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Part 3: Canada. Jacques Benoit
JASON: I will be meeting with Jacques Benoit in the student center of McGill University in Montreal. Jacques is a history student here at the University, and I expect he will probably become a history professor like both of his parents someday. Who better to know the history of his nation, Canada?
Jacques looks like a typical young man with a casual relaxed manner as he draws his long dark hair back and leans into the leather chair across from me. This carefree look is misleading however as he has been recommended to me because he is known to be a serious student of history, with a very mature sense of purpose.
JACQUES: “”Well I will try to keep it brief, something that my professors say I am completely incapable of - but we will see. To start I suppose the history of Canada, as an independent country, does not seem as glamorous as some of our neighbours. There were no armed revolutions, not a lot of bloodshed with our Indigenous population. We remained a British colony through all of that, and eventually in 1867 accepted the offer of independence from the motherland. It was a time when others in the British colonial empire were doing the same. That is not to say that there were not some significant, and even violent, events leading up to this date.
As you know, the first European settlements in Canada were by the French with the arrival of Jacques Cartier in 1534. But his settlement in the Maritimes eventually failed due to the difficult winters. Then Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1608. The winter climate was harsh and his first attempts at settlement failed with disease and starvation. But Champlain persisted in his dream of a major settlement where Quebec City is today. With the help of the native tribes who he traded with, they were able to get through some difficult winters and he was eventually successful. I say persisted because he crossed the Atlantic more than 20 times in establishing and developing his dream. 269Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3NHv6itLBl
The first settlements were French, but British were also interested in this land – and had their own ambition to control the abundant fisheries and fur trade for Britain. The Seven Years War ensued as each nation competed to reap the spoils of war. It all came to a winner take all climax in 1759 on the cliffs overlooking the port of Quebec City. What would be called the battle of the Plains of Abraham between the French General Montcalm commanding the fortress of Quebec, and the British General Wolfe approaching along the St Lawrence River below. The fortress was thought to be impenetrable due to its location on the high ground, actually the cliffs, overlooking the port where cannon and musket fire could rain down on any attackers. And General Wolfe did not disagree with this assessment.
So, instead of a frontal attack, he disembarked his troops in the dark a few miles downstream of the fort. And after scaling the difficult cliffs, he and his troops showed up promptly before breakfast, assembled behind the fort on the Plains of Abraham, ready for battle. The French were taken by surprise and the British prevailed.
However, both generals were mortally wounded and did not live to witness the glory, or the disgrace, of the French lands of Quebec and the eastern provinces being handed over to the victor. What then became British North America with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763.
With their victory in Quebec, the British then held what is now Eastern Canada as well as the New England states to the south. The French continued to hold the lands from Michigan in the north, south along the Mississippi, to Louisiana. So we move forward to some seventy years later when there was Revolution by the New England states as they gained independence from Britain. But north of the St Lawrence River, our territories remained as British North America.
I believe that Canada did not try to separate from Britain because we enjoyed and needed their protection. The population north of the St Lawrence River was small compared to the New England states and without this protection, we would have been quickly gobbled up by the states south of the border. In fact this concern was realized in 1812.
JASON: “”Yes, at that time the New England states recognized that the British were occupied at home in a fierce conflict with Napoleon in France. The time was right, and they were directed by President James Madison to invade their neighbour to the north. Madison famously predicted that it would be an easy march and a short season of fighting to gain the prize””.
JACQUES: “The British regiments in Canada were tasked with holding off the incursion, but equally needed was the aid of the native tribesmen of the Six Nations led by the Cree, Ojibway and the ruthless fighters, the Mohawks. You see, the tribes had always traded with the white British, what they called the “Crown”, and also with the French going way back to the Champlain days. As such, they felt some trust and allegiance to their traditional trading partners who were now under attack.
At the time, the New England states had a small army of regulars that was augmented by irregulars – usually farm hands that owned a rifle and would join the fray until harvest time when they returned to the farm and waited for spring for the battle to resume. The same was true on the Canadian side with a small garrison of British troops and mostly civilian volunteers during the spring and summer.
So the only full-time corps of professional fighters were the tribes, and they fought in a different way than the uniformed soldiers of the day. For them the battle did not end with sun down and restart with the dawn. They could surround you in the night, communicating with animal calls to coordinate their approach, and then pounce on you. And they were particularly feared because of their “quaint” habit of taking no prisoners.
The war was a bit of a haphazard affair due to the lack of mature armies on both sides. There were a whole series back and forth incursions starting with New England burning the parliament buildings in Canada, followed by the British sacking and burning Washington and the Whitehouse the following year. The war ended two years after it stated with virtually a stalemate. Neither side was able overwhelm the other so a peace settlement and the Treaty of Utrecht was signed to conclude the hostilities.
However, one of the reasons for the tribe’s loyalty to the Crown was that they had been promised some buffer territories of their own at the conclusion of the war to protect Canada from a repeat push from the New England states in the future. The territories south of the Great Lakes down to the Ohio River in the south. So that is how the Territories of Michigan, Ohio, and Northwest New York became part of British North America but controlled and governed by the tribes””.
JASON: This war lasted only two years in time, but it turned out to be a most significant event that shaped the evolution of these territories and their borders. British North America had “come of age” as a nation through the act of defending itself. In the future there would be no military incursions from the south. Perhaps some pressure over trade, culture and economy, but no military action.269Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8uhcSuxjrf
JACQUES: “”1812 was followed by relatively quiet times as British North America, what is now Canada, along with New France, and New England settled into, and populated, each of their countries. Eventually however, there would be more turmoil in the late 1800’s in New England. They would suffer for years with a bloody Civil War as well as decades of conflicts with their native tribes and New France.
Canada was fortunate, likely because we were seen as a barren hinterland with little arable land and a harsh climate not suitable for human habitation. Consequently, our eastern Provinces were able to spread their jurisdiction westward all the way to British Columbia largely due to the fur trade at the time.
It was during the time when there was massive unrest with the Civil War in the south that Canada and Britain quietly sat down in 1867 and established the British North America Act, which created the independent Dominion of Canada. This amounted to what today is Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Sir John A MacDonald was the man of the hour presiding over the Charlottetown Conference three years earlier that led to the BNA and independence. when he became the first Prime Minister of the new Dominion of Canada at the age of fifty-two.
I say quietly. But in fact there was real fear at the time that New England, now with a major army after defeating the south in their Civil War, would decide to invade and take over British North America in retribution for the British support of the southern Confederacy. The new union of provinces in Canada under the BNA act was formed to help deter these thoughts.
At the time, the lands to the west of Ontario were largely unsettled. Ever since its founding in 1670 the Hudson’s Bay Company had owned the vast territories surrounding Hudson’s Bay and to the west called Rupert’s Land. The fur trade was declining and they decided to sell their lands to the new Dominion of Canada just two years after our confederation. In addition, the building of a continent wide railroad was instrumental in connecting and settling the lands in the Canadian west over the next thirty years. The northern Territories were added a little later, so that the Dominion of Canada by 1900 was truly from sea, to sea, to sea””.
JASON: “”At this point you seem to have settled matters with your neighbours, and spread out from coast to coast across this vast northern land. But in doing so you have incorporated hundreds of indigenous tribes who now live within your national boundaries. I suspect this was not without a few adversarial clashes?””
JACQUES: “”Yes, today our indigenous people live in their Great Lakes Territories, and also across the country, alongside all of the other races in this multicultural land. It was not always a smooth transition however. There had been battles between our soldiers and the tribes. And the white settlers and their governments here, and elsewhere, tried to convert the indigenous people to the ways and culture of the white man. Early on in Canada there were some churches that had established schools for the indigenous children. In fact the education of the indigenous population was part of the responsibility of the new Dominion of Canada charter in 1867. Initially this movement was taken on as individual church missionary work, as had been done by the colonial churches throughout Africa and South America. That was a mistake that would still hurt, some hundred years later.
Back in 1883 a major step had been taken by Prime Minister John A MacDonald when a federal government program of schools for the Indigenous was spread across the country. At the time free elementary school education was compulsory for all Ontario, and had been law since 1846 under Superintendent Edgerton Ryerson. But the new government led initiative was to involve funding of boarding schools for Indigenous students to be run by the various church organizations. The schools were designed to assimilate the indigenous youth into the white man’s “superior” culture. Yes, missionary work. Generations of children were separated from their families, and their culture.
Several years later, the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Peter Bryce, began discovering health problems, including widespread tuberculosis and death among the residential student populations. He was only able to publish and make his report known years later in 1922. The indigenous leaders of the Great Lakes Territories came to the rescue when they objected strenuously to the residential school practices under Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. They insisted that the schools in their Territories, and also residential schools across the nation, would be run by Indigenous School Boards, much like the Catholic School Boards that existed at that time in each province. And like the Catholic Boards, the schools would provide a curriculum consistent with other schools, plus a portion of the time would be devoted to Indigenous Cultural Studies. There would no longer be missionary-like efforts to eliminate the indigenous culture.
Yes, there are still some reservations that are relics of the colonial period, and full blooded indigenous can live there by choice. There are tax benefits and other support programs for those that do, but few choose to, and in 2021 more that seventy-five percent live and work in communities outside of the Reservations. I believe our indigenous citizens live compatibly and in reasonable harmony with the white European groups because they have their own Territories, and governments, and laws. That was the case with the establishment of the Great Lakes Territories in 1814 and continues to this day in the north with the Northwest Territories and Nunavut””.
JASON: “” Although I am a bit of a history buff, I wonder what is the difference in Canada between a Territory and a Province for these people. And why do you have both Territories and Provinces today?””
JACQUES: “”It is a good question because it is not well understood by most. You see, the original Constitution, or British North American Act, did not mention Territories, only Provinces. This is where the Provinces have their powers set out both in the original BNA, and in the amended version which is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of 1982. The Territorial governments on the other hand have their powers as delegated by the federal government, which still has ultimate control. But the Territories do have Legislative Assemblies and Executive Councils, and as citizens of Canada they vote for their candidates in both Federal and Territorial parliaments.
Some Prime Ministers have said the Territories will eventually become Provinces. But it has not happened yet. By the way, this is not so unusual. Our neighbours to the south, New England, have many full-fledged States, but also hold some fourteen Territories including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Samoa, Guam and others.
So what we have today are certain Provinces and Territories with mostly indigenous populations next to Provinces with mixed, but mostly, European populations. Because each Province and Territory has jurisdiction and control over themselves, they can be distinct from the other Provinces. That is the case with the indigenous Territories, as it is with my Province of Quebec. The best comparison might be Europe where there are more than 20 countries, each with its own government, its own culture, and many with their own language, but living in relative harmony with their neighbours and with the freedom to travel in and through each other’s lands.
So that was 150 years so ago, and in keeping with my promise to be brief I will conclude that nothing else much has happened since . . . a bit of an exaggeration, or maybe just another example of the quiet Canadian understatement.269Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBarXqYSoTl
JASON: “” Yes, I appreciate that concise cover for how Canada evolved as we know it today. Relatively straight forward, but with a couple of significant conflicts with France originally, and then New England. Thank you Jacques, and we will leave it there.””
I do want to return to New France, but this time to the northern Territories, that are populated and governed by the indigenous tribes. I expect they will have a quite different take on their situation today in New France. Certainly as the original peoples of this land, their side of the history with the European settlers will be quite different. Next week I will be in Grand Rapids, Minnesota and will pick up my story there.
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