Canada under British Rule by Sir John George Bourinot (mobi ebook reader .txt) 📕

formally ceded with all of Acadia "according to its ancient limits" to England by the treaty of Utrecht.


[1: This name is now generally admitted to belong to the language of the Micmac Indians of the Atlantic provinces. It means a place, or locality, and is always associated with another word descriptive of some special natural production; for instance, Shubenacadie, or Segubunakade, is the place where the ground-nut, or Indian potato, grows. We find the first official mention of the word in the commission given by Henry IV of France to the Sieur de Monts in 1604.]


It was not in Acadia, but in the valley of the St. Lawrence, that France made her great effort to establish her dominion in North America. Samuel Champlain, the most famous man in the history of French Canada, laid the foundation of the present city of Quebec in the month of June, 1608, or three years after the removal of the little Acadian colony from St. Croix Island to the basin of the Annapolis. The name Quebec is now generally admitted to be an adaptation of an Indian word, meaning a contraction of the river or strait, a distinguishing feature of the St. Lawrence at this important point. The first buildings were constructed by Champlain on a relatively level piece of ground, now occupied by a market-house and close to a famous old church erected in the days of Frontenac, in commemoration of the victorious repulse of the New England expedition led by Phipps. For twenty-seven years Champlain struggled against constantly accumulating difficulties to establish a colony on the St. Lawrence. He won the confidence of the Algonquin and Huron tubes of Canada, who then lived on the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers, and in the vicinity of Georgian Bay. Recognizing the necessity of an alliance with the Canadian Indians, who controlled all the principal avenues to the great fur-bearing regions, he led two expeditions, composed of Frenchmen, Hurons, and Algonquins, against the Iroquois or Confederacy of the Five Nations[2]--the Mohawks, the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas--who inhabited the fertile country stretching from the Genesee to the Hudson River in the present state of New York. Champlain consequently excited against his own people the inveterate hostility of the bravest, cruellest and ablest Indians with whom Europeans have ever come in contact in America. Champlain probably had no other alternative open to him than to become the active ally of the Canadian Indians, on whose goodwill and friendship he was forced to rely; but it is also quite probable that he altogether underrated the ability and bravery of the Iroquois who, in later years, so often threatened the security of Canada, and more than once brought the infant colony to the very verge of ruin.


[2: In 1715 the confederacy was joined by the Tuscaroras, a southern branch of the same family, and was then called more properly the Six Nations.]


It was during Champlain's administration of affairs that the Company of the Hundred Associates was formed under the auspices of Cardinal Richelieu, with the express object of colonizing Canada and developing the fur-trade and other commercial enterprises on as large a scale as possible. The Company had ill-fortune from the outset. The first expedition it sent to the St. Lawrence was captured by a fleet commanded by David Kirk, a gentleman of Derbyshire, who in the following year also took Quebec, and carried Champlain and his followers to England. The English were already attempting settlements on the shores of Massachusetts Bay; and the poet and courtier, Sir William Alexander, afterwards known as the Earl of Stirling, obtained from the King of England all French Acadia, which he named Nova Scotia and offered to settlers in baronial giants. A Scotch colony was actually established for a short time at Port Royal under the auspices of Alexander, but in 1632, by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, both Acadia and Canada were restored to France. Champlain returned to Quebec, but the Company of the Hundred Associates had been severely crippled by the ill-luck which attended its first venture, and was able to do very little for the struggling colony during the three remaining years of Champlain's life.

The Recollets or Franciscans, who had first come to the country in 1615, now disappeared, and the Jesuits assumed full control in the wide field of effort that Canada offered to the missionary. The Jesuits had, in fact, made their appearance in Canada as early as 1625, or fourteen years after two priests of their order, Ennemond Massé and Pierre Biard, had gone to Acadia to labour among the Micmacs or Souriquois. During the greater part of the seventeenth century, intrepid Jesuit priests are associated with some of the most heroic incidents of Canadian history.

When Champlain died, on Christmas-day, 1635, the French population of Canada did not exceed 150 souls, all dependent on the fur-trade. Canada so far showed none of the elements of prosperity; it was not a colony of settlers but of fur-traders. Still Champlain, by his indomitable will, gave to France a footing in America which she was to retain for a century and a quarter after his death. His courage amid the difficulties that surrounded him, his fidelity to his church and country, his ability to understand the Indian character, his pure unselfishness, are among the remarkable qualities of a man who stands foremost among the pioneers of European civilization in America.

From the day of Champlain's death until the arrival of the Marquis de Tracy, in 1665, Canada was often in a most dangerous and pitiable position. That period of thirty years was, however, also distinguished by the foundation of those great religious communities which have always exercised such an important influence upon the conditions of life throughout French Canada. In 1652 Montreal was founded under the name of Ville-Marie by Paul Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, and a number of other religious enthusiasts. In 1659, the Abbé de Montigny, better known to Canadians as Monseigneur de Laval, the first Roman Catholic bishop, arrived in the colony and assumed charge of ecclesiastical affairs under the titular name of Bishop of Petraea. Probably no single man has ever exercised such powerful and lasting influence on Canadian institutions as that famous divine. Possessed of great tenacity of purpose, most ascetic in his habits, regardless of all worldly considerations, always working for the welfare and extension of his church, Bishop Laval was eminently fitted to give it that predominance in civil as well as religious affairs which it so long possessed in Canada.

While the Church of Rome was perfecting its organization throughout Canada, the Iroquois were constantly making raids upon the unprotected settlements, especially in the vicinity of Montreal. The Hurons in the Georgian Bay district were eventually driven from their comfortable villages, and now the only remnants of a powerful nation are to be found in the community of mixed blood at Lorette, near Quebec, or on the banks of the Detroit River, where they are known as Wyandots. The Jesuit mission of Sainte-Marie in their country was broken up, and Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant suffered torture and death.

Such was the pitiable condition of things in 1663, when Louis XIV made of Canada a royal government. At this time the total population of the province did not exceed 2500 souls, grouped chiefly in and around Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal. In 1665 the Marquis de Tracy and Governor de Courcelles, with a brilliant retinue of officers and a regiment of soldiers, arrived in the colony, and brought with them conditions of peace and prosperity. A small stream of immigration flowed steadily into the country for some years, as a result of the new policy adopted by the French government. The Mohawks, the most daring and dangerous nation of the Iroquois confederacy, were humbled by Tracy in 1667, and forced to sue for peace. Under the influence of Talon, the ablest intendant who ever administered Canadian affairs, the country enjoyed a moderate degree of prosperity, although trade continued entirely dependent on the orders and regulations of the King and his officials.

Among the ablest governors of Canada was undoubtedly Louis de la Buade, Count de Frontenac, who administered public affairs from 1672-1687 and from 1689-1698. He was certainly impatient, choleric and selfish whenever his pecuniary interests were concerned; but, despite his faults of character, he was a brave soldier, dignified and courteous on important occasions, a close student of the character of the Indians, always ready when the necessity arose to adapt himself to their foibles and at the same time able to win their confidence. He found Canada weak, and left it a power in the affairs of America. He infused his own never-failing confidence into the hearts of the struggling colonists on the St. Lawrence, repulsed Sir William Phipps and his New England expedition when they attacked Quebec in 1690, wisely erected a fort on Lake Ontario as a fur-trading post and a bulwark against the Iroquois, encouraged the fur-trade, and stimulated exploration in the west and in the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. The settlements of New England trembled at his name, and its annals contain many a painful story of the misery inflicted by his cruel bands of Frenchmen and Indians.

Despite all the efforts of the French government for some years, the total immigration from 1663 until 1713, when the great war between France and the Grand Alliance came to an end by the treaty of Utrecht, did not exceed 6000 souls, and the whole population of the province in that year was only 20,000, a small number for a century of colonization. For some years after the formation of the royal government, a large number of marriageable women were brought to the country under the auspices of the religious communities, and marriages and births were encouraged by exhortations and bounties. A considerable number of the officers and soldiers of the Carignan-Salières regiment, who followed the Marquis de Tracy into Canada, were induced to remain and settle new seigniories, chiefly in palisaded villages in the Richelieu district for purposes of defence against Iroquois expeditions. Despite all the paternal efforts of the government to stimulate the growth of a large population, the natural increase was small during the seventeenth century. The disturbing influence, no doubt, was the fur-trade, which allured so many young men into the wilderness, made them unfit for a steady life, and destroyed their domestic habits. The emigrants from France came chiefly from Anjou, Saintonge, Paris and its suburbs, Normandy, Poitou, Beauce, Perche, and Picardy. The Carignan-Salières regiment brought men from all parts of the parent state. It does not appear that any number of persons ever came from Brittany. The larger proportion of the settlers were natives of the north-western provinces of France, especially from Perche and Normandy, and formed an excellent stock on which to build up a thrifty, moral people. The seigniorial tenure of French Canada was an adaptation of the feudal system of France to the conditions of a new country, and was calculated in some respects to stimulate settlement. Ambitious persons of limited means were able to form a class of colonial _noblesse_. But unless the seignior cleared a certain portion of his grant within a limited time, he would forfeit it all. The conditions by which the _censitaires_ or tenants of the seigniorial domain held their grants of land were by no means burdensome, but they signified a dependency of tenure inconsistent with the free nature of American life. A large portion of the best lands of French Canada were granted under this seigniorial system to men whose names frequently occur in the records of the colony down to the present day: Rimouski, Bic and Métis, Kamouraska, Nicolet, Verchères, Lotbinière, Berthier, Beloeil, Rouville, Juliette, Terrebonne, Champlain, Sillery, Beaupré, Bellechasse, Portneuf, Chambly, Sorel, Longueuil,