When was lower canada established

But an elected assembly of any kind would have been an entirely new experience for the Canadiens, and Governor Carleton delayed. Whether the British thought this was a bad idea in or not hardly mattered: within a decade they were fighting revolutionaries whose elected institutions were calling for an end to British rule in the Americas.

In that context they were loath to extend the right to representative institutions. In the British changed their mind. Revolutions continued to ring around them, but they nevertheless decided that it was time to introduce representative bodies to Canada. The new administrations in each of the two newly separated colonies reflected practices developed in Nova Scotia. A Country by Consent is a national history of Canada which studies the major political events that have shaped the country, presented in a cohesive, chronological narrative.

Many of these main events are introduced by an audiovisual overview, enlivened by narration, sound effects and music. This was the first digital, multimedia history of Canada. While Quebec had been established as a British colony with the Treaty of Paris and the Royal Proclamation of , the majority of the population remained French-speaking.

The English settlers, however, brought with them their own political and religious ideals, and tensions soon arose between the two groups. One key issue was that of land ownership. The Province of Quebec had established a seigneurial system that awarded parcels of land to nobles and religious communities, who then allotted pieces of the land to tenants in return for farming the land.

Used to the freedoms they had held in the Thirteen Colonies , the new settlers wanted instead to own their lands in their own right. Similarly, they pushed for representative government, a British system of parliament, and British civil law. Religion was another point of tension.

In the years prior to the division of Quebec into the Canadas, Britain had hopes that floods of English settlers would anglicize Quebec. Prior to the Loyalist wave, the floods did not materialize. The Canadiens were not ready to give up their recently restored privileges.

The solution arrived at was the division of Quebec. Each province established its own government, with an appointed lieutenant-governor, executive council, legislative council, and elected representative assembly.

While Lower Canada retained the seigneurial system, language, and religious institutions of Quebec, John Graves Simcoe, the first lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, was determined that the new province would be a model of British society. Lower Canada extended east from the Ottawa River to the mouth of the St.

Lawrence River, including what is now Labrador. It has been noted that Upper Canada was the first British colony anywhere that lacked a seaport.

Resolving the difficulties of shipping goods in and out of the colony occupied a central part of the political debates in Upper Canada for many years and continued after to inform political discourse in Canada.

The first Loyalist settlements in the colony were essentially engrossments around existing military positions. The Niagara frontier as well as the eastern end of Lake Ontario were both strategically important and convenient.

Garrisons provided a market for farm surpluses as well as a sense of security in the event of further conflict whether with the Americans or the Aboriginal populations. Settlement in Upper Canada was encouraged to by free land grants, but these were not allocated evenly.

Officers in the British forces could claim as much as 5, acres while just about everyone else received acres. And settlers were expected to achieve clear — if difficult — goals within a year of arriving, as can be seen in Figure 7. Growth depended heavily on immigration and, perhaps ironically, much of that came from the United States.

Claims to land across New York were made through the s and s with the effect that the best land was quickly spoken for. This obliged many American would-be farmers to become Canadian farming pioneers. By the population of Upper Canada had grown from a few thousand to as much as 25,, a significant number being Late Loyalists. To some extent the new farms could sell some of their surplus south of the border to nascent American settlements, but the goal for most at this stage was mere subsistence.

What sustained many farm families in these days was British commitment to the colony. The Loyalists had earned support and the British government felt a moral obligation and political pressure to provide it. They had lost their homes and businesses and were waiting on compensation claims against the United States most of which never came , and they needed defending. Britain provided direct subsidies and stimulated economic growth by maintaining garrisons throughout the colony.

One has to imagine the possible complexities of identity among some of the settlers in Upper Canada at this time. New York Patriots who fought against the British and drove terrified Loyalists from their homes in order to win lands in the Ohio Valley now moved into British North America and back under British rule. There they were neighbours to established United Empire Loyalist families and mostly dependent on the British garrisons to buy their farm surpluses.

The first generation of Upper Canadians was distinguished by their relative wealth coming into the colony. Some of the Late Loyalists who arrived across the New York-Niagara frontier into what is now southern Ontario were beneficiaries of land speculation.

Some had started farms, which they then sold at a profit before heading west in search of free Canadian grants. Coupled to British subsidies, this was a cohort that started well, had a safety net of sorts, and had an artificial local market in the garrisons; they would turn to wheat as their principal cash crop.

The Napoleonic Wars created new demand for wheat from the colonies so Upper Canadians and some Maritimers did well by this. Also, there appeared early on in the Canadas the means of adding value to grain and preserving it for later consumption by brewing. John Molson opened his first brewery in Montreal in and, thanks largely to thirsty garrison troops in the Canadas, he quickly amassed a fortune. Other brewers and distillers appeared across the Upper Canadian landscape in the decades to come, particularly around the area of London and York Toronto.

The principal model of economic and social organization in these years was the family farm. This resulted in the arrival of Euro-Canadian children and, almost immediately, concerns regarding education. As historian Jane Errington has observed, these events coincided with a growing concern in the English-speaking world regarding the role of women in domestic settings, in towns, and in the nurturing of knowledge in children.

Restrictively domestic notions of womanhood worked for a while against the education of girls but soon went by the wayside, while at the same time women struggled to secure teaching jobs before the War of