"I Don't Understand You": A History Of Linguistic Diversity In Colonial North America: Part Three, Canada Continued.

These days we tend to hear an annoying little voice calling out for Quebecois liberty.  This voice has shut up a bit ever since it might have come to its senses and realized that things could be much, much worse for the otherwise fine people of Quebec, which probably has something to do with the fact that a decent majority of her people feel that they are being treated well enough as part of a united Canada and all of them know that they have the right to not only speak French and exist as they otherwise wish throughout the nation.  More on this towards the end of the post, along with the other side, which it turns out is just as bitchy as the Francophones are over "my rights".  First, just how did we manage to get to this point, anyway?

Well, the Canada of the 1770's was a very uncertain place, full of French-speaking people expecting deportation/cultural annihilation.  French anything was certainly not in vogue back in London, to say nothing of how it was openly hated and feared in the rest of English-speaking North America.  Think about things from the American perspective, especially from the viewpoint of a backcountry Pennsylvanian or Virginian: the French were the enemy, sending those terrifying Indians to attack you for no other purpose than to either kill you outright or terrorize you into leaving your land to the beavers so they could just... profit.  That's right, they did not even want to settle down in your vacated clearing and cabin.  Maybe their allies would retake some of that property, but even they would be more than likely to return to ancient lifestyles rather than set up shop in your hard-earned dwelling.  1763 was supposed to have changed all that.  1763 was supposed to be the time where London could tell France to pack up and move on and let people freely expand into that desirable western frontier.  New colonies could even spring up along the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes, where they could connect economic opportunities with the distant Hudson's Bay Company. 

Why would the newly appointed authorities of New France, be it in Quebec or Louisiana, want anything else?

Well, for one, London wanted control.  Liberty was all well and good, but imagine how it looked from an office overlooking the Thames when confronted by the image of a set of colonies slowly growing into something far more expansive than merry old England.  If nothing else, imagine how the people in such offices viewed the revenue potential of such a vast enterprise.  Such income could easily pay for any war that these colonies would get into in the future, let alone what they had already cost the motherland in that war leading up to the victory of 1763.  Now, imagine that if the colonists got their every wish and could expand as far they wanted to across the continent.  Levying a tax on such a vast population would be difficult, and the freedom-minded people might even say no...  In fact, they already had been not even 10 years after that victory had been achieved.  More than this though, mother Britain knew that she could not indefinitely keep the winning streak she was on without a nation getting a bit overwhelmed by almost constant fighting.  She needed to keep large reserves of the American prize open as potential bargaining chips down the road.  After all, Canada was won only at the cost of turning down an even more profitable prize: Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean.  Canada was just an option, and not a trophy or a purpose, for London.

So for control, for an open hand to play, for so many things, Canada was not just given to the Americans in its entirety.  Provided that they give allegiance to a new crown, the French-Canadians could remain as they were, and this was, and has ever since been, because of the vision of one man:  Lord Guy Carleton.

Unknown artist, public domain, reference number C-002833 from the National Archives of Canada.

As I said, he is the savior of the entire concept of French-Canada, and next to George Etienne Cartier is probably the only reason that there are any French-speakers left on the continent.  He made the Quebec Act of 1774 possible, and he also saved our behinds from being taken over by the Americans during the invasion of Quebec that was one of the first strategic offensive moves of the American War for Independence and the first official take-over attempt by Americans to dominate Canada.  You would not figure Guy to be fond of anything foreign, however.

You see, Guy was Protestant, and he was Anglo-Irish, meaning that he was the product of centuries of an imperial attempt to impose English dominance over the island next door.  He was also a veteran of the Jacobite wars over in Scotland, yet another exercise in said imperialism.  By all accounts, nothing French or especially Catholic should have been in any way appealing to him to let live.  That said, we know little of his earlier conviction and personal beliefs regarding English cultural sentiments, but we do know that he was a social climber and cared very much about his military career.  Even if he was not interested in an imperialistic patriotism, he was very much interested in making the right moves.  To speak out on behalf of the conquered French-Canadians was a risky move that one would not expect of a career obsessed officer.  In the end, however, he did just that.  In the end, the Protestant Anglo-Irishman asked London to let the French-Canadians not only speak French and be Catholic, but even to judge themselves according to their own civil laws.  He also put his life on the line to defend Quebec from American attack.

Now the next part is very important.

But wait, you say, Americans of the period soon learned to love the French, especially after they would come to save the day at Yorktown and later even embrace a revolution of their own.  True, but also remember that prejudice built up over generations and hundreds of years is not something to be so easily reversed.  For anyone of British, and then by extension, American, heritage, things French were the rival at best and the enemy at worst.  When we get to language in the United States, we will also cover feelings about things Spanish, but rest assured that in Anglo-American history, both cultures were not exactly well-loved ever since the reign of Henry VIII, and yes, religion complicated matters further.  Why bring this up in a topic about language in Canada?  Well, the battleground on the topic has already existed there for much longer, and now to look at the results, we turn back to Canada.

One can pretty much be certain that loyalty was almost then guaranteed in this new Canada.  In 1775 and again in 1812, any notion of joining the crusade for freedom with the Americans was pretty much junked.  Why take chances with, at best, an unknown foreign government in the colonies, and at worst, a government that would echo the sentiments of her citizens and expunge anything French from the land?  Guy offered security and potential profit: whereas Paris once controlled the economic destiny of New France, she was now joined into a network of free-enterprise with an empire that spanned the globe.  If we consider the Quebec Act to be the political birth of Canada, then we would also have to say that the Quebecois of 1775 where positively thrilled to be Canadian, and in 1812, they pretty much confirmed that notion to curious Americans.  By 1867, when Canada came into an official existence more along the lines of what we know her to be today, French was alive and well in a Canada that had since come to also embrace English and manage to somehow not extinguish languages spoken by her native peoples.

As I have rambled on a bit in this post, we will continue down this track, which does get a bit bumpy, next post.