The Ferryman's Toll - The Nationalist Film Board - Creation of Canada - Episode 4

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.200 But yeah, tonight we're going to get into the years 1818 to 1846.

00:02:06.680 And this episode is one that jumps around quite a bit.

00:02:12.260 There'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.

00:02:28.580 You 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.

00:02:45.160 You know, the industrialization of upper and lower Canada, the shift away from the fur trade as being the dominant economic driver of Montreal.

00:02:57.040 There's a lot going on in this episode, as well as the 1837, 1838 rebellions, which are kind of lumped in here.

00:03:06.500 So this episode does jump around quite a bit.

00:03:10.220 In terms of review, it's actually going to be one of the shorter episodes.

00:03:15.360 And 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.

00:03:35.940 So, 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.

00:03:52.880 If I could draw your attention to one specific topic is the Northwest Company.

00:03:58.020 Now, obviously, most Canadians know about the Hudson's Bay Company.

00:04:02.220 I 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.

00:04:18.940 Far 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.

00:04:36.340 So, you know, we'll get into some key figures in that tonight.

00:04:41.580 But, 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.

00:04:52.760 So, without further ado, let's play episode four of Creation of Canada.

00:04:58.080 It runs about 58 minutes, so I'll see you guys in about an hour.

00:05:03.880 Cheers.

00:05:04.280 Cheers.

00:05:06.340 Cheers.

00:05:36.340 The

00:06:05.340 year was 1815. The mood in Canada was uneasy. In the preceding 40 years, the country had twice been

00:06:14.220 invaded by the United States, and there was no reason to believe that there wouldn't be other 0.99

00:06:18.860 invasions in the years to come. The first of the two attacks had come in 1775, when the American

00:06:27.300 Revolution attempted to include Canada in its revolt against Britain. But the Americans failed

00:06:33.580 in Canada, and the 13 colonies went on to form their new country without a 14th colony to the north.

00:06:41.360 Now there were two nations on the map, with what appeared to be a clear-cut boundary as far west as

00:06:47.800 the Mississippi. But the west, the Ohio-Mississippi Triangle, remained a source of friction. The Indians 0.60

00:06:57.560 there, friendly to Britain, were hostile to American settlers. And in Washington, the war hawks insisted

00:07:04.800 that the only way to put an end to the trouble was to drive the British out of Canada. They wanted to 0.97

00:07:10.900 annex the country to the north once and for all. And there were other grievances against Britain that

00:07:16.580 gave them the excuse. So there was another assault on Canada, beginning in 1812. But once again,

00:07:24.420 after three dreary years of war, the Americans failed. Now, Canada's hopes for favorable boundary

00:07:32.200 revisions in Maine, at Niagara, and in the west could flicker again. But soon it was the American 0.97

00:07:41.040 war hawks who were doing the celebrating.

00:07:50.280 The trumpets of victory might well echo in America, even though no territory had been won in

00:07:56.960 the war. For at the peace talks, the British were compliant. And the leader of the war hawks,

00:08:03.760 Henry Clay, could note with satisfaction how easily Britain agreed to the pre-war boundary,

00:08:09.280 rather than presser advantage on Canada's behalf. For Clay, this was victory.

00:08:18.940 The long struggle for the Ohio-Mississippi Triangle was over. Canada could forget her old dream of 0.87

00:08:26.200 keeping the area tied to the St. Lawrence fur trading empire. For the United States, the road to the

00:08:32.680 west was open. Now, in the post-war period, each country could get on with the grand task of

00:08:39.280 occupying its share of the interior. In this enterprise, the United States had a tremendous

00:08:46.120 advantage. For the great mid-continental barrier, the Laurentian shield hardly touched its territory.

00:08:53.380 From the Appalachians westward, there was arable land all the way to the Rockies.

00:08:58.560 The Indians were still strong here. But east of the Mississippi, the Americans were now in 1.00

00:09:09.400 control. Places like Fort Wayne were jumping off points for the realization of Henry Clay's

00:09:16.040 American system, a vision in which eastern agricultural skills would create a prosperous west to provide food and

00:09:24.700 markets for an industrial east. Good communications were essential for the plan, and roads were

00:09:31.540 extended westward. And at inns along the roads, future settlers showed optimism and high spirits.

00:09:39.380 settlers from the eastern cities and farms, from every walk of life, rich and poor, educated and

00:09:57.640 illiterate, all were lured on by the great American dream of making a fresh start that would lead to

00:10:04.940 prosperity. And so a new and settled world arose in the old regions that Canada had coveted, with sights

00:10:12.940 for fast-growing towns of tremendous potential, like Chicago, New Harmony, Indiana, Detroit, long a British 0.97

00:10:26.220 outpost. Pittsburgh, on the much-contested Ohio.

00:10:34.220 In the unfolding drama of continental development, Canada cut a far less impressive figure than her 0.67

00:10:40.380 neighbor. For one thing, she had only one-sixteenth the population of the U.S., strung out along the shores of 0.59

00:10:48.220 the St. Lawrence and Lower Lakes. Her metropolis, Montreal, was a modest town with an uncertain economic future.

00:10:56.220 Far 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.

00:11:10.220 Had 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.

00:11:28.220 Over the next two decades, these limited but fertile lands attracted many settlers, in both Upper and Lower Canada. And the country grew substantially.

00:11:46.220 But 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.

00:11:59.220 A thousand miles of rock, muskeg, lakes and rivers, before a Canadian could find open land, where the Indian hunters still reign supreme. 0.99

00:12:11.220 It'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.

00:12:35.220 Let's look again at just what it did to Canada.

00:12:39.220 The 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.

00:12:50.220 Thus there could be no equivalent Midwest for Canada.

00:12:55.220 So for almost half a century after Upper Canada was settled, the only Midwest for Canadians was in the United States.

00:13:04.220 Yet the harsh and forbidding shield was not useless.

00:13:08.220 Even 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.

00:13:19.220 The ragged forests that managed to flourish on the shallow soils of the shield were happy hunting ground for the Indians. 1.00

00:13:33.220 And 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.

00:13:50.220 Angrily, the fur merchants of Montreal had watched their operations diminish south of the Great Lakes as the United States consolidated its hold.

00:14:03.220 But taking perseverance as their motto, they had created the Northwest Company in the very year the American Revolution had ended.

00:14:13.220 They would trade in other areas, these determined entrepreneurs, who were mostly Scotsmen, with names like Fraser and McTavish, McGillivray and Mackenzie.

00:14:23.220 Working for the Scottish traders were French-Canadian voyageurs and coureurs de bois, left behind from the great days of New France.

00:14:35.220 Hardy 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.

00:14:46.220 And so, American expansion helped bring about intensified activity on the old French fur trade routes in the north and west.

00:15:02.220 Starting out from Lachine, near Montreal, the voyageurs headed west in their big canoes, their paddles keeping time to the old French songs.

00:15:14.220 The traditional first destination of the voyageurs from Montreal had usually been Grand Portage, which had been British until 1783.

00:15:43.220 This depot on Lake Superior was the best gateway to the northwest.

00:15:49.220 After 1783, Grand Portage and the surrounding area had become American.

00:15:55.220 But 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.

00:16:07.220 It was one of several posts that were illegally occupied by Britain.

00:16:14.220 But in 1794, these forts were abandoned under Jay's Treaty.

00:16:19.220 Now Grand Portage was no longer available to the fur men from Montreal. 0.98

00:16:25.220 And so, a new base had to be created on British soil, Fort William.

00:16:30.220 With furs from the south increasingly denied to Canadian traders, the future would lie north and west of Fort William.

00:16:38.220 And the voyageurs struck out on arduous journeys a thousand miles into the interior over hazardous routes.

00:16:46.220 These were dangerous byways, but the urge for profit was strong.

00:17:08.220 So there was perseverance.

00:17:16.220 Besides 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.

00:17:27.220 And 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.

00:17:46.220 And after gazing out on the waters of the Pacific, Mackenzie proudly recorded his feet for all to see.

00:18:00.220 After 1783, all the powers established on the North American continent were pressing their claims on the fabulous Central Pacific coast.

00:18:09.220 Russia, Britain, and Spain, all had ambitions here.

00:18:13.220 And soon there was a tangle of conflicting bases, established by men who came by sea rather than by land.

00:18:21.220 The flag of Imperial Russia already flew over settlements in Alaska, like Kodiak, a new Archangel.

00:18:28.220 And from here, the Russians, avid for furs, sailed south to establish a toehold in Northern California. 0.98

00:18:39.220 Britain, responding to the Russian challenge, sent Captain James Cook to the disputed area.

00:18:46.220 And in 1778, he visited Knutka Sound on Vancouver Island to assert Britain's title and discuss trading possibilities with the Indians.

00:18:56.220 Imperial Spain, though declining in power, was roused by these actions to make provocative claims to the whole Northwest coast.

00:19:09.220 And in 1789, these led to a dangerous clash with British traders at Knutka.

00:19:15.220 But the threat of war made the Spanish back down.

00:19:18.220 A few years later, Captain George Vancouver strengthened Britain's position by making the first thorough survey of the coast.

00:19:30.220 And in 1808, Simon Fraser found a river to the Pacific, soon after the discovery of the headwaters of the Columbia by David Thompson.

00:19:39.220 Like 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.

00:19:54.220 But when the mouth of the Columbia was reached by David Thompson, he was too late.

00:20:00.220 There was already a fort there with the American flag flying over it.

00:20:04.220 It was July, 1811.

00:20:06.220 1811.

00:20:11.220 Six years earlier, Lewis and Clark had paved the way for the establishment of this fort.

00:20:17.220 The two American explorers had reached the mouth of the Columbia after a trailblazing overland trip.

00:20:24.220 Now the Americans had an active interest here.

00:20:27.220 And even before Lewis and Clark, a ship carrying the American trader Robert Gray had sailed these waters.

00:20:34.220 Britain's Captain Vancouver had just missed this key river mouth.

00:20:40.220 Now its discovery by Robert Gray, who named it the Columbia, was to provide the United States with a claim that would prove decisive.

00:20:49.220 But Gray did not push farther.

00:20:52.220 His immediate interest centered on the superb furs that were offered to him by the local Indians.

00:20:57.220 These rich pelts soon attracted John Jacob Astor, most ambitious of the American fur traders.

00:21:09.220 Early in 1810, after a long voyage in the Pacific and near disaster, his ship finally entered the mouth of the Columbia.

00:21:17.220 And his men established a permanent post called Astoria.

00:21:26.220 But in 1813, with Britain and the United States at war, Canadian traders arrived at Astoria.

00:21:32.220 And the Americans hastily decided to sell out to them.

00:21:37.220 Better this than be captured by a British warship that was approaching.

00:21:41.220 But later, in a move that was to prove unwise, the Navy formally occupied the fort.

00:21:48.220 Thus, at the treaty that ended the war, the fort came under the heading of occupied territory that had to be returned.

00:21:55.220 The United States and Britain were now the chief contenders for this Pacific coast area.

00:22:06.220 Unable to agree, they established a condominium, joint rule in the Oregon country.

00:22:11.220 Meanwhile, in Montreal, the end of the war of 1812 intensified the city's economic worries.

00:22:24.220 The fur barons had long tried to prevent and then to delay the consolidation of American power south of the Great Lakes. 0.67

00:22:32.220 But now it was firmly established.

00:22:35.220 The Ohio-Mississippi Triangle would never again be part of the historic Canadian fur trade.

00:22:41.220 And strategic Mishla Mackinac, captured by Canadians during the war, was now returned.

00:22:47.220 Never again would it serve Canadian enterprise.

00:22:54.220 The building of Fort Snelling in Minnesota symbolized the end of the old order.

00:23:00.220 For the purpose of this installation was to supervise the Indians. 1.00

00:23:05.220 And this meant, in effect, their expulsion westward, out of the way of the settlers.

00:23:10.220 Thus, the unhappy Indians, under the stern eye of the United States Army, would take leave of their Canadian fur trader friends.

00:23:20.220 It was the end of a partnership that went back two centuries.

00:23:24.220 A partnership of mutual profit and respect.

00:23:27.220 Faced with these losses, the men of the Northwest Company of Montreal were forced to develop to the utmost their alternative sources of furs.

00:23:41.220 For many years, their canoes had gone west over long and hazardous routes that stretched all the way to the Pacific.

00:23:50.220 They traversed an empire even greater than that which had been lost to the south.

00:23:54.220 Now, with almost desperate energy, the Norwesters struggled to hold this empire together and exploit it as never before. 1.00

00:24:03.220 But back in Montreal, the Northwest Company was in financial trouble.

00:24:13.220 And Edward Ellis, the director, was given the job of finding a solution.

00:24:17.220 One of the main problems he had to consider was the fierce competition offered by the long-established Hudson's Bay Company.

00:24:25.220 Rivalry sometimes erupted into violence with raids, thievery, and bloodshed.

00:24:31.220 The rivers leading to Hudson Bay, Ellis realized, made for a short, cheap route to Europe.

00:24:42.220 By contrast, the Northwest Company's furs had to come out by a long and expensive route.

00:24:48.220 So Edward Ellis was forced to the conclusion that there was no future for the Norwesters unless they merged with the Hudson's Bay Company.

00:24:56.220 And this merger was effected in 1821.

00:25:01.220 For Ellis and the directors of the Northwest Company, it was salvation.

00:25:06.220 But for Montreal, it seemed a serious blow.

00:25:15.220 Montreal had been largely built on the fur trade.

00:25:18.220 And now, in the words of William McGillivray, the fur trade is forever lost to Canada.

00:25:24.220 McGillivray was in a position to know, for he was a leading member of the Northwest Company.

00:25:30.220 Now 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.

00:25:40.220 The Northwest Company was finished.

00:25:42.220 But it will never be forgotten, for it was the first Canadian organization to span the continent.

00:25:50.220 It had staked the limits and traced the links for the transcontinental nation that was to come.

00:25:55.220 But in 1821, in Montreal, this could not be foreseen, for the economic picture was troubled.

00:26:03.220 In 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.

00:26:18.220 During 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.

00:26:31.220 Ambitions in the Ohio, Mississippi region had been shattered by the War of 1812.

00:26:36.220 And now Hudson Bay was draining away the very lifeblood of Montreal.

00:26:43.220 For Montreal's merchants, the division of Canada into two provinces had made things even more difficult.

00:26:51.220 The new boundary had cut them off from English-speaking Upper Canada.

00:26:56.220 And now they were a political minority, these canny Scots and these well-educated Englishmen who controlled Montreal's commerce.

00:27:04.220 They were vastly outnumbered in Lower Canada by the French-Canadians, now half a million strong.

00:27:11.220 A people whose slow-paced life along the banks of the St. Lawrence held little appeal for the English. 0.99

00:27:21.220 The French-Canadian habitants were small-scale producers whose economic outlook knew little of the complex world of credit and capital.

00:27:29.220 They were true conservatives, with the modest goal of gradually increasing the yield of their land to keep pace with their increasing numbers.

00:27:43.220 Moreover, their church fostered a moral restraint that tended to discourage the accumulation of wealth beyond immediate needs.

00:27:51.220 And the French-Canadians looked to the church for their strategy of survival as a people.

00:27:56.220 In Montreal Harbor, the winter ice symbolized the discontent of the English.

00:28:09.220 But 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.

00:28:18.220 From the sea, past Quebec, it could bring great argosies with the goods of many nations.

00:28:25.220 Past Quebec, past Montreal, and on through the lakes.

00:28:30.220 Past 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.

00:28:39.220 The American West might be closed to exploitation by Canadian fur traders.

00:28:50.220 But could it not still be part of the commercial system of the St. Lawrence?

00:28:54.220 Surely the river was the best link between inland American markets and British markets.

00:28:59.220 And surely Montreal's halfway position could make it an indispensable middleman.

00:29:07.220 From the growing American Midwest would flow staple exports like lumber, wheat, and flour.

00:29:14.220 These would come to Montreal, where they would be reloaded into larger ships and move on down the river and across to England.

00:29:22.220 In return, from industrial England would come a flow of manufactured goods, again trans-shipped at Montreal to ports on the Great Lakes.

00:29:33.220 Montreal would be the entrepot, the depot for the distribution centers of the American West.

00:29:40.220 It was a continental vision, embracing both the United States and the new communities emerging from the Canadian forests.

00:29:47.220 They were coming now, from England and Scotland, in a modest but steady flow.

00:29:58.220 They often seemed out of place, making tea in the wilderness as they struggled to turn the land into home.

00:30:06.220 But they persisted, arduously clearing the limited but fertile land of Upper Canada.

00:30:12.220 Gradually, a pattern of settled life was spreading across parts of Canada that had once been empty.

00:30:26.220 They transformed the land with weirs and spillways, taming it as the fur traders before them had never done.

00:30:33.220 They built water wheels and sluices and, greatest glory of all, grist mills.

00:30:41.220 For these people soon had products to sell, like potash, grain, and flour.

00:30:46.220 And thanks to its durability, there was a growing demand in Britain for Canadian lumber.

00:30:56.220 But as for her ambitions to exploit the St. Lawrence route, Canada soon found that the international boundary was a troublesome obstacle. 0.81

00:31:04.220 Canada had hoped that American goods transshipped at Montreal would be considered Canadian, and would benefit from tariff preferences granted by Britain to her colonies.

00:31:16.220 But in London, Parliament was unwilling to give Americans Canadian privileges, and Britain refused to go along with the schemes of the Montreal merchants.

00:31:25.220 So the grand design for a trade route would have to be based solely on the natural advantages of the St. Lawrence.

00:31:34.220 But there were formidable obstacles.

00:31:36.220 From 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.

00:31:59.220 Canadians had long known that canals were the only answer, a small one having been dug as early as 1781.

00:32:08.220 Now the need was for more canals, and larger ones.

00:32:12.220 So in the 1820s, a series of canals was begun above Montreal.

00:32:21.220 And the year 1829 saw the enthusiastic opening of the Welland Canal, creating a smooth bypass around the mighty cataract at Niagara.

00:32:30.220 Surely 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.

00:32:44.220 On the way, they would pass American exports heading for Montreal en route to the Atlantic Ocean and markets overseas.

00:32:51.220 But the Americans were also interested in navigation, and they too had something to cheer about.

00:33:04.220 Yankee Enterprise and Energy had started building the Erie Canal in 1817.

00:33:09.220 And 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.

00:33:22.220 The Great Lakes had been linked with a great port on the Atlantic.

00:33:26.220 Here was easy access to the American West for goods brought by ships of all nations.

00:33:32.220 The Erie Canal started at Buffalo and cut across to Albany.

00:33:40.220 From here to New York was an easy trip down the Hudson River.

00:33:44.220 Thus the Hudson, historic rival of the St. Lawrence, captured the lively new trade with the Midwest.

00:33:50.220 82 locks were needed to raise the barges almost 600 feet between Albany and Buffalo.

00:34:02.220 The Erie Canal was 373 miles long, but only four feet deep in most places.

00:34:09.220 It was destined to touch off an agricultural boom in the American West, and it was the principal route for emigrants heading there.

00:34:16.220 The New Canal was a tremendous success, and its great beneficiary was the year-round ice-free port of New York.

00:34:32.220 Now 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.

00:34:41.220 The Erie Canal was a great blow to the Montreal merchants, and they had to plan strategy against it.

00:34:56.220 But their planning was complicated by growing political conflict between the English and the French in Lower Canada.

00:35:02.220 The 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.

00:35:18.220 The Montreal merchants, convinced that they alone represented progress, tried hard to get the British administration to ignore the French majority.

00:35:29.220 They had felt justified in this ever since 1822, when the British refused to unite Upper and Lower Canada.

00:35:35.220 In 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.

00:35:49.220 It was in Upper Canada that the great defense against American invasion had been conducted in the War of 1812.

00:35:59.220 The monuments commemorating this war symbolized the triumph of the loyalist, Tory outlook, a system that rested on military power and the British imperial connection.

00:36:09.220 The self-righteousness of this system was reflected in the faces of its leaders, an oligarchy that came to be known as the Family Compact.

00:36:20.220 For these men, the epitome of evil was the popular democracy of the United States.

00:36:27.220 For 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.

00:36:44.220 The American rattlesnake was implacably hostile to everything British in North America.

00:36:56.220 It had tried to strangle Canada twice. Surely there might be a third attempt.

00:37:01.220 The building of the Rideau Canal in Upper Canada was one manifestation of the fear left behind by the Americans.

00:37:15.220 It 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.

00:37:24.220 And its main purpose was defense against the United States.

00:37:35.220 Essentially, the Rideau Canal was meant to provide a route from Lake Ontario to the Ottawa River, and then to Montreal,

00:37:43.220 so that ships could avoid the dangerous American border along the St. Lawrence in the event of war.

00:37:48.220 In the 1820s and 1830s, immigration to Upper Canada from Scotland and England was encouraged, rather than immigration from the United States.

00:38:03.220 These British settlers, it was felt, would make far less trouble for the authorities than would Yankee Democrats, 0.97

00:38:09.220 like those who had come to Canada in earlier decades.

00:38:13.220 Yet this frontier, in many ways, resembled the larger American frontier, and it bred the same individualism and independence.

00:38:23.220 And the desire for democracy found energetic leaders in men like William Lyon Mackenzie and Marshall Spring Bidwell.

00:38:31.220 In 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.

00:38:47.220 While President Jackson battled the bankers, his Canadian admirers like Marshall Bidwell had dragons of their own to denounce.

00:39:03.220 They hinted openly that American institutions would best promote reform of the corrupt ruling class.

00:39:10.220 Even Louis-Joseph Papineau, the brilliant French-Canadian radical, came to praise American republicanism as a remedy for the grievances of his people.

00:39:25.220 The Habitat of Lower Canada, he said, would be better off joining the United States than living under continued British misrule.

00:39:33.220 But loyalism, as personified by Sir Francis Bond Head, Governor of Upper Canada, knew that its privileges could not survive under democratic rule.

00:39:46.220 And it tried to discredit all efforts at reform.

00:39:49.220 Ruthlessly, loyalist propaganda sought to brand any admiration for American ideas as disloyal and lawless.

00:40:06.220 This at a time when for many Canadians, democracy was still a dirty word.

00:40:12.220 With this propaganda, the Tories prevailed, and there was no reform.

00:40:22.220 For William Lyon McKenzie, there was now no choice but rebellion.

00:40:27.220 And in 1837, his badly organized men faced loyalist forces at Montgomery's Tavern.

00:40:34.220 But they were defeated after a few volleys.

00:40:37.220 But in Lower Canada, the rebellion was more substantial.

00:40:40.220 Here, ill-armed but courageous Habitat fought pitched battles against well-trained regulars.

00:40:47.220 But here too, defeat was inevitable.

00:40:55.220 Prisoners taken by the authorities faced an ugly mood as the oligarchy called for vengeance.

00:41:01.220 Ten of the rebels were executed, and 58 were exiled to remote Australia.

00:41:06.220 The forces of privilege were safe for the moment, but only through hateful military oppression.

00:41:18.220 In 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.

00:41:30.220 And in border towns from Vermont to Michigan, the rebels denounced British oppression in Canada in terms that seemed to echo the spirit of 1776.

00:41:42.220 Aroused by this, many Americans were eager to join McKenzie's army of liberation, which was savagely caricatured by the nervous Tories.

00:41:55.220 In 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.

00:42:09.220 For about a month, McKenzie and his followers defied the authorities by occupying Navy Island.

00:42:16.220 But the rebels on Navy Island could not survive without supplies, and these had to come from the American side of the river.

00:42:30.220 So, 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.

00:42:40.220 They 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.

00:42:55.220 It had been a brief but fateful invasion of the United States.

00:43:14.220 American border towns blazed with indignation, and at Cleveland, there was a convention of a militant organization called the Hunters' Lodges,

00:43:23.220 which sought revenge for the Canadian invasion and the final elimination of British rule in North America.

00:43:30.220 The Hunters' Lodges claimed 50,000 members from Maine to Wisconsin.

00:43:35.220 At their Cleveland convention, they proclaimed a Republic of Canada and laid plans for an army of invasion.

00:43:41.220 At Prescott, on Lake Ontario, the Hunters' Lodges struck their most ambitious blow.

00:43:53.220 A thousand of these Crusaders managed to land there and occupy a windmill. 0.58

00:43:58.220 But after a siege of five days, the invaders were forced to surrender to British troops.

00:44:03.220 There were other attacks at border points, but they were small and easily repelled.

00:44:14.220 In Canada, however, there was alarm that these skirmishes might grow into full-scale war.

00:44:20.220 But in Washington, the most influential expansionist forces were at that moment interested not in Canada, but in Texas and California.

00:44:35.220 With American energies needed there, it was time to restrain the hotheads on the Canadian border.

00:44:41.220 And General Winfield Scott was given this job.

00:44:49.220 But whiskey helped warm up the situation again when Alexander McLeod, a Canadian spy,

00:44:56.220 boozily boasted that it was he who had led the raid on the Caroline, McKenzie's ill-fated supply ship.

00:45:02.220 McLeod 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.

00:45:13.220 So passionate were feelings in New York State that McLeod had to be protected from would-be lynchers as he awaited trial.

00:45:20.220 From the British lion came a roar of rage over the McLeod affair, reflecting Lord Palmerston's imperialist mood as foreign minister.

00:45:34.220 There followed a long and fierce diplomatic uproar with the Caroline in the background,

00:45:40.220 as congressmen called for vengeance and the old devil of Anglo-American distrust fanned the flames.

00:45:46.220 The destruction of the Caroline was now furiously defended by the British.

00:45:55.220 While in Washington, it was seen as an act of aggression.

00:45:59.220 But Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, was a restraining influence.

00:46:04.220 And in Britain, the young Queen Victoria, with her husband Albert, also exercised a subtle influence for moderation.

00:46:11.220 Lord Aberdeen replaced the belligerent Palmerston, and the crisis passed when the troublesome Mr. McLeod was acquitted and sent home.

00:46:20.220 The three years following the rebellion in Canada had seen a dangerous deterioration in relations between Britain and the United States.

00:46:34.220 In the reawakening of old hatreds, Englishmen again saw the Americans as boors and blasterers.

00:46:43.220 And the Americans again saw the English as imperialist reactionaries and bullies.

00:46:48.220 Yet those who opposed war managed to prevail.

00:46:51.220 It was even whispered that McLeod's acquittal involved collusion by Washington in the mysterious disappearance of key witnesses.

00:47:00.220 Clearly, there were powerful forces at work on both sides that didn't take war lightly.

00:47:05.220 But before Canada could breathe more easily, the threat of war flared once again, this time over territory at the borderline.

00:47:20.220 By 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.

00:47:30.220 But the boundary remained ill-defined between Maine and New Brunswick, with much dispute over vague geographical references in the peace treaty.

00:47:40.220 This richly forested area had once been safely remote.

00:47:45.220 But after 1830, it was increasingly invaded by lumbermen from both Maine and New Brunswick, all eager for profit.

00:47:53.220 With both sides claiming authority, Americans were soon cutting timber in territory claimed by Canada and Canadians in territory claimed by the United States.

00:48:08.220 12,000 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.

00:48:19.220 Many efforts to settle the dispute failed, and now frontier violence loomed.

00:48:26.220 In the winter of 1839, 50 amateur warriors from Maine ended up in a New Brunswick jail.

00:48:38.220 They had been sent to drive Canadian lumbermen out of the Aroostook area, but instead they had been captured.

00:48:44.220 As the tension grew, local leaders adopted unyielding positions, forcing their respective nations into a glowering and dangerous opposition.

00:48:54.220 Lord 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.

00:49:07.220 For the British saw Maine as a rambunctious Indian with an all-or-nothing attitude toward Britannia.

00:49:22.220 Was the British lion asleep asleep?

00:49:34.220 New Brunswick was worried about this, and about Lord Ashburton's abilities.

00:49:38.220 But Daniel Webster, negotiating for the United States, knew that the grandiose claims of the state of Maine could never be accepted by Britain.

00:49:50.220 The 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.

00:50:03.220 Otherwise, American guns would be very close to this vital waterway, for Maine's claim stretched far north.

00:50:09.220 So Ashburton found his American counterpart to be eminently reasonable, although Maine saw Webster as a drunken nincompoop.

00:50:24.220 In 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.

00:50:38.220 The imperial lion had truly been asleep, in the person of Lord Ashburton, according to a disillusioned New Brunswick. 0.97

00:50:46.220 But for Maine, the lion was a very clever cat indeed, and Daniel Webster was the dunce. 0.82

00:50:59.220 Neither Webster nor Ashburton deserved the epithets that were directed at them. 0.89

00:51:04.220 Actually, they had both acted in a reasonable and intelligent way.

00:51:09.220 Modern 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.

00:51:16.220 As for Webster, the concessions he won included a redefinition of the border at Rouse's Point that put it in American territory.

00:51:26.220 Here 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.

00:51:35.220 Thus, rational self-interest and the courage to compromise won out over unreasoning belligerence.

00:51:42.220 But soon there was another and even more dangerous threat, far to the West.

00:51:48.220 Beyond the Rockies, a tangle of rival claims kept the boundary undefined long after other issues of the War of 1812 were settled.

00:52:00.220 Here, the British wanted the Columbia River for the fur trade.

00:52:04.220 But the United States had its eye on Puget Sound with its excellent harbors.

00:52:11.220 This stalemate had produced an agreement for a condominium, joint occupation for ten years.

00:52:16.220 But 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.

00:52:32.220 And the ambitious plans of Sir George Simpson, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, kept British commerce dominant.

00:52:39.220 This lovely mountain empire seemed safe for the fur trade.

00:52:49.220 There were no settlers to interfere, and only a few military outposts in the 1500 miles of Indian territory between Oregon and the Mississippi.

00:52:58.220 But early in the 1830s, settlers did start to appear in the remote and spectacular Oregon country.

00:53:09.220 They were led by missionaries of various faiths, who hoped to establish an earthly paradise here, and who were driven by mystical visions.

00:53:18.220 The missionaries hoped to build up their utopias in an unspoiled land with the help of unspoiled Indians. 1.00

00:53:28.220 But they were to face every kind of difficulty, including Indian indifference and hostility.

00:53:39.220 Despite all the difficulties that faced them, the new missionary settlers fell in love with these rich and splendid lands.

00:53:46.220 And it was not long before their glowing descriptions were attracting attention in the highest political circles in far-off Washington.

00:54:01.220 At Fort Vancouver, the Hudson's Bay Company had its headquarters for fur trading in the Pacific Coast area.

00:54:07.220 And the chief administrator here, Dr. John McLaughlin, was anything but pleased by the influx of settlers.

00:54:15.220 It had been bad enough to see Astoria return to the Americans after the War of 1812.

00:54:21.220 But now, settlement presented an even greater threat to the fur trade.

00:54:25.220 Still, 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.

00:54:38.220 But 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.

00:54:52.220 However, 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.

00:55:05.220 In 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.

00:55:24.220 Soon, new waves of American settlers were on the move toward the Oregon country.

00:55:29.220 A trickle became a river, and then a flood.

00:55:34.220 They 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.

00:55:47.220 By the mid-1840s, the first towns were starting to appear in Oregon.

00:55:52.220 But just as McLaughlin had feared, the picturesque valleys of Oregon saw political unrest.

00:56:02.220 As early as 1843, in the Willamette Valley, settlers met to debate their status under joint British-American rule.

00:56:10.220 The 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.

00:56:28.220 Meanwhile, 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.

00:56:47.220 A northern boundary on the map, at 54 degrees, 40 minutes of latitude.

00:57:04.220 This became the American slogan.

00:57:06.220 In 1844, this inflammatory slogan helped elect James Polk to the presidency of the United States.

00:57:19.220 Now he had to take action on this issue that so aroused public opinion.

00:57:23.220 54-40 took in about half of what is now British Columbia.

00:57:33.220 But Polk instead made a more moderate demand, the 49th parallel.

00:57:38.220 He confronted Britain with this solution.

00:57:41.220 But when this was turned down by Queen Victoria's government in London, Polk reverted to the extremist line.

00:57:47.220 Yankee Doodle Polk, it seemed to the British, thought he was taunting a benign, doddering Britannia with his warlike cries.

00:58:01.220 But could he be sure that the lion wouldn't bite?

00:58:07.220 Englishmen were confident of John Bull's strength.

00:58:11.220 Polk was just an upstart and a bluffer. 1.00

00:58:14.220 Men like Palmerston, who would rather bully than be bullied, were only too ready to fight.

00:58:23.220 And so, another war seemed all too likely between the lion and the eagle.

00:58:33.220 Suddenly, at the height of the crisis, there was compromise.

00:58:36.220 But the US merely abandoned inflated ambitions for the whole area, while Britain gave up well-founded claims to the Columbia River Triangle.

00:58:47.220 President Polk had been a good poker player.

00:58:50.220 For in the end, he got what he had really wanted all along.

00:58:54.220 A boundary from the Rockies to the ocean that followed the 49th parallel.

00:58:58.220 But an important American concession gave all of Vancouver Island to the British.

00:59:05.220 Thus, the Oregon country was finally divided.

00:59:09.220 And with this agreement in 1846, the entire Canadian-American boundary was at last virtually defined.

00:59:16.220 In Canada, the war scare had found military installations far too weak.

00:59:27.220 Had war broken out, the country might well have been lost.

00:59:31.220 And in Washington, too, there were good reasons to avoid war over Oregon.

00:59:38.220 For there was trouble to the south, which had started a decade earlier,

00:59:43.220 when American settlers in the Mexican province of Texas began battling with the Mexican authorities.

00:59:49.220 Massacred at the Alamo, the Americans had found revenge under Sam Houston's leadership, defeating a Mexican army.

00:59:57.220 The settlers had set up a Republic of Texas, which had later been annexed by the U.S.

01:00:04.220 The hope of further expansion through war with Mexico had been on Polk's mind as he listened to cries for action in Oregon.

01:00:13.220 The American Senate itself had seen bitter debate between 5440 expansionists and 49ers.

01:00:26.220 But the expansionists in the Senate had not prevailed.

01:00:41.220 And the threat of war receded as Polk managed to win support for the more moderate solution of the 49th parallel.

01:00:54.220 Now Polk could turn to his real target, and the brash energies of Yankee imperialism could be fully devoted to snipping away at Mexico. 0.63

01:01:03.220 And for John Bull, this diversion helped preserve for him a goodly share of the Oregon country.

01:01:14.220 During the war scare, weary British troops had reinforced the remote outpost of Fort Gary in what is now Manitoba.

01:01:24.220 This was the center of another vast realm ruled by the Hudson's Bay Company.

01:01:29.220 And even though it was remote from American preoccupations, it too could someday be in danger.

01:01:36.220 The 49th parallel now cut across an empty prairie.

01:01:41.220 But could these boundary posts stop land-hungry American settlers if they ever headed north?

01:01:47.220 Such fears were by no means unfounded.

01:01:54.220 American expansionism was very real, as shown by the war underway in Mexico.

01:01:59.220 The issue there was the desire for more land.

01:02:02.220 And it seemed that American power, roused in support of American settlers, was not to be resisted.

01:02:08.220 Since the war of 1812, moderation had prevailed.

01:02:13.220 Otherwise, the Caroline affair, the dispute with Maine, and the Oregon crisis might have ended in war.

01:02:21.220 But during the Oregon crisis, an American editorialist wrote of his country's manifest destiny to overspread the continent.

01:02:30.220 The phrase caught on, and politicians took to using it.

01:02:34.220 Was this a passing mood or a determination to occupy every part of a continent that was still three-quarters empty?

01:02:43.220 The border with British North America had now been officially drawn.

01:02:48.220 But could it survive the urge toward manifest destiny?

01:03:04.220 The

01:03:32.080 Thank you.

01:04:02.080 Thank you.

01:04:32.080 Thank you.

01:05:02.080 So, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode.

01:05:06.140 I actually really liked that episode, even though, like I said at the beginning, it kind of jumps around a lot.

01:05:12.280 There'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.

01:05:23.040 So, 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.

01:05:36.860 Despite the fact that they had more topics to go over, but we will get into some of it here.

01:05:43.300 Before we do that, I'll do some of the the super chats here that came in early.

01:05:51.300 I think there's there's only a couple.

01:05:53.740 So I'll just get them out of the way now.

01:05:58.880 Big at Bullock says, thank you.

01:06:01.460 Thanks a lot, man.

01:06:02.160 Really appreciate the support.

01:06:03.280 Earlier, Ticklegrass had gifted five subscriptions there.

01:06:07.820 So really appreciate those as always.

01:06:09.500 Thanks, guys.

01:06:10.840 And big one over on Entropy.

01:06:13.460 Thank you, Big J Michigan so much.

01:06:15.580 He 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?

01:06:25.420 End quote.

01:06:26.640 William Lyon McKenzie, 1837.

01:06:28.740 And he says, William Lyon McKenzie is my second favorite Canadian after John A. MacDonald.

01:06:34.120 Yeah, he is an interesting figure for sure.

01:06:37.420 And he does get quite a lot of acknowledgement in Canadian history.

01:06:41.520 I think there is a tendency to, especially among modern Canadians who are drifting towards American republicanism and championing the cause of annexation and stuff.

01:06:52.680 There 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.

01:07:06.080 There is a reason why it doesn't get into much detail in this episode.

01:07:10.900 And it's because it culminates essentially with a bar fight with a few musket volleys at Montgomery's Tavern.

01:07:20.140 I think there was two dozen to 30 men on, you know, William Lyon McKenzie's rebellion.

01:07:29.500 And, you know, they basically sent the local garrison to just deal with it.

01:07:37.060 And, 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.

01:07:46.780 And 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.

01:07:57.440 As it, you know, it goes over that actually in a bit more detail in this episode.

01:08:00.900 But we'll get into it for sure a little bit more.

01:08:04.400 I'll kind of give my thoughts on it because, you know, McKenzie was correct.

01:08:08.120 His assessment, this is so common in history.

01:08:11.020 His assessment of the problem was correct. 0.93

01:08:13.740 His reaction and his solution to the problem, especially in the context of Loyalist Canada, was entirely wrong.

01:08:22.020 And that's why it didn't go anywhere.

01:08:24.840 Now, it wasn't just him, obviously.

01:08:28.580 You know, he was speaking about a real problem, which was oligarchal rule, which, you know, became known as the Family Compact.

01:08:36.320 You know, it wasn't just him.

01:08:37.480 Obviously, they mentioned Louis-Joseph Papineau.

01:08:39.720 They didn't mention Joseph Howe in this series.

01:08:42.720 Joseph Howe didn't lead a rebellion, but he was one of the key influential, you know, brains attacking the Family Compact.

01:08:52.500 And he ended up engaging in more, like, legal battles and what you would call, like, I don't know what to call, hooliganism.

01:09:02.940 So, you know, the oligarchs in Nova Scotia sent, you know, goons basically to smash up his newspaper office and harass him.

01:09:13.640 And, you know, he was, again, he was subjected to lawfare.

01:09:16.940 So he was also part of this equation, and they didn't really mention that.

01:09:20.120 But, yeah, there is a very, I could pull up or, you know, share with you guys.

01:09:26.780 I can't remember exactly what it was, but there is a very interesting series on the 1837-1838 rebellions.

01:09:34.280 And, obviously, you know, it was the rebellion in Lower Canada that had the most teeth to it.

01:09:40.540 But even it was, like, again, they kind of just gloss over it in this series.

01:09:45.280 Because 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.

01:09:54.300 He had fled, I believe, to the United States.

01:09:57.580 And, you know, the rebellion consisted of, at its height, I think 4,000.

01:10:03.880 That's the approximate number.

01:10:05.860 Now, the population of Lower Canada at the time was 600,000.

01:10:10.260 So, you know, less than 1% of the population actually took part in that rebellion.

01:10:16.320 And there's an estimate, like, if you get into it, the estimated support for it was less than 25,000.

01:10:22.440 So, 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,

01:10:35.220 again, there was no real support for it.

01:10:37.380 So, that's why it couldn't win.

01:10:39.140 And it's understanding, you know, this is why I say, I think McKenzie was correct in his assessment of the problem.

01:10:46.820 He was identifying that, look, England is sending over these aristocrats to govern us.

01:10:53.000 They don't really have any connection to the people here.

01:10:56.820 They, you know, don't really care about our interests or what's good for the colony.

01:11:02.620 They're interested in extracting wealth for themselves and for other aristocrats and, you know, mercantile interests in the United Kingdom.

01:11:11.560 And 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,

01:11:19.940 he 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.

01:11:31.980 And 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,

01:11:47.860 some 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,

01:11:59.380 but basically an extension of British Parliament in Upper Canada and Lower Canada.

01:12:05.960 That probably would have gone over better.

01:12:08.100 It probably would have been more well-received by the Canadian people, but I digress.

01:12:13.120 We'll get into it more for sure.

01:12:14.240 But, 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.

01:12:25.320 Yeah, absolutely.

01:12:26.560 Yeah, it did ultimately result in changes, and that comes up in the next episode.

01:12:31.340 So, we will get back into this topic more.

01:12:33.940 But 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.

01:12:49.100 So, the British did learn a little bit from the American Revolution.

01:12:55.000 They understood that, like, if they don't address those problems, you know, this growing sense of rebellion, that it will ignite.

01:13:03.080 And then because of the presence of the American state directly south of the border, if that were to happen, it would be successful.

01:13:11.260 So, they kind of realized that they needed to make concessions and address those problems.

01:13:15.460 But, again, we'll come back to that a little bit later.

01:13:19.640 All right.

01:13:24.580 So, to get into it first, one of the important contexts when studying history and politics in general is that geography matters.

01:13:35.820 You can, you know, a lot of people look at maps and they just see lines on a map.

01:13:44.120 And what they don't understand is that those lines are actually typically geographical.

01:13:49.740 If you look at a map of Europe, there are some spots where the borders are kind of arbitrary.

01:13:56.260 But 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?

01:14:05.480 There's the Andoran Mountains there.

01:14:07.100 If you look at the split between Germany and France, it's because they're separated by a series of rivers.

01:14:12.780 But, you know, the big one being the Rhine River, right?

01:14:15.160 The same is true for the Danube.

01:14:17.720 You know, these, like, Switzerland is located within the mountain, right?

01:14:22.280 It's the low-lying valleys within the Alps Mountain chain, right?

01:14:26.080 Like, these borders are not irrelevant.

01:14:28.020 Italy is capped at the top by the Alps Mountains, right?

01:14:31.060 So, geography matters when you're talking about how nations come into being, you know, natural borders form.

01:14:41.060 And so, you know, to a certain extent, you have to consider geography when you're trying to really understand history and politics.

01:14:49.620 And Canada is no exception.

01:14:52.620 You know, obviously it gets into it, but the big one right off the bat for expansion westward was the Canadian Shield.

01:14:59.280 I'll play the clip, and then I'll talk about it more.

01:15:02.220 But if you've ever traveled this area by car, you'll understand, or if you've flown over it and you've been able to look down,

01:15:09.260 you understand why this was a monumental, you know, obstacle to try and overcome.

01:15:15.700 Another Canadian disadvantage was the Laurentian Shield, an immense low plateau of rock that hindered westward expansion.

01:15:24.120 Had it not been there, Canada, too, would have had an open door to the Rockies.

01:15:29.280 But there it was, remorselessly blocking the road.

01:15:33.380 Yet there was an area that did escape the Shield, an area bordering the waters from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron.

01:15:40.360 And here there was growth.

01:15:45.540 Over the next two decades, these limited but fertile lands attracted many settlers in both upper and lower Canada.

01:15:52.680 And the country grew substantially.

01:15:59.620 But soon enough, the limits were in sight.

01:16:03.160 As in the United States, the homesteaders turned their eyes to the west.

01:16:08.100 Though here, they saw only the forbidding face of the Shield.

01:16:11.520 A thousand miles of rock, muskeg, lakes, and rivers before a Canadian could find open land, where the Indian hunters still reigned supreme. 1.00

01:16:23.240 Yeah, so, it's difficult to explain for a lot of people, but basically, if you take, where does the Shield start?

01:16:35.760 I guess, you could, I guess near Pembroke?

01:16:40.520 Petawawa, like Deep River or North Bay?

01:16:42.960 If 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.

01:17:00.420 Like, not nice, you know, grassland forest, like, hard bush, muskeg, swamp, ponds, lakes.

01:17:10.060 It's just a nightmare.

01:17:11.720 And there's that area, particularly from Thunder Bay to, you know, where you finally break onto the prairie, where it is just swamp.

01:17:24.320 Navigating that at the time would have been a nightmare.

01:17:30.880 You have to consider, too, like, things, like the small things, the bugs.

01:17:37.480 Just think of the bugs of trying to go through that completely unbroken, there's no paths, there's no trails, nothing.

01:17:48.600 Getting through that thousand miles of, you know, basically bog was a Herculean task in itself.

01:18:01.700 And that, that was a huge obstacle for Canadians.

01:18:06.620 You know, the Americans had broken through the Appalachians back in the 1760s or something along those lines.

01:18:15.920 And there's nothing but open land, essentially, until you hit the Rockies, with the exception of a few major rivers.

01:18:24.200 But that's it.

01:18:25.640 Just open plains.

01:18:27.900 Canada didn't have that luxury.

01:18:29.220 So you can see how that was a hindrance.

01:18:33.720 And even the land that was settled in the, you know, basically what is now Southern Ontario, that kind of triangle.

01:18:42.960 It was all forest, nicer forest.

01:18:46.340 But it wasn't open fields.

01:18:47.940 There is some grasslands in Southern Ontario, but most of it would have been, you know, dense hardwood forests.

01:18:55.180 And as you go more north, more coniferous.

01:18:57.460 But, yeah, that was a huge task, just clearing that land itself for settlement.

01:19:05.380 I 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.

01:19:13.500 You 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.

01:19:31.360 It will give you an appreciation for what our ancestors did to actually tame this wilderness.

01:19:38.800 Because it was not insignificant, and it's not something that we should just scoff at and, you know, forget about.

01:19:46.660 So, but now, I got a series of clips now on the Northwest Company, and these ones I find extremely interesting.

01:19:56.580 I actually think I'm going to probably try to do something on the Northwest Company at some point, maybe a series on it.

01:20:04.500 Because these are really interesting stories, and they kind of gloss over a lot of it.

01:20:09.380 But 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.

01:20:18.820 Frankly, they're on the same level.

01:20:20.300 Like, most people listening to this, Canadians, will know the name Lewis and Clark.

01:20:26.720 Like, even if they don't know exactly what they did, they'll know, they'll probably know, oh, yeah, I've heard of Lewis and Clark.

01:20:32.060 They were, like, explorers, right?

01:20:34.140 Yeah, 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.

01:20:41.840 We just kind of know about it.

01:20:43.780 But 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?

01:20:54.860 And that'd probably be the most that you get.

01:20:58.040 So this next series of clips, I think, is really interesting, and I'm going to add some additional stuff to it.

01:21:06.620 Angrily, the fur merchants of Montreal had watched their operations diminish south of the Great Lakes as the United States consolidated its hold.

01:21:15.420 But taking perseverance as their motto, they had created the Northwest Company in the very year the American Revolution had ended.

01:21:26.300 They would trade in other areas, these determined entrepreneurs, who were mostly Scotsmen, with names like Fraser and McTavish, McGillivray and McKenzie.

01:21:35.620 Working for the Scottish traders were French-Canadian voyageurs and coureurs de bois, left behind from the great days of New France.

01:21:48.720 Hardy 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.

01:21:58.800 So, obviously, they jump back in time, you know, out of this episode is supposed to cover 1818 to 1846.

01:22:15.860 Obviously, they're jumping back to 1783, but just the nature of covering this particular period of, well,

01:22:22.700 the 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.

01:22:31.820 And that's obviously important at the end of the episode.

01:22:34.040 So, it kind of ties in.

01:22:36.100 But, 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.

01:22:48.840 Well, David Thompson basically charted most of Oregon before anybody else had got there.

01:22:56.280 He hadn't gone to the Pacific, but he had covered a good chunk of Oregon country.

01:23:02.860 So, yeah, I'll keep running through these clips.

01:23:05.960 Fort William.

01:23:07.920 With furs from the south increasingly denied to Canadian traders, the future would lie north and west of Fort William.

01:23:15.400 And the voyageurs struck out on arduous journeys a thousand miles into the interior over hazardous routes.

01:23:23.580 These were dangerous byways, but the urge for profit was strong, so there was perseverance.

01:23:48.200 Besides 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.

01:24:04.700 And 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.

01:24:22.980 And after gazing out on the waters of the Pacific, McKenzie proudly recorded his feet for all to see.

01:24:30.840 Yeah, so that stone, like, I'm just going to add some color to this.

01:24:42.440 That stone is real.

01:24:43.840 It wasn't carved.

01:24:45.600 It was painted by Alexander McKenzie whenever he reached the Pacific Northwest through what is now, it's now the McKenzie River.

01:24:52.840 But, 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.

01:25:12.400 So, yeah, one of the first people, obviously, to travel the continent overland.

01:25:16.040 And he's remembered as being, you know, one of the greatest explorers, not only in Canadian history, but in history in general.

01:25:24.220 He also traveled north to the Arctic Ocean and charted a bunch of what is now the prairies.

01:25:34.340 So, yeah.

01:25:35.480 But that stone, interesting, is still there.

01:25:38.600 And funny enough, it's at, I think it's McKenzie River National Park in British Columbia.

01:25:43.700 And you can only get there by plane or boat.

01:25:46.980 There's no roads to that spot still.

01:25:49.140 So, it's still a very remote area.

01:25:53.160 But, yeah, it was, I think in 1923, they discovered the stone.

01:25:57.660 And the paint had faded greatly.

01:26:00.780 So, they etched over the paint so that it actually stays there forever.

01:26:06.460 So, yeah, you can, if you ever go to McKenzie River National Park, you can see that stone.

01:26:12.000 But the other things that are interesting.

01:26:18.700 So, you know, like just to add a little color to Alexander McKenzie's life.

01:26:25.500 He was born in Scotland.

01:26:29.960 He moved to America with his father to be with his uncle when his mother died when she was 10.

01:26:36.240 His father and uncle were loyalists who went to, sorry, I don't want to get them confused here because I've got stuff for all of them.

01:26:50.020 So, when basically the American War of Independence broke out, they moved to Montreal.

01:26:59.380 And then, yeah, he began exploring.

01:27:03.980 So, it is interesting, too.

01:27:05.400 Like there's like the ethnogenesis right there of like the Canadian people, you know, the loyalist, you know, channels.

01:27:14.100 Yeah, 1789, he goes to the Arctic Ocean.

01:27:23.660 1793, he goes to the Pacific Ocean.

01:27:25.540 That's 10 years before Lewis and Clark.

01:27:27.920 And he was knighted for his accomplishments.

01:27:31.600 There is a, he did write a book or a series of memoirs.

01:27:34.840 It's called Voyages from Montreal.

01:27:36.200 So, if you want to try and find those, you can.

01:27:40.380 And, yeah, he was one of the, like he was an inspiration to Lewis and Clark, too.

01:27:47.060 So, I think that's interesting that like, you know, most Canadians don't know who this is.

01:27:50.860 But he's a folk hero the same way Lewis and Clark are folk heroes, right?

01:27:55.380 And there is quite a few things named after him.

01:27:58.340 But, yeah, I'll play the next clip here.

01:28:00.680 After 1783, all the powers established on the North American continent were pressing their claims on the fabulous Central Pacific Coast.

01:28:12.200 Russia, Britain, and Spain all had ambitions here.

01:28:16.380 And soon there was a tangle of conflicting bases established by men who came by sea rather than by land.

01:28:22.840 The flag of Imperial Russia already flew over settlements in Alaska, like Kodiak, a new Archangel.

01:28:31.320 And from here, the Russians, avid for furs, sailed south to establish a toehold in Northern California. 0.98

01:28:42.880 Britain, responding to the Russian challenge, sent Captain James Cook to the disputed area.

01:28:48.200 And in 1778, he visited Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island to assert Britain's title and discuss trading possibilities with the Indians.

01:29:03.880 Imperial Spain, though declining in power, was roused by these actions to make provocative claims to the whole Northwest coast.

01:29:11.200 And in 1789, these led to a dangerous clash with British traders at Nootka.

01:29:17.920 But the threat of war made the Spanish back down.

01:29:25.480 A few years later, Captain George Vancouver strengthened Britain's position by making the first thorough survey of the coast.

01:29:32.500 And in 1808, Simon Fraser found a river to the Pacific, soon after the discovery of the headwaters of the Columbia by David Thompson.

01:29:42.880 Like 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.

01:29:57.760 But when the mouth of the Columbia was reached by David Thompson, he was too late.

01:30:02.940 There was already a fort there with the American flag flying over it.

01:30:07.160 It was July, 1811.

01:30:09.700 Yeah, so there's a lot of names dropped in that segment.

01:30:16.020 And that's why I wanted to play that one in particular.

01:30:19.060 And this is going to take a little bit of time to go through.

01:30:22.360 So obviously, I'm going to skim over George Vancouver because he's one of the more well-known ones.

01:30:28.060 Obviously, like that's why it's called Vancouver, Vancouver Island.

01:30:31.620 He was one of the first to he was one of the first Europeans to reach the Pacific Northwest by sea.

01:30:38.800 And he narrowly missed.

01:30:41.360 So Alexander McKenzie was at 17, 1793.

01:30:47.420 Alexander McKenzie goes overland and he misses George Vancouver by like, I think it was four weeks or something like a month later.

01:30:56.540 You know, Vancouver arrives at Vancouver Island and starts charting parts of the Pacific Northwest.

01:31:06.020 So these are very close.

01:31:07.580 The other one, though, that I saw some people react to in the chat there.

01:31:13.420 I actually grabbed one of the comments.

01:31:21.380 Big J Michigan, James Cook, the Australian explorer.

01:31:24.880 Sure. Well, he's he's honored probably most in modern times by the Australians for obvious reasons.

01:31:33.260 He was the first one to arrive at, you know, parts of New Zealand and Australia.

01:31:38.540 He mapped out a good chunk of the New Zealand coast.

01:31:41.600 He found a ton of islands in the Pacific, et cetera, over his three voyages that he did this.

01:31:51.920 But not a lot of people actually know that one of the first taskings that Captain Cook actually had wasn't in the Pacific at all.

01:31:59.740 It was in the Atlantic.

01:32:01.340 And he was actually stationed first in Halifax in the 1760s.

01:32:08.340 So I think it's 1762.

01:32:10.660 He was charting parts of the St.

01:32:13.180 Lawrence around Newfoundland, up into the Arctic, around the maritime coast and stuff.

01:32:19.660 And he was mapping a lot of that stuff.

01:32:22.120 So Captain Cook actually got his start in in eastern Canada.

01:32:25.500 And then from there, in 1768, he does his first voyage here.

01:32:33.500 I pulled that up there.

01:32:37.960 So his first voyage to Haiti, circumnavigated New Zealand.

01:32:44.180 And 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.

01:32:51.880 Uh, 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.

01:33:15.540 So, 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?

01:33:34.120 Um, so there's that, uh, his second voyage, uh, was to determine if an uninhabited southern continent existed.

01:33:43.640 Uh, 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.

01:34:03.560 Uh, and then his third voyage was, uh, 1776 to 1779, and that was the one that he landed in, uh, Canada.

01:34:12.600 And, 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. 0.98

01:34:28.780 And, uh, uh, that's where he was killed by a bunch of fucking savages. 0.95

01:34:33.540 So, yeah, um, Captain Cook is a legend. 0.99

01:34:40.400 Um, he's something that doesn't get as much respect in Canadian history as he probably should.

01:34:45.800 Um, 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.

01:34:56.360 Um, because some of you might remember, but a lot of people probably don't even know that this happened.

01:35:03.060 Uh, there was actually a statue of Captain Cook in Victoria on Vancouver Island that was erected in the 1970s.

01:35:10.760 And on Canada Day in 2021, that was done to it.

01:35:16.180 Um, why?

01:35:20.020 Well, uh, Captain Cook had nothing to do.

01:35:22.960 I mean, he had nothing as far as we know, but peaceful relations and trade with the indigenous that existed on Vancouver Island.

01:35:31.680 Um, he established trade networks, but it wasn't like he was genociding them or anything along those lines. 0.62

01:35:37.980 Uh, but that was just a fun target for a bunch of, uh, destructive communists and, uh, you know, race, uh, traitors.

01:35:47.740 So, yeah, they, uh, tore down his statue.

01:35:50.340 Uh, they dumped it into the harbor at Victoria and, um, it was never replaced.

01:35:56.100 Um, which is disgusting.

01:35:58.680 Um, so, and obviously the same thing is done to his legacy now in Australia, he's had statues torn down, beheaded.

01:36:07.860 The famous Cook cottage was vandalized pretty recently, actually, too.

01:36:12.160 I think that was a year or so ago.

01:36:13.980 Um, substantial damage to like a, like an invaluable, um, you know, monument.

01:36:21.700 Um, so yeah, I just thought I would add that in there for some color on Captain Cook.

01:36:28.380 Because not a lot of Canadians know this about Cook, that he got his start in Nova Scotia and Eastern Canada. 0.98

01:36:34.480 And 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. 0.98

01:36:44.500 So, um, yeah. 0.99

01:36:50.420 All right.

01:36:51.080 Uh, the other name, sorry, that was one name that was dropped in there.

01:36:54.420 The other name, uh, that's important is obviously Simon Fraser is probably the one that people know the most.

01:37:00.440 And that's because the Fraser River is, you know, along a lot of major settlements now.

01:37:06.260 Um, it's one of the regions that, um, uh, became the most populated Simon Fraser University.

01:37:14.360 There's high schools named after him.

01:37:15.920 There's like, the name is, uh, pretty well known to a lot of people, obviously.

01:37:20.260 Um, 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.

01:37:30.760 So, 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.

01:37:42.540 Now 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.

01:37:54.840 And 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.

01:38:04.720 Um, 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.

01:38:16.520 Uh, he found the headwater of the Columbia, um, went all over the place.

01:38:21.960 Yeah.

01:38:23.000 Fascinating story.

01:38:24.000 Um, for him and sadly, he died in relative obscurity and poor.

01:38:29.940 Um, 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.

01:38:42.640 So, um, I believe he was actually born.

01:38:46.680 Um, yeah, so Simon Fraser of, of all the ones that we've just mentioned was the only one that was born in North America.

01:38:53.600 And funny enough, he was actually born in New York, um, similar to, uh, Alexander McKenzie.

01:38:59.200 Uh, his family were loyalists.

01:39:02.000 Uh, they moved, he was sent, uh, to Montreal, uh, whenever war broke out with the Americans.

01:39:09.800 Uh, his father, uh, was part of, uh, one of the highland regiments, um, that was stationed in America.

01:39:20.560 Uh, and he was actually captured, um, at the battle of Bennington in 1774 and died in prison.

01:39:27.780 And so you could see, you know, this is the loyalist founding, right?

01:39:31.720 So this is where you get this, the early rumblings of kind of Canadian patriotism and loyalism, um, you know, from these great figures.

01:39:39.440 So, yeah, that was, uh, Simon Fraser's early story.

01:39:42.580 And, 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.

01:39:53.300 He 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.

01:40:07.160 So, um, like, you know, it all ties together, right?

01:40:10.400 So there's some interesting color there.

01:40:13.360 Um, David Thompson was, uh, uh, yeah, born, born in Wales, I believe.

01:40:21.340 He's raised in Northern England, uh, and, uh, I'm going to forget his, uh, sorry.

01:40:42.500 Oh, I'll just leave it there.

01:40:43.720 I'm not going to, yeah, belabor the point, but yeah.

01:40:46.700 Um, so, you know, these are all fascinating characters in their own right, um, that don't really get the recognition that they probably deserve.

01:40:57.980 And 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.

01:41:07.720 So, yeah, uh, we'll move right along.

01:41:09.600 Faced with these losses, the men of the Northwest Company of Montreal were forced to develop to the utmost their alternative sources of furs.

01:41:21.600 For many years, their canoes had gone west over long and hazardous routes that stretched all the way to the Pacific.

01:41:28.280 They traversed an empire even greater than that which had been lost to the South.

01:41:34.280 Now, with almost desperate energy, the Norwesters struggled to hold this empire together and exploit it as never before. 1.00

01:41:42.140 But back in Montreal, the Northwest Company was in financial trouble, and Edward Ellis, a director, was given the job of finding a solution.

01:41:57.600 One of the main problems he had to consider was the fierce competition offered by the long-established Hudson's Bay Company.

01:42:04.560 Rivalry sometimes erupted into violence with raids, thievery, and bloodshed.

01:42:12.140 The rivers leading to Hudson's Bay, Ellis realized, made for a short, cheap route to Europe.

01:42:20.680 By contrast, the Northwest Company's furs had to come out by a long and expensive route.

01:42:27.220 So Edward Ellis was forced to the conclusion that there was no future for the Norwesters unless they merged with the Hudson's Bay Company.

01:42:35.380 And this merger was effected in 1821.

01:42:40.440 Yeah.

01:42:40.960 So, 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.

01:42:55.560 You know, it's interesting.

01:43:00.220 It was the first truly Canadian enterprise that was set upon, you know, exploration and surveying and discovery.

01:43:11.200 So, you know, there's another clip to go with it that I've kept it because it's, I think, a really good summary.

01:43:19.980 But, yeah, Big J Michigan has a good one here.

01:43:22.940 Didn't the Northwest Company and Hudson's Bay Company go to war?

01:43:25.620 Yes.

01:43:26.400 There was some violence between those two companies and, you know, their respective employees over, you know, territory and furs and stuff like that.

01:43:35.640 But 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.

01:43:47.360 And he was actually captured and sent back to Montreal as a prisoner to face trial.

01:43:53.200 And he was pardoned or given bail and the charges dropped because he didn't do anything.

01:43:59.340 But, yeah, Simon Fraser was at one point.

01:44:01.740 Can you imagine, like, you've traveled all the way by, you know, canoe and overland to get from Montreal to B.C.?

01:44:10.900 And then some little skirmish happens.

01:44:13.460 You 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.

01:44:20.780 So, like, these were not soft men, right?

01:44:31.920 Yeah.

01:44:32.720 And this is all summarized extremely well.

01:44:35.660 Like, I wanted to just play this clip because the narrator does an extremely good job here of summarizing the importance of the Northwest Company.

01:44:44.180 Montreal had been largely built on the fur trade.

01:44:47.880 And now, in the words of William McGillivray, the fur trade is forever lost to Canada.

01:44:54.880 McGillivray was in a position to know, for he was a leading member of the Northwest Company.

01:45:00.040 Now 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.

01:45:08.860 But the Northwest Company was finished.

01:45:13.180 But it will never be forgotten, for it was the first Canadian organization to span the continent.

01:45:20.000 It had staked the limits and traced the links for the transcontinental nation that was to come.

01:45:26.060 But in 1821, in Montreal, this could not be foreseen, for the economic picture was troubled.

01:45:33.000 Yeah, 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.

01:45:45.580 So, yeah.

01:45:46.360 And I just threw this clip in.

01:45:48.320 This isn't from the show, but, you know, a lot of people will know this song.

01:45:52.120 Um, so, like, you know, you can go back and you can, this is a great thing.

01:45:57.200 I posted this, I think, last year at some point.

01:46:01.560 Um, so I just clipped a minute of it.

01:46:03.680 But, uh, you know, the song Northwest Passage by Stan Rogers, um, this is where you'll hear all the names that we're talking about, right?

01:46:12.640 So I'll just play part of this song, uh, with the visual that goes with it.

01:46:17.220 And it gives you an idea of, like, you know, Stan Rogers had a deep appreciation for this history.

01:46:22.180 And he kind of immortalized it, in a way.

01:46:24.980 Um, so, yeah.

01:46:26.460 And through the night behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west.

01:46:33.540 I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson, and the rest.

01:46:40.180 Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me

01:46:48.060 To race the roaring Fraser to the sea

01:46:54.500 Ah, for just one time

01:46:59.960 I would take the Northwest Passage

01:47:04.360 To find the hand of Franklin

01:47:08.040 Reaching for the Beaufort Sea

01:47:11.960 Tracing one warm line

01:47:16.280 Through a land so wide and savage

01:47:20.660 And make a Northwest Passage to the sea

01:47:26.240 Yeah, so obviously, you know, three of the names that we were just talking about pop up in that song.

01:47:34.260 Thompson, Fraser, and Mackenzie.

01:47:36.660 So, yeah.

01:47:37.800 It's a great song, obviously.

01:47:41.080 But, um, yeah.

01:47:43.020 That's the significance of the Northwest Company.

01:47:45.000 And I don't think a lot of...

01:47:46.440 I think very few Canadians would even know what the Northwest Company is if you, you know, mention it.

01:47:53.720 Let alone, um, uh, the men like Thompson, Mackenzie, and Fraser.

01:48:00.680 All right.

01:48:01.580 Um, okay.

01:48:03.540 So now we're going to jump back a bit.

01:48:05.660 Um, so this is what I meant whenever I said this.

01:48:09.180 This episode jumps around a lot

01:48:10.740 Because we've just been, like, covering, you know, Western exploration

01:48:14.260 And then it jumps back all of a sudden to what's going on in Eastern Canada.

01:48:18.060 And at this point, you know, Eastern Canada as well as, you know, the Eastern United States

01:48:23.180 Are undergoing, you know, the beginnings of industrialization.

01:48:28.440 And so there's a push, obviously, to start building the infrastructure

01:48:33.080 That would actually make for an advanced civilization as opposed to just an agricultural one.

01:48:38.820 And this is, the reason this is so important is because this is the stuff that they try to lecture you about, um, you know, today.

01:48:46.320 And they just tell you, like, your ancestors were just immigrants.

01:48:49.300 No, our ancestors built this place.

01:48:52.420 Without the work that was done by our ancestors, there would be no country. 0.83

01:48:57.340 There would be no advanced civilization.

01:48:59.640 There would be no cities.

01:49:00.920 There would be no ports.

01:49:02.100 There would be no canals.

01:49:03.380 There would be no sluices. 1.00

01:49:04.680 There would be none of the things that allow you to come in here and be an Uber Eats driver, uh, would have been created.

01:49:12.260 So, um, you know, it's an important kind of segment of, of this period, even though, you know, it seems minor.

01:49:19.900 But, 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.

01:49:38.120 They were coming now from England and Scotland in a modest but steady flow.

01:49:46.960 They often seemed out of place, making tea in the wilderness as they struggled to turn the land into home.

01:49:55.120 But they persisted, arduously clearing the limited but fertile land of Upper Canada.

01:50:01.000 Gradually, a pattern of settled life was spreading across parts of Canada that had once been empty.

01:50:14.220 They transformed the land with weirs and spillways, taming it as the fur traders before them had never done.

01:50:22.180 They built water wheels and sluices and, greatest glory of all, grist mills.

01:50:28.760 For these people soon had products to sell, like potash, grain, and flour.

01:50:35.440 And thanks to its durability, there was a growing demand in Britain for Canadian lumber.

01:50:44.740 Seems like minor things, obviously, but, you know, without that, there is, there is no, Nate, there is no civilization here.

01:50:53.540 It's just barren wilderness or small, disconnected farms.

01:50:59.560 And then you get into the major projects.

01:51:01.660 So, obviously, one of the major ones that repeated in this episode was the canals.

01:51:07.560 So, we'll go through them.

01:51:08.920 But, 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.

01:51:22.380 And, you know, now you don't think twice about them.

01:51:25.620 You know, you drive over the Rideau Canal or you drive over the Welland Canal and you don't think about it at all.

01:51:30.600 But 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.

01:51:41.020 So, yeah.

01:51:42.500 So, the grand design for a trade route would have to be based solely on the natural advantages of the St. Lawrence.

01:51:49.740 But there were formidable obstacles.

01:51:51.660 From 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.

01:52:14.720 Canadians had long known that canals were the only answer, a small one having been dug as early as 1781.

01:52:23.760 Now the need was for more canals and larger ones.

01:52:30.900 So, in the 1820s, a series of canals was begun above Montreal.

01:52:35.560 And the year 1829 saw the enthusiastic opening of the Welland Canal, creating a smooth bypass around the mighty cataract at Niagara.

01:52:47.160 Surely 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.

01:52:58.840 On the way, they would pass American exports, heading for Montreal, en route to the Atlantic Ocean and markets overseas.

01:53:11.480 Yeah.

01:53:12.560 So, they're just immigrants, right? 0.93

01:53:15.120 There's no difference between what those people did and, you know, Jagpreet getting off the airplane in the airport

01:53:23.660 to get his visa so he could work for his cousin's subway, right?

01:53:33.940 There's no difference.

01:53:37.220 And this, obviously, this one is impressive, obviously.

01:53:40.760 And, again, like, I threw this one in here because the same thing is true for, obviously, the Americans.

01:53:45.080 Like, they'll tell you, like, oh, this is stolen.

01:53:46.800 It's like, do you have any, like, this one kind of blew my mind because I wasn't familiar with it,

01:53:52.780 but the Erie Canal is crazy.

01:53:56.460 Like, I couldn't, I think they said it's, like, just under 400 miles long.

01:54:01.840 That's nuts.

01:54:04.140 Yeah, I don't know.

01:54:05.840 The amount of labor and effort that would have gone into that is crazy.

01:54:09.100 But, yeah.

01:54:09.600 But the Americans were also interested in navigation.

01:54:13.340 And they, too, had something to cheer about.

01:54:16.340 Yankee Enterprise and Energy had started building the Erie Canal in 1817.

01:54:21.500 And eight years later, at the ceremony that opened it,

01:54:26.020 Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York symbolically poured five gallons of Lake Erie into New York's harbor.

01:54:33.660 The Great Lakes had been linked with a great port on the Atlantic.

01:54:38.260 Here was easy access to the American West for goods brought by ships of all nations.

01:54:43.440 The Erie Canal started at Buffalo and cut across to Albany.

01:54:52.000 From here to New York was an easy trip down the Hudson River.

01:54:56.180 Thus, the Hudson, historic rival of the St. Lawrence, captured the lively new trade with the Midwest.

01:55:01.960 Eighty-two locks were needed to raise the barges almost 600 feet between Albany and Buffalo.

01:55:13.680 The Erie Canal was 373 miles long, but only four feet deep in most places.

01:55:21.260 It was destined to touch off an agricultural boom in the American West.

01:55:25.220 The New Canal was a tremendous success, and its great beneficiary was the year-round ice-free port of New York.

01:55:43.660 Now, New York's wharves were crowded with a substantial part of the cargoes

01:55:47.820 that Canadians had confidently expected to attract to the docks of Montreal.

01:55:59.120 373 miles. Like, what is that? 600 kilometers long?

01:56:06.580 An insane feat of engineering for the time, and a monumental, you know, task of labor.

01:56:13.940 This isn't done with excavators. It's not done...

01:56:16.300 Like, there's no... Machinery. 0.99

01:56:18.740 That was dug by fucking hand. 0.99

01:56:21.440 By hand. 1.00

01:56:27.040 But yeah, just a bunch of privileged immigrants, you know, stealing shit from Indians or something, right? 1.00

01:56:37.940 Yeah, so this is why it's important to remember... 1.00

01:56:40.600 Like, you know, often when we look at history, we talk about war and stuff, but, you know,

01:56:44.820 it's infrastructure projects that really drive, you know, a nation, right?

01:56:50.640 Whether it's the castles in the United Kingdom, you know, walls, you know, the Roman roads or canals.

01:56:59.940 These, you know, massive infrastructure projects are, you know, generational things, typically.

01:57:10.720 Eight years is a long time, you know, to devote to building something like that.

01:57:16.000 So Americans should be proud of that.

01:57:18.140 And the same thing is true for us with, you know, the Rideau Canal, which is the next one here.

01:57:25.400 The building of the Rideau Canal in Upper Canada was one manifestation of the fear left behind by the Americans.

01:57:32.780 It was built at loyalist urging and with British funds.

01:57:37.000 And the elaborate engineering involved meant costs that were astronomical by the standards of the day.

01:57:42.200 And its main purpose was defense against the United States.

01:57:52.960 Essentially, the Rideau Canal was meant to provide a route from Lake Ontario to the Ottawa River and then to Montreal

01:57:59.860 so that ships could avoid the dangerous American border along the St. Lawrence in the event of war.

01:58:06.240 So earlier when we were talking about, you know, the importance of geography when it comes to history and politics,

01:58:13.020 like that's a perfect example right there.

01:58:16.480 The reason why Ottawa is now the capital of Canada, you know, which was, you know, a lot of people don't know this either.

01:58:22.740 So the original name of Ottawa that you'll still see in some business names and, you know, like rest,

01:58:30.500 like people play into the kind of nostalgia of it or the history of it.

01:58:34.300 The original name of Ottawa, it was referred to as Bi-Town.

01:58:38.260 And the reason it was called Bi-Town is because the Rideau Canal was built under the direction of Colonel Bi, right? 0.81

01:58:46.960 And so, like, the reason that location was chosen is because it's roughly equidistant between Montreal and Kingston,

01:58:53.240 which were the two major, you know, military outposts of both Upper and Lower Canada.

01:58:58.360 So you could have, you know, this kind of middle between the two that could serve as a launching point for goods, materials,

01:59:10.480 whatever, between those two areas.

01:59:12.240 So, yeah, like that's why Ottawa is the capital.

01:59:16.160 It's just in between, you know, the two most important or what was the two most important,

01:59:21.320 you know, military and economic centers of Upper and Lower Canada.

01:59:27.760 Yeah.

01:59:30.140 So.

01:59:35.440 And again, you know, that project was one, at the time they mentioned it, it was like a feat of engineering.

01:59:43.660 So, like, it's the technology that was used in those locks, a state of the art at the time.

01:59:49.820 And two, the number of people that were claimed by that project is in the hundreds.

01:59:55.420 And they were largely, you know, a lot of people know this.

01:59:57.720 They were largely indentured Irish.

02:00:01.200 So, you know, you want something.

02:00:03.280 If Canada should be ashamed of something, it should be ashamed of, you know, or the British should be ashamed of something.

02:00:08.420 It should be how they were using the Irish as, you know, virtual slaves to carry out these huge infrastructure projects. 1.00

02:00:15.740 But also, this is, you know, the nature of the world and how progress is made.

02:00:20.880 You know, it's made in the blood and bones of the average person at the direction of people who have vision.

02:00:28.360 And it's always been like that.

02:00:31.380 You know, you can complain about it, but, you know, it's the nature of reality.

02:00:34.980 Yeah, so now we turn to the rebellions here.

02:00:41.400 Like I said, again, this episode jumps around a lot.

02:00:44.920 And we get to the, you know, what is called the family compact.

02:00:48.500 A term, I believe that term was actually coined by Joseph Howe and adopted by William Lyon McKenzie.

02:00:55.320 But maybe I'm wrong, but maybe it was the opposite.

02:00:57.180 But 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.

02:01:09.180 But, 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.

02:01:25.600 Just kind of how they wanted, you know, based on their own interest and things like that.

02:01:30.040 And 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.

02:01:43.940 They 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.

02:01:53.000 And 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.

02:02:03.680 So I'll let it explain it.

02:02:07.660 It was in Upper Canada that the great defense against American invasion had been conducted in the War of 1812.

02:02:14.500 The monuments commemorating this war symbolized the triumph of the Loyalist, Tory outlook, a system that rested on military power and the British imperial connection.

02:02:27.100 The self-righteousness of this system was reflected in the faces of its leaders, an oligarchy that came to be known as the Family Compact.

02:02:37.280 For these men, the epitome of evil was the popular democracy of the United States.

02:02:44.500 For 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.

02:03:06.900 The American rattlesnake was implacably hostile to everything British in North America.

02:03:11.980 It had tried to strangle Canada twice.

02:03:15.840 Surely there might be a third attempt.

02:03:22.080 Yeah.

02:03:23.320 So obviously you can see why, you know, the British were hostile towards Americanization,

02:03:33.160 the spread of, you know, what was considered American democracy or, you know, public, what would you call it, you know, public enfranchisement.

02:03:48.780 It was considered a dangerous topic that was inherently, you know, anti-British, specifically anti-British empire.

02:03:54.900 So obviously they were opposed to it.

02:04:00.760 The 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.

02:04:18.920 And 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.

02:04:28.920 Now, 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.

02:04:36.240 The building of the Rideau Canal in Upper Canada was one manifestation of the fear left behind by the Americans.

02:04:44.660 It 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.

02:04:54.940 And its main purpose was defense against the United States.

02:04:59.060 Essentially, 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.

02:05:19.480 Yeah.

02:05:20.900 Is that the one I just...

02:05:23.060 No.

02:05:24.360 I think I...

02:05:27.060 Oh, man, I messed up a couple of my clips.

02:05:32.000 I just played that.

02:05:33.140 I just realized.

02:05:35.500 I must have misnamed one of them.

02:05:37.400 Sorry, guys.

02:05:41.340 Well, I guess I'll just play this one and I'll figure out where I'm at.

02:05:44.020 For William Lyon McKenzie, there was now no choice but rebellion.

02:05:48.640 And in 1837, his badly organized men faced loyalist forces at Montgomery's Tavern.

02:05:54.480 But they were defeated after a few volleys.

02:05:58.740 But in Lower Canada, the rebellion was more substantial.

02:06:02.860 Here, ill-armed but courageous Habitans fought pitched battles against well-trained regulars.

02:06:08.900 But here, too, defeat was inevitable.

02:06:11.660 Prisoners taken by the authorities faced an ugly mood as the oligarchy called for vengeance.

02:06:23.660 Ten of the rebels were executed, and 58 were exiled to remote Australia.

02:06:29.280 The forces of privilege were safe for the moment, but only through hateful military oppression.

02:06:34.960 Yeah, so earlier I mentioned that part of the problem with what William Lyon McKenzie was trying to achieve is that

02:06:47.760 he was trying to sell Americanism to people who, for the most part, were either directly involved in defending the British Empire

02:07:00.500 or defending British rule in North America from the concepts of America.

02:07:07.860 So the reason why these things didn't take root and why there was no public demand for it or, you know, little public demand

02:07:15.880 is even if there was dissatisfaction with the governance by the family compact,

02:07:22.800 there was no popular support for American ideals.

02:07:26.860 The people that he was trying to sell American ideals to were either the direct descendants

02:07:32.460 or people who had directly themselves fought against the American ideals.

02:07:38.460 So it was a doomed rebellion from the beginning.

02:07:43.820 It was a doomed concept.

02:07:45.400 And it's like trying to sell, you know, try selling Islam to a Christian, right, or vice versa. 0.94

02:07:54.580 You know, it's just not going to work.

02:07:56.220 Um, so, uh, that would be my criticism.

02:08:04.060 It's not that William Lyon McKenzie wasn't, uh, intelligent or he didn't, uh, identify the correct

02:08:10.220 problem, like, you know, the problem correctly and that he wasn't justified in wanting some kind

02:08:15.320 of reform or, you know, a redressment of, you know, these issues.

02:08:20.400 It was, it was that you're trying to raid Siren says it's like trying to sell soap to an Indian. 0.90

02:08:26.740 Yeah, exactly.

02:08:27.460 It's just not going to work.

02:08:29.060 Um, so the correct approach would have been to advocate for, as I said earlier, some kind

02:08:37.000 of Canadian enfranchisement within the nobility.

02:08:40.560 Um, you know, in the same way that you have various Lords and Dukes and, um, squires and

02:08:48.140 et cetera, you know, Lairds and there's all these ranks right within the British nobility.

02:08:53.420 He should have been advocating for something like that for a set, you know, somebody born 0.72

02:08:59.220 within Canada onto a landed estate being given the right to govern or, you know, or, you know,

02:09:05.980 a system that would have enfranchised, um, you know, Canadians themselves within the British

02:09:11.900 system.

02:09:13.040 Um, so, uh, I think that probably at the time at least would have been a more, uh, attractive

02:09:22.960 way of, uh, proposing it, but maybe I'm off base here and that never would have flown either.

02:09:27.960 But, um, I think, uh, trying to sell American democracy to a bunch of loyalists who fought against

02:09:35.680 American democracy was probably ill-advised.

02:09:44.880 Uh, we'll play, uh, the next clip here.

02:09:49.160 In Upper Canada, rebels pursued by Tory vengeance squads fled across icy Lake Ontario to the United

02:09:56.880 States, cheered on by American admirers waiting on the shore.

02:10:01.240 And in border towns from Vermont to Michigan, the rebels denounced British oppression in Canada

02:10:09.300 in terms that seemed to echo the spirit of 1776.

02:10:15.040 Aroused by this, many Americans were eager to join McKenzie's Army of Liberation, which was

02:10:21.380 savagely caricatured by the nervous Tories.

02:10:24.020 In Upper Canada, a big price on McKenzie's head reminded him of the gallows that awaited,

02:10:33.860 but he compounded his sedition by proclaiming a Canadian Republic on a little island in the

02:10:39.380 Niagara River.

02:10:41.120 For about a month, McKenzie and his followers defied the authorities by occupying Navy Island.

02:10:47.040 Yeah, so this is where you get the flag of the Republic of Canada.

02:10:53.080 Actually, I could, I should have pulled that up for you guys.

02:10:56.320 Um, you will see this occasionally, um, at, uh, at protests and things like that.

02:11:05.940 It's kind of obscure and not a lot of people just think it's like an American thing, but this

02:11:11.260 is it, um, if you've never seen it, it's this, uh, Liberty flag here.

02:11:22.940 Um, so occasionally you wouldn't, you might've seen this at, uh, you know, convoy protests

02:11:29.740 or, you know, anti-mass protests, stuff like that.

02:11:32.740 And it kind of was gaining so a little bit of momentum and modernity as like a rebel symbol.

02:11:39.040 Um, the problem with it, the same as it was back then is that the people who were championing

02:11:45.960 it, I do think, you know, it's funny in that, in that clip that I just played at one point

02:11:51.060 they talk about, you know, McKenzie's, uh, entourage, they're being, uh, you know, ruthlessly

02:11:57.320 characterized as like a bunch of ragtag, you know, kind of misfits and things like that.

02:12:02.300 And I, I can't help, but notice the, the similarities between that and what we experienced today

02:12:10.160 with people who are, you know, fighting, um, the government or, you know, the crown or, or

02:12:16.680 what, however they, you know, choose to perceive it, you know, the, the global elite, um, they're

02:12:22.300 not organized properly and they don't know how to properly, uh, appeal to, you know, the Canadian

02:12:28.520 population.

02:12:29.220 And so they're trying to sell them ideas that are just never going to work with them

02:12:33.100 because they're not being framed properly.

02:12:34.980 And, um, that's because it's rooted in Americanism and a lot of Canadians, especially on the right

02:12:41.400 wing, they just can't wrap their heads around this, that the way to appeal to the average

02:12:45.480 Canadian is not by basing it in American terms.

02:12:48.560 So like an excellent example of this is something like, um, you know, the second amendment, which

02:12:54.380 I agree with.

02:12:55.100 I think that like, that's a good law.

02:12:57.040 Obviously the way you sell the second amendment to Canadians is not by saying, Hey, we need

02:13:02.520 a second amendment exactly like those American guys have.

02:13:06.280 You've already lost because you're trying to frame the argument in something that Canadians 1.00

02:13:10.840 have an instinctive opposition to a blood memory opposition to when they hear you try to

02:13:16.740 argue in American terms.

02:13:18.120 They're like, no, they reject it.

02:13:20.480 We've seen this repeatedly, right?

02:13:22.360 It simply doesn't work.

02:13:23.900 The correct way to go about selling something like, you know, the second amendment is by

02:13:29.740 rooting it in Canadian traditions.

02:13:31.680 And so you can go look, there's excellent examples of, you know, someone like John A.

02:13:36.180 McDonald talking about how Canadians should have the right to carry firearms because if

02:13:40.780 they don't, then only the rowdies are going to have the firearms.

02:13:44.460 It's I, that's not verbatim, but it's something along those lines.

02:13:47.160 I don't know if he used, he used some kind of, you know, word like rowdies or hooligans,

02:13:50.680 right?

02:13:51.380 So that's how you actually sell, uh, something like firearms rights to Canadians by break,

02:13:57.000 by, you know, um, framing it in their traditions and not in a foreign and what is perceived to

02:14:05.200 be a foreign tradition.

02:14:06.880 Um, and until, you know, people on the right get over this and they stop trying to do this

02:14:11.880 constant, you know, we need to be more like America.

02:14:14.240 We need to be more like America.

02:14:15.760 Even if we do.

02:14:17.140 Okay.

02:14:17.600 The way to get Canadians to be more like Americans is not by telling them to be more like Americans.

02:14:22.800 It's by saying, Hey, you've got this history of your own.

02:14:25.840 That's not American. 0.92

02:14:26.920 That's actually kind of similar to Americans.

02:14:29.180 Why don't you try that?

02:14:31.160 Um, so yeah.

02:14:32.900 And that's where, like, this is why as much as I find William Lyon McKenzie, uh, to be

02:14:40.020 and, uh, Louis Joseph Papineau to be, you know, incredibly interesting figures, I think

02:14:45.200 they just got it wrong.

02:14:46.100 Now I didn't talk about this.

02:14:48.520 Um, the rebellion in lower Canada is interesting for a few reasons.

02:14:56.600 One, because it was much more successful in terms of numbers and support than the one

02:15:05.180 in upper Canada, but two, it's actually had a much longer lasting legacy and memory in

02:15:12.300 Canadian history.

02:15:13.140 Um, and the, the best example of that is I mentioned the Liberty flag that you like very

02:15:22.060 rare, like, you know, occasionally you'll see somebody with that flag at a protest or

02:15:27.560 something.

02:15:27.880 And most people have no idea what it is.

02:15:31.000 Another one that most people still don't know what it is, but is much more common.

02:15:35.140 And you will see it a lot, particularly at, you know, protests in Montreal or, or Quebec

02:15:41.380 in general that are right-wing in nature or anti-government in nature, uh, is the Patriot

02:15:46.880 flag.

02:15:47.700 Um, and so a lot of these would have been seen during the convoy.

02:15:52.860 Um, where is it, oh, hang on a sec.

02:16:09.120 Yeah.

02:16:09.520 It's this one here, uh, in the top right there.

02:16:13.320 Um, yeah, you, if you were at the convoy, you probably saw this flag because there was

02:16:20.300 a lot of Quebecers there and they were carrying this.

02:16:22.720 Now, the reason that it's, it's interesting is because it was a more secular symbol of French

02:16:32.520 national, uh, Quebecois national identity in Canadian history.

02:16:36.180 It's the first time that the rebellion of Louis Joseph Papineau was kind of in defiance of

02:16:46.200 the Catholic church.

02:16:47.300 And so you kind of see this symbol used by Quebecers as like a nationalist symbol now,

02:16:54.420 and it has a more secular kind of connotation to it.

02:16:57.800 And if you recall over the past three episodes, that's not insignificant.

02:17:03.320 The Catholic church was extremely influential in, you know, Quebec's history and their national

02:17:09.240 identity.

02:17:09.820 And it only becomes in later time periods where you start seeing this, like now is where you

02:17:14.840 get the rumblings of it in 1837, but even today.

02:17:19.120 So I don't know if many of you are familiar with what's going on right now in Quebec, but

02:17:23.480 Quebec has just passed anti-religious laws that ban, um, you know, religious displays basically

02:17:29.960 everywhere.

02:17:31.020 Um, but that includes Christian and that includes Catholic.

02:17:34.660 And so modern, there's an interesting, you know, switch there where modern Quebec national, uh,

02:17:42.480 identity is very secular, um, and almost, uh, militantly.

02:17:49.840 So, so there's an interesting transition there where Quebec kind of loses its, uh, and I would

02:17:55.900 like to get, uh, somebody French, uh, maybe like a Quebecer to speak about this more than I would,

02:18:00.860 but I do find that interesting for the sacks is really good on this topic.

02:18:04.240 I know there's some guys from Quebec in, in here that can talk about it, but that is just

02:18:08.580 a kind of interesting tidbit to throw in there for us.

02:18:11.500 So, uh, boiling frogs is we're trying to do like France, but it won't save us. 0.94

02:18:16.800 No, I don't think it will either, but I do think it's interesting that they're like the,

02:18:20.640 at least the French are trying to assert themselves and like, it's almost this weird thing.

02:18:24.840 Um, yeah, they're trying to throw it off.

02:18:29.220 Yeah.

02:18:30.000 Uh, raid sirens is the Quebec war nationalist communist.

02:18:32.760 Yeah, they're, they are.

02:18:34.420 So the interesting thing as well about Quebec separatism is that it's, it is very left-wing

02:18:40.620 economically.

02:18:42.060 Um, now there's a newer kind of vein of it that is kind of like a linguistic nationalism

02:18:50.440 where they emphasize, like, if you speak French, then you're part of like, you know,

02:18:56.140 the Quebec law kind of identity.

02:18:57.580 So that's where you get this.

02:18:58.820 It's a terrible idea because you're getting a lot of like Haitians and what is it? 1.00

02:19:04.220 Is it, is it Algerians? 0.99

02:19:05.820 Yeah.

02:19:06.020 It's Algerians, right. 1.00

02:19:07.320 Uh, that speak French, um, uh, ivory coast.

02:19:11.680 And like, there's all these, you know, former French colonies that have French speaking

02:19:15.960 populations that are finding, you know, an easier access to immigration because they

02:19:20.060 speak French in Quebec.

02:19:21.320 That might be changing a little bit, but, um, yeah.

02:19:30.280 Yeah.

02:19:30.820 Boiling Frogs says we're protecting the language.

02:19:32.620 We don't want to be religious, but we never talk about race.

02:19:35.860 Yeah.

02:19:36.120 And that is the problem.

02:19:37.100 So I don't know.

02:19:38.280 I just think it is interesting that this kind of ties into what's going on with modern,

02:19:42.180 uh, Quebec.

02:19:42.980 You've got this kind of like, um, you know, in the case of Papineau, you had this kind

02:19:47.280 of secular, early secular, um, rebellion.

02:19:51.720 Um, and now that, that kind of is a more accurate description of the Quebec identity.

02:19:57.160 So I think that's interesting.

02:19:58.940 All right.

02:19:59.940 Um, so like I said, if you want to do a deep dive on the rebellions, I'll go find that

02:20:06.440 series that they did, uh, is a Canadian produced series on it.

02:20:10.220 Uh, maybe in the future we could review it.

02:20:12.460 But if people want to learn more about it, it's on YouTube, you can find it if you search

02:20:16.860 1837, 1838 rebellions and just look through the documentaries, you'll find it.

02:20:20.820 But, um, yeah.

02:20:24.060 And the last thing that we're going to cover, uh, from this episode is just the borders,

02:20:28.080 uh, being finalized.

02:20:29.900 So, uh, as it, you know, the series ends there, you can see that, um, by the, by 1846, the,

02:20:38.360 the modern borders are essentially established, uh, between Canada and America.

02:20:42.500 Now there was some back and forth, uh, you know, as, as we go into later dates and obviously

02:20:47.760 there were some raids and the potential annexation and disputes over certain, to all this stuff.

02:20:52.240 But the, the modern border is essentially established by 1846.

02:20:56.960 So, uh, and that ends with these two examples here, the New Brunswick main dispute and the

02:21:02.960 Oregon country dispute.

02:21:04.280 So, uh, Lord Ashburton, assigned by London to negotiate a settlement, had no illusions that

02:21:11.880 the ambitious claims of New Brunswick could ever be made palatable to the state of Maine.

02:21:16.420 For the British saw Maine as a rambunctious Indian with an all or nothing attitude toward

02:21:22.860 Britannia.

02:21:23.500 Was the British lion asleep?

02:21:31.100 New Brunswick was worried about this and about Lord Ashburton's abilities.

02:21:37.100 But Daniel Webster, negotiating for the United States, knew that the grandiose claims of the

02:21:44.700 state of Maine could never be accepted by Britain.

02:21:48.780 The answer lay in compromise, for Webster realized that Ashburton had at least to preserve the

02:21:54.980 vital British military route from the Atlantic to the shores of the St. Lawrence.

02:22:00.060 Otherwise, American guns would be very close to this vital waterway, for Maine's claims stretched

02:22:05.560 far north.

02:22:06.880 So Ashburton found his American counterpart to be eminently reasonable, although Maine saw

02:22:14.480 Webster as a drunken nincompoop.

02:22:21.840 In the end, a treaty gave Maine seven-twelfths of the disputed area and New Brunswick five-twelfths,

02:22:28.480 a decision that disappointed local people on both sides.

02:22:34.780 The imperial lion had truly been asleep, in the person of Lord Ashburton, according to

02:22:40.700 a disillusioned New Brunswick. 0.99

02:22:43.560 But for Maine, the lion was a very clever cat indeed, and Daniel Webster was the dunce. 0.79

02:22:51.260 I just think that's, I think that clip in particular is so funny, because it's the classic, you know, 0.81

02:23:01.960 a great compromise is when both sides are pissed.

02:23:05.260 Um, it's like, it probably was a good compromise, but the, obviously the major takeaway from it

02:23:11.720 is like, there you go.

02:23:12.980 That's how you get what is essentially now the modern border between, uh, Maine and New

02:23:18.440 Brunswick.

02:23:19.440 So, um, you know, the more, you know, um, and then, you know, we end here with the dispute

02:23:26.640 in the Oregon country.

02:23:27.640 I'm not going to go, like, I, I could have, you know, added some stuff to this, but, um,

02:23:33.320 I don't think it really adds much, uh, other than, you know, um, minor background information,

02:23:41.980 but yeah, we'll just watch this clip and then we'll get into some general discussion there.

02:23:46.440 Suddenly, at the height of the crisis, there was compromise.

02:23:52.760 But the U.S. merely abandoned inflated ambitions for the whole area, while Britain gave up well-founded

02:23:59.400 claims to the Columbia River Triangle.

02:24:03.100 President Polk had been a good poker player, for in the end, he got what he had really wanted

02:24:08.480 all along, a boundary from the Rockies to the ocean that followed the 49th parallel.

02:24:14.820 But an important American concession gave all of Vancouver Island to the British.

02:24:20.980 Thus, the Oregon country was finally divided.

02:24:24.340 And with this agreement in 1846, the entire Canadian-American boundary was at last virtually

02:24:31.440 defined.

02:24:32.060 Yeah, so there you go.

02:24:36.260 Um, one really interesting tidbit from what was going on in the Pacific Northwest, if you

02:24:43.080 ever want to look into this, is something called the Pig War, where Britain and America almost

02:24:47.740 went to war because somebody's pig got stolen.

02:24:51.360 Um, Oversimplified on YouTube has a great little, I think it's like 15 minutes long, but this little,

02:24:58.040 like, uh, you know, cartoon version of it, and it's hilarious.

02:25:01.820 Uh, basically farmers and settlers are just arguing over who gets what, and then somebody's

02:25:07.540 pig ended up on their territory, and they said that this is my pig, and the other person's 0.97

02:25:12.100 like, it's not your pig. 0.97

02:25:13.200 And so they go, and they go to the local, because it's joint rule, right?

02:25:17.200 So, you know, the, I can't remember what the story exactly, but the American goes to the,

02:25:21.600 you know, garrison at the local fort and says, this guy, this, you know, it's limey Brit 0.93

02:25:25.780 stole my damn pig, and so, you know, they go, and they bring the garrison, they're like, 0.98

02:25:31.080 give him this pig back, and so the other guy goes, and they get the British on the ships, 1.00

02:25:35.840 and the ships roll up, and they're like, no, it's our pig, like, they're like, two militaries 0.97

02:25:40.900 about to, like, they could just explode, you know, cooler heads prevail, and, you know, Americans 1.00

02:25:46.640 and Canadians don't go to war over a fucking pig. 1.00

02:25:49.320 Like, but it's a, it's a funny little story. 1.00

02:25:56.480 Well, like, that's, that's kind of like the nature of, like, that's how this, this stuff

02:26:00.600 starts, right?

02:26:01.200 Like, it could have happened earlier in the episode, they're talking about, you know, the

02:26:07.520 dispute between New Brunswick and Maine, and you've got lumbermen going into territory that's

02:26:12.420 not really well defined by anyone, it's not like it's settled, it's just woods, and they're,

02:26:17.360 you know, going into territory that's technically Canadian to chop wood down, you know, some Canadians 0.96

02:26:22.200 like, hey, you hoser, don't you be chopping down my trees, right? 0.96

02:26:27.400 Like, that, that leads to, like, bloodshed and fights, and, you know, people get arrested,

02:26:33.620 and, like, so you have international disputes, like, it forces the governments of America and

02:26:39.160 Britain to, you know, argue about territory, because, you know, a few gangs of woodsmen are,

02:26:44.480 like, chopping at each other with axes, like, you know, so, anyways, that's the, the episode,

02:26:55.480 like, I, I actually really like that episode, it gets, like I said, it gets into a lot of

02:27:01.840 different things, things that are all individually important, but don't necessarily justify, you

02:27:06.460 know, their own entire episode, or whatever, all right, we'll do a super chats here, I'll

02:27:14.880 go over to entropy first there, I don't know what's, oh, there's nothing else over there,

02:27:19.460 so that's fine, um, uh, Hallie Lonegan says, the secular Quebec nationalist or fake nationalist,

02:27:29.740 uh, example, the, uh, CAQ, uh, the real nationalists are still Catholic, well, I guess that depends,

02:27:39.380 I could use the example of somebody like Fortisax, who is, uh, not, uh, Catholic, um, but he's,

02:27:46.520 I don't know what you mean, if you mean, like, separatist nationalists or Quebecois nationalists,

02:27:50.800 then I guess that doesn't qualify, because he's, like, a, you know, Canadian nationalist,

02:27:54.580 but, um, yeah, there's, like, uh, I believe Nouvelle Alliance is a Catholic organization,

02:28:02.220 and, but even they, they're, um, they're kind of linguistic nationalists, from what I can

02:28:11.180 gather, or at least, um, you know, they certainly don't put much emphasis on, you know, the racial

02:28:17.580 identity of, uh, Quebecers, so, um, you know, I don't, I don't know of any large Catholic nationalist

02:28:26.000 organizations that currently exist in Quebec, so I don't know, I could, like, obviously I could be

02:28:30.940 wrong, because, um, there is that language barrier, and, you know, it's not like a lot of, uh, nationalist

02:28:36.380 news out of Quebec finds its way into, you know, the Anglo-speaking Canada, but, um, obviously we

02:28:43.960 have, um, Canadian nationalists in Quebec, uh, Active Club Frontenac is now part of, uh, Second

02:28:51.140 Sons, so, um, yeah, uh, uh, and it's growing, too, so I find that interesting. Quebec is growing

02:29:00.920 quickly, and there is a demand for Canadian nationalism. I don't know if anybody's been providing

02:29:05.840 that, uh, in, in Quebec for some time. Okay. Uh, Justice for Fathers says, no more brother

02:29:16.820 wars whites. Yeah, um, it all seems kind of silly, doesn't it, these disputes over, it's

02:29:24.340 basically an empty, a continent that's, you know, uh, 80% empty, and they, they can't help

02:29:30.780 but fight over it. Um, Justice for Fathers again says, ah, yeah, 54-50. I'm not sure,

02:29:38.480 uh, what that was in reference to. Um, maybe the, uh, stop strutter.

02:29:48.680 Um, uh, Brian7316 says, the courage of these pioneers makes me embarrassed to call myself

02:29:53.820 a man. Great teaching, Alex. Yeah, it really puts it in perspective, and I think, uh, Lee

02:29:58.800 said that earlier, uh, in one of the starred chats here. Sorry, I'll, uh, remove some of

02:30:05.900 these, but, uh, yeah, Lee said, uh, they're building canals, and we're like, quote, ugh,

02:30:11.980 my Uber Eats is taking too long. It's shameful. Um, it's shameful how, uh, how soft we are as a

02:30:22.180 people, and, you know, like, look, yeah, you should be able to, like, um, I don't know

02:30:28.900 if we, we, like, you know, we want the conditions that they had, but, you know, you can, you can

02:30:34.240 rough it out a little bit, all right? Like, you're, you think about what your ancestors

02:30:40.300 went through, your forebears went through, right? And then the, the biggest obstacle that

02:30:46.440 you have right now is, but the media is going to call me mean words if I don't do what they

02:30:52.420 say. That's basically it. That's, that's the biggest threat. If I, if I don't do what they

02:30:58.260 say, the media will call me mean words. If, if I do something to stop what's being done

02:31:04.400 to, you know, the civilization that my ancestors built, I might lose my job and have to get a

02:31:09.560 harder job. It's shameful. Um, okay. Uh, bigot Bullock, man. Thank you so much.

02:31:20.380 Says traveling funds are great. Some oil change funds, so much respect carry on. That's funny.

02:31:25.780 I actually need to get an oil change. So I, I really appreciate that. And yeah, like I was,

02:31:31.780 I was actually thinking about that. Um, the other day, I don't think I've gone more than a month or

02:31:38.760 sorry. I don't, I think, sorry. I don't think I've gone a month without at least three weeks

02:31:45.860 out of the four weeks of the month or three, three weekends out of the four weekends of the month

02:31:51.100 being on the road somewhere. Um, I've been driving across this, this continent for, um, basically all

02:31:59.100 summer and into the fall. Um, so it is adding up and like, I'm not, I'm not gonna lie. I'm getting

02:32:04.660 kind of tired of traveling or driving around so much, but it's, but the funny thing is, is like,

02:32:10.520 I came back from London. I was like, man, I'm getting sick of driving all over. And then all

02:32:15.660 the media happened. And I was like, you know, uh, coming into this weekend and I was just like,

02:32:20.880 man, it's so boring whenever you're not doing some kind of activism. Like I, I almost, yeah,

02:32:27.280 it was addictive. Um, uh, drop work, uh, says the enclave of point Roberts, Washington means

02:32:38.220 that Americans have to drive through BC to reach the main part of Washington state. I did not know

02:32:43.280 that. Interesting. Um, just for father says, sorry, 5440. Sorry. I meant. Yeah. Okay. Um,

02:32:55.400 I think that's in reference to the parallels. So yeah. All right. I'll, uh, do some of the,

02:33:06.780 uh, starred chats that I did. This one I thought was funny. So Shamrock shake says this was in

02:33:12.240 reference to the Erie canal. I think he said, how did they keep it ice free? That is a good

02:33:17.320 question. That's a good fucking question. You have a 400 mile long canal. That's four feet 1.00

02:33:24.760 deep and not very wide. How do you keep it ice free in the winter? Or did they just not use it

02:33:30.500 in the winter? Like, I don't know the answer. I didn't like look it up or anything, but when you

02:33:34.920 asked that question, I was like, that is a good question, actually, how did they deal with that?

02:33:39.280 Um, so anyways, I started cause I was, I just thought that was a great question. I don't know

02:33:43.880 if somebody wants to try and find the answers, but yeah. Rain Siren says Irishman with axes. That 0.77

02:33:50.940 probably is the answer. Something like that. Um, Lee Stewie says the canal here, they drain

02:33:58.400 it. What do you mean? They drain it during the winter or they drain it like between uses

02:34:03.720 so that, you know, it doesn't freeze.

02:34:14.020 Rain Siren says they didn't same as the Rideau, the Rideau, they went skating. Yeah.

02:34:18.680 Yeah.

02:34:20.940 So, uh, cocaine rim job has it here. The Erie canal does not stay ice free. It is drained

02:34:33.420 and closed for the winter to prevent ice from damaging the canal structure and locks. This

02:34:38.000 annual winter shutdown allows for necessary repairs. Okay. There you go. It's closed during

02:34:42.000 the winter. All right. Um, uh, racist Jackalope said one of, uh, great, the greatest presidents

02:35:01.720 in American history. And obviously he was referring to Andrew Jackson to be truthful. I don't really

02:35:06.760 know that much about Andrew Jackson. I know that he was the hero of the battle of new Orleans. And I

02:35:12.200 know that he was the bane of the bankers and high finance. That's basically the extent of what I know

02:35:18.480 about Andrew Jackson. And it's the second point that I always hear people bring him up as is basic.

02:35:24.560 Basically he was like, no screw your federal reserve and your fiat currency and your debt slavery. Um,

02:35:32.460 and that's why he gets a lot of praise, especially from modern, um, you know, libert libertarian to

02:35:39.460 nationalist types, right. Uh, who oppose central banking and stuff like that. Uh, he, he gets a lot

02:35:44.860 of praise for that. So I, to be, yeah. But other than that, I don't really know that much about him.

02:35:49.060 Um, yeah. Uh, Lee Stewie says, I think Montgomery's tavern is a Starbucks now.

02:36:00.980 I don't know if that's a joke or not, but that would be a shame if it's true because yeah, it was a

02:36:07.540 a real place in what is now Toronto. So the building probably still exists in some form or not.

02:36:15.240 So if that's okay, she says she was joking. Okay, good.

02:36:24.960 Good. I didn't know. Like I, that could honestly be true. Um, it's so crazy. The things that we

02:36:32.540 in, uh, maybe Americans can relate to this, maybe, you know, uh, people out of the UK can relate to

02:36:39.660 this, but the things that we classify as heritage buildings versus the things that we don't seem to 0.95

02:36:45.460 give a shit about at all are crazy. Like it's always kind of baffled me ever since I, you know,

02:36:50.640 started realizing this, like there's in downtown Ottawa, there's warehouses. Like, like that's all

02:36:59.440 they ever were. They were like lumber warehouses or like factory warehouses and stuff like that.

02:37:05.980 They are considered heritage buildings and the amount of effort that you have to put into,

02:37:11.860 cause I, I had this experience because I was in architecture and design and living in Ottawa.

02:37:17.560 So like all of the windows, you know, if you want to replace a window in one of these heritage

02:37:23.680 buildings, that was literally just like a shed, like it has to be to a certain standard and they're

02:37:29.640 like, you know, it's basically mulled windows that are individual pieces made out of wood and like,

02:37:35.360 you know, a certain kind of like, it's crazy. Um, and then there'll be something like a very historic

02:37:42.220 farm, you know, house that's been there for, you know, 200 years in its various forms,

02:37:49.680 still standing, right. Original, original barn, original, like beautiful old buildings.

02:37:55.740 And somebody will apply for heritage status so that they can get the funds to like upkeep these,

02:38:00.900 these like homes that have stood there for so long and have like an incredibly rich history to them.

02:38:06.320 And the heritage board will just be like, nah, it's just a house. It's like, yeah, but it,

02:38:11.380 you know, it was the site of like this historic event and that historic event. And it stood there

02:38:16.080 and it's original kind of, um, you know, more or less original condition for all this time,

02:38:20.580 but you would rather preserve the warehouse. Like it doesn't make any sense.

02:38:28.020 The GB max is try patching drywall and heritage. I know, man, I, I know what it's like. I've worked

02:38:33.160 on those projects. It's a nightmare. Um, they're like, you have to keep the original lad. You have

02:38:39.500 to keep the original lad and plaster. You could only, you know, touch it up. You can't replace it. And it's,

02:38:45.420 it's, it's, it's lath and plaster. It's not like, that's not integral to like, you know, the,

02:38:51.320 the aesthetic of the building or something. Like, what are you talking about?

02:38:56.660 You're not talking about ripping out the original, like wide plank, oak, hardwood floors. You're

02:39:02.880 talking about some, some, uh, gypsum. Like what do you, yeah, it makes no sense.

02:39:07.920 Um, uh, BJ Michigan has said the spirit of McKenzie is what we need now. Yeah, this,

02:39:19.580 I do agree. We do need the spirit of someone like William Lyon McKenzie. Um, but they have

02:39:24.460 to understand the Canadian people and you know, what is the, uh, what is the correct way

02:39:30.080 to, uh, relate to them. And, uh, okay. I've said this line before the correct framing of

02:39:40.080 rebellion to Canadians is not by telling them they need to revolt. It's by telling them they 0.75

02:39:45.620 need to count their revolt. You need to, the revolution is already happening. It's been

02:39:51.320 happening for 60 years. You don't need to revolt. You need to perform a counter revolution

02:39:58.460 to take your society back because the re, the revolutionaries already took it. 0.85

02:40:06.980 Um, I know that sounds like an insignificant distinction, but it is important.

02:40:20.900 Uh, big J Michigan says, uh, is Jeremy McKenzie, the reincarnation of William Lyon McKenzie now?

02:40:27.240 Um, sorry. The reason I think that's funny is just how many times like, look, look, this

02:40:37.940 is going to sound, um, a little bit, uh, uh, you know, self-interested or like, I don't

02:40:44.640 know, like I'm reading it. I do, I do think it's odd. What did I do? The comments here.

02:40:48.720 Hang on a sec. Okay. Um, so you have William Lyon McKenzie, right? A very important historical

02:41:00.180 figure. We talked earlier about Alexander McKenzie, which I think is funny. Um, you know, the Johnny

02:41:08.360 McDonald was, I don't know if people realize this, his middle name is Alexander, right? Um,

02:41:14.740 the second prime minister was Alexander McKenzie, the, you have William Lyon McKenzie King,

02:41:22.320 right? I do think it's funny how much the combination of Alexander William and McKenzie

02:41:28.540 pops up in these, uh, important historical figures. Um, you'll see those names repeat.

02:41:34.380 I'm like, I, I, it's, I don't know. There's something to it. Um, my name is Alexander William.

02:41:42.140 That's my, my given names. Um, and I do think it's funny that it's an Alexander William and

02:41:48.580 a McKenzie that are trying, they're trying to take this fucking country back. I don't, I 1.00

02:41:54.020 think that is kind of funny. Um,

02:41:55.960 don't let Phil Brown hear this. What it's like. Oh, like the, oh my God, it's a fucking

02:42:11.480 PSYOP. They're trying to find they're doing this. Yeah. Smoke another joint there, Phil. 1.00

02:42:15.640 I just think that's a hilarious coincidence. Um, personally now it's really not because basically

02:42:28.800 if you understand that the, the ethnogenesis Canadians is basically like the, if one group

02:42:35.100 was, uh, you know, really influential, it's Scots. And that's why there's so many Scots, uh,

02:42:41.680 names and like, look, I, I was not named for them. I was named for, um, uh, grandfathers

02:42:49.980 and great grandfathers on my mother's side. So like, there's just a lot of, uh, Alexander's

02:42:57.720 and McKenzie's and, and Williams in, in Scotland. So like, I don't think it's, it's just a funny

02:43:02.740 coincidence though. Right. Um,

02:43:05.080 Alexander William line, McKenzie King Brock based

02:43:16.880 no, I just think that's, uh, so because big J brought that up. I do think that's funny.

02:43:29.540 Um, dent lover says there'd be no coincidence. No, I, um, when I say coincidence, like, I mean,

02:43:40.720 I think it's fitting. I'll put it that way. I think it's fitting that there's, uh, an Alexander 0.94

02:43:49.380 William and a McKenzie trying to, you know, take a country, take back Canada for Canadians. 0.90

02:43:55.520 I do think that's fitting. Um, you know, as, as a leader and a deputy leader, I think there's

02:44:00.240 something to that.

02:44:10.320 All right. Um, that's it. I don't think I missed anything on Rumble in terms of, uh,

02:44:16.520 super chats or anything. Yep. I got them all double 07 light says, uh, Oh, Alex, just admit

02:44:30.920 there's divine will there's the universe likes a good story. I'll put it that way.

02:44:40.520 Um, okay. Um, that was everything I had for the chats.

02:44:56.760 Anything else you guys want or, uh, you guys want to replay the Northwestern song? I could

02:45:03.060 play you guys out on, uh, Stan Rogers. Um, this, we could start by saying, uh, next week

02:45:12.420 I'm doing Friday. Uh, I know people prefer Saturday, but I've got, uh, obligations on Saturday night.

02:45:19.700 So I'll do Friday night for part five, which is, Oh man, the name is a mouthful. Um,

02:45:27.380 it's like annexations and like, I don't, I can't remember the name is like, it's like two sentences.

02:45:36.000 It's not as simple as dangerous decades, but it covers the period 1840 to 1860. Um, like I said,

02:45:43.760 it gets into kind of the fallouts of the 1837, 1838 rebellions and some of the changes that started

02:45:50.000 gets into the threats of American annexation and manifest destiny, the Fenians. This is where it's 0.97

02:45:56.720 the period where you get the really large influx of Irish influence into Canada, obviously, because in,

02:46:04.320 uh, the 1840s, there's the famine going on there. So it's, uh, you know, we'll get more Irish 1.00

02:46:12.700 influence, uh, in, in the Canadian experience, uh, as well. There's, there's a few different,

02:46:18.140 it's kind of similar to this episode that kind of jumps around a lot because obviously, you know,

02:46:23.540 we go from 1840 to 1860, and then it's going to start being more on point again, because obviously,

02:46:29.920 you know, the episode will focus on confederation and then the establishment of the provinces and

02:46:35.040 stuff like that. So, um, these are two like kind of rocky period episodes for Canada where it's like,

02:46:40.880 you know, stabilizing and whatnot. So, um, BJ Michigan says American civil war cut. Yeah,

02:46:47.100 it comes up obviously. Um, not in, uh, this episode or maybe the, the, I can't remember if

02:46:54.660 they talk about the precursor to the American civil war in this episode. I think they do a little bit,

02:46:59.200 um, cause that would have been going on as well. And there would have been, you know,

02:47:03.180 the issues with slavery and stuff like that, that comes in a little bit, but, you know,

02:47:07.240 uh, it's not talked about much in this series because it really isn't that the truth, despite

02:47:13.540 what they want to tell you is that slavery is really not very relevant to the Canadian experience.

02:47:18.020 It just didn't exist. Um, and if it did largely, it was happening within the first nations tribes,

02:47:24.100 not within, uh, the Europeans. So, um, you know, slavery footnote at best in Canadian history,

02:47:32.460 not, not relevant. Um, yeah. Um, raid siren says, is it going to why there are blacks in Nova Scotia? 0.79

02:47:52.160 I can't remember if it, if that comes up in this series or not. I don't think so. Um, yeah.

02:48:02.460 Um, it's been, sorry. It's been a while since I watched these, like, it's been almost a, not a

02:48:11.540 year, eight months anyways, since I watched these episodes and now I'm going back and rewatching

02:48:16.460 them. So I'm like trying to remember what was in, you know, these episodes, like a lot of these

02:48:21.740 episodes and I'm, and I have to rewatch them and make my notes for them. And I'm trying to do that

02:48:26.880 without having to watch it three or four times. So, yeah. Okay. Um, I think that's it. Otherwise,

02:48:43.160 unless people have random things that they want to, uh, throw in.

02:48:47.360 All right. Well, we'll just end here. Actually, I said, yeah, sorry. I said I was going to play

02:48:58.660 you out on Stan Rogers. So hang on. Sorry. Just take a second here.

02:49:19.660 Yeah. All right. Um, I think we covered everything, so I'll let you go. Enjoy the rest of your night.

02:49:36.660 Enjoy the rest of your weekend. I'm probably back, I guess, for Platt Army tomorrow night.

02:49:40.700 Uh, and then on Tuesday, like I said, next week, this episode will run on Friday. If,

02:49:46.920 if I can't do it Friday, it's, we're not going to do it. So hopefully Friday. Um, and yeah,

02:49:53.420 cheers, everybody. Thank you all for the support. It means a lot.

02:50:10.700 For just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the

02:50:27.000 Beaufort Sea, tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage.

02:50:40.700 to the sea.

02:51:10.680 and make a Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea,

02:51:17.680 tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to find

02:51:23.680 the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea.

02:51:27.680 one warm line through a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

02:51:46.680 Three 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

02:51:53.680 plain. Ah, for just one time. I would take the

02:52:00.680 Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the

02:52:10.680 the Beaufort Sea, tracing one warm line through a

02:52:17.680 Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea, tracing one warm line through a

02:52:24.680 land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

02:52:31.680 and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

02:52:38.680 And through the sea.

02:52:48.680 And 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

02:52:53.680 did show a path for me to race the roaring Fraser to the sea, to race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

02:53:18.680 Ah, 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

02:53:40.680 to a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

02:53:52.680 How then am I so different from the first men through this way? Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.

02:54:07.680 To seek a Northwest Passage to seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men, to find there but the road back home again.

02:54:20.680 Ah, for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea.

02:54:38.680 Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage, and make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

02:54:58.680 I was there to be a Mountain fase.

02:55:00.680 Thank you.

02:55:00.740 .

The Ferryman's Toll - November 30, 2025

The Nationalist Film Board - Creation of Canada - Episode 4

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