In this episode of Creation of Canada, we look at the years 1818-1846. There's a lot going on in this episode, but it doesn't really form a comprehensive overview of one specific topic like the previous episodes did, so this episode does jump around a lot. In terms of review, it's actually going to be one of the shorter episodes, and the reason is because this is one of my favourite episodes when it comes to summarizing each of these individual topics in a way that doesn't require much more than a quick summary.
00:02:00.200But yeah, tonight we're going to get into the years 1818 to 1846.
00:02:06.680And this episode is one that jumps around quite a bit.
00:02:12.260There's a lot of different things that are all important in their own right, but it doesn't really form a comprehensive kind of cohesive overview of one specific topic like the previous episodes did more so.
00:02:28.580You know, there's a lot of focus on the geography of Canada, the exploration of the Pacific Northwest through the Northwest Company, the pursuit of establishing fixed borders with the United States.
00:02:45.160You know, the industrialization of upper and lower Canada, the shift away from the fur trade as being the dominant economic driver of Montreal.
00:02:57.040There's a lot going on in this episode, as well as the 1837, 1838 rebellions, which are kind of lumped in here.
00:03:06.500So this episode does jump around quite a bit.
00:03:10.220In terms of review, it's actually going to be one of the shorter episodes.
00:03:15.360And the reason is because this this is one of the actual better episodes when it comes to just summarizing each of these individual topics in a way that like not really, you know, much needs to be added unless you want to do a real deep dive into each one of these topics, which is not really, you know, the purpose of this production.
00:03:35.940So, yeah, we'll go over it, we'll have more time maybe to chat at the end of this one and we'll get into, you know, one of the more fascinating elements that maybe you want to pay attention to in this episode.
00:03:52.880If I could draw your attention to one specific topic is the Northwest Company.
00:03:58.020Now, obviously, most Canadians know about the Hudson's Bay Company.
00:04:02.220I would be kind of shocked if you were, you know, a non-paper Canadian who had never heard of the Hudson's Bay Company for obvious reasons and that you didn't know, you know, the gist of what the Hudson's Bay Company was and why it's relevant in Canadian history.
00:04:18.940Far fewer people know of the Northwest Company, which arguably is equally, you know, important in Canadian history as it actually drove a lot of the exploration of Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest in general.
00:04:36.340So, you know, we'll get into some key figures in that tonight.
00:04:41.580But, yeah, you know, pay attention to that particular aspect because it is fascinating, the story of the Northwest Company and the men who took part in it.
00:04:52.760So, without further ado, let's play episode four of Creation of Canada.
00:04:58.080It runs about 58 minutes, so I'll see you guys in about an hour.
00:06:05.340year was 1815. The mood in Canada was uneasy. In the preceding 40 years, the country had twice been
00:06:14.220invaded by the United States, and there was no reason to believe that there wouldn't be other
00:06:18.860invasions in the years to come. The first of the two attacks had come in 1775, when the American
00:06:27.300Revolution attempted to include Canada in its revolt against Britain. But the Americans failed
00:06:33.580in Canada, and the 13 colonies went on to form their new country without a 14th colony to the north.
00:06:41.360Now there were two nations on the map, with what appeared to be a clear-cut boundary as far west as
00:06:47.800the Mississippi. But the west, the Ohio-Mississippi Triangle, remained a source of friction. The Indians
00:06:57.560there, friendly to Britain, were hostile to American settlers. And in Washington, the war hawks insisted
00:07:04.800that the only way to put an end to the trouble was to drive the British out of Canada. They wanted to
00:07:10.900annex the country to the north once and for all. And there were other grievances against Britain that
00:07:16.580gave them the excuse. So there was another assault on Canada, beginning in 1812. But once again,
00:07:24.420after three dreary years of war, the Americans failed. Now, Canada's hopes for favorable boundary
00:07:32.200revisions in Maine, at Niagara, and in the west could flicker again. But soon it was the American
00:07:41.040war hawks who were doing the celebrating.
00:07:50.280The trumpets of victory might well echo in America, even though no territory had been won in
00:07:56.960the war. For at the peace talks, the British were compliant. And the leader of the war hawks,
00:08:03.760Henry Clay, could note with satisfaction how easily Britain agreed to the pre-war boundary,
00:08:09.280rather than presser advantage on Canada's behalf. For Clay, this was victory.
00:08:18.940The long struggle for the Ohio-Mississippi Triangle was over. Canada could forget her old dream of
00:08:26.200keeping the area tied to the St. Lawrence fur trading empire. For the United States, the road to the
00:08:32.680west was open. Now, in the post-war period, each country could get on with the grand task of
00:08:39.280occupying its share of the interior. In this enterprise, the United States had a tremendous
00:08:46.120advantage. For the great mid-continental barrier, the Laurentian shield hardly touched its territory.
00:08:53.380From the Appalachians westward, there was arable land all the way to the Rockies.
00:08:58.560The Indians were still strong here. But east of the Mississippi, the Americans were now in
00:09:09.400control. Places like Fort Wayne were jumping off points for the realization of Henry Clay's
00:09:16.040American system, a vision in which eastern agricultural skills would create a prosperous west to provide food and
00:09:24.700markets for an industrial east. Good communications were essential for the plan, and roads were
00:09:31.540extended westward. And at inns along the roads, future settlers showed optimism and high spirits.
00:09:39.380settlers from the eastern cities and farms, from every walk of life, rich and poor, educated and
00:09:57.640illiterate, all were lured on by the great American dream of making a fresh start that would lead to
00:10:04.940prosperity. And so a new and settled world arose in the old regions that Canada had coveted, with sights
00:10:12.940for fast-growing towns of tremendous potential, like Chicago, New Harmony, Indiana, Detroit, long a British
00:10:26.220outpost. Pittsburgh, on the much-contested Ohio.
00:10:34.220In the unfolding drama of continental development, Canada cut a far less impressive figure than her
00:10:40.380neighbor. For one thing, she had only one-sixteenth the population of the U.S., strung out along the shores of
00:10:48.220the St. Lawrence and Lower Lakes. Her metropolis, Montreal, was a modest town with an uncertain economic future.
00:10:56.220Far smaller still was Upper Canada's capital, York. Another Canadian disadvantage was the Laurentian Shield, an immense low plateau of rock that hindered westward expansion.
00:11:10.220Had it not been there, Canada too would have had an open door to the Rockies. But there it was, remorselessly blocking the road. Yet there was an area that did escape the shield, an area bordering the waters from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron. And here there was growth.
00:11:28.220Over the next two decades, these limited but fertile lands attracted many settlers, in both Upper and Lower Canada. And the country grew substantially.
00:11:46.220But soon enough, the limits were in sight. As in the United States, the homesteaders turned their eyes to the west, though here they saw only the forbidding face of the shield.
00:11:59.220A thousand miles of rock, muskeg, lakes and rivers, before a Canadian could find open land, where the Indian hunters still reign supreme.
00:12:11.220It's perhaps difficult for some Americans, or even some present-day Canadians, to grasp clearly just how much of a disadvantage the Laurentian Shield was during the 19th century's great advance into the interior of the continent.
00:12:35.220Let's look again at just what it did to Canada.
00:12:39.220The existence of the shield eliminated the possibility of agriculture in the whole area parallel to the rich sweep of American states from Indiana to Minnesota.
00:12:50.220Thus there could be no equivalent Midwest for Canada.
00:12:55.220So for almost half a century after Upper Canada was settled, the only Midwest for Canadians was in the United States.
00:13:04.220Yet the harsh and forbidding shield was not useless.
00:13:08.220Even though it was an impenetrable barrier to the settler, it was for others a familiar home with a unique and well-mastered way of life.
00:13:19.220The ragged forests that managed to flourish on the shallow soils of the shield were happy hunting ground for the Indians.
00:13:33.220And the prizes they pursued had valuable furs, like the sleek shimmering otter, the luxurious mink, the wolverine, and above all, the beaver, whose pelt had done so much to build up the trade of Quebec and Montreal.
00:13:50.220Angrily, the fur merchants of Montreal had watched their operations diminish south of the Great Lakes as the United States consolidated its hold.
00:14:03.220But taking perseverance as their motto, they had created the Northwest Company in the very year the American Revolution had ended.
00:14:13.220They would trade in other areas, these determined entrepreneurs, who were mostly Scotsmen, with names like Fraser and McTavish, McGillivray and Mackenzie.
00:14:23.220Working for the Scottish traders were French-Canadian voyageurs and coureurs de bois, left behind from the great days of New France.
00:14:35.220Hardy professionals, all of them, they once again plied their trade through the wilderness, this time in the service of English-speaking merchants, who sent them forth from Montreal.
00:14:46.220And so, American expansion helped bring about intensified activity on the old French fur trade routes in the north and west.
00:15:02.220Starting out from Lachine, near Montreal, the voyageurs headed west in their big canoes, their paddles keeping time to the old French songs.
00:15:14.220The traditional first destination of the voyageurs from Montreal had usually been Grand Portage, which had been British until 1783.
00:15:43.220This depot on Lake Superior was the best gateway to the northwest.
00:15:49.220After 1783, Grand Portage and the surrounding area had become American.
00:15:55.220But there was so little American presence there that the Canadian fur traders were able to ignore the boundary and still use Grand Portage as the jumping off point to their ultimate destination.
00:16:07.220It was one of several posts that were illegally occupied by Britain.
00:16:14.220But in 1794, these forts were abandoned under Jay's Treaty.
00:16:19.220Now Grand Portage was no longer available to the fur men from Montreal.
00:16:25.220And so, a new base had to be created on British soil, Fort William.
00:16:30.220With furs from the south increasingly denied to Canadian traders, the future would lie north and west of Fort William.
00:16:38.220And the voyageurs struck out on arduous journeys a thousand miles into the interior over hazardous routes.
00:16:46.220These were dangerous byways, but the urge for profit was strong.
00:17:16.220Besides being traitors, the men of the Northwest Company were explorers, for the British government had promised them a monopoly in the area if they discovered a river route to the Pacific.
00:17:27.220And so it was that the first crossing of the Rockies, after one of the most incredible journeys ever recorded, was achieved by a young Nor'wester, Alexander Mackenzie, who became the first man to cross the continent overland ten years before his closest American rival.
00:17:46.220And after gazing out on the waters of the Pacific, Mackenzie proudly recorded his feet for all to see.
00:18:00.220After 1783, all the powers established on the North American continent were pressing their claims on the fabulous Central Pacific coast.
00:18:09.220Russia, Britain, and Spain, all had ambitions here.
00:18:13.220And soon there was a tangle of conflicting bases, established by men who came by sea rather than by land.
00:18:21.220The flag of Imperial Russia already flew over settlements in Alaska, like Kodiak, a new Archangel.
00:18:28.220And from here, the Russians, avid for furs, sailed south to establish a toehold in Northern California.
00:18:39.220Britain, responding to the Russian challenge, sent Captain James Cook to the disputed area.
00:18:46.220And in 1778, he visited Knutka Sound on Vancouver Island to assert Britain's title and discuss trading possibilities with the Indians.
00:18:56.220Imperial Spain, though declining in power, was roused by these actions to make provocative claims to the whole Northwest coast.
00:19:09.220And in 1789, these led to a dangerous clash with British traders at Knutka.
00:19:15.220But the threat of war made the Spanish back down.
00:19:18.220A few years later, Captain George Vancouver strengthened Britain's position by making the first thorough survey of the coast.
00:19:30.220And in 1808, Simon Fraser found a river to the Pacific, soon after the discovery of the headwaters of the Columbia by David Thompson.
00:19:39.220Like the French before them, the Norwesters were driven westward by Hudson's Bay Company competition to the north and fears of American advances to the south.
00:19:54.220But when the mouth of the Columbia was reached by David Thompson, he was too late.
00:20:00.220There was already a fort there with the American flag flying over it.
00:22:35.220The Ohio-Mississippi Triangle would never again be part of the historic Canadian fur trade.
00:22:41.220And strategic Mishla Mackinac, captured by Canadians during the war, was now returned.
00:22:47.220Never again would it serve Canadian enterprise.
00:22:54.220The building of Fort Snelling in Minnesota symbolized the end of the old order.
00:23:00.220For the purpose of this installation was to supervise the Indians.
00:23:05.220And this meant, in effect, their expulsion westward, out of the way of the settlers.
00:23:10.220Thus, the unhappy Indians, under the stern eye of the United States Army, would take leave of their Canadian fur trader friends.
00:23:20.220It was the end of a partnership that went back two centuries.
00:23:24.220A partnership of mutual profit and respect.
00:23:27.220Faced with these losses, the men of the Northwest Company of Montreal were forced to develop to the utmost their alternative sources of furs.
00:23:41.220For many years, their canoes had gone west over long and hazardous routes that stretched all the way to the Pacific.
00:23:50.220They traversed an empire even greater than that which had been lost to the south.
00:23:54.220Now, with almost desperate energy, the Norwesters struggled to hold this empire together and exploit it as never before.
00:24:03.220But back in Montreal, the Northwest Company was in financial trouble.
00:24:13.220And Edward Ellis, the director, was given the job of finding a solution.
00:24:17.220One of the main problems he had to consider was the fierce competition offered by the long-established Hudson's Bay Company.
00:24:25.220Rivalry sometimes erupted into violence with raids, thievery, and bloodshed.
00:24:31.220The rivers leading to Hudson Bay, Ellis realized, made for a short, cheap route to Europe.
00:24:42.220By contrast, the Northwest Company's furs had to come out by a long and expensive route.
00:24:48.220So Edward Ellis was forced to the conclusion that there was no future for the Norwesters unless they merged with the Hudson's Bay Company.
00:25:01.220For Ellis and the directors of the Northwest Company, it was salvation.
00:25:06.220But for Montreal, it seemed a serious blow.
00:25:15.220Montreal had been largely built on the fur trade.
00:25:18.220And now, in the words of William McGillivray, the fur trade is forever lost to Canada.
00:25:24.220McGillivray was in a position to know, for he was a leading member of the Northwest Company.
00:25:30.220Now it was the Hudson's Bay Company, which was British, not Canadian, that would dominate the trade and rule the West, thanks to its short route to Europe.
00:25:42.220But it will never be forgotten, for it was the first Canadian organization to span the continent.
00:25:50.220It had staked the limits and traced the links for the transcontinental nation that was to come.
00:25:55.220But in 1821, in Montreal, this could not be foreseen, for the economic picture was troubled.
00:26:03.220In Montreal that winter, the business community had once again been reminded of the hazards of being on a map that was constantly being changed by politics and war.
00:26:18.220During the past 60 years, the city's area of economic influence had fluctuated widely, thanks to edicts from London and conflict with the United States.
00:26:31.220Ambitions in the Ohio, Mississippi region had been shattered by the War of 1812.
00:26:36.220And now Hudson Bay was draining away the very lifeblood of Montreal.
00:26:43.220For Montreal's merchants, the division of Canada into two provinces had made things even more difficult.
00:26:51.220The new boundary had cut them off from English-speaking Upper Canada.
00:26:56.220And now they were a political minority, these canny Scots and these well-educated Englishmen who controlled Montreal's commerce.
00:27:04.220They were vastly outnumbered in Lower Canada by the French-Canadians, now half a million strong.
00:27:11.220A people whose slow-paced life along the banks of the St. Lawrence held little appeal for the English.
00:27:21.220The French-Canadian habitants were small-scale producers whose economic outlook knew little of the complex world of credit and capital.
00:27:29.220They were true conservatives, with the modest goal of gradually increasing the yield of their land to keep pace with their increasing numbers.
00:27:43.220Moreover, their church fostered a moral restraint that tended to discourage the accumulation of wealth beyond immediate needs.
00:27:51.220And the French-Canadians looked to the church for their strategy of survival as a people.
00:27:56.220In Montreal Harbor, the winter ice symbolized the discontent of the English.
00:28:09.220But their hopes lay in this same river, which when free of ice, might be turned into an incomparable highway for the commerce of a continent.
00:28:18.220From the sea, past Quebec, it could bring great argosies with the goods of many nations.
00:28:25.220Past Quebec, past Montreal, and on through the lakes.
00:28:30.220Past the growing towns of Upper Canada, and on toward the new American West, which was fast being settled, and which would need an outlet for its produce.
00:28:39.220The American West might be closed to exploitation by Canadian fur traders.
00:28:50.220But could it not still be part of the commercial system of the St. Lawrence?
00:28:54.220Surely the river was the best link between inland American markets and British markets.
00:28:59.220And surely Montreal's halfway position could make it an indispensable middleman.
00:29:07.220From the growing American Midwest would flow staple exports like lumber, wheat, and flour.
00:29:14.220These would come to Montreal, where they would be reloaded into larger ships and move on down the river and across to England.
00:29:22.220In return, from industrial England would come a flow of manufactured goods, again trans-shipped at Montreal to ports on the Great Lakes.
00:29:33.220Montreal would be the entrepot, the depot for the distribution centers of the American West.
00:29:40.220It was a continental vision, embracing both the United States and the new communities emerging from the Canadian forests.
00:29:47.220They were coming now, from England and Scotland, in a modest but steady flow.
00:29:58.220They often seemed out of place, making tea in the wilderness as they struggled to turn the land into home.
00:30:06.220But they persisted, arduously clearing the limited but fertile land of Upper Canada.
00:30:12.220Gradually, a pattern of settled life was spreading across parts of Canada that had once been empty.
00:30:26.220They transformed the land with weirs and spillways, taming it as the fur traders before them had never done.
00:30:33.220They built water wheels and sluices and, greatest glory of all, grist mills.
00:30:41.220For these people soon had products to sell, like potash, grain, and flour.
00:30:46.220And thanks to its durability, there was a growing demand in Britain for Canadian lumber.
00:30:56.220But as for her ambitions to exploit the St. Lawrence route, Canada soon found that the international boundary was a troublesome obstacle.
00:31:04.220Canada had hoped that American goods transshipped at Montreal would be considered Canadian, and would benefit from tariff preferences granted by Britain to her colonies.
00:31:16.220But in London, Parliament was unwilling to give Americans Canadian privileges, and Britain refused to go along with the schemes of the Montreal merchants.
00:31:25.220So the grand design for a trade route would have to be based solely on the natural advantages of the St. Lawrence.
00:31:36.220From the churning rapids above Montreal to the awesome plunge at Niagara, the St. Lawrence Great Lakes system offered splendid scenery for the traveler, but costly hindrances to navigation, involving laborious detours by road.
00:31:59.220Canadians had long known that canals were the only answer, a small one having been dug as early as 1781.
00:32:08.220Now the need was for more canals, and larger ones.
00:32:12.220So in the 1820s, a series of canals was begun above Montreal.
00:32:21.220And the year 1829 saw the enthusiastic opening of the Welland Canal, creating a smooth bypass around the mighty cataract at Niagara.
00:32:30.220Surely the great waterway would now see the fulfillment of Montreal's dreams, with goods from Manchester and Birmingham moving inland to Montreal and beyond, to the American interior.
00:32:44.220On the way, they would pass American exports heading for Montreal en route to the Atlantic Ocean and markets overseas.
00:32:51.220But the Americans were also interested in navigation, and they too had something to cheer about.
00:33:04.220Yankee Enterprise and Energy had started building the Erie Canal in 1817.
00:33:09.220And eight years later, at the ceremony that opened it, Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York symbolically poured five gallons of Lake Erie into New York's harbor.
00:33:22.220The Great Lakes had been linked with a great port on the Atlantic.
00:33:26.220Here was easy access to the American West for goods brought by ships of all nations.
00:33:32.220The Erie Canal started at Buffalo and cut across to Albany.
00:33:40.220From here to New York was an easy trip down the Hudson River.
00:33:44.220Thus the Hudson, historic rival of the St. Lawrence, captured the lively new trade with the Midwest.
00:33:50.22082 locks were needed to raise the barges almost 600 feet between Albany and Buffalo.
00:34:02.220The Erie Canal was 373 miles long, but only four feet deep in most places.
00:34:09.220It was destined to touch off an agricultural boom in the American West, and it was the principal route for emigrants heading there.
00:34:16.220The New Canal was a tremendous success, and its great beneficiary was the year-round ice-free port of New York.
00:34:32.220Now New York's wars were crowded with a substantial part of the cargoes that Canadians had confidently expected to attract to the docks of Montreal.
00:34:41.220The Erie Canal was a great blow to the Montreal merchants, and they had to plan strategy against it.
00:34:56.220But their planning was complicated by growing political conflict between the English and the French in Lower Canada.
00:35:02.220The English wanted to impose taxes for public works, like improvements to canals, but the French, with little stake in commerce, were opposed to heavy taxes that would, they said, only benefit the English, and the French were in the majority.
00:35:18.220The Montreal merchants, convinced that they alone represented progress, tried hard to get the British administration to ignore the French majority.
00:35:29.220They had felt justified in this ever since 1822, when the British refused to unite Upper and Lower Canada.
00:35:35.220In this united colony, the English would have been the majority, and the Montreal merchants would have had the support of their compatriots in what is now Ontario.
00:35:49.220It was in Upper Canada that the great defense against American invasion had been conducted in the War of 1812.
00:35:59.220The monuments commemorating this war symbolized the triumph of the loyalist, Tory outlook, a system that rested on military power and the British imperial connection.
00:36:09.220The self-righteousness of this system was reflected in the faces of its leaders, an oligarchy that came to be known as the Family Compact.
00:36:20.220For these men, the epitome of evil was the popular democracy of the United States.
00:36:27.220For America, the serpent had raised the hideous banner of armed rebellion, and the indignities that the Tory loyalists had suffered in the American Revolution still rankled in the memories of the rulers of Upper Canada.
00:36:44.220The American rattlesnake was implacably hostile to everything British in North America.
00:36:56.220It had tried to strangle Canada twice. Surely there might be a third attempt.
00:37:01.220The building of the Rideau Canal in Upper Canada was one manifestation of the fear left behind by the Americans.
00:37:15.220It was built at loyalist urging and with British funds, and the elaborate engineering involved meant costs that were astronomical by the standards of the day.
00:37:24.220And its main purpose was defense against the United States.
00:37:35.220Essentially, the Rideau Canal was meant to provide a route from Lake Ontario to the Ottawa River, and then to Montreal,
00:37:43.220so that ships could avoid the dangerous American border along the St. Lawrence in the event of war.
00:37:48.220In the 1820s and 1830s, immigration to Upper Canada from Scotland and England was encouraged, rather than immigration from the United States.
00:38:03.220These British settlers, it was felt, would make far less trouble for the authorities than would Yankee Democrats,
00:38:09.220like those who had come to Canada in earlier decades.
00:38:13.220Yet this frontier, in many ways, resembled the larger American frontier, and it bred the same individualism and independence.
00:38:23.220And the desire for democracy found energetic leaders in men like William Lyon Mackenzie and Marshall Spring Bidwell.
00:38:31.220In Washington, Canada's radicals saw not a devil, but a hero in President Andrew Jackson, champion of the people in the struggle against the dragons of high finance and privilege.
00:38:47.220While President Jackson battled the bankers, his Canadian admirers like Marshall Bidwell had dragons of their own to denounce.
00:39:03.220They hinted openly that American institutions would best promote reform of the corrupt ruling class.
00:39:10.220Even Louis-Joseph Papineau, the brilliant French-Canadian radical, came to praise American republicanism as a remedy for the grievances of his people.
00:39:25.220The Habitat of Lower Canada, he said, would be better off joining the United States than living under continued British misrule.
00:39:33.220But loyalism, as personified by Sir Francis Bond Head, Governor of Upper Canada, knew that its privileges could not survive under democratic rule.
00:39:46.220And it tried to discredit all efforts at reform.
00:39:49.220Ruthlessly, loyalist propaganda sought to brand any admiration for American ideas as disloyal and lawless.
00:40:06.220This at a time when for many Canadians, democracy was still a dirty word.
00:40:12.220With this propaganda, the Tories prevailed, and there was no reform.
00:40:22.220For William Lyon McKenzie, there was now no choice but rebellion.
00:40:27.220And in 1837, his badly organized men faced loyalist forces at Montgomery's Tavern.
00:40:34.220But they were defeated after a few volleys.
00:40:37.220But in Lower Canada, the rebellion was more substantial.
00:40:40.220Here, ill-armed but courageous Habitat fought pitched battles against well-trained regulars.
00:40:55.220Prisoners taken by the authorities faced an ugly mood as the oligarchy called for vengeance.
00:41:01.220Ten of the rebels were executed, and 58 were exiled to remote Australia.
00:41:06.220The forces of privilege were safe for the moment, but only through hateful military oppression.
00:41:18.220In Upper Canada, rebels pursued by Tory vengeance squads fled across icy Lake Ontario to the United States, cheered on by American admirers waiting on the shore.
00:41:30.220And in border towns from Vermont to Michigan, the rebels denounced British oppression in Canada in terms that seemed to echo the spirit of 1776.
00:41:42.220Aroused by this, many Americans were eager to join McKenzie's army of liberation, which was savagely caricatured by the nervous Tories.
00:41:55.220In Upper Canada, a big price on McKenzie's head reminded him of the gallows that awaited, but he compounded his sedition by proclaiming a Canadian Republic on a little island in the Niagara River.
00:42:09.220For about a month, McKenzie and his followers defied the authorities by occupying Navy Island.
00:42:16.220But the rebels on Navy Island could not survive without supplies, and these had to come from the American side of the river.
00:42:30.220So, on a dark night, early in 1838, the Canadian authorities decided to cut the supply line and send a small iron force out onto the river.
00:42:40.220They found McKenzie's supply ship, the Caroline, in American waters, but they boarded her anyway, overwhelmed her crew, sent her afire and adrift toward the Great Falls at Niagara.
00:42:55.220It had been a brief but fateful invasion of the United States.
00:43:14.220American border towns blazed with indignation, and at Cleveland, there was a convention of a militant organization called the Hunters' Lodges,
00:43:23.220which sought revenge for the Canadian invasion and the final elimination of British rule in North America.
00:43:30.220The Hunters' Lodges claimed 50,000 members from Maine to Wisconsin.
00:43:35.220At their Cleveland convention, they proclaimed a Republic of Canada and laid plans for an army of invasion.
00:43:41.220At Prescott, on Lake Ontario, the Hunters' Lodges struck their most ambitious blow.
00:43:53.220A thousand of these Crusaders managed to land there and occupy a windmill.
00:43:58.220But after a siege of five days, the invaders were forced to surrender to British troops.
00:44:03.220There were other attacks at border points, but they were small and easily repelled.
00:44:14.220In Canada, however, there was alarm that these skirmishes might grow into full-scale war.
00:44:20.220But in Washington, the most influential expansionist forces were at that moment interested not in Canada, but in Texas and California.
00:44:35.220With American energies needed there, it was time to restrain the hotheads on the Canadian border.
00:44:41.220And General Winfield Scott was given this job.
00:44:49.220But whiskey helped warm up the situation again when Alexander McLeod, a Canadian spy,
00:44:56.220boozily boasted that it was he who had led the raid on the Caroline, McKenzie's ill-fated supply ship.
00:45:02.220McLeod committed this indiscretion in a tavern on the American side of the border, where he was promptly arrested for the murder of a sailor aboard the ship.
00:45:13.220So passionate were feelings in New York State that McLeod had to be protected from would-be lynchers as he awaited trial.
00:45:20.220From the British lion came a roar of rage over the McLeod affair, reflecting Lord Palmerston's imperialist mood as foreign minister.
00:45:34.220There followed a long and fierce diplomatic uproar with the Caroline in the background,
00:45:40.220as congressmen called for vengeance and the old devil of Anglo-American distrust fanned the flames.
00:45:46.220The destruction of the Caroline was now furiously defended by the British.
00:45:55.220While in Washington, it was seen as an act of aggression.
00:45:59.220But Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, was a restraining influence.
00:46:04.220And in Britain, the young Queen Victoria, with her husband Albert, also exercised a subtle influence for moderation.
00:46:11.220Lord Aberdeen replaced the belligerent Palmerston, and the crisis passed when the troublesome Mr. McLeod was acquitted and sent home.
00:46:20.220The three years following the rebellion in Canada had seen a dangerous deterioration in relations between Britain and the United States.
00:46:34.220In the reawakening of old hatreds, Englishmen again saw the Americans as boors and blasterers.
00:46:43.220And the Americans again saw the English as imperialist reactionaries and bullies.
00:46:48.220Yet those who opposed war managed to prevail.
00:46:51.220It was even whispered that McLeod's acquittal involved collusion by Washington in the mysterious disappearance of key witnesses.
00:47:00.220Clearly, there were powerful forces at work on both sides that didn't take war lightly.
00:47:05.220But before Canada could breathe more easily, the threat of war flared once again, this time over territory at the borderline.
00:47:20.220By now, clearly marked boundary posts delineated most of the long frontier from Lake of the Woods to the Atlantic, as agreed upon after the American Revolution.
00:47:30.220But the boundary remained ill-defined between Maine and New Brunswick, with much dispute over vague geographical references in the peace treaty.
00:47:40.220This richly forested area had once been safely remote.
00:47:45.220But after 1830, it was increasingly invaded by lumbermen from both Maine and New Brunswick, all eager for profit.
00:47:53.220With both sides claiming authority, Americans were soon cutting timber in territory claimed by Canada and Canadians in territory claimed by the United States.
00:48:08.22012,000 square miles were at stake, with British claims cutting far south of the St. John River and American claims stretching up to within 20 miles of the St. Lawrence.
00:48:19.220Many efforts to settle the dispute failed, and now frontier violence loomed.
00:48:26.220In the winter of 1839, 50 amateur warriors from Maine ended up in a New Brunswick jail.
00:48:38.220They had been sent to drive Canadian lumbermen out of the Aroostook area, but instead they had been captured.
00:48:44.220As the tension grew, local leaders adopted unyielding positions, forcing their respective nations into a glowering and dangerous opposition.
00:48:54.220Lord Ashburton, assigned by London to negotiate a settlement, had no illusions that the ambitious claims of New Brunswick could ever be made palatable to the state of Maine.
00:49:07.220For the British saw Maine as a rambunctious Indian with an all-or-nothing attitude toward Britannia.
00:49:34.220New Brunswick was worried about this, and about Lord Ashburton's abilities.
00:49:38.220But Daniel Webster, negotiating for the United States, knew that the grandiose claims of the state of Maine could never be accepted by Britain.
00:49:50.220The answer lay in compromise, for Webster realized that Ashburton had at least to preserve the vital British military route from the Atlantic to the shores of the St. Lawrence.
00:50:03.220Otherwise, American guns would be very close to this vital waterway, for Maine's claim stretched far north.
00:50:09.220So Ashburton found his American counterpart to be eminently reasonable, although Maine saw Webster as a drunken nincompoop.
00:50:24.220In the end, a treaty gave Maine seven-twelfths of the disputed area, and New Brunswick five-twelfths, a decision that disappointed local people on both sides.
00:50:38.220The imperial lion had truly been asleep, in the person of Lord Ashburton, according to a disillusioned New Brunswick.
00:50:46.220But for Maine, the lion was a very clever cat indeed, and Daniel Webster was the dunce.
00:50:59.220Neither Webster nor Ashburton deserved the epithets that were directed at them.
00:51:04.220Actually, they had both acted in a reasonable and intelligent way.
00:51:09.220Modern historians feel that New Brunswick may have been lucky to get as much as it did, including a route for a future railway to lower Canada.
00:51:16.220As for Webster, the concessions he won included a redefinition of the border at Rouse's Point that put it in American territory.
00:51:26.220Here in northern New York, the Americans had built a fort which, thanks to a surveyor's mistake, was found to be a quarter of a mile inside Canada.
00:51:35.220Thus, rational self-interest and the courage to compromise won out over unreasoning belligerence.
00:51:42.220But soon there was another and even more dangerous threat, far to the West.
00:51:48.220Beyond the Rockies, a tangle of rival claims kept the boundary undefined long after other issues of the War of 1812 were settled.
00:52:00.220Here, the British wanted the Columbia River for the fur trade.
00:52:04.220But the United States had its eye on Puget Sound with its excellent harbors.
00:52:11.220This stalemate had produced an agreement for a condominium, joint occupation for ten years.
00:52:16.220But it was joint occupation in name only, for there were very few Americans in the Oregon country, while Canadians were as busy as ever with the fur trade.
00:52:32.220And the ambitious plans of Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, kept British commerce dominant.
00:52:39.220This lovely mountain empire seemed safe for the fur trade.
00:52:49.220There were no settlers to interfere, and only a few military outposts in the 1500 miles of Indian territory between Oregon and the Mississippi.
00:52:58.220But early in the 1830s, settlers did start to appear in the remote and spectacular Oregon country.
00:53:09.220They were led by missionaries of various faiths, who hoped to establish an earthly paradise here, and who were driven by mystical visions.
00:53:18.220The missionaries hoped to build up their utopias in an unspoiled land with the help of unspoiled Indians.
00:53:28.220But they were to face every kind of difficulty, including Indian indifference and hostility.
00:53:39.220Despite all the difficulties that faced them, the new missionary settlers fell in love with these rich and splendid lands.
00:53:46.220And it was not long before their glowing descriptions were attracting attention in the highest political circles in far-off Washington.
00:54:01.220At Fort Vancouver, the Hudson's Bay Company had its headquarters for fur trading in the Pacific Coast area.
00:54:07.220And the chief administrator here, Dr. John McLaughlin, was anything but pleased by the influx of settlers.
00:54:15.220It had been bad enough to see Astoria return to the Americans after the War of 1812.
00:54:21.220But now, settlement presented an even greater threat to the fur trade.
00:54:25.220Still, immigrants to Oregon got a grudging welcome from McLaughlin, even credit and supplies, for he believed this to be part of the price of joint British-American rule.
00:54:38.220But McLaughlin's cooperation was criticized by other Hudson's Bay officials, who argued that the company's traditional opposition to settlement should be maintained at any cost.
00:54:52.220However, there were others, like Sir George Simpson, governor of the company, who accepted McLaughlin's warning that any extreme course could bring violence from the Americans.
00:55:05.220In its new mood, even the company tried farming at Fort Vancouver, but without success, proving, perhaps, that the fur trade and settlement were forever incompatible.
00:55:24.220Soon, new waves of American settlers were on the move toward the Oregon country.
00:55:29.220A trickle became a river, and then a flood.
00:55:34.220They started out from the Mississippi and the Missouri, and driven by Oregon fever, they ignored promising lands along the way that would not be settled for another 50 years.
00:55:47.220By the mid-1840s, the first towns were starting to appear in Oregon.
00:55:52.220But just as McLaughlin had feared, the picturesque valleys of Oregon saw political unrest.
00:56:02.220As early as 1843, in the Willamette Valley, settlers met to debate their status under joint British-American rule.
00:56:10.220The settlers, almost all of them Americans, felt that the joint rule was far too British and unsympathetic, so they boldly decided to set up a provisional local government of their own.
00:56:28.220Meanwhile, in Washington, expansionists like Senator Thomas Hart Benton could now make a national issue of the Oregon question, and pose as champions of a Miss Oregon who was cruelly oppressed by Queen Victoria.
00:56:47.220A northern boundary on the map, at 54 degrees, 40 minutes of latitude.
00:57:06.220In 1844, this inflammatory slogan helped elect James Polk to the presidency of the United States.
00:57:19.220Now he had to take action on this issue that so aroused public opinion.
00:57:23.22054-40 took in about half of what is now British Columbia.
00:57:33.220But Polk instead made a more moderate demand, the 49th parallel.
00:57:38.220He confronted Britain with this solution.
00:57:41.220But when this was turned down by Queen Victoria's government in London, Polk reverted to the extremist line.
00:57:47.220Yankee Doodle Polk, it seemed to the British, thought he was taunting a benign, doddering Britannia with his warlike cries.
00:58:01.220But could he be sure that the lion wouldn't bite?
00:58:07.220Englishmen were confident of John Bull's strength.
00:58:11.220Polk was just an upstart and a bluffer.
00:58:14.220Men like Palmerston, who would rather bully than be bullied, were only too ready to fight.
00:58:23.220And so, another war seemed all too likely between the lion and the eagle.
00:58:33.220Suddenly, at the height of the crisis, there was compromise.
00:58:36.220But the US merely abandoned inflated ambitions for the whole area, while Britain gave up well-founded claims to the Columbia River Triangle.
00:58:47.220President Polk had been a good poker player.
00:58:50.220For in the end, he got what he had really wanted all along.
00:58:54.220A boundary from the Rockies to the ocean that followed the 49th parallel.
00:58:58.220But an important American concession gave all of Vancouver Island to the British.
00:59:05.220Thus, the Oregon country was finally divided.
00:59:09.220And with this agreement in 1846, the entire Canadian-American boundary was at last virtually defined.
00:59:16.220In Canada, the war scare had found military installations far too weak.
00:59:27.220Had war broken out, the country might well have been lost.
00:59:31.220And in Washington, too, there were good reasons to avoid war over Oregon.
00:59:38.220For there was trouble to the south, which had started a decade earlier,
00:59:43.220when American settlers in the Mexican province of Texas began battling with the Mexican authorities.
00:59:49.220Massacred at the Alamo, the Americans had found revenge under Sam Houston's leadership, defeating a Mexican army.
00:59:57.220The settlers had set up a Republic of Texas, which had later been annexed by the U.S.
01:00:04.220The hope of further expansion through war with Mexico had been on Polk's mind as he listened to cries for action in Oregon.
01:00:13.220The American Senate itself had seen bitter debate between 5440 expansionists and 49ers.
01:00:26.220But the expansionists in the Senate had not prevailed.
01:00:41.220And the threat of war receded as Polk managed to win support for the more moderate solution of the 49th parallel.
01:00:54.220Now Polk could turn to his real target, and the brash energies of Yankee imperialism could be fully devoted to snipping away at Mexico.
01:01:03.220And for John Bull, this diversion helped preserve for him a goodly share of the Oregon country.
01:01:14.220During the war scare, weary British troops had reinforced the remote outpost of Fort Gary in what is now Manitoba.
01:01:24.220This was the center of another vast realm ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company.
01:01:29.220And even though it was remote from American preoccupations, it too could someday be in danger.
01:01:36.220The 49th parallel now cut across an empty prairie.
01:01:41.220But could these boundary posts stop land-hungry American settlers if they ever headed north?
01:01:47.220Such fears were by no means unfounded.
01:01:54.220American expansionism was very real, as shown by the war underway in Mexico.
01:01:59.220The issue there was the desire for more land.
01:02:02.220And it seemed that American power, roused in support of American settlers, was not to be resisted.
01:02:08.220Since the war of 1812, moderation had prevailed.
01:02:13.220Otherwise, the Caroline affair, the dispute with Maine, and the Oregon crisis might have ended in war.
01:02:21.220But during the Oregon crisis, an American editorialist wrote of his country's manifest destiny to overspread the continent.
01:02:30.220The phrase caught on, and politicians took to using it.
01:02:34.220Was this a passing mood or a determination to occupy every part of a continent that was still three-quarters empty?
01:02:43.220The border with British North America had now been officially drawn.
01:02:48.220But could it survive the urge toward manifest destiny?
01:05:02.080So, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode.
01:05:06.140I actually really liked that episode, even though, like I said at the beginning, it kind of jumps around a lot.
01:05:12.280There's a lot of different topics that they get into and, you know, they kind of have to go through them quickly because there's so much to cover and, you know, this is a nine hour series total.
01:05:23.040So, you know, it was there's a lot, obviously, but I think they actually summarized it all pretty well, which is why, you know, as I was making my notes for this, I found I had less than I did on the previous ones.
01:05:36.860Despite the fact that they had more topics to go over, but we will get into some of it here.
01:05:43.300Before we do that, I'll do some of the the super chats here that came in early.
01:05:51.300I think there's there's only a couple.
01:05:53.740So I'll just get them out of the way now.
01:06:15.580He said, quote, shall we continue to be ruled by strangers who know not ours and care not for our welfare or shall we take our affairs into our own hands?
01:06:28.740And he says, William Lyon McKenzie is my second favorite Canadian after John A. MacDonald.
01:06:34.120Yeah, he is an interesting figure for sure.
01:06:37.420And he does get quite a lot of acknowledgement in Canadian history.
01:06:41.520I think there is a tendency to, especially among modern Canadians who are drifting towards American republicanism and championing the cause of annexation and stuff.
01:06:52.680There is a bit of a romanticism going on there where they try to make out like the 1837 rebellion in Upper Canada was a lot more than it was, frankly.
01:07:06.080There is a reason why it doesn't get into much detail in this episode.
01:07:10.900And it's because it culminates essentially with a bar fight with a few musket volleys at Montgomery's Tavern.
01:07:20.140I think there was two dozen to 30 men on, you know, William Lyon McKenzie's rebellion.
01:07:29.500And, you know, they basically sent the local garrison to just deal with it.
01:07:37.060And, you know, obviously it culminates with them, a lot of them fleeing, some of them being executed, some of them being sent to the Caribbean or to Australia.
01:07:46.780And then the ones that did flee and others who weren't there, obviously they regrouped at Navy Island and they held out for a month with some American support.
01:07:57.440As it, you know, it goes over that actually in a bit more detail in this episode.
01:08:00.900But we'll get into it for sure a little bit more.
01:08:04.400I'll kind of give my thoughts on it because, you know, McKenzie was correct.
01:08:08.120His assessment, this is so common in history.
01:08:11.020His assessment of the problem was correct.
01:08:13.740His reaction and his solution to the problem, especially in the context of Loyalist Canada, was entirely wrong.
01:08:37.480Obviously, they mentioned Louis-Joseph Papineau.
01:08:39.720They didn't mention Joseph Howe in this series.
01:08:42.720Joseph Howe didn't lead a rebellion, but he was one of the key influential, you know, brains attacking the Family Compact.
01:08:52.500And he ended up engaging in more, like, legal battles and what you would call, like, I don't know what to call, hooliganism.
01:09:02.940So, you know, the oligarchs in Nova Scotia sent, you know, goons basically to smash up his newspaper office and harass him.
01:09:13.640And, you know, he was, again, he was subjected to lawfare.
01:09:16.940So he was also part of this equation, and they didn't really mention that.
01:09:20.120But, yeah, there is a very, I could pull up or, you know, share with you guys.
01:09:26.780I can't remember exactly what it was, but there is a very interesting series on the 1837-1838 rebellions.
01:09:34.280And, obviously, you know, it was the rebellion in Lower Canada that had the most teeth to it.
01:09:40.540But even it was, like, again, they kind of just gloss over it in this series.
01:09:45.280Because as much as you want to make it into something romantic, the truth is, at its height, you know, Louis-Joseph Papineau wasn't even in the rebellion.
01:09:54.300He had fled, I believe, to the United States.
01:09:57.580And, you know, the rebellion consisted of, at its height, I think 4,000.
01:10:05.860Now, the population of Lower Canada at the time was 600,000.
01:10:10.260So, you know, less than 1% of the population actually took part in that rebellion.
01:10:16.320And there's an estimate, like, if you get into it, the estimated support for it was less than 25,000.
01:10:22.440So, despite the fact that that was significant in that there was, you know, actual fixed, you know, pitched battles between rebels and British regulars in Lower Canada in that rebellion,
01:10:35.220again, there was no real support for it.
01:10:39.140And it's understanding, you know, this is why I say, I think McKenzie was correct in his assessment of the problem.
01:10:46.820He was identifying that, look, England is sending over these aristocrats to govern us.
01:10:53.000They don't really have any connection to the people here.
01:10:56.820They, you know, don't really care about our interests or what's good for the colony.
01:11:02.620They're interested in extracting wealth for themselves and for other aristocrats and, you know, mercantile interests in the United Kingdom.
01:11:11.560And so, he was correct in assessing, like, look, we need to at least not, even if it wasn't, you know, direct democracy or something like the Americans,
01:11:19.940he was correct in noting that they needed some kind of representation that was linked to the Canadian people that were starting to have their own identity and their own interests that were separate from the British Empire.
01:11:31.980And so, what they needed was landed, like, the correct approach or probably the approach that would have gotten more traction is the idea that Canadians needed some kind of landed aristocracy,
01:11:47.860some kind of, you know, House of Lords, you know, representation that was based on the Canadian people, not aristocrats that had been sent over from Britain,
01:11:59.380but basically an extension of British Parliament in Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
01:12:05.960That probably would have gone over better.
01:12:08.100It probably would have been more well-received by the Canadian people, but I digress.
01:12:14.240But, sorry, Big J Michigan says there as well, a lot of historians note the 1837 Rebellion as well as the later American Civil War as key events that led Britain to making Canada a dominion.
01:12:26.560Yeah, it did ultimately result in changes, and that comes up in the next episode.
01:12:31.340So, we will get back into this topic more.
01:12:33.940But it comes with, they send Lord Landon after the rebellions to Canada to address the situation and make recommendations on changes so that this doesn't happen again.
01:12:49.100So, the British did learn a little bit from the American Revolution.
01:12:55.000They understood that, like, if they don't address those problems, you know, this growing sense of rebellion, that it will ignite.
01:13:03.080And then because of the presence of the American state directly south of the border, if that were to happen, it would be successful.
01:13:11.260So, they kind of realized that they needed to make concessions and address those problems.
01:13:15.460But, again, we'll come back to that a little bit later.
01:13:24.580So, to get into it first, one of the important contexts when studying history and politics in general is that geography matters.
01:13:35.820You can, you know, a lot of people look at maps and they just see lines on a map.
01:13:44.120And what they don't understand is that those lines are actually typically geographical.
01:13:49.740If you look at a map of Europe, there are some spots where the borders are kind of arbitrary.
01:13:56.260But for the most part, like, if you look at, say, France and Spain, the reason it's divided like that is because there's a mountain chain that runs in between them, right?
01:15:59.620But soon enough, the limits were in sight.
01:16:03.160As in the United States, the homesteaders turned their eyes to the west.
01:16:08.100Though here, they saw only the forbidding face of the Shield.
01:16:11.520A thousand miles of rock, muskeg, lakes, and rivers before a Canadian could find open land, where the Indian hunters still reigned supreme.
01:16:23.240Yeah, so, it's difficult to explain for a lot of people, but basically, if you take, where does the Shield start?
01:16:35.760I guess, you could, I guess near Pembroke?
01:16:40.520Petawawa, like Deep River or North Bay?
01:16:42.960If you consider, like, where the Shield really starts, you can drive for 14 hours at 100 kilometers an hour, and it's nothing but rock, bush, like, real bush.
01:17:00.420Like, not nice, you know, grassland forest, like, hard bush, muskeg, swamp, ponds, lakes.
01:18:47.940There is some grasslands in Southern Ontario, but most of it would have been, you know, dense hardwood forests.
01:18:55.180And as you go more north, more coniferous.
01:18:57.460But, yeah, that was a huge task, just clearing that land itself for settlement.
01:19:05.380I mean, you could see it in the photos that are, the photos, the still images that they produce and the, like, you could read it in the descriptions.
01:19:13.500You know, so, you know, it's one of those things I think that most people can't, you can't really appreciate it until, this is why, like, I really recommend that at some point in your life, if you've never done it, you should drive across the country.
01:19:31.360It will give you an appreciation for what our ancestors did to actually tame this wilderness.
01:19:38.800Because it was not insignificant, and it's not something that we should just scoff at and, you know, forget about.
01:19:46.660So, but now, I got a series of clips now on the Northwest Company, and these ones I find extremely interesting.
01:19:56.580I actually think I'm going to probably try to do something on the Northwest Company at some point, maybe a series on it.
01:20:04.500Because these are really interesting stories, and they kind of gloss over a lot of it.
01:20:09.380But this was, again, like, another, when we talk about, like, Lavarandri or Radisson or Anthony Hende, like, these guys are right up there with, you know, great explorers.
01:20:34.140Yeah, like, because that's been so well etched in the American psyche and through their culture, it kind of, you know, and the gravity of their culture.
01:20:43.780But most Canadians, if you ask them, you know, who is Alexander McKenzie, who is David Thompson, who is Simon Fraser, they would be like, I mean, I know Fraser University, or the Fraser River, does that have anything to do with it?
01:20:54.860And that'd probably be the most that you get.
01:20:58.040So this next series of clips, I think, is really interesting, and I'm going to add some additional stuff to it.
01:21:06.620Angrily, the fur merchants of Montreal had watched their operations diminish south of the Great Lakes as the United States consolidated its hold.
01:21:15.420But taking perseverance as their motto, they had created the Northwest Company in the very year the American Revolution had ended.
01:21:26.300They would trade in other areas, these determined entrepreneurs, who were mostly Scotsmen, with names like Fraser and McTavish, McGillivray and McKenzie.
01:21:35.620Working for the Scottish traders were French-Canadian voyageurs and coureurs de bois, left behind from the great days of New France.
01:21:48.720Hardy professionals, all of them, they once again plied their trade through the wilderness, this time in the service of English-speaking merchants, who sent them forth from Montreal.
01:21:58.800So, obviously, they jump back in time, you know, out of this episode is supposed to cover 1818 to 1846.
01:22:15.860Obviously, they're jumping back to 1783, but just the nature of covering this particular period of, well,
01:22:22.700the reason why they're doing that is because, you know, the settlement of what is now British Columbia or the Oregon country is directly related to this.
01:22:31.820And that's obviously important at the end of the episode.
01:22:36.100But, yeah, the establishment of the Northwest Company leads to, you know, basically the exploration of Canada's Pacific Northwest and a lot of the American Pacific Northwest as well.
01:22:48.840Well, David Thompson basically charted most of Oregon before anybody else had got there.
01:22:56.280He hadn't gone to the Pacific, but he had covered a good chunk of Oregon country.
01:23:02.860So, yeah, I'll keep running through these clips.
01:23:07.920With furs from the south increasingly denied to Canadian traders, the future would lie north and west of Fort William.
01:23:15.400And the voyageurs struck out on arduous journeys a thousand miles into the interior over hazardous routes.
01:23:23.580These were dangerous byways, but the urge for profit was strong, so there was perseverance.
01:23:48.200Besides being traders, the men of the Northwest Company were explorers, for the British government had promised them a monopoly in the area if they discovered a river route to the Pacific.
01:24:04.700And so it was that the first crossing of the Rockies, after one of the most incredible journeys ever recorded, was achieved by a young Nor'wester, Alexander McKenzie, who became the first man to cross the continent overland, ten years before his closest American rival.
01:24:22.980And after gazing out on the waters of the Pacific, McKenzie proudly recorded his feet for all to see.
01:24:30.840Yeah, so that stone, like, I'm just going to add some color to this.
01:24:45.600It was painted by Alexander McKenzie whenever he reached the Pacific Northwest through what is now, it's now the McKenzie River.
01:24:52.840But, yeah, he was the first European to travel overland, honestly, he was probably the first person to travel completely overland, because it's doubtful that any indigenous or whatever First Nations were doing that in one go.
01:25:12.400So, yeah, one of the first people, obviously, to travel the continent overland.
01:25:16.040And he's remembered as being, you know, one of the greatest explorers, not only in Canadian history, but in history in general.
01:25:24.220He also traveled north to the Arctic Ocean and charted a bunch of what is now the prairies.
01:27:36.200So, if you want to try and find those, you can.
01:27:40.380And, yeah, he was one of the, like he was an inspiration to Lewis and Clark, too.
01:27:47.060So, I think that's interesting that like, you know, most Canadians don't know who this is.
01:27:50.860But he's a folk hero the same way Lewis and Clark are folk heroes, right?
01:27:55.380And there is quite a few things named after him.
01:27:58.340But, yeah, I'll play the next clip here.
01:28:00.680After 1783, all the powers established on the North American continent were pressing their claims on the fabulous Central Pacific Coast.
01:28:12.200Russia, Britain, and Spain all had ambitions here.
01:28:16.380And soon there was a tangle of conflicting bases established by men who came by sea rather than by land.
01:28:22.840The flag of Imperial Russia already flew over settlements in Alaska, like Kodiak, a new Archangel.
01:28:31.320And from here, the Russians, avid for furs, sailed south to establish a toehold in Northern California.
01:28:42.880Britain, responding to the Russian challenge, sent Captain James Cook to the disputed area.
01:28:48.200And in 1778, he visited Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island to assert Britain's title and discuss trading possibilities with the Indians.
01:29:03.880Imperial Spain, though declining in power, was roused by these actions to make provocative claims to the whole Northwest coast.
01:29:11.200And in 1789, these led to a dangerous clash with British traders at Nootka.
01:29:17.920But the threat of war made the Spanish back down.
01:29:25.480A few years later, Captain George Vancouver strengthened Britain's position by making the first thorough survey of the coast.
01:29:32.500And in 1808, Simon Fraser found a river to the Pacific, soon after the discovery of the headwaters of the Columbia by David Thompson.
01:29:42.880Like the French before them, the Norwesters were driven westward by Hudson's Bay Company competition to the north and fears of American advances to the south.
01:29:57.760But when the mouth of the Columbia was reached by David Thompson, he was too late.
01:30:02.940There was already a fort there with the American flag flying over it.
01:32:37.960So his first voyage to Haiti, circumnavigated New Zealand.
01:32:44.180And I say first voyage as in like this was he was tasked specifically and he was at the head of a fleet of ships in charge of them.
01:32:51.880Uh, uh, charted the eastern coast of Australia, uh, landing at Botany Bay, uh, continued north with the Endeavor running around the Great Barrier Reef and, uh, needed extensive repairs at the Endeavor River, uh, reached the northern tip of Australia and claimed the eastern coastline for Britain, naming it New South Wales.
01:33:15.540So, uh, yeah, that's why, um, that's why he's obviously, uh, much more, uh, of an influential figure in Australian history because he's basically their Jacques Cartier or, uh, you know, John Cabot, Samuel de Champlain type, right?
01:33:34.120Um, so there's that, uh, his second voyage, uh, was to determine if an uninhabited southern continent existed.
01:33:43.640Uh, so, uh, this is, uh, 1772 to 1775, uh, sailed further south than any previous navigator crossing the Antarctic circle in 1773, circumnavigated the globe, but found no southern continent, explored and charted, uh, islands of the Pacific, the South Pacific.
01:34:03.560Uh, and then his third voyage was, uh, 1776 to 1779, and that was the one that he landed in, uh, Canada.
01:34:12.600And, uh, so the objective of that was to find the Northwest Passage, um, he sailed, uh, to the Pacific, uh, uh, coast of North America from California to the Bering Strait, uh, and went to Hawaii.
01:34:28.780And, uh, uh, that's where he was killed by a bunch of fucking savages.
01:34:33.540So, yeah, um, Captain Cook is a legend.
01:34:40.400Um, he's something that doesn't get as much respect in Canadian history as he probably should.
01:34:45.800Um, and frankly, it's disgusting, uh, what has been done to those who did try to preserve his memory and honor his legacy in the Canadian context.
01:34:56.360Um, because some of you might remember, but a lot of people probably don't even know that this happened.
01:35:03.060Uh, there was actually a statue of Captain Cook in Victoria on Vancouver Island that was erected in the 1970s.
01:35:10.760And on Canada Day in 2021, that was done to it.
01:36:13.980Um, substantial damage to like a, like an invaluable, um, you know, monument.
01:36:21.700Um, so yeah, I just thought I would add that in there for some color on Captain Cook.
01:36:28.380Because not a lot of Canadians know this about Cook, that he got his start in Nova Scotia and Eastern Canada.
01:36:34.480And that, uh, you know, his last voyage was the one where he started charting parts of Western Canada before ultimately going to Hawaii and getting killed by a bunch of fucking cannibals.
01:37:15.920There's like, the name is, uh, pretty well known to a lot of people, obviously.
01:37:20.260Um, but, uh, yeah, he found the, what is now the Fraser River, obviously, and was one of the first, uh, to chart a direct path, uh, to the Pacific.
01:37:30.760So, um, yeah, uh, and, uh, he thought, I think he thought that he had found, uh, the headwater of the Columbia, but he had ended up finding a completely different river.
01:37:42.540Now it was David Thompson who found the headwater of the Columbia and David Thompson is probably the one, the name of all the ones that I've mentioned that the few people, the fewest people have heard of, uh, listening to this.
01:37:54.840And that's a shame, uh, because David Thompson is arguably, he's considered to be one of, if not the greatest, uh, you know, land-based explorer in history.
01:38:04.720Um, he single-handedly, well, his team, you know, with him at the head, single-handedly charted almost 4 million square kilometers of territory in the Pacific Northwest.
01:38:16.520Uh, he found the headwater of the Columbia, um, went all over the place.
01:38:24.000Um, for him and sadly, he died in relative obscurity and poor.
01:38:29.940Um, so yeah, but, uh, David Thompson, highly recommend you read his story a little bit, uh, similar to, uh, sorry, I forgot to mention to Simon Fraser is also interesting.
01:38:42.640So, um, I believe he was actually born.
01:38:46.680Um, yeah, so Simon Fraser of, of all the ones that we've just mentioned was the only one that was born in North America.
01:38:53.600And funny enough, he was actually born in New York, um, similar to, uh, Alexander McKenzie.
01:39:02.000Uh, they moved, he was sent, uh, to Montreal, uh, whenever war broke out with the Americans.
01:39:09.800Uh, his father, uh, was part of, uh, one of the highland regiments, um, that was stationed in America.
01:39:20.560Uh, and he was actually captured, um, at the battle of Bennington in 1774 and died in prison.
01:39:27.780And so you could see, you know, this is the loyalist founding, right?
01:39:31.720So this is where you get this, the early rumblings of kind of Canadian patriotism and loyalism, um, you know, from these great figures.
01:39:39.440So, yeah, that was, uh, Simon Fraser's early story.
01:39:42.580And, uh, the other interesting thing about him is that, uh, he ended up settling after he was done his career, uh, with the Northwest company and the Hudson's Bay company.
01:39:53.300He ended up, uh, settling in Cornwall, Ontario, where he became the captain of the local militia, the Stormont militia, who was involved in putting down the rebellions in 1837.
01:40:07.160So, um, like, you know, it all ties together, right?
01:40:10.400So there's some interesting color there.
01:40:13.360Um, David Thompson was, uh, uh, yeah, born, born in Wales, I believe.
01:40:21.340He's raised in Northern England, uh, and, uh, I'm going to forget his, uh, sorry.
01:40:43.720I'm not going to, yeah, belabor the point, but yeah.
01:40:46.700Um, so, you know, these are all fascinating characters in their own right, um, that don't really get the recognition that they probably deserve.
01:40:57.980And obviously, you know, what I just went over would have been difficult for them to go over in a series like we're watching, but I figured I could add some of that, you know, background information for you.
01:41:09.600Faced with these losses, the men of the Northwest Company of Montreal were forced to develop to the utmost their alternative sources of furs.
01:41:21.600For many years, their canoes had gone west over long and hazardous routes that stretched all the way to the Pacific.
01:41:28.280They traversed an empire even greater than that which had been lost to the South.
01:41:34.280Now, with almost desperate energy, the Norwesters struggled to hold this empire together and exploit it as never before.
01:41:42.140But back in Montreal, the Northwest Company was in financial trouble, and Edward Ellis, a director, was given the job of finding a solution.
01:41:57.600One of the main problems he had to consider was the fierce competition offered by the long-established Hudson's Bay Company.
01:42:04.560Rivalry sometimes erupted into violence with raids, thievery, and bloodshed.
01:42:12.140The rivers leading to Hudson's Bay, Ellis realized, made for a short, cheap route to Europe.
01:42:20.680By contrast, the Northwest Company's furs had to come out by a long and expensive route.
01:42:27.220So Edward Ellis was forced to the conclusion that there was no future for the Norwesters unless they merged with the Hudson's Bay Company.
01:42:40.960So, you know, obviously, this is just how the Northwest Company ends and why, you know, we only really ever hear about the Hudson's Bay Company instead of the Northwest Company.
01:43:26.400There was some violence between those two companies and, you know, their respective employees over, you know, territory and furs and stuff like that.
01:43:35.640But funny enough, I think Simon Fraser got caught up in something that was called the Battle of the Seven Woods or Battle of Seven Woods.
01:43:47.360And he was actually captured and sent back to Montreal as a prisoner to face trial.
01:43:53.200And he was pardoned or given bail and the charges dropped because he didn't do anything.
01:43:59.340But, yeah, Simon Fraser was at one point.
01:44:01.740Can you imagine, like, you've traveled all the way by, you know, canoe and overland to get from Montreal to B.C.?
01:44:10.900And then some little skirmish happens.
01:44:13.460You get arrested and then you're sent all the way back only to then have to go all the way back again to keep doing your job.
01:44:20.780So, like, these were not soft men, right?
01:44:32.720And this is all summarized extremely well.
01:44:35.660Like, I wanted to just play this clip because the narrator does an extremely good job here of summarizing the importance of the Northwest Company.
01:44:44.180Montreal had been largely built on the fur trade.
01:44:47.880And now, in the words of William McGillivray, the fur trade is forever lost to Canada.
01:44:54.880McGillivray was in a position to know, for he was a leading member of the Northwest Company.
01:45:00.040Now it was the Hudson's Bay Company, which was British, not Canadian, that would dominate the trade and rule the West, thanks to its short route to Europe.
01:45:08.860But the Northwest Company was finished.
01:45:13.180But it will never be forgotten, for it was the first Canadian organization to span the continent.
01:45:20.000It had staked the limits and traced the links for the transcontinental nation that was to come.
01:45:26.060But in 1821, in Montreal, this could not be foreseen, for the economic picture was troubled.
01:45:33.000Yeah, so it's just a really good summary of the importance of it and what it did, basically, is laid the groundwork for a transcontinental union.
01:49:04.680There would be none of the things that allow you to come in here and be an Uber Eats driver, uh, would have been created.
01:49:12.260So, um, you know, it's an important kind of segment of, of this period, even though, you know, it seems minor.
01:49:19.900But, like, this is how you go from being a, an economy based on fur trading and, you know, minor agricultural exports to, you know, an industrialized society capable of, you know, mass produced goods and urbanization and all these things.
01:49:38.120They were coming now from England and Scotland in a modest but steady flow.
01:49:46.960They often seemed out of place, making tea in the wilderness as they struggled to turn the land into home.
01:49:55.120But they persisted, arduously clearing the limited but fertile land of Upper Canada.
01:50:01.000Gradually, a pattern of settled life was spreading across parts of Canada that had once been empty.
01:50:14.220They transformed the land with weirs and spillways, taming it as the fur traders before them had never done.
01:50:22.180They built water wheels and sluices and, greatest glory of all, grist mills.
01:50:28.760For these people soon had products to sell, like potash, grain, and flour.
01:50:35.440And thanks to its durability, there was a growing demand in Britain for Canadian lumber.
01:50:44.740Seems like minor things, obviously, but, you know, without that, there is, there is no, Nate, there is no civilization here.
01:50:53.540It's just barren wilderness or small, disconnected farms.
01:50:59.560And then you get into the major projects.
01:51:01.660So, obviously, one of the major ones that repeated in this episode was the canals.
01:51:08.920But, yeah, like, these are, like, these are major infrastructure projects that took a huge amount of effort, labor, you know, combined collective effort to realize.
01:51:22.380And, you know, now you don't think twice about them.
01:51:25.620You know, you drive over the Rideau Canal or you drive over the Welland Canal and you don't think about it at all.
01:51:30.600But that was, that was a huge deal at the time, you know, saving, you know, days or weeks, in some cases, of effort and travel.
01:51:51.660From the churning rapids above Montreal to the awesome plunge at Niagara, the St. Lawrence Great Lakes system offered splendid scenery for the traveler, but costly hindrances to navigation, involving laborious detours by road.
01:52:14.720Canadians had long known that canals were the only answer, a small one having been dug as early as 1781.
01:52:23.760Now the need was for more canals and larger ones.
01:52:30.900So, in the 1820s, a series of canals was begun above Montreal.
01:52:35.560And the year 1829 saw the enthusiastic opening of the Welland Canal, creating a smooth bypass around the mighty cataract at Niagara.
01:52:47.160Surely the great waterway would now see the fulfillment of Montreal's dreams, with goods from Manchester and Birmingham moving inland to Montreal and beyond, to the American interior.
01:52:58.840On the way, they would pass American exports, heading for Montreal, en route to the Atlantic Ocean and markets overseas.
02:00:31.380You know, you can complain about it, but, you know, it's the nature of reality.
02:00:34.980Yeah, so now we turn to the rebellions here.
02:00:41.400Like I said, again, this episode jumps around a lot.
02:00:44.920And we get to the, you know, what is called the family compact.
02:00:48.500A term, I believe that term was actually coined by Joseph Howe and adopted by William Lyon McKenzie.
02:00:55.320But maybe I'm wrong, but maybe it was the opposite.
02:00:57.180But the family compact is a derogatory term for oligarchy, basically, which is odd because you would think that, you know, in modern times, oligarchy would be the dirty word that people would use.
02:01:09.180But, you know, it was kind of a pejorative way of describing the, you know, cast of aristocrats and noblemen that kind of governed upper Canada and lower all of the colonies of British North America.
02:01:25.600Just kind of how they wanted, you know, based on their own interest and things like that.
02:01:30.040And they weren't necessarily taking into account, as I said earlier, what the actual Canadians who were settling and, you know, building up the colonies wanted.
02:01:43.940They were considering how do we, you know, get the most bang for our buck out of these colonies on behalf of, you know, the empire and the nobles back in Britain.
02:01:53.000And so there was animosity that began to develop between the leadership and the rulers, I guess you could say, and the average, you know, colonist.
02:02:07.660It was in Upper Canada that the great defense against American invasion had been conducted in the War of 1812.
02:02:14.500The monuments commemorating this war symbolized the triumph of the Loyalist, Tory outlook, a system that rested on military power and the British imperial connection.
02:02:27.100The self-righteousness of this system was reflected in the faces of its leaders, an oligarchy that came to be known as the Family Compact.
02:02:37.280For these men, the epitome of evil was the popular democracy of the United States.
02:02:44.500For America, the serpent had raised the hideous banner of armed rebellion, and the indignities that the Tory loyalists had suffered in the American Revolution still rankled in the memories of the rulers of Upper Canada.
02:03:06.900The American rattlesnake was implacably hostile to everything British in North America.
02:03:11.980It had tried to strangle Canada twice.
02:03:15.840Surely there might be a third attempt.
02:03:23.320So obviously you can see why, you know, the British were hostile towards Americanization,
02:03:33.160the spread of, you know, what was considered American democracy or, you know, public, what would you call it, you know, public enfranchisement.
02:03:48.780It was considered a dangerous topic that was inherently, you know, anti-British, specifically anti-British empire.
02:04:00.760The problem becomes, you know, and this is what eventually leads to minor rebellions, is that, you know, you can't govern endlessly in opposition to the will of the people and expect them not to become frustrated and eventually revolt.
02:04:18.920And so this is where, obviously, what is considered a family compact failed to address this problem, this growing problem in Canada, and that's why you do get this kind of outbreak.
02:04:28.920Now, I think the thing that, well, you know what, I'll just, I'll keep playing the clips and then I'll give my comments on the rebellion.
02:04:36.240The building of the Rideau Canal in Upper Canada was one manifestation of the fear left behind by the Americans.
02:04:44.660It was built at loyalist urging and with British funds, and the elaborate engineering involved meant costs that were astronomical by the standards of the day.
02:04:54.940And its main purpose was defense against the United States.
02:04:59.060Essentially, the Rideau Canal was meant to provide a route from Lake Ontario to the Ottawa River, and then to Montreal, so that ships could avoid the dangerous American border along the St. Lawrence in the event of war.
02:51:10.680and make a Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea,
02:51:17.680tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to find
02:51:23.680the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea.
02:51:27.680one warm line through a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
02:51:46.680Three centuries thereafter, I take passage over land. In the footsteps of brave council, where his sea of flowers began, watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again. This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the
02:51:53.680plain. Ah, for just one time. I would take the
02:52:00.680Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the
02:52:10.680the Beaufort Sea, tracing one warm line through a
02:52:17.680Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea, tracing one warm line through a
02:52:24.680land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
02:52:31.680and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
02:52:48.680And through the night behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west, I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson, and the rest, who cracked the mountain ramparts and
02:52:53.680did show a path for me to race the roaring Fraser to the sea, to race the roaring Fraser to the sea.
02:53:18.680Ah, for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea, tracing one warm line through a
02:53:40.680to a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
02:53:52.680How then am I so different from the first men through this way? Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
02:54:07.680To seek a Northwest Passage to seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men, to find there but the road back home again.
02:54:20.680Ah, for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea.
02:54:38.680Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.