A Border Between Friends: Different Priorities.

In the last post on our current topic of discerning a political-cultural divide between Canada and the United States we visited some primal history regarding the development of a modern notion of liberty in our nations. We opened and returned to a concept of liberty that the political forces of the late eighteenth century were familiar with, one that was intimately bound to the power tied to capitalism (or more specifically, capital).  We also ended on a note of something far more simple and familiar for most of us: the desire to live a life unmolested by those who would seek to impose either economic or religious views on people.

Many of the first Colonists or Habitants were probably primarily after a better existence away from all the conflicts over in Europe.  As colonial Canada and the United States grew in size and economic import, however, men of political ambition followed the early colonists and freedom seekers and tried to create little dominions of their own across the sea.  Likewise, any who came over to read the Bible in peace and quiet found some religious reformers and revolutionaries take the same boat and try to start little religious battles that were clearly making life difficult enough over in Britain and even France.

In the end, the religious and economic revolution was forced out of France by a Louis XVI obsessed with eliminating the resistance of Le Fronde; the country was made forcibly Roman Catholic with conservative and slightly Jansenistic agendas.  In Britain Catholicism was instead ousted, and any particular Protestant factionalism shelved in the face of pursuing economic power for the nation and thus for the individuals of the nation (which was clearly tired of religious-inspired civil war).  The battle cry of Liberty thus was suppressed in France for some time, and embraced in Britain, until in the last half of the eighteenth century, when parlors in France became occupied with nothing other than the talk of freedom.  Likewise, talk of Liberty was popular in Britain even after the outbreak of violence in France during the Revolution, but the talk became far more pressing over in the colonies where new waves of taxation were awakening some very old debates.  Liberty for the reason of economic or personal freedom was starting to become an international affair.

So what was it like for everyone, including and especially the ordinary people?

In the thirteen colonies, Liberty meant not having your property infringed upon, especially in the form of taxation or the quartering of soldiers meant to enforce said taxation.  Liberty also meant being able to freely exploit the land, especially the opportunities awaiting beyond the Appalachians which Westminster was otherwise eager to reserve to the First Born of the continent.  Liberty meant being able to defend one's land against encroachment from any hostile party, First Born, British, or even someone from another colony.

In Canada, Liberty meant being able to speak French, remain Catholic if so desired, and preserve a culture while also enjoying the benefits of English law and British developments in representative democracy which had all but been suppressed in France.  After the Loyalists arrived, it meant holding on to hearth and home, just as it did back in the colonies, but not under threat from Britain and King George... under threat instead from intolerant Yankees.  When free land was offered to Americans interested in resettlement, passions became a little less hostile, but the American invading forces in 1812 were seen as no less hostile by such transplanted Americans who actually enjoyed the stability and, yep, lack of government offered by the ruling British.  Here we start to see the beginning of what the negative definition of Canadian identity: being North American and not American.  When the American threat died down, the Loyalists turned their attention to the French-Canadians, who stared back at them from across the Ottawa River, sometimes even from across the street, as my Franco-Ontarien ancestors did.

The English and French wanted protection from each other, in something of a cultural personality battle, even as some loud-mouth, but minority, factions do to this day.  Liberty started to mean "I have rights as a province".  What rights were focused on, exactly?  Language.  Religion.  Education.  Business was, and in my opinion still is, secondary to the debates of cultural freedom.  This is probably why Canada, while decidedly a capitalist nation, has shown only minor aversion to socialistic intervention by the government, in great contrast to the United States where the opposite has been a point of much political drama in the past decade.

In the United States, of course, the states also wanted protection from one another, but this was largely out of economic issues, most notably the issue of slavery.  While cultural debates have always raged on in American political warfare, notably in the realm of civil rights, the power of the Federal government to mess with what the states are allowed to say goes in regards to property has always been the leading force behind helping to define Liberty.  Why?  The United States had long shared a broad common culture, even as immigrants would later pour into the country and regional cultural identity differences were apparent even before the Revolution.  And what of those immigrants?

Canada has had just as many, in proportion of course, as the United States.  The end of the nineteenth century saw all sorts of nationalities pour into both countries, usually for the general reason of seeking a better life and escaping political garbage back in the mother country.  Both countries proved exceptionally capable to absorbing the entire world into a melting pot, but this is the key point of departure:

In Canada, the differences were not considered crucial in deciding how to make someone a Canadian.

In the United States, the differences were considered crucial in deciding how to make someone an American.

Stop for a moment, before drawing conclusions about both countries, however.  Take a look at something very simple in both places, the concept of official language.  Canada has two.  The United States does not even have one, at least not one ever officially declared.  Canada features petty fights over both tongues.  The United States features a general acceptance that English is the way to go and gets into absolutely huge and dramatic patriotic stand-offs over the matter despite, you know, not having declared English the official language.  Citizens have to take an English test, but an interpreter and a lot of assistance in the process are provided for the newly minted American.  In Canada, this is less the case, and you need to do English or French (unless you happen to be in the far north and want to do Cree or something).  Confused at the irony yet?

And what about the general concept of a melting pot?  In the United States, there is little strange about a Black family sitting down for a spaghetti dinner and not having it mentioned that they are eating Italian food, or everyone in town going nuts on St. Patrick's Day despite being in no way Irish whatsoever.  In Canada, half the town might still be throwing an Orangeman's parade!  Go to Wegman's supermarket in Buffalo and find a huge variety of groceries celebrating every known culture on earth with a Christmas display featuring everything from Mexican goodies to Polish-American toasting wafers.  Go to Loblaws over in Niagara Falls, Ontario and notice prominent displays of traditional British cuisine and a Christmas display featuring those annoying Victorian Christmas crackers that my Mom insists are necessities.  Head over to Quebec and find a different world entirely.  Head out into the prairie provinces and find Ukrainian and Icelandic stuff.  First Born influences are also everywhere.  Multi-culturalism is assured, but the individual influences are very obvious.

This is not to say that you can't find tons of different cultural treasures in Canada, especially in places like Toronto (one of the best places to get a curry outside of India is either in London or Toronto) its just that... well the differences will be highlighted, even as they are diluted in the States.  In Canada, cultural differences are viewed as the purpose behind Liberty, and are given anointed protection even as they cause tension here and there.

We certainly have a different emphasis on democracy, to say the least.  But this is not where the differences end.  Again, we return to perspective.  The history of democratic struggle in the United States has always been one of assertive action, sometimes to the point of raw aggression.  In Canada, political freedoms have gradually evolved, with social action being taken defensively.  Political freedoms in Canada have come about  in a parallel history of development with the United States, sometimes even in reaction or as an alternative.  Again, the Canadian mentality is about the democratic experiment looking at the broader portrait of historical awareness, even perhaps into the fishbowl that is British, American, and French democratic evolution.  The American mentality is about the front line of the struggle, an experiment always in a state of flux and even survival.

This is, of course, all opinion and the viewpoint of this French-Irish-Canadian-American looking at his two nations with the perspective of an expatriate looking at both host and home nation from a standpoint straddling the border.  I remain a Canadian citizen because of perspective, even as I continue to live in the United States because of intense fascination.  If ever the two nations were united...

And what of that?  Could they be?  Definitely, and yet not without some pain and difficulty.  We already share a lot in common.  At the same time, we also hold on to a history of "get off my lawn":

The Isaac Brock monument on the site of the Battle of Queenston Heights, overlooking New York across the Niagara Gorge.  This is probably the most poignant reminder that a border still exists between two otherwise peaceful friends.

Yet we also have a history of being allies and building the way to having the longest undefended border in the world.  Signs leading up to border access points on both sides of the line declare not that a checkpoint is coming up, but that there will soon be a bridge to the other country.

Not too far from that monument are multiple bridges manned by immigration officials more concerned with how much duty-free alcohol you have in your car than with how you intend to spend your time in their country.  Above, pointed at the New York side, is the Rainbow Bridge, along with the American Falls of Niagara Falls.  

When you cross over, you will probably see a McDonald's on both sides, you drive on the same side of the road, and you just feel like you are on the other side of a river... and yet it always feels a little bit different, units of distance measurement aside.

Defining A Border: Why Are We Not One Country?

I was once involved in an interesting debate with an Irish professor of international relations.  This was at the University of London back in 2003, right after Iraq had been invaded by the American alliance, a time when the entire city was abuzz with discussions about the directions being taken in the war on terror, large-scale Muslim immigration to western Europe, and how the United States should now be viewed in the eyes of the rest of the world.  The talking always turned back to nationalism, and the professor and I had a historical sensitivity to the question; an Irishman teaching politics in the capital of the British Commonwealth/Empire was discussing what nationhood meant with a Canadian who had then been living in the United States for roughly a decade.

The crowds outside wanted to focus their anger for having Britain dragged into yet another battle in a conflict that was really getting ugly and being engaged on in a global scale.  They blamed the capitalistic giant across the sea, the United States of Imperialistic Christian Conservatism, and they burned her flag on Parliament square.  They were people of diverse nationalities and cultures, people that would just as soon raise a fist against each other but found common ground in their hatreds for a place they had never been to or had really come to understand.  Iranians, Cubans, Egyptians, Somalians, and so many others were burning a flag and even announcing that their national identity, in an adopted immigrant country no less, was about not being American.  The next day, we asked ourselves what we saw, and how it related to our sense of nationality.

For an Irishman, the answer was relatively simple.  Ireland has a different culture, pace of existence, religious foundation, and even landmass from the rest of Britain.  Her people speak in a different accent, if they even speak the same language that they do in the Sceptered Isle.  For a Canadian, the answer was a bit more complex.  We do share a common landmass with the United States, divided by an extremely straight artificial border for the most part.  Our indigenous peoples existed as the same nations on both sides of this line, except around Lake Ontario.  We both have the same fanatical love of hockey and baseball, we both (believe it or not) generally speak the same language in similar inflections and accents.  And yet...

We don't think alike.  Canadians by and large tolerate democracy with greater government oversight.  Americans generally deplore any level of government oversight, and certainly hate taxes, and yes, this goes for both the left and right, even if the execution does not end up being the same!  Canadians, now and in the past, are all about settlement.  Americans, now and in the past, like expanding all sorts of things, from the size of buildings and drinking cups to the settlement of frontiers both natural and man-made.  In Canada, one is more likely to hear a gun called a weapon.  In the United States, one is more likely to hear a gun being debated in the nomenclature of a tool.  In Canada, the struggle to define a national language has largely been settled in a divided country becoming a country of two national base cultures in recognition, even as the French portion grows smaller.  In the United States, the same struggle has long been quieted in the recognition of a single language (albeit one never actually given official status) both out of cultural pride and simplicity among a nation that would otherwise be a jumble of tongues, even as the Spanish minority grows larger.

Canadians were content to await the recognition of freedoms which had long been practically lived in if not codified.  Americans were unable to accept any alternative other than such a codification, even if the price was war and civil unrest.  Canadians would and do debate the nature of liberty.  Americans know liberty comes at a price, and that while debate can help realize what must be fought for, someone has to lead the charge.  Now this is not to say that Canadians have not crusaded for civil rights, no, quite the opposite!  This is not to say that Americans have never debated rather than come to a stand over issues, no, that is why this nation has such an immense legal tradition and a complex history of political theory.   As it was noted so many times in the nineteenth century, however, the United States of America is the great experiment in modern democracy, an experiment that Britain handed over to the colonies when she had to fight against a French powerhouse that was proclaiming herself to have the same role over in Europe (and we all know how that went for them in the first few decades).  Think of it this way:  The United States is like the fishbowl in which the world watches to see how civil liberty develops.  Canada has the front row seat, maybe even being the second fishbowl right next door.

I say this because in that talk with the professor I concluded that Canadian nationalism really started by us being... not American.  Oh yes, there is that distinct French flavor there, but even by the late 1700's the habitants of the St. Lawrence valley were not thinking in the same terms as the Parisians were, but were embracing a concept of parliamentary representation and coming to cherish things like religious liberty.  Educated men in Montreal were reading the same sort of things that Bostonians were, and the English-speaking leadership was getting nervous.  As it turns out, these educated people were historically-minded enough to know that they had it good under the ruling powers, and that together with the influx of Loyalists, were looking into the fishbowl while seeing where the water came from in the first place.  Canadians saw how the United States was developing, and they learned important lessons from her, and developed accordingly into a parallel but slightly different democracy.

Perhaps the most vivid way to see how this is the case would be a look at the unfolding of subsidiarity in both nations.  These days, Federalism can be an ugly word in both countries, and the desire to have a central government in service to local governments forged our two political systems, even as we both found ourselves really in need of unity in order to not be torn apart at conception.  The thirteen colonies had to "hang together, or surely all hand separately .  The diverse provinces of Canada had to make a stand as one body so as to not be swallowed whole by the Yankee to the south.   In both nations, no one wanted to give more power than they had to to the state or province next door.  In both nations, however, the emphasis on what was important to the states and the provinces rested on different foundations.

English liberty, after all, came first as a question of religion, only to be followed by a second question regarding individual property rights.

In Canada, the first question became the focus of what was truly important to the provinces, whereas in the United States, the second question ultimately took precedence.

Yes, I know we all come to the blog not to hear me rant but to see my pictures.  Here we have Wall Street, the modern heart of the "second question".  Interestingly enough, that is a TD Ameritrade building right there.  TD, of course, is Toronto Dominion.  Here again we see integration on economic and cultural levels, even as two different flags continue to fly on the northern part of our continent. 

This, of course, would be a very important part as to why we are not one country, a look at where our mentalities are truly focused.  We see that we define ourselves in part by not being something else.  Come by next post as we take a closer look at just how this happened, and what it means for us today.  

Canada is Not America North

"The apartment a floor above the great loft party."

"America Jr."

"Some stupid place that puts tiny maple leaves over their corporate icons to remind themselves of how dependent they are on us while maintaining a superficial culture of superiority."

If you imagined these were all cute little snide remarks about how Canada relates to the United States, you would be dead on.  One does not need to watch South Park to know that the neighbor to the north has been maligned for years by some Americans, or at best taken as a joke.  Politicians in Washington have alternated between using Canada as a photo-op for international relations and bashing Canada as a terrorist school/socialist nightmare.  The sentiments of condescension toward the folks of the north is nothing new, nor entirely American; the British sometimes saw us as the consolation prize for their efforts in building a trans-Atlantic empire while the French sold us out entirely.  Thankfully, the majority of people who interact with Canada on more than a surface level find her an interesting part of the world, and most Buffalonians and Detroiters will admit that things are not exactly the same across the bridge.

That said, Canadians and Americans share much in common.  We have a shared history of both the first and second born of our continent, we share similar values in regards to an idealistic democracy, and we both tend to view the McDonald's down the street not as some bastion of American capitalistic domination over the world but just as the golden arches down the road that serves things that are not good for you.  We both strongly favor English as a means of communication, even as we have a great many people that speak French or Spanish as well.

But we are different.  The people who live on the left of the river below are not the same as the people who live on the right side.  Lewiston and Queenston might not be as different as Brownsville and Matamoros, but the lack of a linguistic gap and a large economic disparity is not all that goes into dividing neighbors.

Ontario on the left, New York on the right, looking north toward the mouth of the Niagara River on Lake Ontario from atop the Niagara Escarpment.  A boundary very much storied in war and separation   

As a Londoner once pointed out to me nearly a decade ago, at the height of tension during the war on terror, the differences of nationals lie not in cultural attachments, but in mentality.

I am breaking up this post into a series over the next week, mainly because it took a lot out of me to write, and because some very political messages might better be communicated and received when broken down a bit more.  What you will not see are diatribes about who did what to whom.  What you will see are ideas offered by a Canadian very much interested in and passionate about the United States and her history, one who has lived in the United States for quite some time now.

Le Retour de la Neige

Apparently a year has gone by since American Voyages has come into existence, and the thought only really occurred to me because we had our first snow of the year here in southeastern Michigan, the same thing last year being the inspiration for the blog.  In this time, the focus of the blog has shifted a bit from the natural world to a bit more history and politics than I had intended to cover, but the best intellectual constructs in human culture are usually the result of organic development.  History and geography, of course, are very much interrelated.  While people have migrated, fought wars, and developed cultures over ideas, more often than not they settled, sued for peace, and changed cultures because of "background" things like geology, zoology, and botany.  Yes, the Puritans came to New England because they wanted religious freedom, but they really showed up there because the New World really was new.  Our continent contained, and contains, many unique wonders that made them consider settlement here.  I firmly believe that our shared drive as humans, despite cultural differences, is a desire for exploration and growth.  This blog is, and will remain, dedicated to this thrill of discovery regarding our new world that is still new after 500 years.

That said, I still get the odd question over e-mail, most of which get tossed my way when I say something provocative about history and politics.  Here's one:

Q: Just where do you stand politically?  I could take your ideas a bit better if I knew where they were coming from.

A: Everyone has a bias when coming to a conclusion about something.  While objective truth does indeed exist, we also have to remember that we view it through an imperfect lens of human experience.  When we debate politics and culture, it would be wise to remember this, and not just label the "other side" as stupid or responsible for bringing about the apocalypse.  In the wake of the recent American election, we are seeing this in spades from every camp out there.  In some ways, this is good.  Such camps are a sign that democracy is functioning as it should, and that free development of ideas and attempts at self and societal improvements are flowing around without the need for tyrannical oversight.  We have a free society in the United States, Canada, and even, despite what everyone might think, Mexico.  On the other hand... "If we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately. "  Benjamin Franklin said that when he noticed that the other founding fathers were being diverse to the point of polarization.

Anyway, where is my camp?

My camp is anywhere where all life, human or otherwise, is properly respected.  My camp is where individuals have the right to self-determination inasmuch as it does not negatively impact the lives of others in the same regard.  You can pretty much guess where I stand on a lot of issues from those two statements, but if I need to be more specific, I am not best labeled as either conservative or liberal.  Being a Canadian, I could not vote last week, but I would have been hard pressed to favor either presidential candidate.  Both have skewed ideas about what the above statements mean, and exist largely to curry favor with private interest groups or their own agendas.

I do find the present political climate hopeful though; now that Mr. Obama can no longer run again for president (term limits are a very, very good thing), both he and his opposition can more freely find the common ground they need to find to keep us walking in the right direction.  As a result, I am very interested and following very closely the current path of John Boehner.  He and the president, as respective men of repute and importance in their parties, have the chance to do remarkable things in American politics.  Likewise, in my home state of Michigan, I wish I could somehow merge the drives and agendas of the current governor, Rick Snyder, with those of the former, Jennifer Granholm.  The best of both of these leaders have been very good things for Michigan, in my opinion far outweighing the worst of them.  In Canada, I am finding growing respect for Mr. Harper, while I am positively giddy about the prospect of a Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, because if he is even half the man his father was, he will rank among the best world leaders we have ever had.  In Mexico, well, let's just say I hope that the PRI learns to grow up, and that no one is making deals with the cartels.  Really, I just hope we can stop buying drugs here north of the border, because brother is it ever screwing with things south of it.

In short, I am hopeful for the future.  I truly believe that we have a beautiful continent full of beautiful people, and I don't give a damn whether they say si, yes, or oui to what I think.  I prefer being able to do all three!

Bring on the new day!

"An Inexhaustible Lumber Source"

We continue our journey through the human history of Algonquin, starting from where we left off here:

http://americanvoyages.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-land-is-beautiful-but-also-savage.html

As early as the 1820's, the United States was starting to expand into the lands of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to seek out potential new timber areas to feed the growing appetite for wood.  By the 1860's, the need was accelerated by the Civil War, settlement on the treeless Great Plains and other prairie regions (that took off with the immigration surge of the 19th century), railroad construction, and the rise of the timber barons.  By the 1880's, these areas started getting clear cut to fuel both industry and construction demands in the growing cities of the Great Lakes and Mississippi and Ohio valleys.  The American conservation movement, which had been born of a desire to preserve bird populations, now started becoming concerned with the preservation of bird habitats; the eastern forests had already been decimated and were tokens of their former glory, and conservationists were afraid that the largely unspoiled western forests would be next.  They might well have been eradicated with efficiency had a new market not opened up with cheaper imports from Canada.

Though the threat of invasion by the United States in the 1860's concerned many Canadians (and was indeed the prime cause for Confederation in 1867), relations between the two sides had warmed considerably since the War of 1812.  Commerce between the nations kept increasing as the United States required more and more raw resources to feed its industrial and human needs, and Canadian timber interests were among the many commercial ventures that found business with the neighboring United States to be a bit more lucrative than with distant Britain.  At first, Canadian industry had little to offer the Americans that they were not producing manically themselves, but attention quickly turned to raw materials.

Well over half of Canada was covered in forest.  Much of her eastern boreal forests remained untouched, and the southern portions still contained towering virgin Red and Eastern White Pines.  Algonquin, a pristine wilderness less than 100 miles from major water and rail connections was full of these trees and open for business.

These were both taken in the last 2 years by, you guessed it, Bob and Diana McElroy.  They can be found on their picasa site here.  The top picture is along the Barron River, a tributary of the Petawawa River, while the second picture is from the Petawawa River as it exits Lake Travers.  These forests were among the first to be harvested in the 19th century timber rush, as they were easily accessible from the two major waterways.  They have made a lovely comeback, but are still just reflections of what they once were.

Timber barons such as J. R. Booth thus saw opportunity beyond the dreams of avarice.

Booth at a survey of his squared White Pine timber on his Canada Atlantic Railway.  Source: Library and Archives of Canada, C-046480.  

By the 1890's, Booth was the wealthiest and most influential lumber producer in the entire world, made so by harvesting the 150' + White Pines of Algonquin.  The problem was, he was not the only one harvesting every last inch of what remained of wilderness in northern Ontario and eastern Quebec.  By the time Algonquin had made him a very wealthy man, little was left of her virgin forests, and in the early 1890's, Canadian conservationists started looking at their own country as turning into the same sort of environmental war-zone that the United States had become.  In only a few dozen years Algonquin, the principal battleground of the war to save the wilderness of Canada, had been transformed from an earthly paradise that survived thousands of years of human contact into a stubby forest of eroding mountains.

Fortunately, there were men, including Booth himself, who saw what was being done to Algonquin.  Booth was not your typical tycoon; even as late as his forties he worked alongside his men felling trees and lived in the backwoods camp conditions with them.  Even as he was bringing down the giants and transforming the landscape, he was surrounded by it, and like so many others before him, changed by Algonquin.  When the call came to do something about what was happening to her forests and lands, he joined others in trying to save them.  Come by tomorrow to see this unfold.

"The Land is Beautiful, but Also Savage, Wild, and Far From the Comforts of Hearth and Home"

The story of human history in Algonquin continues from where we left off here:

http://americanvoyages.blogspot.com/2012/08/i-never-imagined-i-would-see-land-like.html

The Algonkin continued to visit their sacred summer home every year as a slow trickle of French settlers and the births of the first true French-Canadians started visibly changing the St. Lawrence and lower Ottawa valleys.  By and large, the voyageurs bypassed Algonquin to head out to the boreal forests north of the Great Plains or south into the Mississippi-Missouri watershed.  We do not know why this is the case, but the good relations between the Algonkin and the French probably had a lot to do with it.  While arrangements could be, and often were, made with the various other Algonquian peoples such as the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Nipissings to hunt and trap in their lands, voyageur activity in the upper Ottawa watershed largely took place along the northern tributaries in the part of the Laurentian mountains that rose across the river in Quebec.  Perhaps Brule and Champlain made it clear that Algonquin was to remain inviolate.  We may never know, but we do know it remained a place unto itself even after the native peoples of Canada and the French-Canadians took on a new existence under British rule in 1763.

Settlement in Ontario by new colonists from the British Isles took place at a very slow pace, only really getting underway once the United States won its independence from Britain.  Americans who did not desire independence found themselves increasingly unpopular.  In some cases, hostility against them was taken to the point where even if they did acknowledge the emergence of the new sovereign entity they lived in, their homes and land were burned to a crisp and their lives threatened with violence if not outright death.  While some of these people, now called loyalists, were still passionate enough about a connection to Britain that they could only live under the rule of Westminster, many more simply found that the conditions for them had become intolerable.

Public Domain, a statue commemorating the arrival of loyalists into Ontario in front of McMaster university in Hamilton, Ontario.  Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UnitedEmpireLoyalistsHamilton.JPG

They found themselves exiled, many settling in Nova Scotia, many making their way into southern and eastern Ontario.  The birth of modern American-Canadian relations was rocky, to say the least.  Had they continued to exist in such a chilly state, Ontario might have looked quite different today.  Why on earth, after all, would an agrarian colonial transplanted society ever even try to head north into rocky, cold lands that were the domain of the savages, French-Canadians, and the rough and tumble men of the Hudson's Bay Company?  Southern and eastern Ontario at least resembled something of what had been left behind, and with a bit of landscaping, could even appear to be a true little piece of England across the waves.  

Well, the first English-speaking Ontarians were compelled to move north yet again by the Americans, but this time out of economic opportunities.  Canada had already found an economic bastion in the timber industry, helping Britain and her allies achieve naval victory over Napoleon's forces by providing an incredible source of lumber for the allied shipyards.  One tree, more than any other perhaps in the history of the world, became an object of desire, the Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).

100+ foot pines on the shore of Lake Travers, from a September 2011 trip by Bob and Diana McElroy.

The picture above can be misleading, as the White Pines sticking out above the canopy seem larger than they are due to the surrounding forest recovering from a violent wind event in 1999, but the visual impact is representative of how these trees appeared throughout their range before they were decimated by logging in the 19th century.  White Pines, many over 150 feet tall and some over 200 feet high absolutely dominated forests stretching from Iowa to Nova Scotia and south along the Appalachians into northern Georgia.  They seemed to be countless, and the large amount of harvest worthy timber from a single giant tree made the trees seem inexhaustible.  The American economy, however, has a way of turning plentiful natural resources into barren landscapes.

The need of the growing United States for lumber was the reason for both the near demise of the wilderness of Algonquin and its salvation.  The land that had survived as a majestic testament to the awe-inspiring power of nature had survived thousands of years of human activity that kept away from it out of awe, respect, and even distaste had finally met its match in the power of the saw.  Come by tomorrow to see this story continue to unfold.

The Future of North American Commerce

The blog took a day off yesterday to celebrate the final day of the first International Cactus Weekend, but worry not, we have plenty of places left to go and many to revisit.

We have a very crucial issue to visit today, that of more unfortunate attempts to block a MUCH NEEDED AND CRUCIAL BRIDGE from being completed.  I wrote about this issue, regarding the new international crossing, in this post.  If you are unaware of the significance that Detroit has a trade corridor between not only Canada and the United States but also between Canada and Mexico, please take a look at that post.

Sadly, it seems that the Moroun family, the very same family that has been stalling completion of their contracted project to better link the Ambassador Bridge to Interstates 96 and 75, has managed to collect enough signatures to mount a petition against the progress made in making the second crossing a reality.  Some people have already claimed that such signatures have been purchased:

http://buildthedricnow.com/2012/07/10/ambassador-bridge-owners-paid-millions-for-signatures-to-put-their-monopoly-protecting-proposal-on-the-ballot/

My opinion?  This is not an unreasonable hypothesis.  More trade passes on Detroit's Ambassador Bridge every year than does between the United States and nations such as Japan.  It should therefore not come as a shock to us that Manuel Moroun would want to keep controlling as much of this trade as possible and try to force the issue.

We need this bridge.  This bridge will enhance the local economy even further than the existing span already does.  This bridge will cost American taxpayers nothing.  This bridge is a joint effort between two very old allies, the United States and Canada, the latter of which, by the way, is not just some "foreign power" akin to Iran.  Do not be fed by his misinformation.

On the Fine Art of Appreciating the Neighbo(u)r

This came across my path when I was wandering the internet for the latest news from the Canadian embassy to the United States (and the other way around).  While not exactly new, it is a fine bit by Mr. Brokaw regarding what Canada can and should mean to Americans.  I figure I can let the clip do the talking.



Of particular note would be the mention of, ahem, what Canada did for the United States during 9-11 and afterwards, despite accusations to the contrary of actually helping the terrorists take down the World Trade Center.  Canada remains the largest trading partner of the United States, and is far, far more than just something to be mocked in a South Park movie.  This is an excellent gem!  Now if only he would do a similar one for Mexico...

The Impact of the American Civil War on the Neighbors: Part Two

Ever since 1814, a peace had settled upon the American-Canadian frontier.  The atmosphere was often tense, and a great many people were wondering just when Britain would lose control of her remaining North American provinces to the expansion-hungry United States.  By the 1830's, even with a lusting for "Manifest Destiny" sparking new fires in Texas and Oregon, the borders were looking almost tranquil between New York, Michigan, and Ontario.  Commerce was becoming more enticing than holding on to the hatreds of the previous generation, and even in this realm, competition was giving way to tourist opportunities at the new and already garish spectacle of Niagara Falls.  Furthermore, Ontarians, and to a lesser degree, Nova Scotians, were strongly allied with their Northern American neighbors in debates concerning slavery.  The Underground Railroad sent many escaped slaves to destinations of freedom in southern Ontario, Nova Scotia, Quebec, and even distant Vancouver Island, where James Douglas specifically encouraged black people to settle.  Nevertheless, things were far from settled on the question of a possible American invasion of Canada.  Britain was considering siding with the Confederacy, and several diplomatic blunders had taken place on the high seas.  Invasion, despite decades of peace, was looking more and more like reality as the war progressed further south.  President Lincoln, in fact, had one planned.

Canada, despite breaking even in the War of 1812, was still envisioned to be an easy target for American expansion.  The economies of the two sides had already become a bit invested in one another, especially in the realm of timber products.  Much of the virgin forests of the eastern United States had already found their way into the focus of the growing cities, and Canadian timber interests found a ready market south of the border as well as to a far more distant England.  A huge advantage existed in directing more trade to the United States, as transport of wood to Britain required wasteful squaring of trees in order to more efficiently fit into ship hulls.  Sending wood to the United States by overland networks, railways, and even directly on rivers meant that more wood could be turned into cash, pound for pound.  The authorities in Washington were well aware of how lucrative business was between the two parties, which was of great advantage in warming public relations between what had formerly been hostile enemies.  If an invasion did happen, surely the Canadians would consider the economic benefits at stake if they decided to fend it off...

Furthermore, Canada was not really Canada, at least not as we know it.  Oh, the word certainly existed, and people from Cape Breton to the trading outposts in the Ontario frontier called themselves Canadians when it suited them.  Any sort of concept of a national mutual appreciation society was just so far away, however.  Quebec planted its feet firmly in a defensive position against les Anglais.  Ontario looked across the Ottawa River in disgust.  Nova Scotia and the rest of the Atlantic front felt ignored by these two lands.  British Columbia might have very well been considered to be on a different planet.  Many of these situations have hardly become laughing matters assigned to the bin of history!

Courtesy of Canadian Geographic, where you can find other excellent maps on Le Nord.

The truth was, Canada would be easy to invade because it could be picked apart piece by piece, with the people of one area probably not even considering to help their neighbors.  Or so the Americans thought...

Come by tomorrow for part three.

The Detroit Bottleneck

Much has been in the news lately about the building, or rather delays in building a new international crossing over the Detroit river between Michigan and Ontario.  The governments on both sides have agreed that the heavy amounts of commercial traffic over the existing crossing, the Ambassador Bridge, have necessitated the building of a second bridge to handle this traffic.  The Canadian government, in fact, has pledged 550 million dollars (at the nearly even present exchange rates) to make this happen.

Unfortunately, things have been slow in coming to fruition regarding this expansion.  At the forefront of the debate is one Manuel Maroun, who has launched an incredible campaign to make sure his proposed vision of the new crossing, a bridge parallel to the Ambassador, which he also owns.  He has repeatedly stalled projects which he is bound by contract to have completed by now for the state of Michigan, including the connection complex that links the bridge to Interstates 96 and 75.  He has released many advertisements compelling local voters to write in to their representatives back in Lansing to put an end to the Canadian plan for a new bridge under their financial control, claiming it a waste of taxpayer money, despite, uh, Canada putting up the money for it in the first place.  Mr. Maroun has actually been brought to court over the matter, but still insists on his double span as being the only acceptable plan to move forward with.  Canada has insisted that it needs a new bridge that can form links directly to limited-access highways and not onto the same surface streets that the Ambassador bridge currently empties onto.

So is a new bridge under the financial control of those pesky Canadians (who have a right to collect tolls to re-coup the cost of the bridge) really necessary?  Yes.  Absolutely.  The amount of U.S.-Canada trade that funnels through the Ambassador alone is equal to the total volume of trade engaged in between the United States and various countries, including high-volume partners like Japan.  Why is this the case?  A good percentage of Canadian population, industry, and commerce is concentrated in the corridor stretching from Windsor to Quebec City.  The St. Lawrence and lower Great Lakes valley are essentially the Canadian equivalent of the east coast megalopolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C.  On top of this, the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Hamilton, Toronto, and downstream are notable for being inland sea ports capable of sending and receiving shipping from oceanic trade routes, while also serving as trade hubs within the North American continent.  That lovely Detroit River you see above might be freshwater and hundreds of miles inland, but it can function as well for shipping as New York Harbor or San Francisco Bay.  The fact of the matter is that Detroit is just too important of a trade corridor to be monopolized by one man.  Just take a look at this map.

Courtesy of Estafeta

It is an image of important trade corridors in U.S.-Mexico trade, and it still includes Toronto, despite being off the scope of the map.  Detroit not only funnels commercial traffic between the United States and Canada, but also Mexico!  Chicago might have won the historical battle to serve as the hub of travel between the great cities of the northeast and the interior, but Detroit has the advantage of sitting right at the gates between not two or even three but potentially dozens of nations.  For the moment, it has only a single rail tunnel and a very, very choked bridge which often has a solid line of trucks sitting on its span.  This is one bottleneck that needs to be widened, to the advantage of a little bit more than just the needs of one extremely wealthy man.

The Impact of the American Civil War on the Neighbors: Part One

As the Union and Confederacy were struggling against one another, the Western world was watching the conflict with very interested eyes.  New military technologies were being used that were shredding apart the old traditions of line warfare, and foreign tacticians got to see this in living example (too bad every one forgot that by the First World War).  Democratic government was also being put to the test, and the American experiment was seriously called into question.  While some foreign powers sided with the Confederacy mainly out of economic benefit, there were no doubt many who wished to see the grand experiment of 1776 fall into disrepair, especially after the crushing of many leftist uprisings in 1848.  Closer to home, though, the worlds of Mexico and Canada had many more reasons to pay attention to what was happening in the divided states.

By the time the southern states started to secede from the Union, Mexico had undergone a civil war of its own, the Reform War.  This was fought over the power that the Roman Catholic Church had over the land, which was quite substantial.  By March of 1861, the liberal faction in the war had won, religious liberty was declared law, and Benito Juarez was elected President, the first full-blooded native North American to be head of state on the continent following European colonization.

Public Domain

Problematically, however, was that neither side of this conflict was entirely righteous.  While religious liberty was promoted and maintained, this would come to mean the start of a full-on war against the Catholic Church and the introduction of semi-dictatorial Marxism to the country, both of which issues would reach a peak in the 1920's.  (More on this later).  Of course, Mexico has since remained largely Catholic and Mexican communism is an entirely different animal from most strains of Marxism, but this sort of political change was enough to agitate the Europeans, and by the next year, France had invaded Mexico, was repelled, and returned in greater force so that Mexico found itself under the leadership of Maximilian I, who took the title "emperor of Mexico" after the French had seized the country in a second invasion of 1863.

In the meantime, Mexico found itself with an increase in commerce from the direction of Texas.  The Confederacy was effectively blockaded by the Union at most of its water ports, and soon sleepy Brownsville found itself the major hub of international trade, as cotton could no longer be shipped out of New Orleans, Mobile, or other ports that used to handle the exchange.  For a while, the border on the Rio Grande actually became a bit amiable again, and the goods were flowing freely.  At the same time, the diversion of American interests into their internal division was probably a very good thing for a Mexico which had been weakened by a civil war of its own, to say nothing of being invaded by the French, a clear violation of the principles of the Monroe Doctrine.

So, what did the American Civil War do for Mexico?  It kept the country independent, even as it was struggling for that right.  By the time the Union had prevailed, the United States did indeed turn its attention southwards, but not as a conqueror.  In 1866, President Andrew Johnson instead sent 50,000 troops to deploy along the Rio Grande, both as a warning to the French to get the heck out, and as a front to supply Juarez's forces.  In 1867, the Mexican people had once again won their freedom, and the American forces made no effort to take advantage of the situation, probably because freedom had just taken on a very fresh and powerful meaning for the re-United States.

On the far side of the land, things played out very differently.  Ever since 1815, an uneasy peace had been maintained between Canadians and Americans.  Commerce and lives had started to flow in both directions across this frontier, but the promise of war was never far away.  Come by next Saturday to see how the American Civil War impacted Canada.

This Week on American Voyages...

...we will be exploring what has been happening in the American Civil War until this week in May, 1862.  I have a great deal of photos taken at the re-enactment for the first battle of Manassas, but have thus far been negligent in putting them up.  Chronologically, we are already well into the events of the conflict, and while the great pushes into northern territory by Lee and associates have not yet taken place, more than a few messy battles have already happened.  For those who like to go beyond the blog and actually experience some events for themselves, the National Park Service has a wonderful website set up here.  They also have this wonderful trailer which they show at most of their battlefields:

They did a very good job on this thing.  To be honest, I get a little emotional every time I see it.

To preview the week ahead, I will be covering personal experiences at two battlefields that have thus been fought at in the 150th commemoration, First Manassas, fought in northern Virginia in 1861, and Wilson's Creek, fought in southwest Missouri, also in 1861.  I will also be providing a general overview of the progress of the campaigns of both sides thus far, along with an overview of what climactic and ecological conditions were like for the marchers.  Finally, I will take a look at what was going on over on the sidelines in Canada and Mexico during these periods, including the relations those nations had with each side of the conflict.

Over all these posts, I will be looking at things with an eye of reverence; this war was a very sacred event in the history of humanity, owing to what it was truly fought over.

The Santa Fe Trail: The Start of U.S.-Mexico Relations

The Mexican-American war, while perhaps the most important event in the history of the relationship between Mexico and the United States, was not the first meeting of the two nations.  Rather, through commerce and migration, the countries had a relationship dating back to the early part of the nineteenth century.  Mexico was still a Spanish territory when Americans began showing up in Tejas, Nuevo Mexico, and Veracruz.  The men who came to these places were explorers, merchants, and mercenaries, even some fur traders from distant Canada.  Here and there, business of all sorts happened, at least when the authorities were not around.  The peoples of Mexico were more than happy to engage in commerce with the more friendly and generous faces than those which came from across the ocean.  Time and again, however, the Spanish authorities intervened, and the Americans found themselves arrested or deported, just as Canadians, eager to find more fur-trade opportunities, had been many times before them.

Americans still made their way to Mexico, in greater numbers once the Louisiana Purchase was validated by Spain in the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.   Spanish bans on Mexican exports still stood, even if relations between Madrid and Washington were becoming more civil.  Like so many of his contemporaries, William Becknell took a gamble that maybe things were getting peaceable enough that trade might sneak by a bit easier.  In September of 1821, Becknell departed from Missouri and set out across the Great Plains toward the capital of Nuevo Mexico, Santa Fe.   About 40 miles out of Santa Fe, at a place known as San Miguel del Vado, Becknell and his five companions were approached by soldiers.  While no record remains of what took place at this meeting, not too much imagination is needed to envision that it was a cordial affair, because Becknell was informed that Mexico was now free, and that Santa Fe's markets were ready and waiting for commerce with the rest of North America.  When Becknell arrived in the city, crowds gathered and a great celebration began.

He quickly found buyers for his small stock of textiles, and he found goods and silver to bring back with him in exchange.  Mexicans wanted textiles, especially the very desirable cotton, which the United States was starting to produce in abundance.  Americans like Becknell gladly accepted silver pesos for it, but they also brought back draft animals, herbs, spices, exotic jewelry, and an amazing rich of mineral wealth of all kinds.  They also found furs; French and English speaking Canadians alike, usually working for the growing Hudson's Bay Company, were part of a vast network already working the interior of the continent, and well-informed about what was going on to the south.  In many ways, Santa Fe commerce was the start of relations between all three North American nations, and the city was very much an international hub of activity.  In any event, Becknell came back to Missouri with a smile on his face and much-needed silver currency to fill the cash-dry economy there with.  The next year, he loaded covered wagons, the first to cross the plains in fact, and did it all over again.  By 1824, traffic between Santa Fe and Missouri had started to impact the American economy enough to prompt President Monroe to order a survey of prominent trail routes between the lands.

The opening of relations was profitable for both parties, and Mexican traders took to the trail just as often as their American counterparts did.  Commerce often did not stop in Santa Fe, and the wagons went clear from Independence to Chihuahua and points southwards.  Santa Fe, however, was the juncture between the worlds of the United States and Mexico, and the city engaged in so much American trade that eventually most of New Mexico's dealings were with a far closer United States than with seemingly distant Mexico.  This is not to say that Santa Fe or the New Mexicans surrendered their culture and identity in the process.  While the New Mexicans embraced becoming a part of the United States during the Mexican-American war, they also retained their language and unique culture that had developed as a marriage between Native and Hispanic worlds.  To this day, many New Mexicans are completely bi-lingual, and cities like Santa Fe celebrate their heritage even as they are undoubtedly American in loyalty and character.  The area still celebrates the link it serves as between the parts of our continent:

Otherwise known as I-25.

The Santa Fe trail, after all, was about introducing cultures to one another, blazed in the forging of ties between two young republics, an opening of borders to commerce and migration.  The opening of the trail was a tender embrace between America and Mexico, and is all too easily forgotten in the wake of a century and half of mistrust, bigotry, power struggles, politics, and drugs, between the two neighbors.  Memory remains, however, and regardless of where one stands on the issue of relations between our two nations (which have really started to improve, despite what goes around), this world of a bonding between two nations can still be seen in what remains of the trail, especially in New Mexico.  Let's start down in Santa Fe,  then:

This part of New Mexico is the junction of the Rockies, the deserts of the southwest, and the Great Plains.  Not too much of a stretch of imagination is needed to see that this was once a world truly in the middle of the path between east, west, and south.  Everything here is distinctively New Mexican, right down to the bus stops.

Here we have a place that is obviously part of the United States, and yet also would not seem too out of place in Mexico, while not being entirely a product of either place.

They most likely did not know it, but the founders of Santa Fe picked a pretty decent location that would become the meeting place of many other "trails" to come in the future:

Moving out from Santa Fe, the trail, Us 66, and now I-25, skirts the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (part of the Rockies) before spilling out into the Great Plains.  Pictured here is part of Glorietta Pass.

At the entrance to the pass, the trail passes just to the south of the ruins of the Pecos pueblo, preserved at Pecos National Historical Park.  Glorietta Pass, in fact, has served not only as a passage for the trail, but has been walked by Coronado and his conquistadores, fought over in the Civil War, and long served as the meeting place between Pubeloan peoples and the peoples of the plains, such as the Kiowa and Comanche.  Pecos is probably the most diverse point of cultural meeting in all of North America.  We will come see it in a future post.  For now, here is the view from the ruins, looking back west to the pass.

 The trail eases out at an angle into the high plains of northeastern New Mexico, leaving behind the pinyon-juniper forest and entering one of the most arid parts of the Great Plains, a grassland dotted with cholla cacti, sagebrush, and yuccas.  The golden grass waves in an almost ever-present wind that blows between the great air masses of the arctic and the tropics, and between mountains and seemingly endless plains.

Once in the plains, the trail diverges.  One path, historically considered the safest route, follows the base of the Rockies north into Colorado until it cuts across the land to meet the Arkansas river.  This route is largely followed today by I-25.  Some of the best preserved ruts of the trail can be found at one of its famous sites, Fort Union, where the other path of the trail leaves this one.

This other path cuts northeast-southwest across New Mexico, past dead volcanoes and into the panhandle of Oklahoma, which has some of the most open country in the entire world.  The experience is good for making us feel small when we otherwise feel like kings of the earth, to say the least.  We have the luxury of roads to do this on now.  One can only imagine what travelers heading down the trail must have felt when they saw this, at once both in awe and hoping that the ruts they traveled on would stay visible.

This path continues into surprisingly rugged parts of Kansas before meeting the other path again at the Arkansas river, at which point the trails cut clear across the open land towards Independence, Missouri.  Halfway between the river and Missouri, things would get a bit greener and arboreal again, with some trees even growing in the middle of the prairie, sentinels of the advancing edge of the eastern forests.

At Council Grove, the trail is well-defined, and a memorial sits on it to mark the spot where the United States and the Osage nation signed a treaty to protect safe passage across their homeland.  The town was named for both the treaty and the grove of trees that offered shelter to those getting ready to depart into the treeless expanses to the west.  One of the 12 Madonna(s) of the Trail, placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, can be found here.

The trail then arrives at its eastern terminus, Independence, a very different place from Santa Fe.  Here we have the text-book definition of a Midwestern American town, a place that even in the 1820's would have been as much a great discovery for Mexican travelers as Santa Fe was for the Americans and Canadians.  The tour we took from west to east was to highlight the impression this must have made on such travelers, heading from the vast, open, dry, adobe west to the relatively more compact, settled, humid, brick and mortar east.  Just as Santa Fe served as the door to Mexico and the inter-mountain west (including the Old Spanish trail to California, by way of Utah), Independence was the place where the California and Oregon trails would start, as well as points to the east, serving as the western terminus of the National Road, which would take people all the way to the Potomac at Cumberland, Maryland.  Here too, in those days of optimism so long ago, could there be found the various peoples of the continent, trading with one another, exchanging cultures, and getting ready to set off across the land to some destination of promise.  No record remains of any parties thrown when the first Mexicans arrived in Independence, but it was quite likely that the meeting was a good one.  

The 10 Most Important Events in North American History, part three.

Part one of this series can be found here.

Part two of this series can be found here.


Before we go on, I will come clean and state that the American Revolution is not on this list.  Instead, the next two events are presented as the forth and third most important events in our shared North American history, as they were far more influential in making sure the United States would even go after, much less maintain, independence.  Even if the list were just about the United States and not also Canada and Mexico, these two events would remain in place of the events that took place between 1775 and 1781.

4. The Treaty of Ghent.



Without engaging in another diatribe about how the War of 1812 gets very much ignored by most Americans, I would have to say that I maintain, and likely always will maintain, that the War of 1812 was the most important exercise in the declaration of nationhood for both the United States and Canada.  What's more, the fact that the United States got so thoroughly trounced and yet managed to tell Britain, or any nation for that matter, to mind its own business, was a message to the rest of the world that the fragile existence of a democratic state was perhaps a bit more strong that anyone had thought.  Yes, democracies had existed before, but they were not like this.  The only other large scale experiment in this kind of revolution happened in France, and, well, it really did not work out so well.  Here, not only the sovereignty of a nation  was held intact, but also its pride.  On the other side of the table, though not immediately apparent, Canada did the same thing.  As was the case in 1763, Britain did have an attractive choice in forgoing a Canadian retention, but chose not to take such an option.

Beyond these obvious considerations and players, however, lies a third party.  Two years before the war even began, Mexico had begun its war of independence under the leadership of Miguel Hidalgo.  Things got off to quite the rocky start, and by 1815 Hidalgo was executed and the Mexican forces had accomplished seemingly little in their fight to take the country.  Hope was needed if the enterprise was to succeed, and most historians will be quick to point out that things really got underway when Augustin de Iturbide switched sides from Spain and brought a good portion of the royalist army with him.  However, Iturbide also had himself crowned emperor and was more interested in destroying liberalism than in freeing Mexico.  In 1821, only a year into his reign, Iturbide was overthrown by Santa Anna, and Mexico became a republic.  Clearly there was some other inspiration out there that kept the fires burning down in Mexico.  Things were not looking good for anyone over in Europe, and the Congress of Vienna made sure that the concept of revolution would be put to rest until 1848, for the most part.  But Mexico was not part of Europe.  Call it conjecture, but maybe, just maybe, Mexicans looked north and saw that the United States was not only still standing at the end of their second war with a distant would-be ruler, but the United States made out pretty well in the deal.  For that matter, Canada survived intact.

So how did this happen, exactly?  Sure, Fort McHenry got blasted to smithereens but stood its ground for two whole days, protecting Baltimore.  Yes, Tecumseh had been killed at the Battle of the Thames, York (Toronto) had been burned to a crisp, and Britain was unwilling to devote more force to protecting Canada. However, Detroit was captured, the American forces were repulsed back across the Niagara, and Washington was taken, with the White House in need of a substantial re-construction and now famous paint job.  Most importantly, this was the first time that Canadians themselves actually fought to protect their homeland.  Yes, British regulars were responsible for many of the great victories of "Canada" during this war, but it was Canadians, English, French, and First Nations alike who shed their blood at River Raisin, Thames, Lundy's Lane, and most sacred in memory of all, Chateauguay.  Both sides were not fighting for some distant government or a handful of rich men who wanted to tell them what to do.  They were fighting for their homes, for their families, for their land.  The ideals of freedom might have been philosophized elsewhere in books and speeches and formalized into governments closer to home, but here, democracy did not mean the prosperity of "the people" so much as it meant something far more tangible when blood was spilled over beloved soil.  All of a sudden, "nation" became as important a concept as "liberty".  "Nation" existed before, but now it meant something more than just a crown.  "Nation" became "My Mexico, My America, My Canada".

In Ghent, Belgium, in August of 1814, after some very passionate fighting on the part of North Americans both north and south of the Great Lakes, Britain and the United States started talking.  The Americans did not have much to bring to the table outside of victories won at Plattsburgh and Baltimore.  Their capital had been destroyed, their army somewhat demoralized, and Canada had not been taken, to say nothing of how it had not been taken as easily as many believed it would be.  Napoleon had been defeated, and Britain was certainly capable to taking its full force over to the United States and dictating very brutal terms to the young nation if it wanted to.  Some historians claim that Britain was weary and just wanted to be done with the business of war for a while.  Rather, I think that Britain looked over at Canada and saw something different than an imperial territory, for once.  There in cold and snowy Canada were people who fought to defend their homes from invaders.  They might not have all locked arms and looked at one another lovingly while proclaiming how wonderfully Canadian they felt (and you know what, some things have not changed), but like those Yankees to the south of them, they did not have the luxury of parochial snobbery in the face of annihilation of what it meant to be what they were.  There were people there who put their lives on the line for their homes, just as Britain had done herself against Napoleon in the preceding decades.  Still, there were choices to be made.

Britain was undergoing a transformation into a world empire.  Old rival France had been soundly divested of that concept, and the concept of Spanish empire was in its death throes as well.  India, the Caribbean, Australia, Africa... new opportunities were everywhere.  Canada, seemingly good for only timber and beaver pelts, looked like a bizarre waste of resources to maintain.  The United States was clearly not part of the British world anymore, and they had far more to do with North America than Britain did, at least in terms of logical direction of commerce.  Maybe the Americans would be better off buying Canada and coming to an amicable relationship with Britain again thereafter.  Trans-Atlantic commerce could be renewed, while both sides could maintain their own business at their leisure, and not at competing interests.  Then again, those Canadians, well, they fought against that sort of thing, much to the shock of everyone.  While the Americans had been much more pro-active in telling others to get off the lawn, they were not the only ones interested in not being pushed around by a foreign power.  Instead of giving up or resuming aggression, then, Britain offered the United States a return to the ways things were before the war, a status quo antebellum.  Many Americans became convinced that they had won, and the funny thing is, they did.  They lost a war, achieving no objectives in it, but won a conference.  Granted, impressment of sailors stopped (because they were no longer needed), the British did not gain control of the northwest territories, and American independence was now very real and uncontested.

What had begun in 1776 was truly realized, and a surge of patriotism washed over the states, which were now 18 in number, and no longer the disparate colonies they started out as.  Western expansion could go on without too much worry.  Native peoples would be forced out of their lands by expansionists and pioneers.  What remained of North American French culture outside of Quebec and Louisiana went into remission.  Canada survived.  The American Revolution now truly succeeded in changing the face of the continent, but not as some people had envisioned, and "freedom" became synonymous with more than just "America", if the two neighbors were given a chance to say anything about it.


3. The Fall of Quebec.


Montcalm and Wolfe probably did not know what was happening as they were both dying that powerful day of September 13, 1759.  They knew that the war in which they were fighting was going to take a corner from here on out, and they knew that the British would take the city.  As Wolfe bled out onto the field, he initially had no idea that the French were even in retreat, and even as he was about to breathe his last, he simply gave out orders to consolidate the British position by ordering a march on the bridge over the St. Charles river to cut off retreat.  He was a solider though and through, only concerned with the actions of the battlefield, and unable or unwilling, even in his final moments, to focus any attention on the impact on the history of North America his bold strategy to take Quebec would have.  No doubt that there were many there that saw the world change that day, and knew it all too well.  The French-Canadians knew it, and they feared what would happen to their world; they had seen what had become of the Acadians.  When the Americans far to the south would learn of it, they would certainly know it; finally they would not have to worry about the French, and they could have access to the riches of the interior.  No one, however, knew that the blood spilled this day would be the seed of a revolution fought a mere 16 years later, and the birth of not only that nation, but that of Canada as well.  Likewise, no one could have imagined that the fall of Quebec would not result in the destruction of French Canada.  French rule was disputed here to the point of extinction, while French-Canadian rule silently began.

 English rule was strengthened, only to grow so strong and looming that the Americans would unite together to challenge what had become the ironic block to their growth and unrivaled prosperity.  Forget taxation, forget a lack of representation in Parliament, what the American Revolution really came down to was a monopolistic opposition, a being surrounded on all sides by one power, one very real, yet very imagined, enemy.  Don't get me wrong, the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, and yes, taxes are very annoying.  But those things, the wet ink on a declaration signed rather flamboyantly by a certain Mr. Hancock, and the courage shown by patriots risking life and land, that was all very potent fuel added to a fire that was lit the moment French control over the Ohio valley was relinquished.  The conditions to allow the spark to even ignite, of course, had been forming ever since the first colonists stepped off their ship and planned to make a new life for themselves.  Now, self-determination seemed like it could be more of a reality.  It took a war and a battle involving every party on the northern part of the continent to make it happen.

Meanwhile, Canada sat on the edge of the American world, cold, vast, Indian, and French.  Now it was all of those things, but worse still, part of the supposed tyranny of King George.  The truth was, Canada was simply too far away from the colonies, geographically, spiritually, culturally, and mentally.  Both Canadians and Americans settled their new land for a self-determined life away from the conditions and economics of distant mother countries.  Both Canadians and Americans would explore their continent and seek out its resources as their own.  For all they held, and hold, in common, they also were worlds apart in many ways.  Canadians were stewards of inherited traditions and pioneers of a far slower pace of converting their land into "civilization".  Americans were breakers of tradition, innovators, desperate to expand as a way of maintaining their individualist mindset.  This is not to say that everyone followed these character patterns precisely, but such patterns were, and in many ways still are illustrative of what differences lie between the peoples who otherwise seem so outwardly similar.

Then there were the choices made as a result of the Fall of Quebec.  Britain had a choice to leave Canada to the French, and instead take Guadeloupe, a very profitable sugar island in the Caribbean.  Guadeloupe was worth more than the entirety of Canada, and furthermore, there were some on parliament who wanted the French to stick around on the colonists' backdoor so that loyalty in both heart and arms would remain focused back with the crown.  Instead, the choice was made to control Canada, and later, the Quebec act would allow it to remain French in soul if not in duty.  Loyalty, needless to say, ran away from London regardless.  In that same year of 1774, the Fall of Quebec turned from a happy memory into a sign of betrayal by the British.  To this day, the Fall of Quebec is remembered by many French-Canadian separatists as the second worst event in human history after the Fall from Grace.  To Anglo-centric Canadians, it is remembered as a triumph.  Historical memory, obviously, often gets whitewashed or darkened beyond recognition.  Instead, I prefer to think the Fall as the point of conception for our nations, and the birth of a true French-Canadian independence.

And what of the peoples who had been in Canada and America long before such words even existed?  They were used as scouts, as shock troops, and as bargaining chips.  For the original people of North America, the Fall of Quebec was largely another turning point in which they would find themselves facing new political difficulties, if they would face any attention at all.  With the French gone, and the British an obstacle, but not immediately a dangerous one, the Indians were now a primary threat to the spread of American civilization and security.  History tells us plainly what has happened since this attitude gained popularity.  Savage retaliation was produced by savage assault, with little to show for it in reward, and only cultural annihilation and a loss of moral superiority the penalty inflicted on the respective sides of the ongoing war between peoples.

In the meantime, far to the south, Mexico slowly awakened from a slumber under Spanish monopoly as Jesuits improved educational access within the country, and some people began to find out about what was happening up north.  Their concept of nation, of course, had already been forming for centuries prior, and was the impetus for settlement in those lands to begin with.  Come by next Saturday to see what I mean as I conclude this series.