Rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada: 1837- of Upper and Lower Canada: 1837-1838 ... Religious observances were essentially obligatory for most respectable ... interest in developing the local


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    Rebellions of Upper and Lower Canada: 1837-1838

    C.W. Jefferys, The March of the Rebels upon Toronto in December, 1837, c. 1921 (blw photograph)Government of Ontario Art Colection, Toronto

    Thomas Moore Photography. Toronto

    The Rebellions of 1837 and 1838 in Upper and Lower Canada are remarkable episodes in Canadian history. Duringthese years, hundreds of armed citizens rose up against the government, protesting the injustices of the ruling elite, anddemanding changes in the politics and economics of Imperial rule in British North America. In Lower Canada,disagreements between the British ruling elite and the ordinary residents took on an ethnic form. Francophone merchantsand habitants, led by the rebel Patriotes, sought more control over their economy and culture. When their concerns werenot heard, they fought to overthrow a government that did not have the support of the people. Both Upper and LowerCanadians joined with sympathetic Americans to launch military invasions hoping to free the colony from British rule. Anumber of people were killed in the insurrections, hundreds were arrested and, as a result of the Rebellions, British NorthAmericans lost civil rights and broad democratic control of their lives. While the Rebellions had little direct impact onAboriginal peoples in Upper and Lower Canada, the Rebellions reflected the emerging dominance of European politicaland economic concerns in the new world.

    Overview of the decade: 1835-1845

    Economic developments

    Continuity and gradual evolution, not revolutionary change, defined most aspects of life in British North Americaduring this decade, and the economy was no exception. Agricultural lands continued to expand, as settlers slowly turnedforest into farmland, building both an agricultural and a timber industry. The economy of Aboriginal peoples was affectedas they came increasingly in contact with the Europeans, and while trading goods became more common, conflict aroundland increased as their land gradually disappeared under the tide of immigration. Despite its expanding base, the economyof the colonies, based on the export of staples like wheat, timber, furs and fish to Britain, faltered in these years as it did sooften throughout the nineteenth century, resulting in particular economic hardship to merchants and businessmen.

    1722Snapshots of 19th Century Canada 73 fi.- The Critical Thinking Cooperative

    This resource is copyrighted. The contents may be used exclusively by you or ens you teach.No part of this resource may be transmitted electronically, photcopied or redistributed to other educators.

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  • Blackline Master #12B

    Although wheat production and export of wheat had expanded from 1815 onward, poor crop yields, particularly in 1836,meant that many farmers did not have enough wheat to pay their debts, buy supplies, tools or seed for the next years crop.

    Sugar making, from Canniff Haight.Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago:(Early Canadian Online, Canadian Institute forHistorical Microreproductions, #13133) 33+0064

    In Lower Canada, the agricultural crisis was severe. Poor farming practices, particularly the failure to rotate crops (aform of soil management where different crops are planted each year to protect the quality of the soil), lead to lower cropyields, and a vulnerability to disease and pests. French Canadian habitants, unlike most other farmers in British NorthAmerica, did not own the land that they worked, and most of their surplus money and wheat was paid to seigneurial lordsand to the church. The habitants were caught in a vicious circle: since they did not earn much money from selling excesswheat, they had little money to buy manufactured goods, and so the manufacturing sector did not develop. This meant fewjobs were available outside of farming and thus the habitants were kept on the land farming for the seigneurial lords. Theirseasonal work in the fur trade may have brought in some extra income, but it took men away from their fields when theirwork was needed on the land.

    Social developments

    The biggest changes to the colonies were likely created by the stream of immigrants pouring in from Britain.Increasing immigration, the growth of commercial fanning, and the slow increase of trade and industry were accompaniedby the growth of cities. While most British North American cities were tiny by our standards, the clustering together of somany people presented problems of poverty, overcrowding, poor sanitation and crimeproblems that were particularly badin the winters, when less work was available. Many immigrants arrived without the support of friends and family in theseyears, and the towns and cities had few facilities to help those without support. British North American cities began toreplace a loose system of voluntary emergency assistance with more formal responses to the poor, sick and destitute. By theearly 1 840s, street lighting, sewers and piped water were appearing in cities like Toronto, Halifax and Kingston, making lifemore comfortable and safe for urban residents. Economic dislocation for Aboriginal peoples was accompanied by culturalchanges, many of which were associated with increasing violence and alcoholism. Most significant, however, were theepidemics of smallpox, measles and influenza that killed thousands of Native peoples across British North America,contributing to the assault that Europeans made, intentionally or not, on Aboriginal life.

    Families remained central to the society and culture of the new society. Although they did not always immigrate at thesame time, other family members would generally follow the first immigrant in a pattern that historians call chainmigration. This pattern helped to establish the clustering of people of similar ethnic and religious backgrounds intoparticular areas of a city or rural community. People brought with them patterns of behaviour, as well as British goods, lawsand religious beliefs, and all of these continued to influence life in the new location. Communities were important centresof co-operation and mutual assistance in both English- and French-speaking areas of British North America. Most present

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    This resource is copyrighted. The contents may be used exclusively by you tiidents you teach.No part of this resource may be transmitted electronically, photcopied or redistributed to other educators.

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    day Canadians might find the type of moral and social regulation of behaviour that accompanied such close community ties

    very confining. Religious observances were essentially obligatory for most respectable residents of a community. While

    the British system of law formally managed serious breaches of the peace in courts of law, communities would enforce

    particular standards through a variety of informal responses. Public humiliation of people who married an unsuitable

    partner (i.e., a marriage where differences in age, or religion, or wealth were pronounced) was a common form of

    community control.

    The goal of most immigrants was to establish themselves on the land, and it was this element of colonial development

    that proved so devastating to Aboriginal peoples as populations increased in this decade. Only in the vast area of the

    Northwest did Aboriginal peoples continue their traditional social, economic and cultural ways. The Hudsons Bay

    Company, with its monopoly on trade in the region, depended on the Aboriginal peoples to provide furs that they would

    then sell to the fashion houses of Europe. The Company had, therefore, no reason to disrupt Aboriginal life, and actively

    discouraged European settlement as they feared it would interfere with trapping and trade. Western expansion was some

    years in the future.

    Political developments

    By 1791, the British government had responded to American Loyalists desire for British rule with the Constitution

    Act, which separated Quebec into two colonies, English Upper Canada to the west and French Lower Canada to the east.

    Upper Canada was governed by a Lieutenant Governor, who answered to the Governor General in Quebec City, who was in

    turn was answerable to the British Crown. The Governor appointed executive and legislative councillors, who ran and

    made laws for the two colonies. A Legislative Assembly was elected by a relatively broad male electorate, but this

    Assembly had very limited powers. The British Crown deliberately restricted the Assemblys power because it was this

    kind of democratically elected body that had initiated the revolt of the thirteen colonies, a revolt that had turned into the

    American Revolution.

    By the mid-1820s, a number of groups were impatient with their limited political and economic power. Both colonieswere pre-industrial, agricultural economies that were heavily dependent on land. In both Upper and Lower Canada,

    however, huge tracts of land were in the hands of the small British elite who had been granted political office. The British

    government had hoped that this elite group would promote immigration to the colonies by attracting buyers for their lands.

    However, in the 1830s these tracts of lands were largely unsettled because the price they demanded for them was too high.

    Most of this land was owned by absentee landlords (owners who were absent from or did not live in the area) with little

    interest in developing the local roads, businesses or communities. In Upper Canada, clergy reservesone seventh of all

    lands that the Crown gave to the Church


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