Social 6

• Britain's Thirteen Colonies


  Prosperous colonies south of the St. Lawrence River
• By 1765


  They were growing restless under British rule
• Reasons for restlessness


  • Could trade only with the home country
  • Had to pay high taxes on British imports
  • Wanted more control over their own affairs
• In 1774 after Britain passed the Québec Act


  The act gave the Ohio Valley to Québec, not the Thirteen Colonies
• The first shots of the War of Independence were fired


  April 1775
• The American rebels hoped the Canadiens would join their revolt
• American rebels' actions


  1. Captured Montréal

  2. Moved on to Québec City
• American rebel soldiers invaded Québec

  1775
• The Americans thought the Canadiens would see them as liberators as they were also oppressed under British rule
• The Americans faced fierce resistance
• The Americans attacked Québec City

  On the last day of 1775
• It was a disaster! There was a blinding snowstorm. The rebels got lost in Québec City's maze of narrow streets. They were easy targets for the British and Canadien defenders, who fired on them from the walls.
• The Americans called off their attack
• Loyalists who came to Québec

  • Spoke English
  • Came from colonies with British traditions and customs
• In Québec, the Canadiens formed the majority
• Loyalists


  Wanted to keep their British heritage
• To keep their British heritage


  1. Needed their own colony

  2. Needed their own institutions
• The Constitutional Act divided Québec in two

  1791
• Upper Canada (now southern Ontario)


  • Land west of the Ottawa River
• Lower Canada


  • Old colony of Québec, east of the Ottawa River
• Each colony had an elected assembly
• The citizens of Québec kept all the rights they had gained from the Québec Act in 1774, including French civil law
• This strategy allowed the French and English cultures and languages to co-exist
• It was an important step in building a bilingual country
• The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812


  December 1814
• Treaty of Ghent


  • Required both sides to return any territory they had gained
  • The two sides agreed to make the 49th parallel of latitude the political boundary from west of the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains
• The War of 1812 ended


  In a deadlock
• The Americans viewed the war as a triumph over Britain
• People of Upper and Lower Canada had the opposite view - they had stopped an American attack for a second time
• The First Nations could claim no victory
• About 15,000 First Nations allies died in the war, more than the British and American casualties combined
• The Americans refused to create a First Nations state, as Britain had proposed
• After the war, Britain was eager to open up the backwoods to farming
• Britain planned to fill its colonies with people from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland
• Between 1815 and 1850, more than 800 000 immigrants came to the ports of Halifax, Saint John, and Québec City
• The influx of immigrants is called

  The Great Migration
• Reasons why many people wanted to leave Britain to live in the colonies

  • Population growing rapidly, but jobs scarce
  • Farmers being forced off the land
  • Poverty and hunger common
  • Ireland suffered a terrible famine, forcing many rural people to flee
  • With peace, ocean travel was now safer
  • The colonies offered free land, new opportunities, and a chance for a better life
• Immigrants travelled from Britain to Canada by ship. It was a long journey that lasted for many weeks. For those with money, there were comfortable cabins. Most of the immigrants, though, were poor. They were crowded into the dark and filthy holds below deck, where diseases ran rampant.

  So many people died on these voyages that they called the boats “coffin ships.”

  Some of the immigrants stopped in the Maritime colonies. Most, however, continued up the St. Lawrence River to Québec City and Montréal. From there, most newcomers travelled by land to

  Upper Canada.
• Immigrants


  People who come to live permanently in a foreign country
• At first, about 30 000 immigrants arrived from Britain each year