{"id":6614,"date":"2016-11-02T15:04:33","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T15:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/preconfederation\/?post_type=chapter&p=6614"},"modified":"2019-06-04T23:21:24","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T23:21:24","slug":"11-1-introduction","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/preconfederation\/chapter\/11-1-introduction\/","title":{"raw":"11.1 Introduction","rendered":"11.1 Introduction"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_842\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 11.1 The Nelson Monument in Montreal, ca. 1830. Painting by Robert A Sproule.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAdmiral Horatio Nelson, the victor of the Battle of Trafalgar\u00a0in 1805, was memorialized shortly after his death by pedestal columns erected around the empire. The Nelson Monument in Montreal was the first in British North America and elicited different reactions from the Anglo-Protestants and the French Catholics. Completed\u00a0in 1809, the column provides Nelson with a good view\u00a0over the city, is visible for miles, and functions as a daily reminder of the triumph of British naval (and commercial) power both across the Atlantic and in North America. At 69 feet tall,\u00a0it is not the tallest of the Napoleonic Columns (the one in Trafalgar Square in London stands\u00a0170 feet high),\u00a0and Brock's Monument is taller still.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_843\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 11.2 The original Brock's Monument.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe first memorial to General Isaac Brock\u00a0was erected on the Niagara River at Queenston Heights in the 1820s, when the War of 1812\u00a0was still very much a recent memory. It originally stood 135 feet tall\u00a0and was easily visible from the American side of the Niagara gorge. The column -- with a viewing platform at the top -- became a pilgrimage site for Upper Canadians. For Tories it had a special meaning as the place where, at the cost of Brock's life, the American invaders were repelled. In the budding\u00a0myth of English Canadian nationhood it would mark the spot\u00a0where the new nation\u00a0bloodied its neighbour's nose. The fact that the Canadian militia was a tiny and reluctant fraction of the troops involved was neither here nor there; growing the legend of loyalism and duty was the point of the exercise. This narrative was perpetuated in song in 1867 by Alexander Muir (1830-1906) in \"The Maple Leaf Forever,\" often regarded as Canada's first national anthem. In the second verse, Muir wrote:\r\n
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At Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane,\r\nOur brave fathers, side by side,\r\nFor freedom, homes and loved ones dear,\r\nFirmly stood and nobly died;\r\nAnd those dear rights which they maintained,\r\nWe swear to yield them never!\r\nOur watchword evermore shall be\r\n\"The Maple Leaf forever!\"<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nMuir was a Scottish immigrant whose father could not possibly have stood firmly or any other way alongside\u00a0Brock. Setting that literary exaggeration aside, what Muir wished to convey is that Canadians in 1812 had fought for freedom from American republicanism while\u00a0protecting their families from a savage Yankee attack.\r\n\r\nIn part, Muir was reflecting\u00a0his own experiences. At 45 or 46 years of age, he was a member of the Queen's Own Rifles, a Toronto regiment that served in 1866 at\u00a0the Battle of Ridgeway, the year before both Confederation and his writing of \"The Maple Leaf Forever.\" Ridgeway is barely a day's march south of Queenston Heights, on the same Niagara frontier that Brock defended successfully 50 years earlier. For Muir, a loyal Orangeman and a proud Scot, fighting the Fenian Invasion of 1866 was a matter of saving\u00a0Canada from the barbarian Irish and Irish-Americans, and as far as he was concerned Brock had done nothing less in 1812.\r\n\r\nNot everyone felt the same way. To some, Brock was representative of the haughty and corrupt Family Compact, the Tory cabal that wrapped itself in the flag of loyalism and exploited an extensive system of patronage for its own gain.\u00a0Repeated efforts were made to achieve political reform through peaceful means, but they failed on every occasion. Opponents of the regime were expelled from the colony; some were imprisoned.\u00a0In the 1830s republican sentiment in the colony was growing and exploded in a brief and doomed rebellion. The rebels who weren't captured, imprisoned, or hanged were\u00a0driven across the border into the United States. In 1837 some made their way to Navy Island in the Niagara River, in Canadian waters. They\u00a0declared a provisional Canadian Republic and plotted, unsuccessfully, an invasion. One of the armed\u00a0exiles\u00a0was an Irish-Canadian named Benjamin Lett (1813-1858). As the rebel movement lost steam in 1840, someone -- many believed it was Lett -- set off an explosion that tore the top off of Brock's Monument.\r\n\r\nThe decapitated and ruined tower was transformed in an instant into\u00a0a very different memorial. Its shattered profile became a powerful testament\u00a0to\u00a0the tensions that existed in Upper Canadian society between those whose history was bound up in anti-revolutionary Loyalism, oligarchical authority, and the power of the local garrisons on the one hand, and those colonists who saw themselves as North Americans first, heirs to a tradition of relative colonial autonomy, advocates for democracy, and even foes of the monarchy.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_844\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"212\"]\"A<\/a> Figure 11.3 Brock's Monument after the bombing of 1840.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nA new monument to Brock was completed in 1860. At 184 feet, it is comfortably taller than Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, making it the tallest of all the Napoleonic Wars towers. It would have been six years old during the Battle of Ridgeway, and there's some possibility that Alexander Muir passed within view of it as his\u00a0regiment marched south to face the Fenians. Perhaps he saw it again as his unit\u00a0retreated in haste after the first volleys near Fort Erie. The Queen's Own Rifles were mocked by their peers as the \"Quickest Out of Ridgeway,\" but they faced a force of Irish-American nationalists\u00a0hardened by three years of Civil War service. The battle cost the lives of 32 Canadians and was an embarrassment for the authorities in Canada West, even though the Fenians abandoned the attack. In other words, it was no Queenston Heights and there were no retroactive attempts to mythologize it.\r\n\r\nAmong\u00a0the embarrassed parties after Ridgeway was the Minister of the Militia,\u00a0none other than John A. Macdonald (1815-1891). Macdonald was then a young and inexperienced militiaman (not unlike the composer Muir). He was visiting Toronto from Kingston and was called up to disperse the rebels led by the radical reformer William Lyon Mackenzie (1795-1861). It is possible that the future prime minister even exchanged fire with\u00a0Benjamin Lett, who may have been present among the rebels\u00a0during the Battle of Montgomery's Tavern.[footnote] The fact that Macdonald was exchanging fire with the grandfather of future prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King is worth considering as well.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nIn the 20th century Canada acquired the epithet, \"the peaceable kingdom.\" As we've seen, the period up to 1820 was marked by anything but peace. The historical record bulges with accounts of inter-empire warfare, ongoing battles between the Aboriginal occupants of North America and newcomers everywhere from Newfoundland to the West Coast, and struggles between\u00a0settler societies. There were also violent conflicts between British North Americans, such as\u00a0the fur trade wars and anti-Irish riots. If we think of the Niagara River\u00a0as the sharp edge of Canadian-American relations, there were three occasions when blood was shed there in the half-century\u00a0between 1812 and Confederation --\u00a0once for each of three generations.\u00a0What happened along the Niagara frontier consistently involved questions about Britain\u2019s relationship with its colonies and where power resided in the colony itself. And, of course, each struggle pointed to the challenges inherent in British North America\u2019s relationship with the United States, one of many important issues that drove political debate in the 19th century.\r\n\r\nThis chapter places the critique of the established oligarchy in the context of larger political changes taking place across the Atlantic world. The protests that led to rebellion, bloodshed, the Durham Report, the Act of Union, and a nascent Canadian political culture are examined, as are the changes and continuities to be found in the Atlantic colonies.\r\n

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Learning Objectives<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n

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