General Rules For All Classes - Pierce County Wisconsin: Fill & Download for Free

This answer has gotten entirely out of hand. Either more was going on at 21 than I initially thought. Or I don’t know how to shut up. It is broken up into neat blocks. If aren’t interested in one thing; just scroll down to another.So, let’s start at the beginning . . . .AGE 21 . . . August 19, 1970: Vietnam was the big thing that overshadowed everything. I was in college, so that would have covered my ass were it necessary. But my draft number was 311 and I also had chronic severe asthma. So I was covered three ways from Sunday and didn’t have to sweat it like many did.RIP. . . 17 soldiers from the general St. Cloud area were killed in Vietnam and are memorialized on a wide granite stele in the city park next to our lake. The ages and death dates inscribed thereon tell me 8 of them were close enough in age for me to have passed them in the hallways of my high school when we were all there, 1965–1967. I knew 3 by name—George Gillespie, Ron Panno, Danny Zutter. None were personal friends. RIP.This memorial is set in amongst lilac bushes. I have always, even before the above, associated the smell of lilacs with funerals. Not my favorite flower.There is a story which I can’t nail down as tight as I’d like: 10 or 40 (I’ve heard both) of my classmates volunteered for Vietnam en masse shortly after graduation: June 1967. I think the army had some kind of enlistee recruiting gimmick at that time; whereby, if friends enlisted together, they went through basic training together. I don’t know about deployment. Those above named three soldiers were among that group. I also knew two others who were part of that group who managed to come back in one piece. Most of the men I was in classes with were not not, um, militarily inclined.Another Vietnam story involves the stated intention to douse a dog in gasoline on the steps of the historic Stearns County courthouse here in St. Cloud (a majestic, pristine, 1922 brick and granite building raised up on a ten-foot pedestal and capped with a golden terra cotta tiled dome that is all by itself 109 feet tall and 46 feet in diameter.) And then light that dog on fire to protest the immolation of the Vietnamese by napalm.But this was Yippie-style punking (-ie, not -ee ; politically active hippies.) The student protesters showed up with the dog and a gas can; and so did the ASPCA; and the police; newspapers; television stations. The dog was not set on fire. The point was, “Look at how upset you get about burning a dog alive. But there are hundreds of Vietnamese getting torched, melted, tortured, mutilated, and scarred for life by napalm every day; not just one lousy dog.”I only found out about this piece of street theater a couple of years after the fact—I was away at college when it all went down.Meanwhile, I was arrested May, 1971 (age 21 and 9 months), along with ten other college friends for blocking the entrance to the Federal Building in downtown Minneapolis. There was a draftee induction scheduled for that day. It would have been better if we had chained ourselves to the door; but we weren’t thinking that far ahead. I depressed the valve on a government car and let most of the air out of one of its tires. A passer-by yelled at me and I desisted. I believe we were fined only court costs, $25. Our lawyer was pro bono. One of my co-conspirators, Randy, become a lawyer and then a judge.We made the next day’s paper. Big whoop. notSomewhere in the bowels of the FBI records division, there may still exist a grainy, home movie quality film—originally shown at our pro forma trial—of me lighting Tracie Dalton’s cigarette Bogart-style and handing it to her back over my shoulder. She says she doesn’t remember that gesture; but it’s true. We joked with the arresting officers as they perp-walked us, handcuffed, to our arraignment about how this whole thing was cutting into the time we usually reserved for our daily, mid-afternoon, co-ed softball game. We invited them to get a team together and play softball against us, They declined. One of them laughed that he didn’t want to get close to us if we had baseball bats in our hands. We agreed to agree; a good time was had by all.The war continued on regardless. And without us.My father was, at that time, the commander of VFW Post #428.# # # # #During the years up to and around turning 21, I spent a lot of time with my college cohort hanging out and having deep discussions about Metaphysics/Ontology—the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space; and the nature of concepts like being, existence, and reality. These impassioned discussions and abstract theories and talks with no basis in reality would also have been colloquially known as college-life bull sessions. Looking back at it now, a different S-word could fairly be substituted.Below is a raft of dates and events. Strictly speaking most of these events predate me reaching 21; but really they are all of a piece and can’t be so neatly parsed out. 21 years old for me means the years 1967–1972.Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. was born January 14, 1942. At 1960 Olympics, he won the gold medal in the Light Heavyweight division. Feb. 25, 1964, in one of the most stunning upsets in sports history, Clay knocked out Sonny Liston and became Heavyweight champion of the world. Feb. 27, 1964, he shocked the world again by announcing that he had accepted the teachings of a black separatist religion known as the Nation of Islam. March 6, 1964, he took the name Muhammad Ali, which was given to him by his spiritual mentor, Elijah Muhammad. For the next three years, Muhammad Ali totally dominated the boxing world. [ESPN.com] April 28, 1967, Mohammad Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces saying, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” June 20, 1967, Muhammad Ali was convicted of draft evasion; sentenced to five years in prison; fined $10,000; and banned from boxing for three years. He stayed out of prison while his case was appealed. Returning to the ring on October 26, 1970, he knocked out Jerry Quarry in Atlanta in the third round. March 8, 1971, Muhammad Ali lost to Joe Frazier after 15 rounds; the first loss of his professional boxing career. June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction for evading the draft. He retired from boxing at age 39 in 1981. In 1984, Muhammad Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. He died June 3, 2016. By the time he died, Muhammad Ali was the best known individual in the world; his closest competition was Micky Mouse and Coca Cola.It’s hard to explain what a big deal this was when he refused to serve in the army; but he was a hero to both the African American community and to anti-war protesters and the counterculture alike.My father was a big boxing fan. He was not at all happy with Muhammad Ali right from the start, calling him a showboat and a braggart. That bobbing and weaving he did with both hands down at waist height really sent him up the wall. Dad didn’t dispute Ali’s superb boxing skills; he just didn't like him and would have been perfectly happy had he never returned to the ring.Mohammad Ali wasn’t the only African-American that changed his name in deference to his heritage or religion: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar , born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor in 4/16/1947, changed his name in 1971. When he ”. . . left the game in 1989 at age 42, no NBA player had ever scored more points, blocked more shots, won more Most Valuable Player Awards, played in more All-Star Games or logged more seasons. His list of personal and team accomplishments is perhaps the most awesome in league history . . . no player has ever duplicated his trademark sky-hook.” [NBA]I can’t prove Ali and Kareem were the start of the trend; name changing and birth names reflecting African and Islamic heritage are pretty common now. But I'll give to them anyway because they were among the most visible.Alex Haley did research for Roots around 1969. He was on some kind of fellowship where he lived and worked on his book at Mac; but he did not teach. I only found out about this after the ground-breaking four-part mini-series was on TV in 1977.Missing from this is a ton more stuff about civil rights and the rise of the Black Power Movement and the Black Panthers (founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in October 1966) and voting rights that got its start in the 1950s and extended into the late 1960s , through the 1970s and that continues today. I can’t cover all that here. My apologies; but covering the flow and evolution of civil rights is simply too much and as a white guy I might not even be the right person to try it.# # # # #The my lai massacre facts, March 16, 1968, happened two years and five months before achieving my majority. Martin Luther King was assassinated April 4, 1968. Robert Kennedy was murdered June 5, 1968. On August 20, 1968, the USSR led Warsaw Pact troops in an invasion of Czechoslovakia to crack down on the reformist trends started by The Prague Spring. This action successfully halted the pace of reform in Czechoslovakia, but it had unintended consequences for the unity of the communist bloc. [History]“The police assault in front of the Hilton Hotel in Chicago on the evening of August 28, 1968 (age 19), became the most famous image of the Chicago demonstrations of 1968. The entire event took place live under television lights for seventeen minutes with the crowd chanting, "The whole world is watching." [WIKI] I was working my summer job at a moving company, between college years, and didn’t know about it until my boss mentioned it the next day.Neil Armstrong walked on the moon July 20, 1969 (age 20). Missed that one too; working.Sept 23, 1969, in Federal Court in Chicago, the Chicago Eight Trial of the eight antiwar activist leaders charged with responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 25–29, 1968 Democratic National Convention, began . The defendants were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot. The trial was presided over by the far from impartial Judge Julius Hoffman. Aided and abetted by Judge Hoffman, the trial quickly turned into a circus as the defendants and their attorneys used the court as a platform to attack Nixon, the Vietnam war, racism, and oppression. When the trial ended five months later, February 18, 1970, Hoffman found the eight defendants and their attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of court and sentenced them to terms of between two to four years. Although the jury declared the defendants not guilty of conspiracy; the jury found six of them guilty of intent to riot and they were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000. However, none of the eight served time—in 1972, a Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions and eventually most of the contempt charges were dropped as well.Earth Day started April 22, 1970–I have no memory of this either. The kent state massacre - Google Search closed out my spring, May 4, 1970. (age 21)Amongst all the above mess, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)—founded 1959 and dissolved 1969—amped up the anti-war movement and splinter groups started making bombs. August 24, 1970, (age 21) a bomb was set off at Sterling Hall, University of Wisconsin–Madison with the intention of destroying the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC) housed on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors as a protest against the university's research connections with the U.S. military. It killed a university physics researcher and injured three.The Ford Econoline van they used was filled with close to 2,000 pounds of ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil.) Pieces of the van were found on top of an eight-story building three blocks away and 26 nearby buildings were damaged. However, the targeted AMRC was scarcely damaged. By comparison, when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, OK, April 19, 1995, he used about 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane (a fuel additive.) [WIKI]Total damage to U Wisconsin–Madison property was over $2.1 million ($13.5 million in 2018.) [WIKI] The greatest legacy of the UW bombing might be as the moment that broke the radical movement in Madison and then caused a peaceful refocusing that returned Madison activism to its roots in the civil rights era. [oops . . . lost source]These guys weren’t always the brightest candles on the cake. March 6, 1970, in a sub-basement furnace room at 18 West 11th Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NYC, a townhouse explosion was caused by the premature detonation of a bomb that was being assembled by members of another American radical left, anti-war group, the Weather Underground (aka the Weathermen)—a splinter group of SDS), . Three bomb makers were killed instantly; and two others were injured but were helped from the scene and later escaped for a while. And then were caught. [WIKI]June 17, 1972, was the Watergate break-in. August 9, 1974,Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on preventing the House from virtually certainly impeaching him with conviction by the Senate equally certain to follow. On September 8, 1974, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him.# # # # #In 1957 the FDA approved the birth control pill, but only for severe menstrual disorders, not as a contraceptive. May 9, 1960, the FDA Advisory Committee voted to approve its use as a birth control pill and was formally approved as an oral contraceptive by the FDA on June 23, 1960. The Women’s Movement began in the late 1960s and continues today. I am intentionally combining these two incidents. By 1967 Women’s Lib was in full flower. It’s been 50–60 years depending on when you start counting. That closely conforms to a dictum from Mao’s Little Red Book that it takes three generations for change to become fixed within a society. A generation is usually marked as twenty years. So in that 50–60 years we have come from the nascent Women’s Lib to #MeToo. Interesting. . . .In 1972, Gloria Steinem, et al, founded MS Magazine, the first mainstream publication of its kind to speak honestly and directly about real women's issues; including being the first magazine to tackle domestic abuse. [Makers] Ms Steinem first broke onto the publishing scene with the most famous expose of Playboy ever written in the amazing May 1963, two-part article in Show magazine—”A Bunny’s Tale”—about what it was like to work as a Playboy bunny at the New York City Playboy club. That time Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy Bunny Scroll halfway down and just past the Playboy cover to IT CONTAINED A SURPRISING AMOUNT OF BODY HORROR for a quick sample of what she had to put up with.All of which perversely brings us to Playboy Magazine, founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953 with a $600 loan against his furniture and investments from family members to launch the magazine with a total of $8,000 ($74,600 in 2018) after getting turned down for a $5 ($46.60 in 2018) raise. Cue the sexual revolution, the exact dates for which seem to be in dispute but which seem to revolve around the late 1960s and through the 1970s# # # # #I wasn’t even aware of this next bit until recently; the latter part of which was happening around me at the time. 1944 gave us the Bretton Woods Conference, which rebuilt the world’s financial system after WWII. It established a rule-based system to regulate international trade and monetary relations. The gold standard had been destroyed by WWI. Attempts to fix it during the 1920s were unsuccessful. The Great Depression continued to break down the global financial system; and international trade collapsed. WWII erased hopes for a return to normalcy. Bretton Woods was designed to include the best parts of the gold standard. By the 1950s, in the US, the Bretton Woods Accords framework resulted in tightly regulated banks; complete credit creation was controlled by the Federal Reserve; dollars were backed by gold; and the government balanced its books. All the pieces were in place to fix the monetary and economic chaos that began with the breakdown of the gold standard in 1914. This worked really well at first: the US economy expanded 49% during the 1950s; 54% during the 1960s. It probably helped that the US was the only industrialized country to survive intact from the ruins of WWII.Then Vietnam happened; which brings this rant back to my life. Not to get all wonky on you; but basically Congress passed legislation in 1965 and 1968 that loosened the ratio of gold relative to the deposits that were required to be held by banks. Wars cost lots of money; and politicians hate raising taxes. During the 1960s, despite the strong growth noted above, the US government ran deficits in 8 of those ten years. By the early 1970s, Bretton Woods had collapsed. On August 15, 1971 (4 days shy of 22,) President Nixon suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. March 1972, the Secretary of the Treasury announced that the US was prepared to accept a system of floating exchange rates. On January 1, 1975, all restrictions on the private ownership of gold were lifted and gold could now be freely held in the U.S. without licensing or restrictions of any kind. The price of gold was . . . wait for it . . . $194 an ounce ($897.85 in 2018 dollars which isn’t quite as much fun.) I distinctly remember saying “So what. It’s a fad. I’m not interested in jewelry.” My initial dismissal of the internet is equally embarrassing.Throwing Bretton Woods under the bus resulted in the US government going off the gold standard and losing interest in balancing the budget. By the end of the 1970s, the US government no longer controlled credit creation. The world financial system went from a debt-based economy to a credit-based economy. The argument ends by saying this sequence of events resulted in credit bubbles forming during the 1980s and 1990s and ultimately was responsible for the Great Recession of 2008. [Richard Duncan: The Dollar Crisis; The Corruption of Capitalism; The New Depression — you really should read these !]# # # # #The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival happened on August 14-19, 1969. (age 20) And hair.??? Long hair was a political statement. Huh? Wha’? Nobody had tattoos nor piercings. The movie Hair, based on the eponymous stage-play, is probably the most cringe-worthy interpretation I can think of about this whole 1967–’72 period.Around 1969–71, The Marx Brothers were rediscovered and became cultural icons again. Busby Berkeley musicals were back in vogue; the trippy, kaleidoscopic dance routines were, umm, ah, inspirational. We weren’t allowed to drink beer in the school auditorium where they were shown. :-DLots of really good music was available locally: Spirit twice—and, yes, bleeping Zep stole the intro to Stairway to Heaven (“the law’s an ass—a idiot”, Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist. Waddaya mean, “Not Guilty?” pfui)—all Randy California cared about was a polite acknowledgement; the money was secondary. It’s amazing, looking back on it, how shared and integral to life music was then. That will likely never happen again; because now the music scene is now so fragmented and diverse that cultural cohesion is severely eroded . . . for better and for worse. Now you have to screen roommates to avoid conflicting musical tastes. Once upon a time, we only worried about duplicate LPs; because they limited exposure to new tunes.Mid-summer 1967: The Shadows of Night; The Electric Prunes; Buffalo Springfield; Jefferson Airplane at a Mpls. Aquatennial concert. Feb. 2, 1969, I was ten people away from the door before getting into the Mpls. Labor Temple for the Grateful Dead with Pigpen; but the fire marshal said, “enough people already” and shut down the box office. The original Velvet Underground, sans Nico; Sweetwater with Nancy Nevins; Minnie Riperton (before she got famous) with her five octave, coloratura soprano, whistle-register as the lead vocalist of the psychedelic soul band Rotary Connection. All these concerts were held at the Labor Temple, Minneapolis’s de facto psychedelic ballroom through 1969-1970. A great venue that regrettably no longer caters to rock concerts. 1971, across the river in Minneapolis, the club that is now known as First Avenue opened under the name Uncle Sam’s.# # # # #Buses weren’t running on that route that late at night. So, having failed to gain admission to the Dead concert, I walked back to Macalester in the sub-freezing cold wearing very wet, light suede shoes—summer shoes—what was I thinking; I wasn’t. No luck hitchhiking a ride that night—just bad luck; that happens. But then, seven months after that late night trek, Charlie Manson went and screwed the pooch and took the nation’s hitchhiking lifestyle down with him. August 9, 1969, were the Manson Murders—one day after my mother’s birthday; ten days before my 20th. Before Manson, I could hitchhike everywhere; after Manson, good luck with that.! Nevertheless, 1970–72, I hitched to once to NYC one way (I couldn’t figure out how to leave and took the bus back); and to California twice, out and back, despite the Manson curse. Spring 1971, a “society matron”—who was driving one of those glorious, grinning grill, All-American 8 cylinder, shark fin tanks that Detroit once made like nobody ever had before nor has ever since—took just one look at me as I was waiting innocuously for a bus on a corner in downtown Minneapolis; and deliberately reached across the front seat; and purposefully depressed the door lock. Keeping eye contact the whole time. The end of an era.# # # # #The house band at Macalester College 1969–1971 was Foxglove and they were every bit as good as major label acts.! Seriously. Thanks, guys.! And they still had their musical chops 45 years later at class reunion despite no longer being a working band.Somewhere during all that above mess, I managed to attend college classes and get a slop-and-splash studio art degree by Spring of 1971 (21+9 months.) I actually graduated with no debt.! Thanks, mom and dad.Of course, I also worked at the college food service 30+/- hours a week; and in the Art Department doing odd jobs all week long. I pretty much sold all of my student art (including—for $50 ($318 in 2018 dollars)—the painting I most wish I hadn’t sold. Damn.) And scrambled to pick up outside, temporary work during semester breaks and over the summers to help pay my way through. comme ci comme ça.Macalester is an elite “prairie ivy”; I doubt if they would let me in anymore. I attend occasional reunions; and make modest donations to the Alumni Fund.August 1971, (age 22) I started King Harvest—later, the St. Cloud Food Co-op. Basically I had no choice but to start my own business; I had no marketable job skills. It still exists as The Good Earth Food Co-op; although I am only remotely involved.# # # # #21 ? Mostly, I spent way too much time smoking pot . . . .

You give way too much importance to this Quebec Act. This doesn’t make the British benevolent, just geopolitically lucid. They did not do it because they had generous sentiments, they did it because they had no choice in the circumstances. It’s super insulting to be told that English gallantly granted rights in 1774 when it took 200 years of riots to get any rights at all./!\ Nomenclature : There are no such thing as “English Canadians” in the 18th century and most of the 19th century. Canadian (Canadien) necessarily means French at that time. The usurpation of the name happens much later. Canada then is also the more common name for then’s “province of Quebec”. /!\Let’s counterbalance the usual nonsense from Heritage Canada and the likes with some unconvenient facts.This answer is organized by chapters, so you may read about what interests you.Chapter 1 : The Quebec Act, or being simply realistChapter 2 : USAmericans come to pay a visitChapter 3 : The Constitutional ActChapter 4 : The War of 1812Chapter 5 : Systematic conflict between the Parliament and the CrownChapter 6 : War of Independence & its repressionChapter 7 : No more Mr Nice GuyChapter 8 : The advent of the FederationChapter 9 : Suppression of French accross the FederationChapter 10 : The Chinese of the Eastern StatesChapter 11 : Opposition to foreign warsChapter 12 : A Civil Rights movement for francophones in CanadaChapter 13 : Constitutional betrayalsChapter 1 : The Quebec Act, or being simply realistIn the beginning, in 1763, catholicism is legal “as long as the Laws of the Kingdom of Great Britain allow it” (so not so much) and the status of the French Laws (Custom of Paris), French manorial regime (lordships, fiefdoms), French language, etc. is unclear. At that point, catholics are officially discriminated against by law, and are not allowed to have public charges because they must pledge the Test Oath that makes one abjure catholicism. Acadians have had this since their Conquest in 1713 up to now, so that entire time, the British made no “Quebec Act” for them, and on the contrary deported them in 1755. However now they also got the colony of Canada, the population was way too big to start thinking about doing that again.So this is the situation the first English governor Murray (he was a Scotman) had to deal with. In reality, it was much impractical. The Test Oath meant that no francophone could be in the administration or be in a jury !!! At that point, there were simply not enough anglos to do all the job there is to do to run this country. Murray was simply forced to bend the laws to appoint catholics to public posts because it was simply unrealistic to do otherwise. Of course the bunch of racist merchants in Montréal complained about that “leniency”, like they would always do. So in 1774, it’s just that the Parliament of Westminster acknowledged that applying the regular British laws in Québec was unrealistic.They even went as far as to create an office of “Superintendant of the Romish church” (= bishop for the catholics), with a sort of legal ambiguity that would make it kind of legal in British law. So the first bishop was Briand. That guy was a collaborator, he was famous for dining with the governor all the time and was of course the most submissive candidate among those who were fit to become bishop.In 1774, what else is going on ? How yeah, there is agitation in the old British colonies in the South. They are not happy about being asked to pay for their own defense, they are not happy about the reduction of the taxes for tea because they want to keep smuggling it illegally, they are not happy about the clever policy of trying to avoid aggravating the indigenous nations by giving the Crown a monopoly over land cessions, and so they start to be… seditious. Westminster is perfectly aware of that, and is also perfectly aware that so far, Canadiens have very little reasons to be loyal to the British, and the rebels also know that very well.So in 1774, the Quebec Act was an emergency. Its aim was to please the upper strata of the population, so they would preach obedience to the English.There are garantees for the catholic religion. It pleases the clergy.There are garantees for the manorial regime. It pleases the lords.It allows catholics to be part of public offices, which is simply realism and was already going on informally.It creates a Council for the Affairs of the Province of Quebec, a council of advisors to the governor to basically give a job to the pennyless nobles.This endeavor will be effective. All the rich people will indeed side with the British, to protect their immediate interests. This is why Pierre Perrault in 1991 said that Québec was betrayed « par les seigneurs et les monseigneurs ».Chapter 2 : USAmericans come to pay a visitHowever things are much fuzzier for the lower classes. When the “Bostonians” (rebels of the South) came to visit us in Québec, there were a certain number of incidents that show that contrary to the current Canadian propaganda, it was not obvious that the French population vehemently chose the British Crown.4th of June 1775, governor Carleton has trouble recruiting Canadiens of the district of Montréal in the milita and even got resistance in Saint-François and Saint-Joseph. In fact, the role of the Canadien militia would be minimal the whole time compared to the available troops.7th of June 1775, governor Carleton complained that he’s powerless to make the general population loyal to the cause of the government.In Terrebonne, the son of the deceased lord, Louis II de La Corne, would threaten the inhabitants of prison and bounds for their non-cooperation. 300–400 militiamen from the nearby parishes of Saint-Louis-de-Terrebonne, Saint-Charles-de-Lachenaie, Saint-Henri-de-Mascouche and L’Assomption-de-Repentigny read the 2nd letter of the Congress, got enthused by it and went to Lachenaie to block the passage to the royal troops. Carleton sent the 15th Regiment against them, they got afraid and went back home.In Trois-Rivières and Québec city, recruitment was also difficult.In Montréal, major Prescott sent the order to levy 15 men per company to the captains of the militias of the nearby parishes , but they refused to obey.During the one month long siege of fort Saint-Jean sur Richelieu, many Canadiens deserted.29th of September 1775, a local Canadien in Saint-Michel-de-Bellechasse spoke against the government in the mass.30th of October 1775 : Benedict Arnold reached the Beauce region and found an old woman singing the Yankee Doodle. The local captain of the militia, Étienne Parent and his wife were enthusiast pro-rebels.3rd of November 1775 : Canadiens of the Richelieu valley there joined the rebel cause! (Incidentally, those would be the same who would rebel in 1837.)9th of November 1775, lieutenant governor Cramahé thought the French upper classes were not able to make the general population loyal and expected to lose Québec.12th of February 1776 : Moses Hazen and Prudent Lajeunesse were in Philadelphia to explain to the Continental Congress that the clergy and the lords were to blame for the lack of participation of the Canadiens to the rebel cause.There was an inquiry after the event. It found that over 4492 militiamen reviewed for the district of Québec city, 757 were rebellious. They did a similar enquiry for the district of Montréal but the documents were lost. (could the conclusion have been unpleasant ? it would be the district of Montréal that would rebel a lot in 1837)Pierre de Sales Laterrière, director of the Forges du Saint-Maurice in Trois-Rivières, would be jailed because he gave tools and weapons to the rebels.Fleury Mesplet, printer, and Valentin Jautard, journalist, would also be punished. They printed pro-rebel propaganda, they criticized the British judiciary system, etc.François Cazeau, merchant in Montréal and Charles Hay, merchant in Québec city, would be jailed because they gave information to the rebels.Joseph-Louis Gill, of Saint-François-du-Lac, would be arrested because he was suspected of delivering correspondance to the southern rebellious colonies.There was also a rumor that the oath made to the King of Great Britain in 1763 would expire after 21 years. (How convenient !)So I hope after this you will stop assuming the loyalty of the Canadiens was so obvious and that the Quebec Act did all the job. This is one of the most annoying myth I see all the time in manuals. When you look in detail at what happened, those events were way more nuanced and in a grey zone.More details about the Campaign of Canada in the US War of Independence : Thomas de La Marnierre's answer to What happened to Canada when the US declared independence?Soooo… The US eventally got independence. Good for them.Pierre du Calvet also was suspected of collaborating with the rebels during this war and was arrested, and he wrote the famous Appel à la justice de l’État. He is considered the precursor of all independantist thought in Québec, and the precursor of the Montréal School of historiography. You can still visit his house in Old Montréal.Pierre du Calvet wrote in 1784 that Canadiens were« furent déclarés étrangers, intrus, esclaves civils dans leur propre pays »“were declared foreigners, intruders, civil slaves in their own country”Pierre du Calvet would stress the « droit des nations » (right of the nations/peoples), 134 years before Woodrow Wilson made it cool.Pierre du Calvet also wrote :« Qu'il est triste d'être vaincu, s'il n'en coûtait que le sang qui arrose le champ de bataille! À la vérité, la plaie serait bien profonde, bien douloureuse ; elle saignerait pour bien des années; après tout, la révolution des temps la fermerait, la consoliderait à la fin : mais être condamné à sentir la continuité de la main d'un vainqueur, qui s'appesantit sur nous ; mais être esclaves à perpétuité, sous l'empire d'un souverain qui est le père constitutionnel du peuple le plus libre qui soit dans l'univers; oh, pour le coup c'en est trop ! »“How sad is it to be vainquished, if it only costed the blood that sprays the battlefield! To say the truth, the wound would be much deeper, would hurt much more; it would bleed for many years; after all, the revolution of the times would close it, would strenghten it in the end: but to be condemned to feel the continuity of the hand of a victor, that weighs down on us; but being slaves in perpetuity under the empire of a sovereign that is the constitutional father of the most free people of the world that exists in the universe; oh, this time it’s too much!”Years later, revolutionary intellectuals would complain two opportunities were lost in 1775 and 1812 to join the US…Chapter 3 : The Constitutional ActIn 1791, for the first time in its history, a Constitutional Act gives an elected Parliament to Quebec, now renamed Lower Canada. The catch is that the Upper House (called Legislative Council) can veto whatever the Lower House (Legislative Assembly) does. So it’s not all that great. A portion of Québec was detached to create Upper Canada (future Ontario), because those anglos could not stand to live under French laws.But for some time, the naïve Canadiens, that are just getting introduced to English constitutional principles, are thrilled. For the moment, they believe in those “English liberties”, which are much different from the usual authoritarianism they were used to. François Baillargé even wrote that 1792 was the first free year of the country, imagine how naïve he was.« Le nouveau bil de quebec ou plutot L’amandement de l’acteest mis en force le 26 Décembre dernier il nous donneune chambre d’assemblée et divise la province endeux gouvernements celui du haut et du basCanada, mais a que bec residera laprincipalle autorité dans le gou-vernement génneral dont celuidu haut Canada depen-dra. et 1792 estlapremièreannée libredu paiy »It’s amusing to note that the VERY FIRST election Québec ever had in 1792 ended up as usual in a riot between Anglos and Francos. The first election ever. Let that sink in.Oh, and in 1801, there was a bill to create free, public, ecumenical, English schools for the entire population, with the avowed goal of assimilating the population, as explained by Hugh Finlay, with his usual bluntness :“School teachers should be English if we are to make these Canadians English […]. We could completely Anglicize the people by introducing the English language. This will be done through free schooling…”Hugh Finlay, member of the Council of Québec, 1789Those schools were a major failure because nobody fell for the trap, and the clergy wanted monopoly over education anyway.Chapter 4 : The War of 1812There was the War of 1812. It’s true that this awefully loyalist Michel de Salaberry commanded 300 Canadiens Voltigeurs and Kanien’kehá:ka indigenous in the Battle of the Châteauguay river… but it’s also true there was a riot of the milita in Lachine and Sainte-Geneviève because they would not let themselves be recruited.(Map of the riots)Chapter 5 : Systematic conflict between the Parliament and the CrownThere was a systematic conflict with the United Kingdom on all issues. On the issue of taxes, anglos would want the peasants (= the Canadien people) to be taxed while of course those would ask that foreign imports be taxed (= English merchants). It was the Quarrel of the Jails in 1805–1807. Journals would criticize the British colonial government, and those would be seized and their editors arrested many times, like Ludger Duvernay. Canadiens would prioritize local development while British mechants would rather want enlargements and canals on the Saint-Lawrence river to benefit trade with the UK. British merchants would want to speculate on lands while locals would want to ensure their children could manage to get their own for cheap. In 1822, there would be with the Canada Trade Act the first discussion for an union of other colonies with Lower Canada, which would of course cause uproar.The English pressured to orient the economy towards exportation to London, and the Canadiens did not want that. Canadiens wanted to develop the local economy. That created a lot of conflicts in the Parliament. English wanted to tax the farmers and spend a lot to create channels for the ships, whereas Canadiens wanted to tax importations and trade. Almost all the significant economical activities were in the hands of anglo-scots capitalists : wood cutting, fur trade, lands (half of the seigneuries belonged to the British), international trade (an exception to this was Joseph Masson), banking (exception : Joseph Masson), etc. This is how Canadiens became an underclass. However there was a region where locals were more prosperous : the valley of the Richelieu river. It benefited from the trade with the United States and from good agricultural yields. The condition of the farmers generally declined : the old countryside was overpopulated and English lords tried to speculate on the land despite it being illegal under the Custom of Paris. It meant that land became more and more costly and lots got smaller and smaller. The situation was similar in the townships, in which capitalists accumulated the land to speculate. The most famous example was the British American Land company in the Eastern Townships. This company alone was the main reason the French-controlled Parliament was afraid of abolishing the Ancien Régime too quickly : they knew that if they did not handle this with great care, it would be detrimental to the population. In the 1830’s, there was an economical crisis. Farmers could not get credit nor sell their wheat. The causes are debated, and the very idea that it was an agricultural crisis is debated too among historians, but the result was that the times were difficult, ESPECIALLY in the region of Québec city, in which people were starving and in which there were a lot of hobos at that time. In the Gaspesia peninsula, the fishermen became exploited by a family from the European island of Jersey, and the fishermen were exploited to the very limit : they had difficulty to feed themselves. This situation would last for the whole century and most of the XXth. Incidentally, this poverty in the region of Québec explains their very small participation to the war that is going to come.In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville came to visit, and with his usual cleverness, immediately saw what were the issues and anticipated the future accurately. It’s an amazing read.A more complete account of the visit of Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831.“Although French is the language most universally spoken, the newspapers, the notices and even the shop-signs of French tradesmen are in English. Commercial undertakings are almost all in their hands. They are really the ruling class in Canada. I doubt if this will long be so. The clergy and a great part of the not rich but enlightened classes is French, and they begin to feel their secondary position acutely. The French newspapers that I have read, put up a constant and lively opposition against the English. There is every sign that the new generation will be different from the present generation, and in a few years from now, if the English race is not prodigiously increased by emigration and does not succeed in shutting the French in the area they now occupy, the two peoples will come up against one another. I do not think that they will ever merge, or that an indissoluble union can exist between them. I still hope that the French, in spite of their conquest, will one day form a fine empire on their own in the New World, more enlightened perhaps, more moral and happier than their fathers. At the present moment the division of the races singularly favours domination by England.[…]I went today in a lecture cabinet. Almost all the printed newspapers of Canada are in English. They have about the same dimension as of those of London. I did not yet read them. In Quebec City a newspaper called the Gazette, half-English, half-French; and a newspaper absolutely French called the Canadien. This newspapers have more or less the dimension of our French newspapers. I have carefully read some issues: they offer a violent opposition to the government and even to all that is English. The epigraph of the Canadien is: Our Religion, Our Language, Our Laws. It is difficult to be more frank. The contents answers the title. All that can inflame both great and small popular passions against the English are carefully reported upon in this newspaper. I have seen an article in which it was said that Canada would never be happy until it had an administration that would be Canadien by birth, by principle, ideas, prejudice even, and that if Canada escaped England, it would not be to remain English. In this same newspaper one could find pieces of French verses that were quite nice. Was reported upon a distribution of prizes where the students had played Athalie, Zaïre, la Mort de César. In general the style of this newspaper is common, mixed with anglicisms and strange expressions. It resembles a lot the newspapers in the Vaud canton in Switzerland. I have not yet seen in Canada a single man of talent, nor read a production proving it. The one who must awaken the French population, and rise it against the English is not yet born.The English and the French merge so little that the latter exclusively keep the name of Canadiens, the others continuing to call themselves English.”(Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831)“Their jealousy is vividly excited by the daily arrival of newcomers from Europe. They feel they will end up being absorbed. We can see that all that is being said on this subject animate their passions, but they do not clearly see the remedy. The Canadians fear leaving the sight of their church, they are not astute. - "Oh! you are very right, but what can you do?" These are their answers. They clearly feel their position as a conquered people, not counting on the goodwill, I would not say of the government, but of the English. All their hopes are fixed on their representatives. They seem to have that exaggerated attachment to them, and especially to Mr. Neilson -"But he is English", they said to us, as if in astonishment or regret- which oppressed people generally have for their protector. Several of them seemed perfectly to understand the need for education, and to take lively pleasure in what had just been done to help it on. All in all we felt that this population could be led, although still incapable of leading itself. We are coming to the moment of crisis. If the Canadians do not wake out of their apathy, in twenty years from now it will be too late to do so. Everything indicates that the awakening of this people is at hand. But if in this effort the middling and upper classes of the Canadian population abandon the lower classes, and let themselves be carried in the swing with the English, the French race is lost in America. And that would truly be a pity, for there are here all the elements of a great people. The French of America are to the French of France as the Americans are to the English. They have preserved the greater part of the original traits of the national character, and have added more morality and more simplicity. They, like them, have broken free from a crowd of prejudices and false points of departure which cause and will cause all the miseries of Europe. In a word, they have in them all that is needed to create a great memory of France in the New World. But will they ever succeed in completely regaining their nationality? That is what is probable without unfortunately being certain. A man of genius who would understand, feel and be capable to develop the national passions of the people would have an admirable role to play here. He would soon be the most powerful man in the colony. But I do not yet see him anywhere.”(Alexis de Tocqueville, 1831)He even found a journal that said : “Canada would never be happy until it had an administration that would be Canadien by birth, by principle, ideas, prejudice even”. What does that mean ? Quebecers should rule themselves and end the English domination. How is that not awfully similar to the XXth century ?There was also Adam Thom, who had a journal in which he wrote everyday hate speech against francophones, and he was seriously pissed that the governor did not do more to oppress the population, like many other anglos of Montréal of that time. Those radical anglos were so determined that the governor would eventually start to see them as a threat to the stability of the colony !! And indeed, they were quite willing to overthrow the governor to get a more strong-arm policy. Adam Thom even published anonymously the Anti-Gallic Letters, in which you can read wonderful things like this :“Conciliation, my lord, is at least a new principle in policy, for it compels the conquerors to pay tribute to the conquered. If your lordship can pardon a bitter jest, I may compare the conquest of Canada to a donkey-race, in which the most ignoble animal carries off the prize.”(Adam Thom, Anti-Gallic Letters)In 1832, there was as usual violence during the election, because the vote was not secret, so every time, each faction would have a bunch of ruffians to beat up the other side. This time, the street war in Montréal ended up with an intervention from the police and all three deaths were Canadiens : Pierre Billet, François Languedoc and Casimir Chauvin, and the Jury freed the officers who were charged with murder. This was called the press the “Massacre of Montréal” and had the same impact in the public conciousness the so-called “Massacre of Boston” had a few years before.(So-called “massacre of Montréal” in 1832)In 1834, as usual there was again violence in then’s election. In William-Henry (future Sorel), Louis Marcoux was assassinated by two English brothers. In the trial afterwards, the biased judge did not lay any charge against them and let them free. This injustice infuriated Wolfred Nelson, a republican and independist anglophone sympathetic to the Canadien cause, and I suspect this is this incident that made him turn against the British Crown. Wolfred Nelson built a monument for his friend Louis Marcoux where he lived, in Saint Denis sur Richelieu, and it is one of the oldest monuments in Québec. The British army destroyed it in 1837 but it was patched up.The Parliament would be in systematic conflict with the British governor, and finally sent an ultimatum in the form of 92 Resolutions in 1834. The 42nd resolution would ask for more democratic institutions, more like those of the United States, that would be more respectful of the will of the general population instead of the British govenment. Canadiens would have their own “Intolerable Acts” : the 1825 Tenure Act for example, criticized in the resolutions 56 to 62. The British tried to bribe the Parliament by offering them posts in the Upper House of the Parliament, which had veto power over the Lower House’s decisions, but it didn’t work. In 1837, the British government issued the 10 Russel Resolutions, with not only rejected everything but in fact entitled the governor to secure his budget without the consent of the Parliament.This was an outrage and so in the summer of 1837, there were popular gatherings all over Lower Canada to protest. These gatherings worried the British government and so they decided to arrest the parliamentary leaders. They refused to let themselves be arrested, and this is how the war started.Chapter 6 : War of Independence & its repressionBattle of Saint-Denis : victory of the insurgents, who built a barricade.(Battle of Saint-Denis, with British regulars)Battle of Saint-Charles : victory of the British army. The insurgents refused to surrender and shot at the British again after they lowered their weapons.Battle of Saint-Eustache : the British army defeated forces outside the village and bombarded the church where the insurgents were hidden.(Battle of Saint-Eustache)A British soldier that participated to the battle of Saint-Charles described the aftermath :"On entering the town there was little quarter; almost every man was put to death ; in fact, they fought too long before thinking of flight. Many were burned alive in the barns and houses, which were fired, as they would not surrender. Gun-barrels and powder-flasks were exploding all night in the burning houses, and the picture that presented itself the following morning to my eyes was terrible. A number of swine got loose, and were eating the roasted bodies of the enemy who were burned in the barns and killed in the streets : those brutes were afterwards shot. The loss of the rebels was great ; their position was strong, and they defended it with desperation ; but they were totally routed, and received a lesson that they are not likely ever to forget. We took twenty-eight prisoners, destroyed a great quantity of arms and ammunition, spiked their two guns, and sunk them in the river, burned every house from whence a shot was fired, turned the priest's house into an hospital, and the church into a barrack."(George Bell, "Rough Notes By an Old Soldier," 1867)There was also the village of Saint-Benoît which was ordered to surrender. They did, and Colborne ordered the burning of the houses of the leaders, but the troops were quite too enthusiast and burned the entire village.The entire county of Deux-Montagnes was burned.(Ruins of Saint-Benoît)(British volunteers, paramilitaries)The defeats of 1837 made the revolutionaries flee to Vermont, in which they prepared the next phase of the war. They created a secret society called the Frères chasseurs (Hunter brothers) and would establish a network across all Lower Canada. They would try to make USAmericans join their cause, which they did not do, excepted that they did join Mackenzie’s cause in Upper Canada by signing in the Hunters’ Lodge.The deliveries of weapons were crushed in the two battles of Lacolle and the battle of Odelltown. In Napierville, independence was declared. In Beauharnois, the lord’s family was taken hostage, a steam-boat was captured but they were defeated in the Battle of Beauharnois.(Battle of Odelltown)(Beauharnois’ revolutionaries, pained by their captive Jane Ellice in 1838)The historian Jean-Marie Fecteau did an interesting legal study about the legality of the Martial Law that was proclaimed then.It’s interesting to note that commenters of the Common Law at the time said that indeed, English liberties were never meant for non-English, but on the contrary, the Law was discriminatory by design. This means that despite Canadiens being now considered British subjects, they actually did not have the same rights as the English.“The important point to be observed is, that the more the Common Law is supposed to be extended to a colony in right of English blood and descent, the more it must be considered to be in favor of and for the protection of those subjects of English descent, whose birthright it is presumed peculiarly to be. So that this theory, which has lately been proclaimed upon such high authority, only makes all the clearer the power of a governor to proclaim martial law for the protection of the subjects of English descent whenever really required for their protection; as in cases of a really dangerous rebellion of those of a different, perhaps hostile, race. And this, although a legal argument, goes to the root of the whole question as to the application of martial law in a colony, because it shows how entirely fallacious it is to liken it to a case of martial law as between those of British blood and descent, which can scarcely occur - at all events in these times, and especially in a colony - where they form a class and race mutually bound together by common ties of blood, not at all likely to come into collision or conflict among themselves.”(W. E. Finlason, A Review of the Authorities as to the Repression of Riot and Rebellion, London, Stevens & Sons, 1868, pp. 120-21.)It’s also interesting to note that the legal precedents for the governor proclaiming the Martial Law in Lower Canada were all from the laws enacted to crush the rebellions in Ireland, and those laws would have been illegal in England, and were only legal because BRITISH CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTIES WERE DISCRIMINATORY. This is why the habeas corpus writs that Canadien lawyers asked were disregarded and this is why the English voted themselves legal immunity that made it impossible to try them in Court.The British army’s retaliations were described in a letter of Louis Perrault to Louis-Joseph Papineau of the 19th Fabruary 1839 (in the Perrault Papers of the Historical Society of Wisconsin). You can read it in extenso here. It describes various things :The entire South Shore from Saint-Timothée to Châteauguay was devastated, burned and pillaged for a total of 87 787 £ of damages (£ of 1839 of course, under a different monetary system).Houden, a Scotman from Beauharnois was said to have taken his sword and to have pierced the ears and breast of the wife of Charles Lavigne.In Châteauguay, Dr Henry Mount, who would torch houses, would also sexually harrass women, and also load boats with what he stole.In Sainte-Martine and Beauharnois, women were raped.The parish of Contrecœur was pillaged and the women raped.So the English spread terror in 1837 and 1838.Chapter 7 : No more Mr Nice GuyIn 1838–1840, Lower Canada was ruled through dictatorship by the Special Council of Lower Canada, which enacted everything the MP had ever rejected before (because they viewed that as harmful to the French majority).So in 1840, the Union Act merged the colonies of Lower Canada and Upper Canada, which was an old project of 1822 (Canada Trade Act) as I told you earlier, and it was also the recommendation of Lord Durham to do this with those Francos who unfortunately could never be as modern and progressive as those Anglo-North-Americans and due to their structural inferiority had to be assimilated for their own good. (And Durham was a liberal for his time!!!) Lower Canada inherited the huge debt of Upper Canada (because there was nothing in 1791, it all needed to be built from scratch). In the beginning, it was not allowed to speak to this Parliament in French. It’s Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine who somehow imposed it to them by starting his first speech in French.“We suggest establishing a closer union between the two colonies by incorporating their two legislatures into one so that the English language and the spirit of the British constitution are more powerfully distributed among all classes of the population.”Robert Wilmot, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1822“And is this French Canadian nationality one which, for the good merely of that people, we ought to strive to perpetuate, even if it were possible? I know of no national distinctions marking and continuing a more hopeless inferiority. The language, the laws, the character of the North American Continent are English; and every race but the English […] appears there in a condition of inferiority. It is to elevate them from that inferiority that I desire to give to the Canadians our English character. […] That in any plan, which may be adopted for the future management of Lower Canada, the first object ought to be that of making it an English Province; and that, with this end in view, the ascendancy should never again be placed in any hands but those of an English population […]. Lower Canada must be governed now, as it must be hereafter, by an English population.”Lord Durham, 1839Meanwhile, after the defeat of the revolutionary intellectuals, it’s the clergy that took over the leading intellectual role, and this is how Lower Canada turned gradually into a theocracy.In 1849, the Parliament of the now united “province of Canada” in Montréal wanted to offer reparations for the damages the war caused, including to rebel families, and so an English mob assembled on the Place d’Armes in Montréal and torched the Parliament, which is still in ruins now.“The End has begun. Anglo-Saxons! you must live for the future. Your blood and race will now be supreme, if true to yourselves. You will be English "at the expense of not being British." To whom and what, is your allegiance now? Answer each man for himself. The puppet in the pageant must be recalled, or driven away by the universal contempt of the people. In the language of William the Fourth, "Canada is lost, and given away." A Mass Meeting will be held on the Place d'Armes this evening at 8 o'clock. Anglo-Saxons to the struggle, now is your time.”— Montreal Gazette, "Extra" of April 25, 1849“Your blood and race will now be supreme”. When I am speaking of “supremacism”, I am not kidding. Just read them !So they did exactly that, they assembled on the Place d’Armes in Montréal and torched the Parliament.(Ruins of the Parliament of Montréal near the Musée Pointe-à-Callière)In 1851, for the first time, the demographic majority of the Canadiens ended. For the first time, francophones were a minority in British North America. However, in the context of Québec, francophones were not a “minority” but a “temporarily embarrassed majority”.When they realized this in Upper Canada, suddenly, the Union Act they benefited from so much turned into the most despicable thing ever. It was unfair ! They demanded representation proportional to the population !!! Oh, this Union Act is so unfair !!! It wasn’t unfair in 1840 when they were the minority, right ?So despite how bad the situation appeared, francophones had half of the representation and so used this to systematically block the Parliament when they were not satisfied. Obviously, with a representation proportional to the population, this mean to coerce the anglos to be nicer would disappear. This is obviously why this had to end.The inheritors of the revolutionaries now were pushing for annexation to the US. Louis-Joseph Papineau included.« [après] avoir échappé aux griffes du lion britannique qui nous tient à terre, notre destinée est de nous élever dans les serres de l'Aigle américain »“[after] having escaped the claws of the British lion that keeps us on the ground, our destiny is to elevate ourselves in the talons of the American Eagle”(Charles Laberge, L’Avenir, 30th october 1849)« Bien souvent, Messieurs, dans mes trop courts passages sur le sol de la vieille Europe, bien souvent j’ai regretté, — non pas d’être Canadien, car qui dit Canadien dit descendant de la France, et je le dis hautement, je me fais gloire de cette origine, et je l’aurais choisie, si j’avais eu à choisir — mais regretté profondément, amèrement que les partisans par état et plus encore par calcul de l’absolutisme politique aient pu assez dominer nos pères, pour leur faire repousser à main armée, à deux reprises différentes [1775, 1812], le progrès, la prospérité, la liberté du pays ! deux fois ils n’ont eu qu’à tendre la main pour acquérir son indépendance, et deux fois ils l’ont repoussée parce qu’on a réussi à leur faire croire qu’elle serait funeste à leur langue, à leur nationalité, à leur religion, à leurs institutions, à leurs mœurs !Oui, Messieurs, deux fois, nous avons, de propos délibéré choisi le mauvais lot ! Deux fois nous avons volontairement manqué notre avenir ! »“Very often, gentlemen, in my too short passages on the soil of the Old Europe, very often I have regretted, not to be Canadien, because who says Canadiensays descendant of France, and I say it highly, I take glory from this origin and I would have chosen it if I had to chose, but I have regretted deeply, bitterly that the supporters by condition but even more by calculus of political absolutism could dominate our forefathers enough to make them repel with weapons, in two occasions [1775, 1812], the progress, the prosperity, the liberty of the country ! Two times they only had to hold out their hand to acquire its independence, and two times they repelled it because someone managed to make them believe it would be gruesome for their language, their nationality, their religion, their institutions and their moors!Yes, gentlemen, two times, we have chosen, after intentional words the bad fate! Two times we have voluntarily missed our future!”(Louis-Antoine Dessaules, 1851, Six lectures sur l'annexion du Canada aux États-Unis)Chapter 8 : The advent of the FederationIn 1864, representative of some British colonies were gathering in Charlottetown (PEI) to discuss the creation of a Maritime Union.This is where history was heading, but then John A. Macdonald (co-PM of the Province of Canada) and friends came to disrupt the talks on their big boat. They gave champagne to people and pushed their own agenda of creating a Federation. This was the beginning of the downfall of the Maritimes, that never enjoyed any prosperity in that Federation.At that time, there were various projects of railroads, and businesspeople found that the small colonies were not rich enough to handsomely pay them back like they wanted, because as usual private actors don’t do anything unless the government garantees everything with public money. In a few years, it will be reaveled that nearly all the main actors that created the Federation were dipping in corruption scandals with railroad companies, who would even pay for their elections.At that time, whigs ruled in Westminster and they were tired of the vast spendings the colonies meant to the British Treasury. It was an endless pithole of spendings. Besides they abolished the Corn Laws and the colonies stopped having a prefered status on British markets. Britain was in the process of giving more autonomy to colonies so they could basically pay for themselves.The only reason why it’s federal was because there was a lot of opposition to this project. John A. Macdonald, future first prime minister, wanted this Federation to be extremely centralized, and called the provinces mere “big municipal councils”. This is why the federal structure of the Canadian Federation is much less generous for federated states than the US can be. It was entirely thought as a copy of Great Britain, which is not federal but an unitarian state.And in fact, the opposition to the Federation was strong.In Québec, there was an important faction that prefered annexation to the US rather than being part of that Federation.In NB and NS, people voted AGAINST the Federation. Their governments joined it without popular mandate.Newfoundland slammed the door and slammed it several times until their annexation in 1949, and Britain coerced them into doing that.PEI wanted nothing to do with it and was kind of coerced due to their huge debts.BC was initially not interested, until they were bought with a transcontinental railroad.For the case of Québec, let’s read Dorion on that matter :« Avec une majorité de trente à quarante voix, on n’hésite plus. La Constitution qui gène un peu les allures cavalières des principaux chefs, qui bride un peu leur ambition personnelle, qui limite enfin le champ de leurs opérations spéculatives, ne convient plus [l’Union Act de 1840]. On la sape à grand coup de hache; on veut la faire disparaître sans consulter les intéressés, pour la remplacer par un tout autre ordre de choses, dans lequel on ne respecte pas plus les principes politiques que les droits et les besoins des populations. Une simple majorité parlementaire d’une voix suffira, ici, pour tout bouleverser dans l’ordre politique, et il n’y aura aucun appel d’une décision aussi importante, si ce n’est l’appel à un pouvoir situé à 3000 milles de nous, qui peut ajouter au projet des choses qui le rendrait encore moins acceptable.Le peuple pourra plus tard condamner ses représentants, mais le mal sera accompli. […] N’est-ce pas que le contraste entre notre manière stupide de faire les choses, et le procédé prudent, rationnel, de nos voisins [les États-Unis] est bien grand ? Aussi, sont-ils nos supérieurs sous tous les rapports politiques ? […]Ce n’est pas une union fédérale que l’on nous propose, mais bien une union législative déguisée. Le fédéralisme est passé bien loin dans ce projet. […] Dans ce projet que nous examinons, tout est force, puissance, dans le gouvernement général ; tout est faiblesse, insignifiance, anéantissement dans les gouvernements locaux ! »“With a majority of thirty to fourty votes, they do not hesitate. The Constitution that would impede their cavalier ways, that would restrict their personal ambitions, that would narrow the field of their speculative operations, is no longer convenient [the Union Act of 1840]. It is undermined with big axe blows; they want to make it disappear without consulting those concerned, to replace it to a totally different order, in which neither the political principles or the rights or needs of the populations are considered. A simple parliamentary majority of one vote is enough, here, to turn everything upside down in the political order, and there is no appeal to such an important decision, if it is not the appeal to a power located at 3000 miles from us, that can add to the project things that would make it even more unacceptable.The people would later be able to blame its representatives, but the evil will be done. […] Isn’t the contrast between our stupid manner to do things and the prudent, rational process of our neighbours [the United States] so great? Aren’t they our superiors on all the political matters? […]It is not a federal union we are being proposed, but actually a disguised legislative union. Federalism has gone a long way in this project. […] In this project we are examining, everything is strength, power, in the general government [federal]; everything is weakness, insignificance, annihilation in the local governments! [provincial]”(Jean-Baptiste-Éric Dorion, I oppose Confederation, 9th of March 1865)He complains there was no referendum to create this Federation (people were not consulted). I always wondered why a referendum would be required to leave it given these circumstances.Chapter 9 : Suppression of French accross the Federation1868 : The Federation acquired the Rupert Land from the Hudson Bay Company, rename it North West Territory and decides to redraw the boundiaries of Métis lands in the Assininoia Territory (Red River colony) without consulting them.1869 : As a consequence, the Métis rebelled, create a Provisional governement that would initially be independent, but since they know the Federation will crush them (they are on their way), they decided to negociate a bilingual province in 1870.1870 : Manitoba Act, which makes Manitoba a bilingual province, with garantees of land for the children of the Métis (that will be betrayed as usual).1871 : New Brunswick promulgates a new school law that abolishes the system of French separated schools. Acadian schools become private, not funded by the state, and thus are more costly despite them being a poorer population. Because of taxes, the Acadians paid for the English school but had to pay again for French school.1877 : Prince Edward Island abolished separated schools.1889 : D’Alton McCarthy makes an anti-French campaign in Manitoba1890 : Manitoba becomes unilingual English under the liberal government of Thomas Greenway, which is illegal under the 1870 Manitoba Act (Manitoba was born bilingual) and the article 93 of the 1867 Constitutionnal Act. Separated French Schools did not receive any funding. As usual, double price : you pay for the English schools through taxes and pay again for a French education. Despite it being an illegal move, prime minister John A. Macdonald at the time used his federal power to break 68 provincial laws but did nothing to counter this blatantly illegal law. A most “strange” thing because under the article 93, he should have made a law to repair the damages.1896 : A bill to overthrown the 1890 act in Manitoba (Mackenzie Bowell act) was never voted, so the article 93 of the Constitution was still not applied. The legal battle went up all up to the Privy Council in London and they said everything was okay because they were on the English’ side. Much, much later, as usual, the Supreme Court of Canada would acknowledged it was illegal way too late as always, but the damage was done.1905 : Prime minister Wilfrid Laurier, instead of just repealling the act in Manitoba like he was entitled to do, decided to “negociate” with the Greenway government in Manitoba. The same year, Laurier tried to acertain the North West territories enabled bilingualism but was betrayed by his own minister Sifton regarding that issue. The end result in Manitoba was ridiculous : you could be taught in French for a very short time AFTER the regular English classes, so it wasn’t really a compromise att all. Laurier wanted to prevent the conflict instead of just doing his job and therefore the injustice could continue unpunished.1910 : The Franco-Ontarians are now 10 % of the Ontarian population. This causes a massive stir amongst the Orange Lodge and are victim of a lot of racism.1912 : Due to an intense lobbying in Ontario triggered after the hysteria about the 10 % French population, the Regulation 17 is passed. The point was to limit education in French to only the first two years of school. The catholic bishop of the time was Irish and he approved the law.1917 : The separated classes were restored by Ferguson in Ontario.1920 : in the Prairies, the French bishops are replaced by Irish bishops and the French schools disappear at that moment.Chapter 10 : The Chinese of the Eastern StatesIn the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Quebecers were poor as f*ck. The countryside was overpopulated and the job market in Montréal was saturated and anyway, it was also seasonal (no jobs in the winter). In 1830’s, the revolutionaries thought about those issues and wanted to prevent land speculation in the coutryside so their children would manage to get land for cheap, but as you know they lost, and so everything they did not want to happen happened.This mass poverty triggered an insane emigration to the United States, to the New England states, in which they went to be exploited in textile mill towns. That population was so huge that it amounted to the same amount as the entire population of Québec, and so without their departure Québec would have twice its population now (8 M -> 16 M). These masses were a source of cheap labour and one US official called them “the Chinese of the Eastern States”. They lived in ghettos called “Little Canadas”, that were quite unsanitary.At that time, this alarmed much the public opinion in the US and they were regarded much like the Mexicans currently are. If Trump lived in the 1880’s, he would have wanted a wall with the Canadian border. Hatred against them went as far as forced sterilization in Vermont, in Vermont’s Eugenics Program that was made a law. The KKK also persecuted them.More about US bigotry and racism against Franco-Americans :Thomas de La Marnierre's answer to Does the anti-Catholic sentiment in the US, during the 19th and early 20th century, affect the French and Quebecois American?When child labour was made illegal in Québec, this prompted people to emigrate even more because they were too poor to not require an additional salary from their children, and since it was not illegal yet in the US, then they emigrated even more. There was even a strike of franco children in the US !(Joseph Beaudoin, 14 years old Franco-American worker, Chace Cotton Mill, Burlington, Vermont, May 1909)I suggest you the very recent book A Distinct Alien Race - Baraka Books from David Vermette.Chapter 11 : Opposition to foreign warsAs a loyal part of the British Empire, of course the Canadian Federation was required to take part to foreign wars.Unlike the English-speakers, the francophone population of Québec had been American for centuries while at the time the anglophones were for the most part recent immigrants from the British isles. They were British first and foremost. Therefore, when Britain was at war, THEY were at war and felt involved.Quebecers on the contrary did not have that emotional connexion to Europe. They were already a North American nation. They sure had a certain fondness for France, but France was now so different that it was alien to them. The France that the colonists were from did not exist anymore. The clergy especially was wary of the Republic (then, the Third one). If you want to compare the Quebecers to someone, compare them to the United States. The US were famous for their lack of enthusiasm about participating in European wars. It was difficult for Wilson and later Roosevelt to convince the US to enter either World Wars.Besides, it is true there was hostility towards the British Empire. “Quebecers” (forgive the anachronism), unlike the Anglos, were absolutely not interested in being a mere “colony”, a mere pawn that had to be obedient to Britain. “Quebecers” believed that Canada had to be really independent from Britain.In 1899, there was the Second Boer War in South Africa, and Britain demanded that the colonies take part to that conflict. That war was viewed with contempt in Europe in general because it was too obviously a war motivated by pure greed. At the time, the prime minister of Canada was Wilfrid Laurier… a “Quebecer”. He participated to the Imperial conferences and he agreed that Canada build warships for the war effort, and eventually agreed to military involvement. This is what reduced support for him in Québec. In the following elections (1911), he lost supports in Québec which contributed to the opposition’s victory, that of Robert Borden. Critics, like Henri Bourrassa, were quite harsh on Laurier.[…] we are opposed to any new policy that would drag us into faraway wars, foreign to Canada, especially as long as the autonomous colonies of the Empire won’t share with the motherland, and on equal terms, the sovereign authority that concern the imperial army and fleet, the peace and treaty alliances, the foreign relations, the government of India and possessions of the Crown. […] We blame the federal ministry and the parliamentary majority that imposed to Canada this new naval law, brought the country into the chasm of militarism, once condemned with so much energy by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, put Canada in danger and diverted towards the construction of deadly machines and the preparation of bloody wars the millions intended for the development of our agriculture and our transport routes. […] We affirm that the parliament had no right to so engage the future of Canada in a policy that was never submitted to the people destined to pay the blood tax and endure the yoke of military spendings.Saint-Eustache Resolutions, 1910, with the involvement of Henri Bourrassa (translated by me)At the time, many “Quebecers” were vocal opponents to the Second Boer* war, like Henri Bourassa, founder of the journal Le Devoir. You could even find in Montréal pictures of Paul Kruger, the president of the Transvaal Republic, so an “enemy”.*Boer ought to be pronounced like “buhr”.(Picture of Paul Kruger, the president of the Transvaal Republic, in Montréal)However, it order to put things in perspective. There is one example of overseas war in which Quebecers were surprisingly… enthusiastic. It occured when the Kingdom of Italy attacked the Papal States in 1870, while France could not defend it because of the Franco-Prussian War. The Pope Pius IX asked that all catholics come to save the Papal States and… Quebecers answered the call to arms ! They enrolled with enthusiasm as papal zouaves and took part to the Battle of Rome in 1870. This is the only popular war Québec ever had and the only autonomous military initiative it ever participated in. The zouaves veterans were considered heroes afterwards for generations, and they had veteran associations and wore their uniform during celebrations. Many cities were proud to say they contributed to the war effort. The Pie IX boulevard in Montréal commemorates this.(The zouave Ménault, at the time.)(Contemporary members of the Association des zouaves du Québec)I don’t quite know for the Crimean War, I would need to look more into that.In 1911, the prime minister Wilfrid Laurier was beaten by the Borden’s conservatives PRECISELY because he complied with the British Empire’s imperialist wars. The author of the famous poem In Flanders Field, John McCrae, even wrote in a letter: “I hope I stabbed a Fr. Canadian with my vote” (referring to the vote favorable to conscription). In 1917, the conscription law in Québec caused riots, and in fact Québec city was literally burning in 1918 and the army killed 4 people. The tension was so great that for the first time in history MP Francœur even dared to suggest to the Legislative Assembly of Québec a motion to reclaim independence, for the first time in history since 1837! For 73 YEARS Quebecers never forgave the conservatives for that and never voted for them. Quebecers held that grudge for that long.In 1918, the Federation had the nice idea to want to intervene in the Russian Civil War to crush the communists, and so they made up a Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force. Unsurprisingly, the Quebecer soldiers mutinied in Victoria, BC.After being betrayed by the conservatives, they were betrayed by the liberals of William Lyon Mackenzie. He was elected in Québec with a mandate to NOT take part to WW2. Mackenzie of course did a plebiscite in 1942 to ask the population to free him from his promise to Quebecers.Then’s mayor of Montréal, Camilien Houde, decided to do active civil disobedience in 1940 against the war and he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp in Petawawa, Ontario.The results in 1942 were awfully predictable :(1942 plebiscite in Canada)People were serious about not going to that war. There was of course a campaign of mass-wedding, but some people also mutilated themselves to be declared unfit for duty. They were not kidding around.It seems the Korean War did not generate much protests however, but all the other wars afterwards would. So this how Quebecers turned quite pacifist, a little like the Japanese now.Chapter 12 : A Civil Rights movement for francophones in CanadaThe so-called “Quiet” Revolution was a sort of civil rights movement. There was a Commission on bilingualism and biculturalism at the time of Pearson and it found out francophones were the poorest ethnic group of them all but the Italians (and probably the indigenous, but they were not considered).The manifesto of the FLQ expressed well the anger of that time :“The brave workers for Vickers and Davie Ship, who were sacked without notice, know these reasons. And the Murdochville men, who were crushed for the simple and sole reason that they wanted to organize a union and were forced to pay $2 million by the rotten judges simply because they tried to exercise this basic right – they know justice and they know many such reasons. Yes, there are reasons why you, Mr. Lachance of Sainte-Marguerite Street, go and drown your despair, your bitterness, and your rage in a bottle of that dog's beer, Molson. And you, Lachance's son, with your marijuana cigarettes … Yes, there are reasons why, generation after generation, you, the welfare recipients, are kept on social assistance. Yes, there are lots of reasons, and the Domtar workers in East Angus and Windsor know them well. And the workers at Squibb and Ayers, and the men at the Liquor Board and those at Seven-Up and Victoria Precision, and the blue collar workers in Laval and Montreal and the Lapalme boys know lots reasons. The Dupont of Canada workers also know them, even if soon they will be able to express them only in English (thus assimilated they will enlarge the number of New Quebecers, the immigrant darlings of Bill 63). […]We have had our fill of a federal system that exercises a senseless policy of importation while the low wage-earners in the textile and shoe manufacturing trades, who are the most ill-treated in Quebec, are thrown out into the street for the benefit of a clutch of damned “money-makers” in their Cadillacs; we have had enough of a federal government which classes the Quebec nation among the ethnic minorities of Canada. We have had our fill, as have more and more Quebecers, of a pathetic government that performs a thousand and one acrobatics to charm American millionaires into investing in Quebec, la Belle Province, where thousands and thousands of square miles of forests, full of game and well-stocked lakes, are the exclusive preserve of these almighty twentieth century lords. We have had our fill of hypocrites like Bourassa who rely on Brinks armoured trucks, the living symbol of the foreign occupation of Quebec, to keep the poor “natives” of Quebec in fear of the misery and unemployment in which they are accustomed to living. We have had our fill of the Ottawa representative to Quebec who wants to give our tax money to the Anglophone bosses to “encourage” them to speak French, my dear, to negotiate in French. Repeat after me: “Cheap labor is main d’œuvre à bon marché in French.”We have had our fill of promises of work and prosperity, when in fact we will always be the diligent servants and boot-lickers of the big shots, as long as there is a Westmount, a Town of Mount Royal, a Hampstead, an Outremont, all the fortresses of high finance on St. James Street and Wall Street; we will be slaves until all of us, the Québécois, have exhausted every means, including arms and dynamite, to rid ourselves of these economic and political “big bosses” who are prepared to use every dirty trick in the book to better screw us. We live in a society of terrorized slaves, terrorized by the big bosses like Steinberg, Clark, Bronfman, Smith, Neaple, Timmins, Geoffrion, J.L. Lévesque, Hershorn, Thompson, Nesbitt, Desmarais, Kierans. Compared to them, Rémi Popol the nightstick, Drapeau the “dog,” Bourassa the twink of the Simards, and Trudeau the faggot are peanut politicians!”(Manifesto of the FLQ, 1970)It was an tumultuous time.1955 : Maurice Richard riot in Montréal1964 : Samedi de la matraque in Québec city1968 : Lundi de la matraque in Montréal1969 : Saint-Léonard parents riot in Montréal(The Italian parents wanted nothing about becoming a part of francophone society, while francos demanded that minorities be integrated into franco society, and so the parents rioted and threw chairs at each other.)1969 : Murray-Hill riot, the police of Montréal riots!1970 : The Canadian army occupies Québec again (War Measures Act)This is why the Federation turned bilingual in 1969, to prevent an Irish-style war.Chapter 13 : Constitutional betrayalsIn 1980, Pierre Eliott Trudeau (the father of Justin) promised to make great constitutional changes to the Federation to guarantees to Québec if they voted NO to the independence referendum. These changes of course did not happen.In 1982, a new Constitutional Law was promulgated to make the Canadian legal system autonomous from England. So this is when Canada turned actually independent. The representatives of the 9 other provinces agreed on something while Québec was absent, and so that 1982 Constitutional Law was adopted without the consent of Québec, Québec never ratified it. Québec had 5 minimal demands that were not met. So far the Parliament of Québec never acknowledged this law and never ratified it.There was in 1987 the Lake Meech accord to at last include Québec in the new Canadian order, but the indigenous as usual were forgotten and a single vote from the indigenous Elijah Harper in Manitoba was enough to make the entire thing fail.In 1992, there was another attempt (Charlottetwon Accord) to make Québec enter this constitutional order. Québec voted against the new proposal in the 1992 referendum.The anger generated from the Charlottetown Accord and the repeated exclusion of Québec made possible the 1995 referendum of secession, but that is an entire other story to tell.Incidentally, the goddamn equalization program was one feature of this 1982 Constitutional Law Québec always rejected. Meditate on this. Take all the time you need.I’ll stop here for now. But at least I hope you are a little less naïve. I provided you with as much evidences as I could so you can fact-check things on your own.