Racism in the Old Province of Quebec

R acism in the O ld ProvincetsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFE of Q uebec H ild a N ea tb y NO ONE CONTEMPLATING today what is often called the French fact in Canada can be blamed for assuming that the roots of the dangerous and occasionally even violent French-English racial-nationalist confrontation in the modern province of Quebec must have taken hold in the period immediately after the Con­ quest. Superficial evidence supports this assumption, but recent re­ search is showing the actual situation as more complex than has been supposed and the issues as far from fitting neatly into a racialnationalist pattern. It was in the years 1759-60 that a British naval force and Brit­ ish troops operating from bases in the British-American colonies completed the military occupation of the French province on the St. Lawrence and prepared for the events that resulted in surrender of the whole French empire on the mainland in North America to Britain in the peace treaty of 1763. This for Britain was a great but almost embarrassing victory. It necessarily involved London, at a time of great political instability, in a major reorganization of vast territories formerly ruled or claimed by France, territories in which almost every colony along the Atlantic seaboard had its claims and interests, at a period when there was considerable friction among the colonies themselves and a good deal between them and Great Britain. The necessary reorganization eventually helped to precipitate American armed resistance to Britain in 1775, the American Dec­ laration of Independence in 1776, and the ensuing war which ended in 1783 with recognition of the United States of America. 279 Ra c is m in t h e Eig h t e e n t h Ce n t u r y Meanwhile, Great Britain had in 1763 created on the St. Law­ rence a new province destined to be the nucleus of the later Dominion of Canada, the province of Quebec. This province was, roughly, a parallelogram extending along both sides of the St. Lawrence River from a little above the prosperous fur-trading town of Montreal to a little below the older, more dignified, gov­ ernment and military centre of Quebec, an area roughly 700 miles in length and something over 200 in breadth, a considerable ex­ tent but trifling compared with the other tremendous continental spaces now ruled by Britain. The province included most of the Canadian settlements which were clustered along the banks of the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers, as well as very considerable tracts of vacant land. The Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763, which had created this province, had also, and indeed as its primary purpose, estab­ lished the tremendous area south of the Lakes, north of the Ohio, and east of the Mississippi, known generally as the Ohio country, as a large Indian reserve. Restless Americans and any others who wanted to settle there were strictly prohibited from entering; they were instead invited to occupy the vacant lands made available in the new province of Quebec and were promised, should they re­ spond to the invitation, "the enjoyment of the benefit" of English law, and an elected assembly as soon as one could be summoned. This historic document, the basis of the first Canadian constitution under British rule, saw the beginning of a problem which has al­ ways looked large to Canadians, and has often not been much noticed by Americans—the problem of Canadian-American rela­ tions. Not many frontiersmen or would-be farmer settlers responded to the invitation of the Proclamation, but some hundreds of others did. These were the traders and merchants from Boston, New York, and other American towns, and from London and else­ where in Britain, all of them eager to supply the army and to take over the fur trade in which, as was well known, merchants on the St. Lawrence had important natural advantages. Some of them no doubt also were interested in buying up seigneuries which might be made available by Canadians who, by treaty, were allowed to 280 R acism in th e O ld P rovince o j Q uebectsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA sell their property and return to France. On...