
on York (Toronto) and captured it after a sharp fight.
WAR WITH THE UNITED STATES 203
Not only did the Americans destroy the ship-yard and the
defences; they burned the Parliament Buildings of the
little capital, scattered the books of the public library,
and even pillaged the church and carried off the church
plate. These barbarities, regretted by Chauncey himself,
vere aftervards avenged, when the British destroyed
the public buildings in Washington. At the end of May
the Americans crossed the river in force and captured
Fort George, the chief British stronghold on the Niagara.
LAD'RA ECORD ON HER JOURNEY TO WARN THE BRtTIS
They attempted to occupy the xvholc shore from Niagara
round the end of the lake to Toronto. But the British
stood across their path at Burlington Heights, which noxv
became the chief British depot. In the thick [orcst
lurked their Indian allies, of whom the Americans had a
great dread. Their painted faces and their vild whoops
204 HISTORY OF CANADA
in the silent forest were indeed, as a British officer said,
enough " to frighten the Black Devil himself." The
British post of Beaver Dams was about seventeen miles
from Fort George. Laura Secord, the wife of a settler,
overheard at Fort George talk of a coming attack. After
the Americans had started, she slipped past them through
the woods and gave the alarm to Lieutenant FitzGibbon
at Beaver Dams. As the American force drew near,
they heard on every side war-whoops. The forest
StoP8 OF WAR ON THE GREAT LAKES, 1811815
seemed alive with the savages, and at last, in fear of
massacre, about five hundred Americans surrendered to
half their number of Indians and British.
All this summer each side tried to secure command of
Lake Ontario. Since ships could not be brought up the
river from Alontreal, it was necessary to build them on
the spot. For this the Americans, with their larger
population, had greater resources. But to the end of the
xvar neither side had on Lake Ontario the complete mas-
tery which the Americans secured on Lake Erie. The
XVAR WITH THE UNITED ST XTES 207
thus sav victory and defeat. Canada had achieved this,
at least, that, when the war ended, not an American sol-
dier was to be found in arms within her frontiers. She
had repelled the invader, and ,her future as a British land
was secure.
The indecisive conflict was far from fruitless. Each
side learned the strength of the other. On the sea the
British were surprised to find that American ships were
sometimes better buiIt than their own. There was no
American fleet vhich could face the ]3rifish fleet. ]3ut
there were single combats betveen American and ]3rifish
ships in which the Americans gave a good account of
themselves. None the less, the ]3ritish secured command
of the sea so completely that they kept up a blockade of
American ports, vhich menaced the North with ruin and
made it ever more hostile to the var. Peace was signed
at Ghent in December, 1814. From that time no party
in the United States has made a serious effort to absorb
Canada in the Union. The war of 1812-1814 decided
a great issue; henceforth there vere to be two English-
speaking states in North America. English and French-
Canadians had fought side by side to ensure that Canada
sfiould remain ]3rifish. And Canada had shown that
she was prepared to fight for her own ideals in face of
overvhelming odds.
210 HISTORY OF CkNADA
l,light. .\ Poor Lav, intended to help him, had proved
a blighting curse. Under this system a man whose
wages were too lov for the support of a family might
claim help from the parish on a fixed scale. If out of
work, he was entitled to receive money from the parish
in lieu of his vages. The idle and dissipated fared
better than the industrious man, whose vages were too
low to enable him to live decently, but who was too self-
relialt to take aid from the parish. Discontent in Eng-
land made it a land of violence. Sullen and embittered
labourers vandered through the country, begging when
they must, thieving when they could. Every evening at
dark the doors and windows of the country house vere
barred and bolted, and every nook vas searched in pro-
tection agaist thieves and violence. The stranger was
suspected, and doors were closed upon him lest he should
be a robber or a murderer. From such an England many
were glad to emigrate across the sea.
2o Clearing the Land in Canada.II Canada was
a land of hardship, at least the spirit of its people was
kindly and trusting. " Let the traveller," says Mrs.
Traill, herself an educated pioneer, " seek shelter in the
poorest shanty and he need fear no evil, for
never have I heard of the rules of hospitality being
violated." The houseless wanderer was rarely turned
from the door. There were no starving poor, robbing in
order to live, no opulent rich whose treasures tempte,l
the covetous. Idle and drunken people there were in
Canada, for the change of scene did not change the
habits of the depraved. But observers noted the effect,
in improving character, of the prospect before a man of
securing the broad acres which should reward his toil:
" Men like this do not steal." In spite of primitive con-
ditions, Canada vas a land of security. Doors were
rarely locked, and almost no violence vas ever done.
The Indians, so .long a terror to the settler, had ceased to
214 IlISTORY OF CANADA
lie had, too, in Canada Sl,,rt, ,pen in England ouly
to the wealthy. The forest abounded in deer. Some-
times, indeed, they were troublesome neighbours, for they
were apt to come at night to browse in the wheat. The
howling of the wolves was not a pleasant sound, and
sometimes they wrought havoc anaong the sheep. The
bear, too, was an incorrigible robber and would make his
way into the kitchen to carry off meats or sweets. But
to hunt the bear was a sport. In the spring vast flocks
of pigeons darkened the sky and were an easy mark.
There were such quantities of salmon in the rivers that
in a single evening one farmer speared more than fifty
with a pitch-fork. In the streams were trout, and in the
great lakes huge salmon-trout, one of which, it is re-
corded, weighed more than seventv pounds. Wild ducks,
wild geese, and in some places immense wild turkeys
were abundant. Black squirrels made a pleasant food.
The life had, of course, its drawbacks. The mos-
quitoes and black flies made early summer well-nigh in-
tolerable to new-comers. Wanting were the quiet beauty
of the English village, the gray tower of the ancient
church clothed with ivy, and the smooth and finished
country-side. &ld friendships were broken to go to
Canada. For those who xvere delicate the life was hard,
and a malaria, known as the ague, weakened and de-
pressed many. The labour of the men cleared the ground
and tilled the fields, but most of what was used within,
the women 'had to .make--the daily bread, the candles, the
soap, not least the clothing, for the spinning-wheel was
in every household. \Vhen there was illness the doctor
was often remote. The cardinal vice among the pioneers
was drunkenness. Whisky was easily distilled, and it
was consumed in vast quantities. When farmers gath-
ered in a "bee" to help to raise the frame of a barn or
a house for a neighbour, the day was certain to end in
intoxication for some. A pail of water and a pail of
whisky were often carried round to the uests, who
216 HIST(RY -F C-NADA
not, as in Engl:tnd, a class which lived on its income from
land. Colonel 'l'allot secured for himself more than
sixty thousand acres, but in no case did land mean
wealth, ht primitive conditions land was usually a
burden, rather than a source of income, and no large
estates were preserved in Upper Canada. Its aristocracy
consisted of the officials of the government, the profes-
sioual classes--the lawyers, the physicians, the cler,
and the numerous retired officers who, confronted by a
long era of peace in Europe, sought provision for their
families in a pioneer life. This class frowned upon per-
sons engaged in trade, and it is amusing now to note that,
xvithin the memory of men still living, to be engaged in
trade disqualified a candidate for admission to the most
exclusive social club in Toronto.
From the first, the legal profession and the law courts
maintained a creditable dignity. There were no corrupt
judes, and a court in session awed the settlers with a
grave decorum borrowed from England. The crude in-
formality of justice in pioueer society in the United
States found no place in Canada. Complaints there were
from radicals that the courts had a Tory bias. This was
iuevitable in a society dominated by a soldier governor
and an office-holding caste, but no judge was bought.
Inevitably in a new country, wilzh thousands of ignorant
settlers, jails were needed, and were sometimes full.
Kingston l'enitentiary, completed in 1833, was already a
vast place, and its inmates were treated with a rigour
long since discarded. Brutal flogging was a frequent
punishment, and the dark cell, without a ray of light, was
in use for trouhlesome prisoners. Toronto Jail was a
dismal place, in which prisoners sometimes died from
cold and neglect. This was all the more barbarous be-
cause respectable and refined men were still sent to prison
for debt. The age did not draw a sharp line between
crime and misfortune.
21g IIISTORY C)F CANADA
As late as iu 1827, roads withiu tweuty miles of Toronto
were corduroy, which means that they consisted of logs
laid side by side. The rough surface was not usually
softeued by auv covering of earth, and the bumps and
jolts tried every, joint in the body of the traveller. But
the roads improved rapidly. P,v 1850 main highways
xvere lined with farm-houses. Tfaere xvere stage-coaches
drawn by four horses, and taverns every- few miles.
The houses were well built and more spacious than
those occupied by tillers of the soi in England. though
they lacked the taste and fini.sh of the Englsh country'-
side. The farmer, dependent upon 'his own labour and
engrossed in things necessary, neglected things orna-
mental, and, in some respects, he is still apt so to do.
The well-kept flover garden is rarely seen on the Cana-
dian farm. But at an early period the farmer plante,l
orchards and had apples, plums, cherries, and, in some
di.tricts, peaches. The abundaut supply often rotted on
the trees, for the market demand was small.
220 HISTORY OF CANADA
just been overthrown, after a quarter of a century of
bloodshed, and fiere vas now fear and hatred of new
opinions. About the Governor iu Upper Canada had
grown up a small official circle which aimed to guide his
actions. The members of the Second Chamber, the
Legislative Council, were appointed for life. The officials
who carried on the government formed what was called
the Executive Council. They, too, usually held office for
life, and many of them were also members of the Second
Chamber. They had a vested interest in things as they
were. The Governor wa a new-comer, living in the
country for only a fev years; vhile the officials dvelt
there permanently. The population was widely scattered,
and the roads were bad. There is little wonder that the
governing class at the capital came to think that it vas for
them alone to rule. Some one, who had read about the
alliance betweeu members of reigning houses in Europe
relaed by blood, called the ruli.ng set at Toronto '" The
Family Compact," and the name clung to them. It was
not appropriate, for many of them were not related.
For the most part they were of Loyalist descent. The),
had a fiery hatred of revolution and republicanism, they
had been long in Canada, and they resented political
agitation carried on bv new-comers. Who, they asked,
should know better than they, the founders, the needs of
the country ?
The Family Compact wished Canada to be like Eng-
land. England had a state church. In Canada pro-
vision had been made for state support of " a Protestant
Clergy." This, said the Family Compact, meant and
must always mean th._e clergy of the Church of England.
In 1812 Dr. John Strachan, a former Presbyterian, be-
came rector of the church at Toronto, and, unti.l he died
fifty-five years later, .he was the fierce champion of the
claims of the Church of England. It was not until 1824
that Methodist ministers were allowed to celebrate mar-
226 HISTORY OF CANADA
"Young Head" should be sent to Canada. There was,
however, another lIead, not so young, but with some
reputation a's a wri.ter; and by an error the offer went
to him. If the story is true, it shows that the Colonial
Office was willing to
let the error of a
clerk saddle Canada
with an unfit man.
-. Francis Bod Head
vent off to Canada
so promptly that Col-
borne, much to his
annoyance, xvas
-" -. forced to make a hur-
ried exit from Gov-
ernment House. To-
ronto. He was trans-
ferred to Montreal
as Commander-in-
Chief of the Forces.
Before he left he took
a step that enraged
Sm FANCm Bot,D
the opponents of a
state church. He set apart public lands to endow forty-
four rectories.
Head was in Canada for less than two years, and in
that time blundered only less grossly than did Mackenzie
in his appeal to arms. Mackenzie's friends, hoping
rather than knowing, quoted Head as a "tried Re-
former." They soon learned better. When Head had
met Mackenzie, he described how "the tiny creature" sat
with his feet not touching the ground, and, while "afraid
to look me in the face," "raved about grievances." At
once Head set down Mackenzie as a republican traitor
anxious to despoil the country for his ovn profit, and he
.conceived himself as the one person who could save the
REBELLION IN UPPER CANADA 227
state. He proceeded to act without taking advice from
any one, and, when his Executive Council protested, he
replied that he would ask for advice when he liked, but
that he alone was responsible for the government of
Upper Canada. The Council then resigned. When a
great public meeting in Toronto sent a protest to Head
against his course, he replied that he would speak out
plainly to these, " the industrial classes," and that he in-
tended to go his own way. Protests of the Assembly
demanding " cheap, honest, and responsible government "
he received with fretful anger. He vould fight, he said,
the " low-bred antagonist democracy." Since the Radicals
seemed to tesire aid from a foreign invader, that is, the
United States, he hurled his defiance: "I publicly pro-
mulgate, let them come if they dare !"
This half comic Governor vas confronted by a man
now in a temper so frantic that his mind was unbalanced.
When Mackenzie advised the Assembly to brand the
Governor as a liar, Head dissolved the House and
appealed to the country. His opponents, he said, were
traitors, and he asked the electors to answer the simple
question whether they were for him and British connec-
tion or for the Assembly and a republic which would be
quickly added to the United States. Such an appeal to
loyalty has never failed of force in Canada. Its deepest
traditions are linked with the resolve to remain separate
from the United States. Head threw himself into the
election with fiery energy, and he never lacked courage.
His policy suited the Family Compact, while the more
sober of the Liberal element were alarmed at Mackenzie's
extreme language. The result was that Head won a
sweeping victory, and his friends nov controlled the
Assembly, which had been so troublesome with its griev-
ances. Head wrote to England that he had saved Canada
and that now its loyalty vas as solid as a rock. He re-
garded himself as so much master of the situation that he
REBELLION IN UPPER CANADA 229
lieved that he had saved the state, that the people were
wholly on his side, and that not fifty vould take up arms.
He xvas wrong. On an afternoon early in November,
1837, Mackenzie held a secret meeting at the house of a
lIr. Doel, a brewer, at the corner of Adelaide and Bay
Streets, now in the business centre of the great city of
Toronto. Mackenzie spoke with fire. Liberties for
which great leaders in English history had died were at
stake; from the British government no redress would
come; an adverse Assembly had been elected by fraud;
a state church had been forced on an unwilling people;
public funds were misused to make offices for the tools of
oppression; trade, education, and all progress were para-
lyzed under a detestable tyranny; and so on.
What shall we do? asked l\Iackenzie, and he gave a
startling answer. The men are ready. Go at once to
Govern.ment House. Sir Francis has just come in from
his ride, and there is but one sentinel. Seize him, seize
the City tlall, where there are four thousand stand-of-
arms. Set up a provisional government. Lower Canada
will join the movement. Rouse the country. Oblige Sir
Francis to dissolve the packed Assembly and to have a
free election. If he refuses, proclaim independence. It
may be that in such a plan lay the only hope of rebellion.
But the meat was too strong for those present. " This is
treason," cried one of them, vell knowing that the
penalty of treason was a halter and a scaffold.
Plotters are always in fear of spies. Though ready
to rebel, the more cautmus spirits were for acting with
deliberation. Four or five thousand men were quietly to
make ready ap.d to gather suddenly. The chief discon-
tent was in the north, and the great route from the north
into Toronto was Yonge Street. Here at Montgomery's
Tavern, three miles from the city, the rebel forces were to
converge on December 7th and to make a rapid capture
of the city. But everything went wrong. By December
232 HISTORY OF CANADA
dian Republic with two stars, in imitation of those in the
Stars and Stripes. A vessel called the Caroline served
the rebels on the island, and a Can'adan party cut her
out as she lay under the guns of a fort on the American
side, set her on fire, and sent her over the Fails. It was
a lawless act for which due apology was made on behalf
of Canada. In the end Mackenzie found himself in
prison in New York .State for lawless acts directed
against Canala.
It is easy to deride the rebellion as trifling and sordid,
but it was really ixnportant. There was folly on both
sides. ]3ut even Mackenzie's enemies nmst admit that
he made no mistake in demanding that the people of
Canada should govern themselves. In this respect time
has vindicated him. Vrhen, however, he favoured politi-
cal union with the United States, he was running counter
to the deepest conviction of the Canadian people. If
anything had been needed to persuade Canadians that
they must rule themselves, it was to be found in the
policy of Sir Francis Bond Head. A system that could
make so vain and foolish a man the head of a Canadian
province stood self-condemned. The picture of the
Governor, overriding in the hour of victory the wishes
of the tried soldier, FitzGibbon, burning rebel houses,
and turning their occupants out into the wintry cold, is
not inspiring. Happily Head had already been recalled,
and he soon left Canada.
Of course, against the rebels the day of vengeance
came. Passions ran high and the punishments were
stern. The chief leaders had escaped to the United
States, but Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews, who had
taken command of the rebel forces, had been captured.
Van Egmond, who had played a worthy part as a soldier
of Napoleon, and now, an old man, had taken what he
thought the side of liberty in Canada, was thrown into
jail at Toronto in midwinter and died from his hardships.
REBELLION IN UPPER CANADA 233
Lount and Matthews were tried. Their fine character
was admitted, but the Chief-Justice, John Beverley
Robinson, sentenced them to death with no recommenda-
tion to mercy. Sir George Arthur, who had ruled con-
victs in Van Diemen's Land, succeeded Head. Orders
were on the way from England to be merciful. The cable
would have saved these men. But the instructions
arrived too late. In April, 1838, before the jail at the
corner of Toronto and Court Streets, Lount and
Matthews were hanged. Others concerned in the rising
were exiled to the remote Van Diemen's Land. The rebel
cause had its martyrs and brought enduring sorrow to
many families. In the eild Mackenzie and other exiles
were allowed to return to Calmda. But they came back
to a changed world in which they played little part.
REBELLION IN LOXVER CANADA 235
tory, and of cultivated manners. The opinion is wide-
spread that only a leader obedient to the Roman Catholic
Church and acceptable to the priests can obtain great in-
fluence in Lower Canada. Papineau, .however, held radi-
cal opinions in religion and was the enemy of clericalism.
He was chosen Speaker of the Assembly in 1815, and by
his dominating eloquence "he secured a fi,rm hold on the
masses of the people. To this day in the Province of
Quebec the highest compliment to an orator is to say that
he speaks like a Papineau.
At first Papineau was moderate. I* vas, indeed, fit-
ting that, vhile Speaker, he should not lead a political
party. In the ]3ritish tradition the Speaker does not take
.q ,
sides. ]3ut, in time, from the peaker s chair, Papineau
assailed his opponents with great bitterness. The mem-
bers of the Second Chamber--the Legislative Council--
vere named by the Governor, and alvays there vas a
large English and Protestant majority. The government
was carried on by an ExecutiTe Council, also named by
the Governor. He took its advice only when he liked; ;t
was not a real Cabinet, to go out of office if a majority in
the Assembly. failed to support it. Its members could be
dismissed only by the Governor. AIost of them had also
seats in the Second Chamber. Judges and other salaried
officials sat in this Executive Council and took an active
part in politics. In the background vas the authority of
the Colonial Secretary in England, whom the Governor
must obey. Such a system could not possibly vork xvell.
even with the best intentions on both sides. Either Can-
ada must govern itself, or England must govern Canada.
In England there were sometimes half a dozen new
colonial secretaries in as many years. They knew little
or nothing about Canada, and had to depend on the
officials in the Colonial Office. Despatches from Eng-
land to Canada were supposed to express the minds of the
king and the mother-country, when, in fact, it vas a clerk
236 HISTORY OF CANADA
in the Colonial Office xvho spoke. A biting satire de-
scribes " Mr. Mother-Country" as a commonplace person,
living in a London suburb, and going daily in a bus to the
office where he directed the colonial policy of the British
Empire. Such a system maddened a man of Papineau's
excitable temper. Elections, he saw, were futile. Even
with a huge majority in the Assembly he would have little
power. He was doomed to be always in opposition.
\\'hat did Papineau desire? He did not clearly
demand what we have to-day in every British Dominion
SEIGmORIAL IN'OR HOUSE OF XIoEBEL : THE HOME OF
PAPImAU ON E AWA IVER
govcrnment by a Cabinet, with a Prime Minister at its
head, and holding oce only so long as it has the suprt
of the eltors. What he insisted upon was that the
mcmrs of the Sond Cmber should no loer be
appointed, but should be elated. Then it would be pre-
vailingly French in character. He demanded that no
ociMs, and especially no judges, should t in the S-
ond Chamber and that judges should do what hithe
they had not donchold aloof from politics. Above all
he demanded that public revenues of eve kind should be
RE-BELLION IN LOWER CANADA 237
controlled by the Legislature. This meant that every
offficial, from the Governor down, would be dependent on
a vote by Parliament for his salary. In itself this is rea-
sonable enough, but, with the bitter temper of the time,
the official class feared that, if they offended Papineau
and his friends, they wotrld have their pay cut off and be
face to face with starvation--something which actually
happened.
Papineau became finally embittered by a plan pro-
posed in 1822. Upper Canada, remote from the sea, had
to import goods through Lower Canada. There they paid
duty, and most of the revenue went to the government
at Quebec. Naturally Upper Canada desired her fair
share, and, in 1822, it was proposed that the problem
could be best solved by uniting the two provinces under
one legislature--a proposal which was carried out a
score of years later. But in this plan was involved, as
Papineau perceived, the dominance of the English ele-
ment. Emigrants from Britain were flocking in, and it
was certain that before long the English in Canada, as a
whole, would be more numerous than the French. Then
the elections would tell a new story. The majority in the
Assembly would be English, and the French would lose
control in the one place where they had it.
The tone of the officials in Loxver Canada was not
conciliatory. Canada, so the talk went, had been under
the British flag for half a century, and it was time for
the French, a conquered people, to give up the language
and manners which kept them still foreign, and to become
British. As it was, they xvere too French for a British
colony. Herman Ryland, xvho for many years com-
manded grea' influence as secretary to the Governor,
disliked both the French and their religion. To this day
he is denounced by French-Canadian writers as a gloomy
and cold-blooded fanatic, and certainly he lacked tact. He
went to London and was persistent in urging the union.
238 HISTORY OF CANADA
To the French his activities there seemed an infamous
plot against their liberties. Papineau xvent to London to
oppose union, and he did so with success. But from this
time he lost all restraint and moderation. He insulted
successive governors and described heir policy in such
terms as foul, indecent, debasing. \Vhen one of them
appealed for moderation, Papineau denounced this as
insult to the Canadian people. An inquiry from another
governor as to an extreme speech by him he called " an
impertinence which I repel with contempt and silence."
Governors came to (uebec from England filled xvith
kindly intentions. They were always conciliatory in tone,
much more so than were 3laitlaad arrd Head in Upper
Canada. But they had no power to change the system.
They must obey their instructions. Papineau would not
accept an offered seat in the Executive Council. He said
over and over again to the Governor : " You cannot have
peace until you yield all poxver to the electors in this
country." The Governor answered in effect: " By all
means let us have peace, but I have no poxver to grant
what you demand." The Earl of Dalhousie, another
\Vaterloo veteran, was Governor for nine years from
1819. He was courteous and moderate, but with no
great force of character to lift him above the whisper-
ings in the official circle. He and later governors told
Papineau that the grant by the Assembly of a " civil list,"
as it was called, ensuring permanently the pay of the
governor, judges, and other officials, xvould result in giv-
ing up to the Assembly control of all other moneys. But
to this grant Papineau would never assent. He xvished to
have always the power to starve out the officials. \Vhen
one of them defaulted in his accounts, Papineau said that
Dalhousie vas the real thief. In 1830 came Lord
Aylmer, still another general vho had fought under
Wellinon. He, too, vas of kindly intent. He urged
the Assembly to make known all its grievances: "' We
240 HISTORY OF CANADA
in the Assembly at Quebec. Though Papineau was
Speaker, this did not keep him from a passionate share in
the debates. His supporters brought in Ninety-Two
Resolutions--nearly a 'hundred, be it noted--stating
grievances big and little. Since other appeal-s had failed,
these Resolutions were to go direct to the king, and the
king vas the kindIy, ignorarrt, and undignified William
IV. We can imagine his amazement when he read the
long paper. The British system, it said, was not, after
all, very admirable. Only a beggarly few Royalists ad
Consera'atives vere left on the American continent.
Canada would soon have more people than the revolted
colonies had had in 1776, and would repudiate a system
even worse than that which had caused the American
Revolution. In a word the Resolutions said that Canada
was beginning to look to X, Vashington. All this was
addressed to the king himself, and ve know the effect on
the mind of x, Villiam IV. He set his face against yield-
ing anything to Papineau.
None the less, in 1835, a Commission of three mem-
bers was sent from Briin to Canada to make inquiries.
At its head was the Earl of Gosford, a genial Irishman,
who was also made Governor-General. By this time the
tritish government had begun to realize that generals
would no longer do as governors, and made the effort to
send out a leading statesman. But no one of the first
rank would go. Gosford, the first Governor who vas not
a soldier, had no political training, but he brought, at
least, good intentions. He kept open house. Papineau's
followers and even Papineau himself sat at his table and
drank his wines, and some of them opened their minds
to him. Vhen Gosford met his Parliament, he urged
peace betveen the two races " sprung from the l-xvo lead-
ing nations of the world." His Tory officials began to
show alarm at this friendliness to t.h French. He xvas
warned that his Burgundy wine would be turned into
242 HISTORY OF CANADA
minister, an advanced Liberal in politics, passed through
the British House of Commons in :March, 1837, Ten
Resolutions. These declared impossible the concessions
demanded by Papineau, and ordered that for a limited
amount the Governor of Loxver Canada might pay out
public funds vithout the consent of the Assembly. This
decision made Papineau frantic. His speeches openly
incited to rebellion, and he was certain that he could
secure aid from the United States.
3. The First Rebellion in Lower Canada.--There
was fiery agitation during the summer of 1837.
Mackenzie and Papineau had now agreed on common
action. All the time Sir Jolm Colborne vas quietly
getting troops ready for an emergency. In great public
meetings Papineau denounced the Russell Resolutions
as " foul;" his oppouents, he said, resembled "a savage
beast ready to bite and to tear its prey ;" and Gosford's
caressing artifices veiled a t, reacherous design to disarm
the patriots. Papineau praised what the American re-
volutionists had done. Since they had, refused to wear
]3ritish cloth. Canadian patriots were urged to follov
their example, and some of the leaders vent about in
rough homespun. Canadians organized, in imitation of
the men of Washington's time. " Sons of Liberty," who
began to arm. \Vith civil war in sigh', the Roman Ca-
tholic Church grew alarmed and xvarned the agitators.
Montreal was the chief centre of unrest, and the Bishop
of hIontreal spoke strongly against rebellion, and most
of the parish priests tried to stop it. The hot-heads,
however, had gone too fast and too far. Sometimes
Papineau seemed to favour rebellion; sometimes he
warned his followers against it. But he could no longer
ride the storm. \Vhen in June. Gosford, xvith a true
sense of what xvas coming, issued a proclamation for-
bidding public meetings because of the many appeals to
violence, enraged croxvds tore doxvn the placards, and
REBELLION IN LOWER CANADA 245
brutally murdered when he seemed to be trying to escape
from a guard of ignorant habitants. " Remember Jock
X.Veir," va.s noxv the loyal cry. A loyal habitant named
Chartrand 'had also been. murdered by angry rebels.
These outrages led to the burning of a great deal of pro-
perry, some of i,t belonging to loyalists. Out of this came
the " Rebel, lion Losses" which a dozen years later were
to play a startling part in Canadian 'history.
Meanwhile. news of Gore's defeat at St. Denis had
been carried fa, r. It was clear that the habitant could
FIGHT AT ST. EUITACHE, DECEXmER 14, 1&37
fight, and this success encouraged action elsewhere. In
the district north-west of lIontrcal Papincau's influence
vas strong. An agitator named Girod had been busy
in the village of St. Eustache, eighteen miles from Mont-
real. The country doctor has ahvays been active in the
politics of French Canada. Girod's chief ally was Doctor
Ohnier, a man of deermned courage. A few days after
Nelson's victory at St. Denis, the whole district about
St. Eustache was in arms, and loyalist houses were being
looted. Colborne did not attack until he had some two
thousand men, and then the rebel cause was/hopeless. It
246 HISTORY OF CANADA
vas December 14th, mid-winter, vhen Colborne attacked
St. Eustache. Chnier would not surrender His last
defence was a convent and the village church. While
the rebels were shooting from the church windows, a
loyalist set the building on fire and a scene of horror
followed. Some rebels vere burned in the church.
Others, including Chnier, were killed in trying to escape.
Girod committed suicide. About seventy in all were
killed, and the village was burned. So also was the
neighbouring village of St. Benoit, though the inhabitants
surrendered without fighting. The mililia got out of
hand and pillaged and destroyed without mercy. The
prisons were soon full of rebels.
And all this time where was Papineau? At the first
appeal to arms he had fled to the United States, saying
that he would come back with ten thousand men. Ta
many of his allies he seemed to be a deserter in the day
of trial. Nelson stayed with his followers until the re-
bellion was crushed. Iu the end he was taken prisoner.
After a long exile Papineau was alloved to return to
Canada. He sat again in Parliament, but never again
had a strong folloving. Born in 1786, when Canada was
under the Quebec Act, he lived to 1870, vhen it had
become a great free federal state. Always he claimed
that he had not counselled an appeal to arms. That was
a tragic blunder. Many scores of dead, burning villages,
and a devastated country-side were some of its fruits.
But vorse still vere the inflamed passions added to
political strife already acute. Across the sea in England
there came to the throne in this same summer the young
Queen Victoria, and th.e dreadful bloodshed in Canada
caused a jarring note in the general rejoicings. The
whole ]3ritish world demanded that the cause and the
cure of the trouble should be found. Only a statesman
of great capacity could achieve this task, aud in 1838 the
Earl of Durham was sent to Canada.
248 HISTORY OF CANADA
and stormed out of the room. He vas not an easy
colleague, and it may be that Lord Melbourne, the Prime
Minister in 1838, wished to have him out of the vay
vhen he urged him to go to Canada. Durham's secretary,
Charles Bullet, called him playfully, " The Dictator."
His manner was haughty, but he vas fearless, honest,
and generous. Once, in the presence of servants, he
spoke harshly 'co Lady Durham. When they were alone
and she gently remonstrated, he summoned the servants
back to the room and apologized in their presence for his
fault. To go to Canada he made great sacrifices, and
he was eager to do what vould make for the well-being
of its people. His health was bad, and his labours in
Canada really killed him. He had had many sorrows.
A beloved son and three daughters had recently died.
At the end of May, 1838, Quebec sav a brilliant
pageant, when Durham landed, and, mounted on a white
charger, paraded through the streets to the Castle of St.
Louis. His enemies jested at his bringing vith him gold
and silver plate and such a mass of luggage that it seemed
to fill the hold of the ship. He had no fexver than eight
aides-de-camp, and his entertainments were magnificent.
In all this vas a purpose. Durham wished Canada to
understand that a new era xvas dawning, and with grace
and dignity he xvelcomed at his table men of all parties.
He brought with him a group of able meta, whom he set
to vork at once to find out the truth about the country.
His authority xvas great. He xvas Governor-General
over not only the two Canadas, but also Nova Scotia and
the other British colonies. To Lower Canada he stood
in a peculiar relation. Not only was he Governor; he
lad despotic powers. That legislature in which Papineau
had played so strong a part had been suspended until
November, 1840, because, in such a crisis, it seemed to
have no promise of usefulness. No shadow of self-
government was left in Louver Canada. At once, how-
250 HISTORY OF CANADA
Durham's most pressing prohlem was to establish
settled government. The jails were full of men liable to
the dread penalty of treason. He was resolved to send
no man to the scaffold. But he found that, while an
English jury would only too readily sentence rebels to
death, a French jury would acquit rebels clearly guilty.
When the murderers of Lieutenant Weir and of Char-
trand were shown to be guilty, the French jurors shouted
from the box, " Not guilty," and then went off to be
entertained for their verdict at a public dinner. Dr.
XVolfred Nelson and other leaders were awaiting trial,
and public trials would only inflame racial passions.
Durham aad been given unlimited power of pardon, and
he would have freed every one except those concerned in
nmrder, but that he feared by this to stir up resentment
among the English. In the end [he issued an ordinance
banishing Nelson and seven other chief rebels, with their
ow consent, to ]3ermuda. There they were to be held
as political exiles. These and some fifteen others, in-
cluding Papineau, who had fled, must not, on pain of
death, return to Canada. Other accused persons Durham
released. He thought that, as possessing supreme
authority in Lower Canada, he had power to do all this;
and he vas certain that his XVhig friends in England
would protect him. But he had no authority to order
that ]3ermuda should receive the exiled leaders, and it
was contrary to British tradition that men should be
exiled and also sentenced to death, if they should act in
a certain xvay, without ever having been brought to trial.
Durham's course was vell meant. Had the British
government been loyal to him, it would have passed a
special bill to protect him. His was the right policy.
But when Lord Brougham attacked Durham in the
IIouse of Lords for exceeding his powers, his ,Vhig
friends, instead of supporting him, admitted that his
ordinance was illegal and disallowed it. Durham vas
LORD DURHAM'S MISSION 251
a proud man, ano the rebuff struck him to the heart.
He first learned the nexvs from an American paper.
Melbourne did not even write promptly to explain what
had been done. It so happened that on September 22rid,
just after Durham had received the nexvs, he met a group
of delegates from the Maritime Provinces, and, over-
come by his emotion, he broke down and cried. At once
his resolve was fixed to return without delay to England.
The situation in Canada was critical. The French had
received Durham as a friend. But noxv, with his merci-
ful policy repudiated, the saner element among the
French sank into something like despair for the future,
while extreme men began to plan a new appeal to arms.
Agents of the government reported that secret drilling
xvas going on, even in the Quebec district, and that arms
xvere being brought from the United States. In that coun-
try was still strong the old idea that I3ritish rule meant
tyranny, and that the republic should include Canada
and extend from the Arctic Ocean t'the Gulf of Mexico.
Recent events 'had revived this idea. In 1836 Samuel
Houston had led a movement in Texas, then a part of
Mexico, which resulted in the setting up of the republic
of Texas--a republic destined in due course 'to become a
state in the American union. If Texas in the south, xvhy
not Canada in the north?
3. The Crushing of the Second Rebellion.-- In
Canadian politics the possible part to be played by
the United States has alvays seemed important.
Papineau, Mackenzie, and other exiles vere appealing to
the Americans to help to make Canada free. The result
was the forming on the American side of the frontier
of what were called Hunters' Lodges--groups of restless
men, who formed a secret society with a ritual suggested
by that of the Freemasons. They were arming and
making ready to invade Canada. Houston's bold success
was muoh in their minds. [ost of them were simply
252 HISTORY OF CANADA
freebooters; a few of them, like the former Polish
solder, Von Schultz, were men of culture, who thought
that Britain meant to Canada vhat the iron heel of
Russia meant to enslaved Poland. The news that
Durham had failed in his task caused in these circles
keen excitement. Forty thousand men were ready, it
vas said, to invade Canada. Incidents occurred well
fitted to cause war with the United States. Just when
Durham arrived, a Canadian steamer, the Sir Robert
Peel, lying on the American side of the St. Lawrence,
had been burned by an American freebooter named
Johnson, and the Canadian passengers 'had been treated
with gross brutality. A little later, British sentries at
Brockville had fired on aia American steamboat. Ameri-
can newspapers attacked Britain with fury, and some
politicians, eager to make capital out of the distrust of
Britain, clamoured for war. In this situation Durham
had sent tactful messages o the American government,
which took steps to hold in check the lawless elements on
the frontier.
But now Durham was going, and hopes revived for
creating a republic of Canada. On a bleak, cold day,
November 1st, 1838, Quebec was astir. The streets and
even the housetops vere alive with people to see Durham
depart. A crovd of three thousand people followed in
gloomy silence the carriage in vhich he drove to the ship.
The French, sull'en and suspicious at the failure of his
policy of peace, held aloof. It was the English who,
vith poignant regret, sav depart the man, sick and dying,
who had spent himself xvithout measure to solve a
tangled md noxv seemingly hopeless problem. Sir John
Golborne, ae capable and sern soldier, vas there by
Durham's side and was to take over the government.
Cannon boomed a salute, and the ship set sail. Buller,
from a wirdow which opened on the spacious Basin,
noted that the sky was heavy and that a storm was corn-
LORD DURHAM'S MISSION 253
ing, as he watched " the dark form of that ill-omened
ship slowly, and, as it were, painfully, struggling on its
course." He did well to feel a sense of gloom. Four
days later Montreal was in a panic. Armed rebellion had
again broken out, and there was a plot to seize the city on
Sunday, when the soldiers should be at church.
Colborne had some twelve thousand troops, and was
too alert to be taken unawares. From the first the rising
was doomed to failure. Wolfred Nelson was in jail, but
his brother, Robert Nelson, was also a leader on the side
of the "' Patriotes," and he had fled to the United States.
On November 4th, this young man, with a motley fol-
lowing, re-entered Canada by the well-tried route from
Lake Champlain, seized the village of Odelltown, and
proclaimed the Republic of Lower Canada, with himself
as provisional president. The press was to ,be free, and
manhood suffrage, vote by ballot, and religious equality
were to be features of this model state. The habitant
was to own his own land and not to be subject to a
seignior. From this foolhardy enterprise the better
class of people held aloof, but some thousands of
peasants, many of them armed only with pitch-forks and
rakes, joined Nelson. His attempt to play the role of
Houston in Texas failed miserably. Colborne was pre-
pared. Within a week his legions had marched to the
scene of .the rising, Nelson had fled to the United States,
and the ill-fated rising was utterly crushed. The loyal
inhabitants were bitter against this mad effort. Those
in La Prairie had been given by the rebels only ten
minutes to abandon the village. Now they had a quick
revenge. The iiontreal Herald described "the awful
spectacle" of a vast sheet of lurid flame made by the
burning houses of the rebels near La Prairie. The
troops, too, were angry at renewed treason. Soon there
LORD DURHAM'S MISSION 255
from their families. Such xvas the distressful fruit of
t)olitical strife. The results of the seeming failure of
Durham's mission were indeed tr.aic.
Meanwhile at Plymouth, on November 30th, a sick
man, worn to a shadow by fever, had landed after a
month's voyage. By what seemed studied neglect,
Durham was denied the salutes and honours usually
extended to a returning enx'oy. But crowds gathered to
applaud him. He was hailed as a champion of thorough-
going radicalism betrayed by the timid \Vhigs. News
soon came of the vising in Loxver Canada, and this seemed
to show the folly of failing to support him. Men xvon-
dered that Durham, often so volcanic in his outbursts,
xvas now so gentle, so free from resentment. The truth
is that his mind xvas still fully occupied with Canada.
tie xvas busily engaged in finishing a " Report," and he
knew that he could afford to wait. Early in 1839 the
great work was completed, and on the last day of
January Parliament receix-ed perhaps the most important
single document in [Iritis'h Colonial history--Lord
Durham's " Report on the Affairs of ]3ritish North
America." It was the work of a man near his end. In
the next year Durham died at the early age of forty-
eight. Canada had killed him, and almost his last vords
were : " Canada xvill one day do juqtice to mv memory."
Rarely has the insight of the dying been more completely
justified. The " Report " marks the beginning of a new
era for Canada.
IHP. L2.\I. _t' lta= I **_ CANADAS 257
lie could not see that this would mean to the French
irreparable loss. \Vhile they desired no political tie with
France, they were proud of their origin from that great
nation. France had founded Canada, and to the French
the English seemed like intruders. The French in
Canada were devoted to their church with siucere reli-
gious passion. They were proud of their ancestry, their
language, and their institutions: and any attempt to re-
shape these on the English model would make them only
the more tenaciously French. They were both virile and
obstinate. To Durham. however, ther seemed to be an
inferior race, lackin vigour, and living under antiquated
land laws, which made the tiller of the soil the vassal of
his lord as seignior. Their idea of preserving a dis-
tinct type of nationality seemed to Durham intolerable.
They must be anglicized for their own good.
Accordingly, Durham urged the tmion of Upper and
Lower Canada. Th, ey should become one province, with-
out anv remnant lef.t of division between them. The
idea that. in the parliament to be created. ,the two divisions
should have equal representation, was hateful to him.
lie rejected, also. the thought of federal union, for this
would mean that. while the French would unite with the
English in ffhe wider national affairs, in 'local affairs
which touched education, religion, aud other things
closely related to daily life. they would still preserve their
distinct type. This. said Durham. should not he. If the
Canadians were to become the strong nation for which
he hoped, there should be no line of separation of any
kind. Members should be elected to Parliament on the
basis that each member would represent about the same
number of people. It was true that, since the French
were the more numerous, they would, at first, have a
majority in parliament. But this vould gradually
change, for the ]ritish Isles would, as Durham hoped,
send manv innnigrants to Canada, and France would send
H.C. 17.
THE UNION OF THE TXVO CNADAS 265
raged at the thought. The French, they said, had
never really shared iu the government of Canada. "Vhy
should they now share in it when even their leader,
Lafontaine, had so recently been a rebel? "Vore traitors
to be so rewarded? In England the opinion prevailed
that the French-Canadians were rebellious and disloyal
and quite unfit to hold office. The Duke of Wellington
fumed at " that nmn Bagot," his nephew by marriage,
xvhose ideas woultl, he said, wreck the British Empire.
But Bagot had either to go back to the old ways, which
had caused rebellion, or to let the majority rule. He
offered to include Lafontaine and other French members
in the existing Cabinet formed by Sydenham. ]ut
Lafontaine and his all)-, Baldwin, who were both well
read in British methods, insisted that the British xvay
was government bv the party which had a majority, and
would take office onlv on this basis.
VVithin two weeks after Parliament met in September,
1842, Bagot, half distracted, had to yield. Baldwin and
Lafontaine took office. All but I,iberal and French
members retired from the Cabinet, and Canada had its
first government directly responsible to Parliament.
Bagot vas attacked bitterly by the dying remnant of the
Family Compact. In England his act caused a sensation.
Lord Stardey, the Colonial Secretary, wrote to Bagot a
letter of sharp censure. Already he vas ailing, and his
anxieties broke dovn his health. He died at Kingston,
in May, 1843, killed, as Durham and Syden'ham had been
kil.led, by the cares involved in creatin,g a xvorkable system
in Canada.
$. Metcalfe Repudiates Colonial Self=(iovernment.
While Bagot lay, slowly dying, at Kingston, his suc-
cessor arrived. Sir Charles Metcalfe had served long in
India; for a time he had acted there as Goxernor-
(;eneral, and he had given offence by his Liberal views.
As Governor of Jamaica, he had been the mercifnl friend
268 HISTORY OF CANADA
victory in Canada's long fight. In 1846 the Earl of
Elgin, son-in-law of Lord Durham, was made Governor,
and he had the fixed resolve to carry out to the full
I)urham's liberal policy.
CIlAPTER XXI
SELF-GOVERNMENT AT LAST
I. How Elgin Insisted on SelfOovernrnent in
Canada .--James Bruce, Earl of Elgin, vas only thirty-
five years of age vheu, in 1847, he arrived in Canada
to take up what vas to prove a heavy task. For it he
had been vell trained. At
Eton and Oxford he had been
the friend of Gladstone and
other youths destined to high
fame, whose daily talk was of ,
politics. I-te had lived much "
in Paris and spoke French
with an ease which charmed
the French in Canada. He
had, indeed, a striking gift of
eloquence. For fou.r years he
had been Governor of Ja-
maica. And now. while still
young, he was sent to Canada
with the avowed aim of car-
rying out Lord Durham's -------,
policy. He had insight, and,
nore than any-previous gov-
ernor, he read the Cana- Lorm
dian problem as a whole and did full justice to the
French. After a sharp struggle, Britain had just adopted
free trade, something which, as we shall see, brought
dismay in Canada. Ireland vas suffering from the ef-
fects of , terrible famine, and thousands of Irishmen
"269
SELF-GOVERNMENT AT LAST 275
Globe--already a poxverful influence. Government ser-
vants vho signed the manifesto were dismissed from
office, and it was not lozg before the movement died out.
The troubles in Montreal at this time cost that place
its position as the capital of Canada. Members of the
legislature refused to return to a city where a frantic
mob might again commit outrage. In European states
the seat of government xvas usually in a great city, such
as London or Paris or Vienna. It might have beeu well
for Canada to have as its capital a seaport with a great
commerce, a city with traditions and wealth, but the Par-
liament looked elsewhere. Rivalcities claimed the honour,
a selection was not easy, and it was decided to fall back
on the two former capitals of the separate provinces.
Thus, for about fifteen years, Parliament sat for half
the time at Toronto and half the time at Quebec. It was
costly to move from place to place the offices of govern-
ment, and in 1858 it was decided to create a new capital
city at Ottawa, remote from the American frontier, so as
to be safer in case of war, lying in Upper Canada, which
had become the more popul'ous province, but only across
the Ottawa River from Lower Canada. In Ottawa, then
a raw town, chiefly engaged in the timber trade, every-
thing had to be created. The site on cliffs overlooking
the waters of the Ottawa was beautiful. It took years to
erect the necessary buildings, and they were ready only
when the Union, created vith such high hopes and
energy by Sydenham, had broken down, and a new poli-
tical fabric vas to take its place.
3. Antagonism Between the "Clear=Grits" and the
French.As the event showed, the Union would not
vork. At first, indeed, much vas done. When Elgin
made it clear that henceforth the Canadian legislature
must settle the problems of Canada, with no interference
from England, the new broom swept clean enough. In
Upper Canada the voice of the Family Compact was
278 HISTORY OF CANADA
have schools without this religious teaching, the reply
was: " Very well, but, in return, the Roman Catholics in
Canada West .mlst llave the right to schools in which
their religion is taught." On this basis an agreement was
reached, with the result that to this day in the state-
supported Separate Schools in Ontario the tenets of the
Roman Catholics are taught, while non-Catholics in
Quebec have also their own schools.
After an election in 1854, a radical ministry was only
avoided by a union of Tories and moderates: and the
fiery leader of the Family Compact, who had denounced
all French as rebels, became 'head of the government, xvith
Morin, a one-time follower of Papineau, as his part-
ner in the premiership. Thus was formed xvhat has ever
since been known as the Liberal-Conservative party. It
xvas an amusing turn in politics, and now, under the arch-
Tory, MacNab, was finally settled, on radical lines, the
question of a state church. There was no hope of getting
the churches to agree on a division of the eudoxvment of
religion by the lands known as Clergy Reserves. Accord-
ingly, apart from a stun used to protect vested interests
already created, the fund was handed over to the muni-
cipalities, and money intended for the support of religion
was used for building roads and hridges. If religion
suffered, it was because the churches could not agree.
Another vexed question was also settled on radical lines.
The habitants in Lower Canada were now hostile to the
old French civil law, which preserved feudal rights to the
seigniors, and, in 1854, seigniorial tenure vas abolished,
and the habitants secured full ownership of their land.
It was under MacNab, the Tory, that this Bill, too, xvas
passed, and the chief fulminator against it was Papineau,
himself a seignior, now returned from exile, and fighting
this phase of radicalism. There are strange mr:as in
politics.
282 ItISTORY OF CANADA
It was he who brought to a head and settled the problem
of self-government in Nova Scotia, md, unlike Papileau
and Mackenzie, he did it without even the threat of an
appeal to arms.
Howe edited a newspaper, the Nova Scotian, and in
1835 he attacked for corruption and incompetence the
magistrates of l talifax. \Vhen they had him tried for
libel, he defeuded himself in a crowded court-room with
a fervid speech which lasted for six hours and made his
fame as a great orator, lie watched events in Canada,
and, when Lord Durlaam's "" Report " appeared, and Lord
John Russell said that the governor of a colony, while
treating the legislatnre with respect, must yet accept not
the policy of his ministers but the orders of the Colonial
(ffice, Howe wrote four masterly open letters addressed
to Russell. No one vould to-day admit what I/owe
admitted--tlaat Britain might regulate the trade of the
colonies, might bind them by her treaties, and control
completely their military forces. Howe said, however,
that the people of Nova Scotia must control their own
affairs. To Halifax society he was a vulgar agitator, a
lw radical, and gilded youths talked of ducking him in a
horse-pond or shooting him. \Vith one of them Itowe
fought a duel, and our only surprise is that the gilded
youth should challenge a man whose social rank he
despised. ]lowe fought fair. md he loved the fray. But
he had a poet's temperament, and the pride of genius, and
contempt stung him. '" Thev have scorned me at their
feasts, and l'hev have instdted me at their funerals," he
once said bitterly. But all the supposed great did
not scorn hin. In 1840, for some three weeks, Poulett
Thomson was at Halifax, and he and Howe became fast
friends.
Howe was dangerous as an enemy. Papineau had
fought as it xvere with a club, Mackenzie with the lack
of humour of a fanatic. Howe's veapons were eloquence,
wit, and satire. An unhappy young Governor, Lord
A GREAT CANADIAN UNION 289
Canadians." ]3ritain, spending heavily to defend Canada,
was angry at this attitude. Canada was taxing ]3ritish
goods and yet leaving her defence to Britain. The Times
called the Canadians an inert race " lacking in the first
virtues of freemen." They .had "money for all kinds of
corrupt jobs, but money for honour, money for liberty,
money for independence ehey have nothing to spare."
It added that England had no terror at the thought of
Canada's breaking away from the Empire, since she was
an incumbrance involv-
ing 13ritain herself in
the danger of war.
Such was the dis-
credit which danger
from the United States , -,
brought upon Canada,
and thousands of
Canadians felt impo-
tent rage at her fail-
ure to meet the demands
of self-respect. The . ..
French, angry at the
venomous attacks of
The Globe on their race
and religion, were un-
yielding. No govern-
ment could last, and af-
ter two more years of
drifting, with pressing
problems of defence, of railvays, of trade, all unsolved,
it became dear to leaders on both sides that some
radicl step must be taken. When taking office in 1858,
Galt, wno represented the English minority in Lower
Canada, had insisted that the question of a federal system
should be faced seriously. He ,had then gone to England
with Cartier, to put the problem before the British gov-
294 HISTORY OF CANADA
liked the results of the Quebec Conference. Both New-
foundland and Prince Edward Island quickly decided
to hold aloof. Newfoundland still maintains this decis-
ion, whereas, in 1873, Prince Edward Island, in great
financial need, changed its mind.
Even in the Canadian Parliament vhich met at
Quebec in February, 1865, the proposals were long dis-
cussed and ably opposed. But, from the first, it was
certain that Brown, allied with his old enemy, Macdonald,
could wiu Upper Canada, and that Cartier could rely
upon Lower Canada. So clear was the nfind of both
divisions that no need was felt in Canada to submit the
question to a vote of the people. Elsewhere it was dif-
ferent. Tilley faced the electors of Nexv Brunswick in
an election in March, 1865. It was the first time that
relations vith Canada had played any serious part in the
affairs of Nev Brunsvick, and noxv Tilley's opponents
described him as a dreadful ogre, destroying his country.
Not a ,horse, nor a co,v, nor a sheep, not even a chicken
would, it was said, escape the Canadian tax-gatherer.
Union vith Canada w, ould mean racial strife and prob-
ably bloodshed, and the loss by New Brunsvick of any
control over her own affairs. One politician described
his innocent, lisping son as asking him: " Father, vhat
country do we live in ?" and the answer was: " My dear
son, you have no country, for Mr. Tilley has sold us to
the Canadians." As a result Tilley was soundly beaten
and driven from office. It was, however, not long before
New Brunswick was better informed and changed its
mind. In a second election, held in 1866, it gave an
emphatic verdict for federation.
Iv, 1864 Dr. Tupper was Prime Minister of Nova
Scotia, and it vas he who at Quebec stated Nova Scotia's
vievs. For the time Joseph Howe, the Liberal leader,
was out of the way. To Howe it was bitter, indeed,
that he had not led in the great movement. He would
THE ,VINNING OF THE WEST 303
but how could the Company enforce it ? The North West
Company was the more active. It was strong with the
Mdtis, strong with the Indian tribes. The rivalry was
already bitter, when it was made acute by the act of a
high-minded and earnest
man. Thomas Douglas,
Earl of Selkirk, was a
Scottish noblema1 wh.o,
pitying the many Scots
starving on barren land, :" "
or driven from their hold-
ings by relentless land- " ,,,
lords, aimed to take these
people to nev homes
across the sea. Many of
the prosperous farmers of ,
Prince Edxvard Island are
descended from settlers
whom Selkirk took to that ''
happy island. In 1811 the
fur-trading vorld learned Tuo.,as
startling news. Lord Sel- Exat, Ol 8EI.,KIRK
kirk had bought from the Hudson's Bay Company
a vast estate of one hundred and sixteen thousand
square miles on the Red River and was going to bring in
settlers. His first farmers were to be planted where
Winnipeg now stands, and this territory lay across the
route from Canada to the West.
A tragic series of events followed. Then, said the
North West Company, the West is to be settled, and the
fur-trade ruined. Such a plan, they vowed, must be
given tap. They .made every ngenious effort to discredit
Selkirk. No less than they did the traders of Selkirk's
ally, the Hudson's Bay Company, dislike settlement. To
whisper discontent, agents were sent to the ports where
Selkirk's emigrants gathered. But he was able never-
306 HISTORY OF CANADA
carry on the government. The newspaper appeared and
actually dared to attack the methods of the Company.
Clearly a new age was dawning.
3. The Termination of the Rule of the Hudson's
Bay Company.--Vhat would take the place of the
Company as ruler ? Cauada had close ties with the West,
but Canda was very remote. The railway xvas pushing
orthward across the State of Miunesota, and the best
route to the Red River was n loner by ship to I Iudson
Bay but by way of the Unted States. To Canada there
was the old route of the fur-traders across the wilderness
from Lake Superior. But travellers an goods reached
the couutry chiefly by way of the Unted States. Chicago
meant more to the colony than did Torono or MoutreaL
There xvas talk of joinn the Unted States, and only
deep British feeling made this talk lack vigour. At the
end of 1864. word came of the plans formed at Quebec
for untin all the British provinces, an this stirred keen
interest. The settlers felt that, if they joind Canada,
they must do so as a provine. At the end of 1866 some
of them drew up a memorial to the Queen. Conitions,
they said. were so unsettled that they xvere not even sure
of the titles of their lan. They demanded that Rupert's
Lan should be made a Crown Colony, an that a road
should be built conecting them wih Canda in the East
an with British Columbia in the far \Yest. Prompt
action they added, was urgen.
To this memorial, which made its long journey from
Rupert's Lan to Lonon, no reply was ever received.
No wonder that settlers grew impatient. On July 1st,
1867, the Dominon of Canda came into being. In
Janary, 1868, at a public /neeting held at Portage la
Prairie, those present formed themselves ino a self-
governin British colouy to be knovn as Manitoba. They
said that if Britain or Canada did not soon recognize the
colony, Manitoba xvould apply to the governent of the
308 HISTORY OF CANADA
the Mtis asked respect for their special rights. They
vere French, and they desired.' guarantees in regard
to their language and to religious education. Their farms,
long narrow strips, each with the desired frontage on the
river highvay, had never been surveyed. The Mtis
had no deeds, and now they wished to have secure titles.
There were some ten thousand people in the country,
the great majority of them Mtis. By some mysterious
impulse of race, the English and the French elements
formed distinct commu.nities. The centre of Mtis in-
fluence was St. Boniface, that of the English lay just
"L-----7".- .. . -" ".
across the Red River, at Fort Garry. in the heart of
what was then the village and is now the city of Vin-
nipeg. The original English-speaking settlers had been
chiefly Scots, but Canadians were drifting in. Specula-
tion in land has been the perennial curse of new com-
munities h North America. And now in this remote
community of farmers and traders, glowing talk of
a rich future vas linked in nnholy union with the lust of
specul,ation in 1.and. Iu lhe summer of 1869 he Cana-
dian government sent ants into the West to make
surveys for a road from Lake Superior. to brin the
count int direct touch with Cana when it should be "
CHAPTER XXIV
CANADA REACHES THE PACIFIC
|. The Rivalry of the British and the Americans
n the Pacific .--In the days before the railway, the
Pacific coast of North America seemed as dstant from
the Atlantic coast as was China from England. In the
east the St. Lawrence was an
open door, through which
could pass to the interior the -
traders and the goods of ' ..
Europe. But there was no
open door from the Pacific ,, -_
coast to the interior. Great " ---'
ranges of mountains reared ._--:>._
their snowy peaks across the
way. It vas not until nearly
two hundred years after the ----.
founding of Quebec that an [ -I.-'%,"\;S "\--x-\""---'k'
expedition from Canada corn- ,.
pleted Che perilous journey ,'\-\x ,,
across the continent. Pro- SIMON"
phetic vas the inscription
painted in 1793 on a rock overlooking the vaters of the
Pacific: "Alexander Mackenzie from Canada by land."
I'hat was the beginning of the connection of the Pacific
zoast vit.h Canada. The route by land had appalling diffi-
culties, and, in confronting them, two men, Simon Fraser
and David Thompson, rank only after Mackenzie. In
1808 Fraser set out from the head waters in the moun-
tains of the great river which now bears his name. For
seven hundred miles he followed the river, tearing its
TIlE DAY OF SIR JOHN .\. MkCDON.\LD 333
a new religion to the Mtis. He sigued himself Louis
David Riel. \Vhat David was to the Jews lie was to
be to the .Mtis. In the spring of 1885 he led in settiug
up a provisional government on the Saskatchewan. iX,rot
only did it deny the authority of Cauada : it declared for
separation from the Church of Rome. To Riel the
priests, no less than the Canadiau officials, were agents of
tyranuy, and now ever), element opposing him vas
to be driven from the country. Riel's madness increased,
and at last his cry was : " We want blood : it is a war of
extermination." He spoke with contempt of the Hudson's
Bay Company and of Canada: the -Mounted Police
would, lie said, " be wiped ou of existence."
In one sense all this was a petty squabble in which
a reckless madman was leading a few iguorant people.
But it touched the nerve of racial and religious passion
in Canada. Fighting begau on March 24th. 1885, when,
at Duck Lake near Prince Albert. the half-breeds drove
off Major Crozier of the North-West Mounted Police,
kil'ling fourteen of his men and wounding twenty-five.
This looked like real war. Great was the alarm when
Riel appealed to the Iudiau tribes to join him. for this
might mean flae ruthless massacre of scattered settlers.
Those who could, flocked into the towns and villages.
It was necessary to send troops from Eastern Canada.
and this was not easy, for the railway line to Winnipeg
was not yet completed. But the driving power of W. C.
Van FIo-rne of the Canadian Pacific Railway proved
effective. He had moved troops during the American
Civil ,Var, and nxv his skill did not fail him. Regiment
after regiment of militia forces from Eastern Canada
was poured into the West over the railxs, ay. At places
the men had to march over the ice on frozen lake or
river. Freighting sleighs carried them over parts of
CHAPTER XXVI
CANADA OF TO-DAY
I. Wil|rid Laurier, Liberal Prime /inister. m It is .
fault of great leaders that they rarely train their
successors. When Macdonald died in 1891, no one
was marked by public opinion as the person to take his
1,1a:e. First, Sir John Abbott. a Mon'real lawyer, became
Prime Minister, chiefly on the ground of his seniority.
He soon died, and was succeeded by Sir John Thompson,
a Nova Scotian, a :apa'ble man, with a keen mind. But
he died in 1894. and hen Mackenzie Bowell, the Orange
leader in Ontario, a man of no special capacity, headed
the government. The West now furnished a new :risis.
In 1870. when Manitoba was made a province, the
Roman Catholics had insisted upon the riOht to schools
in xshich their reliNous views migh.t be taught. The result
was that all the churches had been given this right, and.
in consequence, the Roman Catholics, the Anglicans,
and the Presbyterians had set up separate schools. So
weakened were the forces of ed'acation by this division
that in 1890 the Liberal government of Manitoba es-
tablished a non-sectarian system. This was the step
which the Roman Catholics had feared, and, to avert it,
they 'had secured a provision in the constitution of
Manitoba, giving the federal government pover to over-
ride any action injurious to their rights as a minority.
\\'hen the Acec of 1890 .permitted only non-denomina-
tional religious teaching in schools supported by the
state, the Roman Catholics in Manitoba appealed to
Ottawa to interfere. It was difficult for the federal gov-
338
CANADA OF TO-DAY 347
whether the whole British Empire vould be a unit in
the face of real danger, but these were at once dispelled.
Australia, Canada, and every other part of the Empire,
knowing that liberty was at stake in face of He Germ'a
menace, sprang to arms. The Canadian Minister of
Militia was Sir Sam Hughes. His faults were many,
but he showed amazing energy in the crisis. An army
was quickly gathered at Valcartier, near (uebec, and,
NEW PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS OTTAWA
seven weeks after the outb-eak of var, th, irty-four
thousand Canadian soldiers were on the ocean, speeding
to the scene of war. They were only the first of very
many thousands. Contingent followed contingent, and,
during four long and wearing years, Canada emptied
her young manhood into Europe.
In the South African War the Canadians had fought
creditably. But it was one thing to make war in the
primitive conditions of South Africa, and quite another
34 HISTORY OF CANADA
to confront on the battle-fields of Europe the disciplined
soldiers of Germany, the greatest military power in
the world. There was nervous anxiety in Canada. The
strain was almost intolerable, but, in April, 1915, it
had a tragic easement. Before Ypres, Canadian troops
had 'been attacked by the Germans with the fumes of
poisonous gas. By (his barbarity many died in agony,
but the Canadian line held. Had it broken, it seems
certain that nothing could have kept the Germans from
reaching the Channel. Once there they could, have made
that highway of ships unsafe, and could even have
thrown shells into English towns. After this incident,
Cnada was not nervous a.s to whether 'her men could
fight. They ranked, in truth, among the best troops in
the fighting-line.
it seemed as if a war so intense must be short, but
it lasted for more than four years. Al, most from the
first, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan stood, together,
and, in the end, the Unite8 States and China and a
multitude of smaller powers joined them. Germany
and Austria-Hungary secured only two new allies--Tur-
key and Bulgaria. The Germans still boast, with truth,
that it took a whole vorld in arms to defeat them. But
never before had a nation so equipped itself for war.
Secretly it had secured powerful howitzers, which blew
to fragments forts supposed to be impregnable. ,Vhen
the allies numbered their machine-guns by tens, Germany
had hundreds; and these formidable xveapons mowed
down vhole battalions. Before the war ended. Germany
had a gun which threw shells into Paris from a distance
of seventy miles--much more than the distance from
Toronto to Niagara Falls as the crony flies. One of these
shells fell upon a Paris church on Good Friday, 1918,
and killed many of the congregation. In the use of their
formidable weapons the Germans showed no scruple.
The aim of war, they said, was to break the will to resist
To all future generations of British people the
war xvill remain a sad but inspiring memo.ry. Two
hundred thousand xvounded and sixty thousand dead
were Canada's sacrifice, and these great numbers were
only a part of the vast cost to the British Empire for
its share in the victory. In 1919 peace was signed at
Versailles--peace in which Germany admitted utter
defeat and agreed to pay vast sums to repair the losses
of the victors. The war left Canada no longer a col-
ony but a British nation, which had fought side by
P.RLIAMENT BUILDINGS, TORONTO
side xvith the othcr nations within the British Common-
wealth. As s,lch a nation, Canada signed the treaty
of peace, exactly as (rcat Britain signed it. As such
a nation, Canada, like Great ]Britain, is a member of
the League of Nations, which aims so to unite the
nations as to make recourse to war difficult. It is a
far cry from the struggling colony on the St. Laxvrence
to the great state of to-day.
Canada, like all the nations which shared in the
labours of the war, is now carrying a heavy burden
of debt, a burden, however, much less heavy in pro-
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