New France was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris. The treaty formally ended the Seven Years’ War, known as the French and Indian War in the North America.
By Britain’s Royal Proclamation of 1763, Canada (part of New France) was renamed the Province of Quebec. The new British province extended from the coast of Labrador on the Atlantic Ocean, southwest through the Saint Lawrence River Valley to the Great Lakes and beyond to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Portions of its southwest (south of the Great Lakes) were later ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris (1783) at the conclusion of the American Revolution although the British maintained a military presence there until 1796. In 1791, the territory north of the Great Lakes was divided into Lower Canada and Upper Canada by an Act of the British Parliament.
The Act came into effect on on this date in history, having received royal assent the preceding June. It enshrined constitutional changes that were part of the reorganization of British North America that took place under the pressure of thousands of Loyalists seeking refuge after the American Revolution.
By 1776, some 100,000 loyalists had already fled into exile. The British government offered them asylum in Canada and was offering financial compensation.
According to a Canadian history website:
[The] influx of English speaking Loyalists increased tensions between Anglophones and francophone Canadians. . . . The French feared that the Anglophones would overpower them and take away from the privileges they’d obtained in the Quebec Act, whereas the Loyalists wanted government reform to be ruled as British citizens.”
The Act separated Canada into two different sections: Upper and Lower Canada. Anglophones and loyalists resided in Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) and francophone Canadians lived in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec). Both areas developed different systems of governance, and both sides battled for political dominance.
An important area of contention was also a provision of the Act that set aside one seventh of all land in Upper Canada for [Protestant] “Clergy Reserves.”
Although various Protestant denominations made claims to the land, the Church of England tended to view the allocation as their own, creating conflict.
Another cause of dissension was the provision that voting was open to owners of land or rental property of a certain monetary value. In Lower Canada, inheritance rights were determined under French Law, which allowed women to receive half of her husband’s property after his death. Thus women in Lower Canada had the right to vote. Women in Upper Canada, however, were unable to vote because English Common Law did not grant them property.
Eventually, these tensions boiled over into The Rebellions of 1837-1838, armed uprisings in both Lower and Upper Canada. Each rebellion called for a more accountable government in which the Executive (today called the Cabinet) would be drawn from the elected majority of the Assembly, rather than appointed.
Battle of St. Eustache during the Rebellions
John George Lampton, known as Lord Durham, was sent to British North America in 1838 to assess the reasons for the Rebellions.
He spent five months in the country and produced the Durham Report which was used to draft the Act of Union of 1840. Durham suggested a political union of the British North American colonies which would give the English a majority and result in the assimilation of the French, which he considered to be desirable, given what he saw as the inferiority of the French culture.
British reaction to Durham’s Report was mixed. The colonial secretary, Lord John Russell, was opposed to giving up British parliamentary supremacy by allowing the colony to have representative government. He agreed with the proposal for union, though, and a bill to unite Upper and Lower Canada became law on July 23, 1840, just five days before Durham died. This was the Act of Union.
The British North America Act, 1840, commonly known as the Act of Union 1840, was enacted in July 1840 and proclaimed February 10, 1841 in Montréal. It abolished the legislatures of Lower Canada and Upper Canada and established a new political entity, the Province of Canada to replace them.
Province of Canada 1840. The large area marked “Rupert’s Land” was a territory operated by the Hudson’s Bay Company for 200 years from 1670 to 1870.
The British North America Act 1867 was the act that established the Dominion of Canada. As the various colonies of Canada debated uniting under a British flag, the United States did not stand by idly. As “The Globe and Mail” reports in a history of the 1867 Act:
Pockets of opposition existed in the [northern states and in the] U.S. House of Representatives as well. The member from New York, Henry Raymond, viewed the proposed confederation as a threat to Americans, arguing that ‘a powerful monarchy, under the protection and with the support of a foreign nation, cannot be regarded as otherwise than hostile to the peace and menacing to the safety of the Republic.’ Nathaniel Banks (Massachusetts), chair of the foreign affairs committee, also wanted to ensure that all of the territory of North America fell under the Stars and Stripes. To this end, he introduced a bill into the House in July, 1866, to annex the British colonies – all of their land and resources – and in exchange provide them with approximately $86-million. The bill also proposed merging Nova Scotia with Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland with Quebec.”
However, for better or worse, Congress was mainly occupied with Reconstruction after the Civil War.
On Feb. 12, 1867, the Earl of Carnarvon, secretary of state for the colonies, introduced “A Bill for the Union of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick” into the House of Lords. The Act was passed on March 29, 1867. The “Globe and Mail” recounts:
The Dominion of Canada came into effect a few months later, on July 1, 1867, and celebrations took place in all the major cities.”
There was, notably, both celebrating and mourning in Canada, and one group entirely omitted. As “The Globe and Mail” notes:
Indigenous peoples were not included in the discussions leading up to the British North America Act, 1867, nor were they part of the celebrations of its adoption. They were effectively invisible to the political leaders of British North America.”
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