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Most people assume the
answer is simple. Canada belonged to Britain, and no American president
wanted a war with the British Empire. But American armies invaded Canada
twice anyway, in 1775 and in 1812. A congressman brought in a bill
laying out how the British provinces would become American states, and a
senator argued that Britain owed more than two billion dollars. More
than 300 Montreal men signed an annexation manifesto, and 104 residents
of Victoria petitioned President Grant. The border came much closer to
vanishing than most of us learned, and the usual explanation tells only
part of why it held.
This documentary follows the story from the Quebec Act of 1774 and
Richard Montgomery's attack on the walls of Quebec on December 31, 1775,
to Bishop Briand, Benjamin Franklin's failed mission to Montreal, and
the Loyalists who founded New Brunswick. It covers the Caroline affair,
the Battle of the Windmill, the Oregon Treaty of 1846, the burning of
the Montreal parliament, the Annexation Manifesto of 1849, Lord Elgin's
Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, the St. Albans raid, the Fenian raids of
1866, and the British North America Act, given royal assent the day
before William Seward signed for Alaska. It follows John A. Macdonald,
the Victoria petition to Ulysses Grant, Charles Sumner's Alabama claims,
the Treaty of Washington of May 8, 1871, and the Geneva award of 15.5
million dollars, and ends with the Canadian Pacific Railway, Champ
Clark's North Pole speech, and the reciprocity election of 1911.
The story includes its human cost. Many Black Loyalists never received
the land they were promised. Of some 15,000 Chinese railway workers, at
least 600 lost their lives on the job, and Ottawa imposed a head tax on
Chinese immigrants in 1885. On the prairies, Ottawa withheld rations
from hungry First Nations to force them onto the reserves it chose. In
1885 Louis Riel was hanged, and eight Cree and Assiniboine men convicted
of murder for killings during the rising were hanged at Battleford.
You can view this video on YouTube |
