Canada under British Imperial Control (1764-1867)
With the end of the Seven Years' War and the signing of the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763, France ceded almost all of its territory in mainland North America. The new British rulers left alone much of the religious, political and social culture of the French-speaking habitants, guaranteeing the right of the Canadiens to practice the Catholic faith and to the use of French civil law through the Quebec Act of 1774.
[edit]American Revolution and Loyalists, 1775-1790
During the American Revolution which erupted shortly afterwards, while there was some sympathy for the American cause among the Canadiens and the New Englanders in Nova Scotia, neither colony joined the rebels, although several hundred individuals joined the revolutionary cause. An attempt by the Continental Army in late 1775 to take Quebec from British control was defeated by Guy Carleton, with the assistance of local militias.
The defeat of the British army at Yorktown in Virginia in October, 1781 signalled the end of Britain's struggle to suppress the American Revolution. During the war, thousands of American 'Tories' who had joined regiments to fight for Britain or worked actively on behalf of the king fled patriot areas, usually heading to New York City. At war's end 80% or more of all Loyalists remained in the U.S. but about 48,000 moved to Canada, where they received lands and reimbursements for lost property from the British government. When the British evacuated New York City they took the refugees to Nova Scotia. Other Loyalists made their way to southwestern Quebec. So many Loyalists arrived on the shores of the St. John River that a separate colony--New Brunswick-- was created in 1784; followed in 1791 by the division of Quebec into the largely French-speaking Lower Canada along the St. Lawrence River and Gaspé Peninsula and an anglophone Loyalist Upper Canada, with its capital settled by 1796 in York, in present-day Toronto. The Loyalists included several thousand slaves and 'free Blacks' and a large part of the Iroquois nation.
The signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783 formally ended the war. Britain made several concessions at the expense of the North American colonies. Notably, the borders between Canada and the United States were officially declared. Land South of the Great Lakes, which was formerly a part of the Province of Quebec and included large parts of modern day Michigan, Illinois and Ohio, was ceded to the Americans. Fishing rights were also granted to the United States in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence and on the coast of Newfoundland and the Grand Banks.
War of 1812
Henri Julien's artistic rendition of the Battle of Chateauguay, part of the War of 1812
The War of 1812 was fought between the United States and the British with the British North American colonies being used as pawns. Heavily outgunned by the Royal Navy, the American war plans focused on an invasion of Canada (especially what is today western Ontario), hoping to use it as a negotiating pawn. The American frontier states voted for war in order to suppress the Indian raids that frustrated settlement frontier.
The War of 1812 ended with the Treaty of Ghent of 1814, and the Rush-Bagot agreement of 1817. Neither side saw any land gains or losses; the only people who really lost were the Natives who fought for the British and lost their lands in the United States. A demographic result was the shifting of American migration from Upper Canada to Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. After the war supporters of Britain tried to repress the republicanism that was common among American immigrants to Canada. The troubling memory of the war and the American invasions, however, etched itself into the consciousness of Canadians as distrust of the intentions of the United States towards the British presence in North America.