Ever heard of Louis-Joseph Papineau, the process of Confederation, or the seigneurial system of New France? Yeah, me either, until this year.
Canadian history is hard to wrap your head around quickly. Mainly, I think, because I don’t know even the basics. Drop a random century of English history on me and I can generally figure out who was ruling, what was going on with religion, medicine, trade, imperialism, and, importantly, hygiene.
Not so with Canada. It’s all brand new. I can’t believe I’m so ignorant. I mean, Canada is RIGHT THERE. RIGHT ON TOP OF US and I couldn’t even tell you the year of Confederation until I hunted it down. I didn’t even know it was called that. And I kept trying to look up “Canadian Presidents” and getting no where. I’ll assume you already know why there’s a problem with that. I am not proud of this.
It doesn’t help that I took TWO years of “French One” and never went on to “French Two.” I was a teenager and French was not much on my mind but my early years with the language left me leary of it and now that I need just to remember basic names and spellings and phrases I’m in the cold. (In college, I took Chinese and Spanish to make up for my French language failure.)
And I was not aware that so much of my family was, and is, Canadian. We call ourselves Dutch. We were probably German. And in either case that was, like, two hundred and fifty years ago. My line was Canadian for a long time before we came to the United States. I couldn’t say if it’s “some” or “a lot” of Schryers that came to the United States. I can tell you that all of my mother’s paternal great-grandparents were Canadian. I don’t think anyone of my generation in the U.S. realizes how very Canadian our family is. I was always careful about not saying “America” when I meant “United States” for politically correct reasons. Now I realize how ridiculous it makes you sound to do so.
So, a short history lesson:
Papineau was a charismatic politician of Lower Canada in the early 19th century. When the Rebellion of 1837 that he helped to foment broke out, he fled to the U.S. The rebellion centered around British control. Later, Papineau was pardoned by the British and returned to Canada. He retained some political influence. There’s a lot more to it, obviously, but I’m not there yet. I’ve read one book and it wasn’t entirely clear. I can also tell you Papineau had a town named after him where my family lived for several generations. The economy centered around the lumber and timber industries. One of my ancestors was named in a letter to him. Maybe he was a foreman or something.
In 1867, Canada united for a number of reasons. A few of them included:
1. The British, low-key Confederate sympathizers, were a threat to the Union and President Lincoln threatened to fight it out with them on Canadian soil. There was at least one incident where Canada actively supported a Confederate force (it was in Vermont). Britain had sent 14,000 troops to North America during the war and it was apparently these troops that Lincoln was going to fight in Canada. I’m not sure about that whole business. Again, I have two more books that will help me.
2. The U.S., again over the Civil War, was threatening to end a free trade agreement that Canada was dependent on and so Canada needed to depend on itself.
3. Rail made it possible to unite Canada
4. The desire to create “Peace, Order and Good Government.”
The seigneurial system of New France was the way the French government split up land along the St. Lawrence river into long, narrow plots, retained ownership of the land, leased it to someone, usually a rich person, in New France, who then had tenants who improved the land. My family “owned” some land, too. Might have been under this system.
OK, Canadian readers, feel free to correct this. I don’t want to get it wrong.
Plum Librarian LLC 