Lecture 11 Notes: The Myth of "English" Canada

¨  There’s a mythology that pre-1970s Canada was a harmonious place full of happy white people waxing fat on colonialism and privilege.

¨  The facts are considerably different.

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The United Empire Loyalists

¨  There were English, Scottish, Irish and German United Empire Loyalists who arrived after 1783.

¨  A generation of politicians seeking self-government evolved in Canada. 

¨  Almost all of them had control of a newspaper. Parties also financed news media. George Brown of Ontario and Joseph Howe were two early important politician-editors.

      ¨  There were two the major differences between the citizenship of the people of Quebec in the French regime and the new British-run colonies.

¨  One was the idea of some kind of press:

¨  (It’s much too early to talk seriously about a free press in British North America. When the powers-that-be were vexed by the press they sent mobs to trash printing plants}

¨  Still, people inspired by events in England tried to make a free press here.

Great Canadian Newspaper Trashings of the 1830s

¨  Colonial Advocate: Toronto mob smashes up office, wrecks press, throws type into Lake Ontario.

¨  Grenville Gazette (Brockville): press wrecked.

¨  Belleville Plain Speaker: Office wrecked, editor forced to leave town

¨  Montreal Vindicator: Office trashed, editor forced to flee the country

¨  Kingston Whig: Office smashed, press wrecked, editor’s dog killed in the line of duty

¨  St John’s Ledger: Editor attacked, has ears cut off.

¨  St. John’s Ledger:  Press foreman’s ears cut off by mob.

¨  London Free Press: trashed by mob in 1849.

¨  The other thing the new British-approved immigrants, especially those from the US, expected some form of elected local and provincial government

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      Anti-multiculturalism

¨  The Orange Lodge became the most powerful group in Canada

¨  More that 30% of Ontario’s MPPs were Orangemen in the 1920s.

¨  Prime Ministers Sir John A Macdonald,  John Abbott, Mackenzie Bowell and John Diefenbaker were members of the Orange Order, as was Tommy Douglas

Irish Immigration

¨  Ireland was struck by a vicious famine in 1845 when the potato crop failed. Potatoes were the main source of food for most of the people. Once the people began starving, they were easily targeted by diseases.

¨  The population was cut from 8 million to 4 million.

¨  1 million – more than 10% -- of the people starved or died of disease.

¨  About 3 million fled their country, with tens of thousands coming to Canada

¨  The Loyal Orange Lodge was determined to exclude these people from leadership in politics, business, the professions and the media.

¨  The Fenian raids of 1866, launched by Irish-American soldiers who wanted an independent Ireland,  caused the Macdonald government to impose almost police-state suspensions of civil liberties

¨  The laws were supposed to apply to everyone but were used against the Irish

¨  Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier encouraged people from the grain-growing regions of Central Europe to settle on the Canadian Prairies

¨  After World War II, hundreds of thousands of European political and economic refugees – Displaced Persons – settled in Canada.

¨  For the first time since the American Revolution ended in the 1780s, Canada accepted a large number of political refugees

¨  They radically changed Canada, especially Toronto and the West.

Beginning in the 1970s, Canada opened its doors to "visible minority" people from the Caribbean, to South Asians refugees persecuted by the Idi Amin regime in Africa, and from the subcontinent itself.  Starting in the 1980s, Canada also began attracting many more immigrants from China and Muslim countries (see chart below)