Happy Canada Day – and a nod to the Loyalists who fled from the American Revolution  

When I was growing up, we occasionally heard that not everyone in the American colonies supported the Revolutionary War, but we never, ever, got a clue of how many opponents there were or how strongly they resisted. Sometimes it went past as “a third.”

Living where I do, facing the border of New Brunswick, Canada, has been an eye-opening experience on that front.

In fact, a premiere historian of their support of the Crown was Lorenzo Sabine, a prominent figure in early Eastport and a business partner, briefly, of two of the sons of the man who first presided in our house. We’ll look at him in a Tendrils next week.

Today, in observation of Canada Day, we’ll focus on the United Empire Loyalists who were expelled from the new United States to the south. Or, where I live, it’s also east.

1. An estimated 42,000 white settlers plus 3,500 free blacks and 2,000 enslaved blacks migrated to the remaining British North America holdings during and especially at the close of the Revolutionary War. They came from all 13 rebelling colonies, but principally from New York and New England. Many other expelled monarchists relocated to Florida, Britain, and the Caribbean.
2. They came from every social class but often after enduring the confiscation of their property and wealth. Some did manage to dismantle their houses and erect them anew in Canada, as I learned in a neighborhood of Castine, Maine.
3. Sir Guy Carleton – the 1st Lord Dorchester and governor of Quebec and governor general of the Canadas – created the identifying label to distinguish the English-speaking settlers from the descendants of New France inhabitants of the Province of Quebec, otherwise known as Canadians or Canadiens, possibly akin to Acadia.
4. Growth resulting from the arrival led to the creation of new colonies. In 1784, New Brunswick was partitioned from Nova Scotia to reflect significant new settlement around the Bay of Fundy. In 1791, the Province of Quebec divided into Lower Canada (present-day Quebec), and Upper Canada (present-day Ontario).
5. To encourage Loyalist resettlement, especially along the frontier of Upper Canada, the Crown awarded the new arrivals land grants of 200 acres a person. This added English speakers to the population and was followed by additional waves of immigration that established a predominantly Anglo-Canadian culture both west and east of the modern Quebec border.
6. Loyalists in Upper Canada petitioned the government to be allowed to use the British legal system, which they were accustomed to in the American colonies, rather than the French system. Great Britain had maintained the French legal system and allowed freedom of religion after taking over the former French colony with the defeat of France in what we call the French and Indian War but is more widely known as the Seven Years’ War. Thus, most Loyalists in the west could live under British laws and institutions while the predominantly ethnic French population of Lower Canada, who were still French-speaking, could maintain their familiar French civil law and Roman Catholic religion. (I’m assuming that the residents of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick already functioned under the British system.)
7. Thousands of Iroquois and other pro-British Indigenous peoples, expelled from New York and other states, resettled in Canada. One group established the Six Nations of the Grand River, the largest First Nations reserve in Canada.
8. In laying out St. Andrews, eight miles from my home in Maine, Loyalists named the north-south streets after the 13 children of King George III. The major east-west streets include one named for Queen Charlotte and another as the Prince of Wales. The county is also named for Her Highness.
9. Largely influenced by its Loyalist presence, Canada resisted U.S. overtures during the War of 1812 and successfully repulsed American invasion. From the Loyalist perspective, the War of 1812. Other parties viewed it as a mixed bag.
10. Many Canadians take pride in their Loyalist ancestry. As In 1898, Henry Coyne wrote in 1898, “The Loyalists, to a considerable extent, were the very cream of the population of the Thirteen Colonies. They represented in very large measure the learning, the piety, the gentle birth, the wealth and good citizenship of the British race in America, as well its devotion to law and order, British institutions, and the unity of the Empire. This was the leaven they brought to Canada, which has leavened the entire Dominion of this day.”

George Washington, we may note, did not view them so favorably. As he remarked in a 1776 letter, “One or two have done what a great number ought to have done long ago, committed suicide. By all accounts, there never existed a more miserable set of beings than these wretched creatures now are. Taught to believe that the power of Great Britain was superior to all opposition, and, if not, that foreign aid was at hand, they were even higher and more insulting in their opposition than the regulars.”

Now, for tonight’s fireworks from an island on the other side of the international border.