Lower Canada

“ The disparity between the population and the wealth of the two provinces is annually on the increase.
The progress of Upper Canada is something perfectly astonishing, and bids fair to rival, if not exceed, that of her gigantic neighbour. Her communication between the Lake district and the Atlantic is practically more economical, taking the whole of the year, and, as British emigration has tended chiefly to the Upper Province, the population is of a more homogeneous character than that of the States. The climate also is more favourable than that of Lower Canada. ”

“ In Upper Canada it was 104 per cent. from 1841 to 1851. Upper Canada exhibited in forty years nearly four times the increase of the United States in fifty years. Even the population of Lower Canada increased 90 per cent. from 1829 to 1854. In a table in the same work it appears that the Irish in Lower Canada were more than double the English and Scotch together, and that they equalled both in Upper Canada. The writer says:—
“The ‘World’s Progress,’ published by Putnam, of New York,—a reliable authority,—gives the population and increase of the principal cities in the United States. ”

“ Lower Canada, the basin of the St. Lawrence, was rightly included under the wider name of New France, for here France and the French were reproduced in weakness and in strength. It was a land well suited to the French character and physique. Much depended on tactful dealings with the North American Indians, a species of diplomacy in which Frenchmen excelled. The commercial value of Canada consisted mainly in the fur trade, an adventurous kind of traffic more attractive to the Frenchman of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than plodding agriculture or the life of a counting-house. ”

“ There are garden lands around most of the western cities, on which these cities of yesterday subsist and have arisen. And even in Lower Canada there are straths of wonderful fertility. Canada, with any government which will permit trade, cannot fail to become pecuniarily rich, even with the drawback of the towns of Lower Canada being rendered inland for half the year by means of ice. Lower Canada has been crippled by the policy of Cardinal Richelieu, who, by that policy, paradoxical as it may appear, was her first benefactor. ”

“ Canada remained for many years a land of struggling pioneers, who had little truck or trade with the world out of sight of their log shacks. The habitant on the seigneuries of Lower Canada continued to farm as his grandfather had farmed, finding his holding sufficient for his modest needs, even though divided into ever narrower ribbons as le bon Dieu sent more and yet more sons to share the heritage. The English-speaking settler, equipped with ax and sickle and flail, with spinning wheel and iron kettle, lived a life almost equally primitive and self-contained. ”

“ It is possible for anyone to live long in another part of Canada without getting much idea of the history, resources or characteristics of the “Provinces down by the Sea,” but it adds immensely to one’s interest and pride in the Dominion when one realizes that Quebec and Ontario—wealthy and important as they unquestionably are—are now only a part of Canada, and that for a comprehensive understanding of the country as a whole, there is needed at least some knowledge of the prairie provinces, and British Columbia to the west, and of the little old less restless Lower Provinces to the east. ”

“ Upper and Lower Canada, the English and French territories of the rebellion, are now known as the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, and with them are confederated New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, Manitoba, and the North-West Territories. The population of Canada has risen from about one million and a half in 1841 to five millions at the present day, and progress in commerce and wealth has been equally rapid. ”

“ It is true that a great many English settlers had arrived, and had settled upon different farms; but as the French settlers had already possession of all the best land in Lower Canada, these new settlers were obliged to go into or toward Upper Canada, where, although the land was better, the distance from Quebec and Montreal, and other populous parts, was much greater, and they were left almost wholly to their own resources, and almost without protection. ”

“ A victory won not a century ago gratified the animosities of the American colonies, and added to the countries ruled by the Sovereign of Great Britain a tract of territory thrice the size of his kingdom. From Labrador to the western limit of Lake Superior, a line drawn east and west within the boundaries of Canada, is 1600 miles long; but the breadth of the country from its Southern frontiers to the ill-defined boundary on the North, is but 225 miles. This vast region is divided into Upper and Lower Canada. ”

“ Of the population of Lower Canada, 669,000 are of French origin. These people speak the French language, and profess the Romish faith. The land is divided into seigneuries; there are feudal customs and antiquated privileges, and the laws are based upon the model of those of old France. The progress of Lower Canada is very tardy. ”

“ There was a beginning by men whose names are familiar to the Canadians. These were some of the pioneers of improvement, and some of them yet living have to combat the vulgar or interested reproach of being possessed with ideas of utopian schemes. But it is time to turn again to the baser things of Lower Canada. Lord Dalhousie, who had paid a visit to Nova Scotia, immediately after the prorogation of the parliament of Lower Canada, returned to Quebec in August. ”

“ In the progress of things towards this conclusion, the inhabitants of Upper Canada would imperceptibly be induced to form connections with their American neighbours, and, being unnaturally disjoined from Lower Canada, would seek to diminish the inconveniences arising by a more intimate intercourse with the adjoining states, leading inevitably to a union with that country. ”

“ To this view we have ventured to give very positive dissent, and have supported this position in another place with the following language: “In Canada are to be seen quite remote descendants of the most prominent people of Europe, the British and French, and, I am prepared to assert, with no marked signs of physical degeneration, the French of Lower Canada, even under many adverse circumstances, have fully maintained their ancient bodily vigor, and can compare favorably with the present inhabitants of old France, while their number has increased.” ”

“ It will thus be seen that in the cities of Canada, those in the Upper Section of the Province contribute less, in proportion to their population, than do those in the Lower Section; while in the rural parts, Upper Canada contributes a larger number for each 1,000 inhabitants than does Lower Canada. ”

“ Having said so much relative to the coloured people of Canada, we will say a word as to Canada itself:—the Province of Canada extends over an area of 242,500 square miles, or 240,000,000 acres, consequently one-third larger than France, and nearly three times larger than Great Britain and Ireland, the settled portion is about 40,000 square miles, the entire population in the Canadas exceeds 2,500,000. That part of Canada east of the Ottawa river is called Lower Canada, the inhabitants are chiefly French extraction, in this part of the colony, 160,000,000 acres ”

“ This was really the population of what was afterwards the province of Lower Canada, exclusive of Ontario and the Maritime Provinces which were the main scenes of Loyalist settlement. The overwhelming majority of the [239] population in the province of Quebec, as Canada, other than the Maritime Provinces, was styled prior to the Act of 1791, consisted of French Canadians, and the citizens of British birth were still comparatively few in number: but, as has been seen, the incoming of British citizens was actively in process under Haldimand’s administration ”

“ Lawrence, and throughout that portion of our possessions which is known as Lower Canada, are necessarily, from the improved condition and more numerous population of that province, on a larger scale and of better appointment; but in Upper Canada, where the traces of civilisation are less evident throughout, and become gradually more faint as we advance westward, the fortresses and harbours bear the same proportion In strength and extent to the scantiness of the population they are erected to protect. ”

“ In Upper Canada, a very small proportion (perhaps less than a tenth) of all the land thus granted, has been even occupied by settlers, much less reclaimed and cultivated. In Lower Canada, with the exception of a few townships bordering on the American frontier, which have been comparatively well settled, in despite of the proprietors, by American squatters, it may be said that nineteen-twentieths of these grants are still unsettled, and in a perfectly wild state. ”

“ In 1791, when the former province of Quebec was divided into the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, Upper Canada contained about ten thousand inhabitants, chiefly Loyalists, who, as noted elsewhere, when the United States threw off allegiance to Great Britain, sought new hope in the wilds of Canada ”

“ ABOUT five-sixths of the inhabitants of Lower Canada are of French extraction, the bulk of whom are peasants, living upon the lands of the seigniors. Amongst the English inhabitants devoted to agriculture, but few, however, are to be found occupying land under seigniors, not withstanding that several of the seigniories have fallen into the hands of Englishmen; the great majority of them hold the lands which they cultivate by virtue of certificates from the governor, and these people for the most part reside in the western parts of the province, bordering upon the upper parts of the river St. ”

“ Lawrence and the great lakes, but light was breaking into the limitless area beyond, and as men’s visions widened, there came more movement and more unrest.
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We have no regular census of the two Canadas between the year 1790, when there was an imperfect enumeration of the inhabitants of the then undivided province, and the years 1824-5; but in 1800 the Lieutenant-Governor estimated the population of Lower Canada at 160,000, while in 1806 an estimate of 250,000 is given from another source, the population of Upper Canada in the same year being estimated at 70,000. ”

“ For in Canada there were two civilised populations of nearly equal power, viewing each other with traditionary dislike and distrust: the French habitans of the Lower Province, strong in their connexion with the past, and the British settlers, whose energy and enterprise gave unmistakable promise of predominance in the future. ”

“ It has not been thought important to establish regular governments in all the provinces, so called. Such governments are established only in the Canadas, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, New Brunswick, Prince Edward's Island, and Newfoundland. The Canadas consist of Upper and Lower, or Canada West and Canada East, and embrace the principal amount of the population and productive resources of that whole northern world. ”

“ My parents were both from Scotland, but had been resident in Lower Canada some time before their marriage, which took place in Montreal; and in that city I spent most of my life. ”

“ B. Security of the Person The law has long recognized that the human body ought to be protected from interference by others. At common law, for example, any medical procedure carried out on a person without that person's consent is an assault. Only in emergency circumstances does the law allow others to make decisions of this nature. Similarly, art. 19 of the Civil Code of Lower Canada provides that "The human person is inviolable" and that "No person may cause harm to the person of another without his consent or without being authorized by law to do so". ”

“ The great English colony which stirs the pages of more than two centuries of history has for its capitals such proud and notable cities as Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, Halifax, and many others, to distinguish the progressive civilization of the region east of Lake Huron—the older provinces. But the Canada of the geographies of to-day is a land of greater area than the United States; it is, in fact, the "British America" of old. A great trans-Canadian railway has joined the ambitious province of the Pacific slope to the provinces of old Canada with stitches of steel across the Plains. ”

“ First were the Maritime Provinces, with western bounds touching the eastern bounds of Quebec, but in reality with the settlements of New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island separated from the settlements of Quebec by a thousand miles of untracked forest. Only the Ottawa River separated Quebec from Ontario, but one province was French, the other English, aliens to each other in religion, language, and customs. A thousand miles of rock-bound, winter-bound wastes lay between Ontario and the scattered settlement of Red River in Manitoba. ”

“ At one pole of society were a certain number of obedient human beings, planted out in rows; at the other were the wandering fur-traders, who knew no law and had no fixed dwelling-place. Excluding the officials from France, ill paid and intent on perquisites alone, and excluding French or Canadian merchants, the main constituents in the population of Canada were the seignior, the priest, the habitant, and the voyageur; of these four elements it would be hard to say which was farthest removed from citizenship, as it was understood in England and the English colonies. ”