Mason Wade, Acadia and Quebec 9780773582187

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Mason Wade, Acadia and Quebec The Perception of an Outsider

The Carleton Library Series A series of original works, new collections and reprints of source material relating to Canada, issued under the supervision of the Editorial Board, Carleton Library Series, Carleton University Press Inc., Ottawa, Canada. General Editor

Michael Gnarowski Editorial Board

Valda Blundell (Anthropology) Irwin Gillespie (Economics) Naomi Griffiths (History) Robert J. Jackson (Political Science) David B. Knight (Geography) Michael MacNeil (Law) Stephen Richer (Sociology)

Mason Wade, Acadia and Quebec The Perception of an Outsider

Edited by N.E.S. Griffiths and

G.A. Rawlyk

Carleton University Press 1991

©Carleton University Press Inc. 1991 ISBN ISBN

0-88629-149-6 (paperback) 0-88629-147-X (casebound)

Printed and bound in Canada. Carleton Library Series 167 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Wade, Mason, 1913-1986 Mason Wade, Acadia and Quebec (The Carleton library : 167) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-88629-149-6 (paperback) ISBN 0-88629-147-X (casebound) 1. Quebec (Province)-History. 2. Maritime Provinces-History. 3. Canadians, French-speaking-History. 4. Wade, Mason, 1913-1986. I. Griffiths, N.E.S. (Naomi Elizabeth Saundaus), 1934- . II. Rawlyk, George A., 1935- . III. Title. IV. Series. FC60.W315 1991 F1026.6.W33 1991

971.4

C91-090641-6

Distributed by Oxford University Press Canada, 70 Wynford Drive, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada. M3C 1J9 (416) 441-2941 Cover design:

Aerographics Ottawa

Acknowledgements: Carleton University Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its publishing programme by the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council. This volume has been published with the help of a grant from the Department of Tourism, Recreation and Heritage of the Province of New Brunswick. Carleton University Press wishes to express its appreciation to Margaret Wade Labarge for her generous support and consideration in helping publish this book.

Veritas et caritas no mean gods for the academy

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Table of Contents Preface

ix

Part One — Hugh Mason Wade: An Appreciation Chapter 1 Hugh Mason Wade — N.E.S. Griffiths Chapter 2 Mason Wade as Historian of Quebec — David M.L. Farr

1 13

Part Two — Mason Wade's Maritime Melting Pot An Introduction — G.A. Rawly k

53

Chapter 3 Two French Canadas: Quebec and Acadia

55

Chapter 4 After the Grand Dérangement: The Acadians' Return to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to Nova Scotia Chapter 5 Outpost of New France and New England

65 83

Chapter 6 The New England Planters and the American Revolution (1749-1781)

109

Chapter 7 The Coming of the Loyalists

139

Part Three — Mason Wade in Canadian Historiography Chapter 8 "Histoire sans coeur"?: Historiographical Reflection on the Work of Mason Wade — Stephen Kenny Bibliographic Notes

179 195

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Preface The publication of this book has taken a long time. When Mason Wade died he left behind a long manuscript concerned with the history of the Atlantic provinces, a work in which he had interested the government of New Brunswick as a project for its centennial celebration. He had spoken about the work to a number of publishers, some of whom had undertaken evaluation of parts of the manuscript. Wade died, however, before he came to terms with the type and number of revisions that were suggested. The present work contains a significant portion of this manuscript. Having read the full manuscript a number of times, it is our professional opinion that what is printed here are the most valuable sections of that work. When we made the decision, as editors, as to what should be published of Mason Wade's last work, we came to the conclusion that the pages should be accompanied, first, by Wade's articles on Acadian and Quebec history which demonstrate the development of his ideas concerning these fields. We also believed that the time had come for an estimation of Mason Wade's work in the context of anglophone understanding of Quebec. It is our good fortune that D.M.L. Farr agreed to write this essay. We also felt that there should be a short biography of the career of this important American historian of Canada. Margaret Wade Labarge, Mason Wade's sister, gave of her time and affection to ensure that the biographical chapter by N.E.S. Griffiths would have both depth and accuracy. Stephen Kenny has also allowed his obituary for Wade to be included in the volume. We would like to thank the government of New Brunswick for its generous aid and support of this project. We hope that this work provides both a valuable conclusion to Mason Wade's published work and an appropriate memorial to a man whose impact upon many Canadian historians was of significance. N.E.S. Griffiths G.A. Rawlyk

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Hugh Mason Wade N.E.S. Griffiths Hugh Mason Wade was born in New York City on 3 July 1913 and died in his seventy-third year at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire on 6 January 1986. For the majority of his adult life he had worked to understand Canada, more especially French Canada, both Acadia and Quebec. His father, Alfred B. Wade, was also born in New City in December 1874. On 3 June 1907 he married Helena Mein, of Philadelphia. It was a "mixed" marriage: Alfred was an Episcopalian and Helena a Roman Catholic. Their four children were raised in the Catholic church; their three boys received a secular/Protestant education, while their daughter was sent to the Sacred Heart nuns for her early schooling. Mason was their third son. His elder brothers were Alfred Munroe, born in 1908 and Philip Tread well, born in 1909. His sister, Margaret Mein was the youngest of the family, born in 1916. Alfred Wade's career was in many ways a typical American success story. His childhood had been one of comfort, but his father's unlucky speculation meant that while his elder brother Herbert went to university and eventually taught at Columbia University, Alfred began life as an office boy in the firm of Parker, Wilder and Co. of New York. He rose to be a partner in the firm, whose business was wholesale dry goods, specifically textiles. He was able to retire in comfort in 1926 to New Canaan, Connecticut, at the age of fifty-two. In part his early retirement was the result of the lasting consequences of an accident in his twenties when he was thrown from a horse and kicked in the head in Central Park. From that point onwards he suffered a continual ringing in his ears and periodically severe headaches. In spite of this physical handicap Alfred Wade joined the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard in 1895 and saw active service on the Texas border. He retired from the Guard in 1916 but continued to be active in the Seventh Regiment Veterans Organization and the New

2 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec York Society of Colonial Wars. He was also a member of the Sons of the Revolution and of the Pilgrims. Helena Mein was the youngest of three isters and almost exactly three years younger than her husband. Her father had died when she was four years old and the circumstances of the family were financially strained. While her husband was inclined to be reserved and somewhat shy, characteristics intensified by his physical handicap, Helena was of a lively disposition and made friends easily until ill-health struck. She had a major thyroid operation in 1926 and for several years was a semi-invalid. She died in a nursing home at New Canaan in 1966. The family circumstances during Mason's childhood and adolescence were those of a cultured and moneyed family, and one where a number of expectations were subtly conveyed. There was a sense of noblesse oblige. The children's education was seen as a family responsibility even if a particular child was capable of winning a scholarship. This attitude was reinforced by the impact of the Depression, which confirmed the parents in their belief that what money was available for further education should be awarded as much on need as for merit. Amusements were very much those of the mainstream upper class of the eastern United States at that time: travel, golf, tennis, the contemporary musical and literary scene. The artistic leanings of Philip Wade, the second son, were encouraged. If the social gathering was small, Alfred Wade could enjoy the conversation and the company in spite of the strain on his hearing. Perhaps the home atmosphere can be best described as that of a cultured and liberal humanism with, however, religious life being a matter of serious concern. The divergent religious beliefs of the parents meant a degree of toleration for a diversity of religious creed, but it was toleration which was founded on the importance of religious conviction, not upon humanist agnosticism. Mason's Catholicism was an important element in his character. His religious belief would always be of consequence to him although his formal relationship with the church was often strained. While expression of emotion, especially among the men, was restrained, there was a considerable emphasis upon family feeling among the Wades. Helena brought her considerable social skills and lightness of touch to her husband and children. She had openness of spirit that mediated the difficulties her husband felt in expressing his care for others. Alfred Wade's disability, however, and his frequent absences from the home on business when the boys were young, inhibited easy communication between father and sons. Further, Mason Wade's position in the family tended to emphasize separateness rather than sibling bonding. His two elder brothers were only a year apart and were close friends. Mason was their younger by four years and the next child was not only three years

Hugh Mason Wade / 3 younger but a girl. When the family moved from New York City to New Canaan, Munroe went on to Princeton University and the two younger boys were sent to Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. Mason was thirteen at the time and this period in his life seems one he endured rather than enjoyed. He was there six years, leaving for Harvard in the fall of 1931, when he was eighteen. His brother Philip was by then at the Art School at Yale University, and Munroe had already graduated from Princeton. His sister Margaret would follow him, entering Radcliffe College, Harvard University, in 1933. Mason spent four years at Harvard studying medieval history and literature.1 For Mason undergraduate life was as much about extra-curricular activities as about formal study. He took an active role in the running of the Advocate, the serious Harvard literary review, and led a busy social life. In his fourth year a combination of factors led to his leaving Harvard without a degree. He spent the next year in the throes of an acute nervous breakdown. This was the first known episode of his manic depressive illness, a condition which would plague him throughout his life. As Graham Fraser pointed out in Mason Wade's obituary, his "was the generation of James Agée and Scott Fitzgerald: like them he often dealt with his demons by drinking too much."2 Throughout his life his friends and acquaintances would be confronted with the enigma of a man who loved company but was essentially solitary, a man quick with sharp retorts, himself very vulnerable to any criticism. Wade was gifted with extraordinary physical energy and would always be puzzled by the way in which companions would need greater time than he did to recuperate from hard working days and late night conversations. His family were able to allow him to recuperate from this first bout of anguish in a house at Cornish which Alfred Wade had bought in 1918 as a summer refuge from New York City. Mason would find this house and the surrounding New Hampshire countryside a place of solace and refuge throughout his life. It was here that he had known the most carefree summers of his youth and it was here that he would often find tranquillity in his adult life. It would become his harbour in retirement. This inauspicious beginning to his adult life turned Mason away from any possibility of a conventional American academic career. Instead his occupation as an historian would be rooted in publishing and journalism. Throughout his life his place in orthodox university circles would be hard won and, in many ways, grudgingly accorded. Graduate studies bring the student not only the approved and accepted techniques of a discipline, the agreed-upon methods of research and the knowledge of the commonly held theories of the field but also entry into a particular

4 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec scholarly community. Those whose paths lead to scholarly recognition through non-academic circumstances will almost always be judged with particular rigour by those possessing more conventional training. Given the nearly twenty years that Mason Wade spent as a full professor, first at the University of Rochester, New York, and later at the University of Western Ontario, as well as the four honorary doctorates he received during his lifetime, one can hardly consider Wade as someone denied academic recognition. Nevertheless, his was an intellectual life that did not follow the normal academic pattern of earned university accreditation. To the end of his life he felt vulnerable in the face of the grudging recognition accorded him by some of his academic contemporaries. The year that Mason spent recovering in Cornish also saw him move towards the life of an historian. Supported financially by his parents, he began to work on his first book, a biography of Margaret Puller, the nineteenth-century New England feminist. His choice of what is, in essence a person whose centre is literary life and religious belief reflects Mason's early interest in these fields. Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius was published in 1940, by Viking Press, New York. Mason was twenty-seven years old and while the work met with a less than enthusiastic reception from the scholarly community, it had a fair popular success. According to the list published in the New York Times, it was Wendell Wilkie's reading on the campaign trail that year.3 In 1938 Mason had left Cornish for New York, working as a junior editor in the publishing houses of Harcourt Brace and then Little, Brown in the next months. His main efforts, however, were concentrated upon his writing. As he finished the manuscript of his first book he immediately began thinking of his next, and his selection of Francis Parkman as a subject for a biography saw him firmly set on the path of historical research.4 He was fortunate to find a hitherto unexploited series of Parkman diaries and letters and this allowed him to throw new light on the way in which Parkman had prepared himself to write his monumental histories of the Anglo-French struggle for North America. Wade published Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian with Viking Press in 1942. This work established not only Mason's ambitions to write and to write about the past, but was responsible for his interest in French Canada, the subject of much of Francis Parkman's own work. From 1943 to 1945 Wade held a Guggenheim Fellowship which allowed him to begin serious study of the history of Quebec. During these years, Wade was befriended by Professor J.B. Brebner, then at Columbia University. It was Brebner who encouraged Wade's interest in French Canadian history and provided support for the young scholar as he developed his interests without being formally linked to a graduate training program.

Hugh Mason Wade / 5 It was also during the 1940s that Wade began spending summers in North Hatley, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, becoming friends with English Montrealers such as John and Florence Bird, Frank Scott, and Hugh MacLennan. Perhaps one of the most helpful of these new acquaintances was Harvey Ballantine. Wade was godfather to one of the Ballantyne children and he maintained a close link with the family until his death. In 1946 Wade published The French-Canadian Outlook: A Brief Account of the Unknown North Americans? a book which began as a series of lectures to Canadian audiences. This was received with considerable acclaim. It remains a perceptive and original work and demonstrated at least two insights that would illuminate all Wade's writings about Quebec. The first of these was. the comprehension that Quebec Catholicism was far more than an opium of the people. It was a faith that provided, among other things, a sophisticated and highly complex intellectual context for the cosmology of many of the Quebec elite. Secondly, Wade perceived the extent to which Quebec was a vibrant and strong culture, not a conquered society but a distinct and developing people.6 In 1946 he received a Rockefeller grant to aid his scholarly work. It was also the year that he formed a connection with the University of Laval, one that was both professional and social. He was to teach in summer school there from 1946 to 1948. This experience not only brought him an understanding of what French-Canadian students most wanted to know about their past, it also introduced him to a number of Québécois academics who became his important friends and colleagues. It was mainly through his work at Laval University that he first met the sociologist Father Lévesque and other important Quebec intellectuals, Jean-Charles Falardeau, Jean-Charles Bonenfant, Pierre Dansereau, Gustave Lanctot, and Gerard Morisset among others. In 1949 he received a further grant from the Guggenheim Foundation for his work on the French Canadians. The 1950s would be an enormously successful decade for Mason Wade. He was thirty-eight in 1951. The decade began with his appointment as a foreign service reserve officer, serving as public affairs officer to the American embassy in Canada and with his marriage to Eloise Bergland Spencer. This took place on 29 December 1951. The appointment as public affairs officer meant that Wade would have considerable opportunity to meet influential Canadians in many walks of life, an opportunity that he exploited to the full during the time of his appointment which lasted from 1951 until 1953. It was also of great help to him that his sister was settled in Ottawa, having married Raymond Labarge, a FrenchCanadian whose links to both French and English elites were strong.7

6 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec His sister's eldest daughter, Claire, was to become, as an adult, a source of considerable emotional importance to Mason. The year 1953 saw his work associated with that of two important Canadian scholars, Jean Charles Falardeau and Nathan Keyfitz. Together these three were responsible for a seminar on the far-reaching changes that were affecting Quebec at that time. They organized a symposium at Laval University concerned with the social and economic repercussions which were a result of Quebec industrialization. The proceedings were published under the title Essais sur le Québec contemporain/Ess ay s on Contemporary Quebec* In 1953 Wade also received an honorary MA from McGill University. The following year Wade was invited to give the Grey Lecture at the University of Toronto and to teach summer session at the University of British Columbia. He was finding that there was indeed a growing interest in his ideas within Canadian universities. In 1955 Wade was forty-two years old and it was a year of undeniable triumph. He was appointed to the University of Rochester, New York, as a full professor; he was hired to take over the direction of the program of Canadian studies which had been started there in 1953; above all, his most important work, The French Canadians: 1760-1940 was published by the Macmillan Company. One of the senior editors there, John Gray, was a major force in getting the manuscript published and he became a very good friend of Mason's. It was largely through his efforts that a French translation of the work was published in 1963, and the English work would later be revised to include the years from 1945 to 1967. This edition, published in 1968, and was also translated into French. As the essays of D.M.L. Farr and Stephen Kenny explain, this work is the one which embedded Wade's name in the consciousness of Canadian historians. Yet the point of view expressed by Yves Roby in the obituary he wrote for the Bulletin de VInsütut d'histoire de l'Amérique française9 is valid. "I believe that his most important contribution came later on, with the establishment of a Canadian studies program at the University of Rochester, New York. For the Québécois, English Canadian and American students who gathered round him (close to thirty of them received their Ph.Ds) he was a demanding and accomplished teacher. One had to work hard in his courses but everyone who took them shared unforgettable intellectual experience from which two points clearly emerged: the conviction that French Canadian culture is an amalgam of French Heritage, of a North American environment and Roman, British and American influences: a deep belief that the French experience went much beyond the borders of Quebec." Wade's tenure at

Hugh Mason Wade / 7 Rochester lasted for ten years. The record he established as a graduate supervisor in those ten years is one which any academic would envy. In 1957 the University of New Brunswick awarded Wade an honorary LL.D. for his achievements as a scholar of French Canada. Over the next three or four years his main scholarly activity, apart from the administrative work demanded by his appointment in Rochester, was a series of important articles in refereed journals and the editing of a number of conference proceedings. He also worked on an unpublished book-length manuscript dealing with the general history of the French in North America. In 1960 he published an important short monograph entitled Canadian Dualism: Studies in English-French Relations.10 While the late 1950s saw Wade well established as an authority in his chosen area of study, his personal life was less than happy. His marriage was showing signs of strain and ended in divorce in 1962. While the 1960s might not have seen the extraordinary successes of the previous decade, they nevertheless were years of solid academic accomplishments for Wade. In 1963 he was appointed visiting lecturer in the Institute of Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. That same year saw Ottawa University bestow an honorary D.ès L. on him. He might be considered an outsider by some, he might consider himself as much academic journalist as a dyed-in-the wool academic, but those he studied as an outsider were convinced of the value of his work. In fact so convinced were Canadian historians of his worth that Wade was elected president of the Canadian Historical Association for the year 1964-65. Neither before nor since has the association granted this honour to a non-Canadian. With this election Mason Wade's position as an influential and important figure in the historical profession in Canada was secure. One might disagree with him; one might criticize the way in which he presented his undoubted knowledge, but that knowledge was considerable. From 1965 until his death Mason was a familiar and important figure at meetings of the Canadian Historical Association. His criticisms were trenchant, his beliefs about how history should be written were clear and often delivered with impatient articulateness. Perhaps his greatest value to the historical profession in Canada as a past president of the Canadian Historical Society was the fact that he took history seriously. In his eyes, the pursuit of history was not only of intrinsic value, but also of immediate significance for the contemporary world. The reiteration of this point of view by an "elder statesmen" was of immeasurable importance as the priority accorded history in the late twentieth century diminished.

8 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec In 1965 Wade left Rochester for an appointment in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario, where he remained until 1971. This would be an increasingly unhappy time for him. However, from 1966 onwards Wade made an important contribution to the seminars on Canadian-American relations that were held at the University of Windsor.11 In 1967 he was a leading participant in the centennial seminars organized at the University of Victoria.12 This was also the year in which he married Joan Glassco Lloyd, a marriage which would also end in divorce in 1974. As the 1960s drew to a close Wade's mood swings became more frequent and often interrupted his work. It was during this time, nevertheless, that he began work on a study of Maritime Canada, some of which is published in this book. His interest in the Maritimes was enhanced by the presence of his niece, Claire, in Fredericton. She had married John Morris and was established in her career as a provincial civil servant. Her young sons brought much joy to Mason Wade. As his work developed, Mason Wade found much pleasure in the friendship of the one-time premier of the province, Richard Hatfield, and of historians at both the University of New Brunswick and the Université de Moncton. Dr. A.G. Bailey of the former and Father Clement Cormier at the latter both valued Wade's wide-ranging curiosity about the way things happened in Maritime Canada. The resulting manuscript, however, was never completed and much of it remained not far from the note-taking stage when he died. George Rawlyk has taken great pains to present its most valuable insights in his selection from this work. Wade went on leave from the University of Western Ontario in 1971 and did not return. He had considered his permanent home to be Cornish for many years and he now established himself permanently there. He was fifty-nine and his lifelong habit of heavy smoking was beginning to have the inevitable impact on his lungs. However, retirement did not mean inactivity. He continued to write. If the completion of his book on the Maritimes did not come about, Wade was able to publish astute articles in a variety of publications. In particular, he published a comparison of Quebec and Acadia in the Journal of Canadian Studies in 1974.13 Another of the articles written during this period is reprinted in this volume, an overview of post-Deportation Acadian history.14 In 1976 he published a charming Brief History of Cornish.15 But for the last fourteen years of his life much of Wade's scholarly life and reputation drew its strength from work which he had produced earlier. He continued to be noticeably and effectively present at conferences and meetings concerned with French Canadian and Maritime

Hugh Mason Wade / 9 history. He was frequently consulted by young American scholars interested in Canada. While he admitted the importance of the work of senior scholars, he was never particularly comfortable with the new approaches that people such as Fernand Quellet were exploring. Wade also considered that there was a tendency for younger historians to forget that history was a matter of literature "and should not be served up in an indigestible mass of tables and statistics linked by passages of jargon-ridden prose."16 Commenting to a seminar at Carleton University in the mid-1970s, Wade presented Acadian history as above all a matter of international relations and domestic politics. While himself a man of wide reading, Wade was to a large extent a traditionalist who considered history above all "past politics." He was not fundamentally concerned with the force and importance of cultural and social activities as determinants of historical change. In 1974 Laval University honoured him with a Doc. de Science Sociale and in 1978 he was given an honorary D. Litt, by the University of Vermont. In December 1981 he married Elizabeth Eberts, a marriage which emphasized his long-held connections with the anglophones of Montreal. In 1984 at a meeting of the American Society for Canadian Studies he received the Donner medal for his work for promotion of Canadian studies in the United States. This was given not only in recognition of the work that he had done for that association and the impact he had made as director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the University of Rochester, but also because of a lifetime of journalistic writing about Canada that he published in the United States. From the mid-1940s on he had published significant articles about Canada in the some of the most prestigious American journals, such as Commonweal, Foreign Policy Bulletin, Saturday Review, and Atlantic Monthly. Among those who attended the banquet at which the award was given there was a noticeable and warm enthusiasm for the nomination. Mason Wade was regarded with much more affection by his colleagues than he ever recognized. Until the very end Wade continued to be concerned with writing about the Maritimes and at the time of his death on 6 January 1986 was discussing the possible publication of his book-length manuscript. It was, however, his work on Quebec that was the centre of the obituaries. From the Globe and Mail to Le Devoir the point was made that Wade introduced "thousands of Canadians to a society they had never known." The Montreal Gazette paid tribute to this "disinterested outsider" and quoted his opinion that "The problem of Canadian union is merely a

10 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec special case of the great world problem of our time, for mankind must learn to be equal without being identical, if it is to survive." At a time when intellectuals are discussing the vexed question of how human beings can really understand the experiences of "the other," Mason Wade's career stands as a monument to common sense and courageous imagination. In some ways one of the most basic assumptions an historian makes is that one can understand experiences that one has not lived. For an historian, not only is "no man an island," but no human community lives unlinked to the rest of humanity. The knowledge of "the other," the understanding of how one is perceived by "the other" is necessary for any true understanding of one's own culture. Mason Wade offered to Quebec and Canada his own perception as an outsider, his own real vision of how both had come to be. However much one might disagree with his conclusions, however much one might wish he had asked different questions of his sources, his work presented Quebec to English Canadians, and Canadians and Americans to each other. We owe him much gratitude.

Notes 1 This was also the field of study chosen by his sister. She went on to become an historian of international repute. She married a Canadian, Raymond Labarge, and managed to publish extensively while bringing up four children. Her eight books on medieval history gained her membership in the Royal Society of Canada and a number of other academic honours, including a D. Litt, honoris causa from Carleton University. 2 "Solitary U.S. Scholar wrote seminal work on French Canada" Globe and Mail January 7, 1986. 3 Margaret Wade Labarge: recollection. 4 The historiographical analysis of Mason Wade's career is the theme of the essay by D.M.L. Farr in this volume. 5 (New York) Viking Press 1946. 6 He returned to this theme most succinctly in an article, "The Collapse of the French Empire in North America," Lex et Scientia 10, 1 (January-March 1974). 7 Raymond Labarge was at that time an administrative officer in the Department of Customs and Excise. His father was Charles Henry Labarge, a successful businessman. He had originated the process and was the first to introduce homogenized milk in America. Raymond Labarge became deputy minister of Customs and Excise in January 1965. As a rising civil servant in the 1950s, Raymond Labarge was a very useful connection for the new foreign service officer.

Hugh Mason Wade / 11 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Presses Universitaires de Laval, 1953. Numéro 9 (printemps 1986). University of Toronto Press. Published as The International Megalopolis: Report of the University of Windsor Seminar on Canadian American Relations 1966. Published as Regionalism in the Canadian Community, 1867-1967, Canadian Historical Association Centennial seminars, University of Victoria, 1967. "Commentary: Québécois and Acadian," Journal of Canadian Studies 9 (May 1974), 47-53. "After the Grand Dérangement: The Acadians' Return to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia," American Review of Canadian Studies 5, 1 (1975), 42-65. Hanover, N.H.: published for the town of Cornish by the University Press of New England, 1976. "The Collapse of the French Empire in North America," 9.

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Mason Wade as Historian of Quebec David M.L. Fair Writing in 1976, Carl Berger chose not to discuss French-Canadian writing in his account of twentieth-century Canadian historians. "The two language traditions have, in historical thought . . . occasionally touched and intersected but in general have been preoccupied with the backgrounds to two ... different 'nations'".1 Berger's judgment stands. With few exceptions, Canadian historians have respected the cultural divide between the historical traditions of Quebec and those of English-speaking Canada. Two historians from the United States have not: Francis Parkman in the nineteenth century and Mason Wade in the mid-twentieth. Both made Quebec and its inhabitants the object of their life's work. Through travel and study and immersion in Quebec's affairs they came to know the province as thoroughly as any outsider can. Their purposes as historians were not dissimilar. Both sought to make known to the American people the existence to the north of a neighbouring but alien culture. Parkman saw the eighteenth-century conflict between France and England as a neglected chapter in the history of North America that ought to be better known. For Mason Wade the French in Canada were "the unknown North Americans," struggling heroically to maintain a distinctive life, an isolated island in a sea of English-speakers. Writing during the Second World War, Wade saw tolerance of diversity as an essential underpinning for the post war world order. His work on French Canada was, he asserted, a contribution towards understanding the baI would like to thank my friends Joseph Levitt and Blair Neatby for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I would also like to thank Carl Spandoni of the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collection of Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University, for information from the Macmillan Company records on the printing history of Mason Wade's books. Michael Gnarowski supplied similar information for the Carleton University Press reprint of The French-Canadian Outlook.

14 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec sis of North American history. Although the two men brought differing presumptions to their tasks, it is appropriate to recognize Parkman and Wade as pioneers, crossing the cultural divide to venture into an unknown land.

Mason Wade and Francis Parkman Mason Wade's resolve to study the French in North America was formed, like Francis Parkman's, at an early age. His first attempt at sustained writing was a life of Margaret Fuller, the feminist member of the New England Transcendentalist group and literary critic for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. The biography was published in 1940, and was followed a year later by a volume of selections from the writings of Margaret Fuller.2 The two titles, although published by a prominent press, Viking, seem to have had little impact. Forty years later, with the coming of the feminist perspective, Fuller is the subject of a small shelf of monographs and studies. More discouraging to the young writer than neglect, however, was a crushing "put down" by the dean of New England literary historians, Perry Miller of Harvard. Reviewing Margaret Fuller, Miller noted patronizingly that publishers tend to favour biographies because they "will sell." Here was a biography of a celebrated New England literary figure written by a young man in his twenties who was "not particularly or technically equipped to deal" with his subject. Although felicitously written, the portrait of Fuller was a monotone, lacking "depth of insight."3 The implication was plain. The young Mason Wade should not trespass in the sacred grove occupied by the most exquisite blooms in New England letters. Many aspiring writers would have grasped the message and beat a hasty retreat. But Mason Wade, as his whole life proved, was made of sterner stuff. He abandoned literary figures and turned his attention to the historian Francis Parkman. Parkman was acknowledged to be a giant among nineteenth-century American historians, a counterpart of Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Adams. In company with most of this exalted group, he was a "Boston Brahmin," born on Beacon Hill and living for half his life on Chestnut Street on the slopes of the hill. After early years marked by strenuous exercise and Western travel, he had become a sickly recluse, a lonely figure bereaved of his wife and son early in his marriage. He suffered for the remainder of his life from acute eye strain, fierce headaches, insomnia, and mental depression. Yet, in spite of these barriers to effort, he conceived and carried through an epic history of the "Old Ftench War", the struggle between the British and French empires for dominance in North America. Records relating to the war were scattered

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 15 over two continents. Parkman collected and transcribed them, talking to descendants of those who had taken part in the conflict, and visited all the important sites of settlements and battles. Beginning in 1851 and ending in 1892, he brought out eight massive volumes whose text totalled well over one million words. To this great undertaking he gave the omnibus title, "France and England in North America." Until Parkman's day Americans had been only mildly interested in the history of their country, especially in the period before independence. Cultural links with Europe were close and European historical subjects of absorbing interest. Prescott and Motley had established the fashion with their histories of Spain and Holland; Parkman challenged this offshore focus. He turned the eyes of Americans to their own history, to the phase he termed "the history of the American forest." Although he based his work on painstaking research, he brought a romantic imagination, married to a vivid writing style, to his task. By the end of his life he had established a new tradition in historical writing in America. Parkman died in 1893. After his death his secretary, C.H. Farnham, brought out a sympathetic memoir which was followed by a life by the noted biographer, Henry Dwight Sedgwick, in 1904. A selection from Parkman's writings, introduced by a lengthy essay, appeared in 1938. Parkman was also noted approvingly as a writer in the American romantic tradition in V.L. Parrington's provocative Main Currents in American Thought (1927). But it was the immensely popular literary historian, Van Wyck Brooks, who brought to the general reader most vividly Parkman's courageous struggle and monumental achievement. His New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915, part of his literary history of the United States, appeared in August 1940, the year in which Mason Wade began work on the historian. Brooks apparently suggested the study of Parkman to Wade and undoubtedly influenced the younger scholar's approach to his subject. Bernard DeVoto, another well-known student of American letters, helped Wade with his account of Parkman's journey over the Oregon TVail. But Wade's book, when it appeared in 1942, was his own. Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian was the first full-length biography of Parkman in thirty-eight years. The enterprise was blessed with a stroke of miraculous good fortune at its outset. This was the discovery of fifteen of Parkman's journals, some substantial, some little more than working notes. The journals had been sparingly used by the earlier biographers, then lost sight of. When Wade began his research on Parkman he learned that all the historian's papers had been bequeathed to the Massachusetts Historical Society or to Harvard University. But the journals were not among this material. Wade visited Parkman's house on Chestnut Street, at this time still

16 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec occupied by his niece. On the top floor, looking north towards Canada, was Parkman's study, closed since his death in 1893. Everything in the room was as it had been left almost fifty years before: Parkman's Indian artifacts, souvenirs of his trip over the Oregon Trail; busts and pictures; the wire frame which his poor sight required to guide his hand when writing. His desk, covered with a dust sheet, stood against the wall. It possessed drawers on two sides. The drawers on one side had been overlooked when Parkman's papers had been removed. Here lay the missing journals and a mass of correspondence, forgotten since the death of the sister who had kept house for Parkman during his last years. Wade set to work on his life of Parkman fortified by the new evidence he had found. From the journals he reconstructed Parkman's travels to the New England frontier and southern Quebec in the 1840s, a place and a time when Indians and pioneers were still to be found. These travels represented the field work for the great history. They gave Parkman the sense of place which inspired the freshness and vitality of his prose. The journals became an indispensable source for Wade as he traced Parkman's preparations for his career as an historian. They were so fascinating, in fact, that they skewed the proportions of the resulting biography. There was something out of balance, reviewers noted, when it took the biographer 287 pages to bring his subject to the age of twentythree! The intrinsic interest of the journals and the calibre of some of their writings may have inclined Wade to what became a weakness in his style: a tendency to quote too extensively. This became more marked in his works on Quebec, where occasionally his prose resembles a thick forest whose outlines are hard to discern. The biography, Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian, appeared in 1942, to be followed five years later by a carefully edited edition of Parkman's journals.4 The delay was occasioned by Wade's decision, early in the interval between the two books, to undertake a thorough examination of the history and present condition of Quebec. Parkman had ended his account with the cession of Canada to Great Britain in 1763 and Pontiac's uprising against the British conquerors; Wade decided to begin his history with the fall of New France and carry it forward to the end of the Second World War. He moved to Quebec to go over the ground in much the way Parkman had some seventy years earlier. At the same time he continued with the editing of the journals. The dating of the preface to the Journals reveals that work on them was undertaken in Quebec and in Cornish, New Hampshire (the Wade summer home) between 1943 and 1946. The two volumes of the journals run to over seven hundred pages, reproducing diaries and jottings from Parkman's first trip north

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 17 to the frontier of New England in 1841 to the last of his notes for the revision of the history dated 1892. Heroic Historian and the Journals were reviewed favourably in the United States, Great Britain and Canada. Most reviewers recognized and appreciated Wade's enthusiasm for Parkman the traveller, noting that it produced a more vivid portrait of the young Parkman than it did of the older Boston recluse. Wilbur Schramm, who had edited the 1938 selection from Parkman's writings, while acknowledging that Heroic Historian was the best of the three Parkman biographies, believed that Wade had failed to put Parkman into the literary and intellectual context of the last forty years of his life. The biography was most convincing on Parkman's years of travel.5 Grace Lee Nute, the dean of historians of Western travel and the fur trade, agreed. Wade had done little to illuminate Parkman's working methods or bring out the strengths and weaknesses of his individual volumes. Yet in his editing of the journals he had shown an unassailable control of his sources. In publishing Parkman's 1846 diary of his trip along the Oregon TVail Wade had brought into print an account stronger and more colourful than the finished book Parkman had made of the diary. (The California and Oregon Trail [1849]; reissued as The Oregon Trail [1872].) The biography was "superb"; the edition of the journals "a treasure."6 All the reviewers noted Wade's impeccable editing of the Parkman journals, his imaginative selection of photographs, drawings and maps, and the handsome format accorded the two volumes by their American printer and publisher. How well did Mason Wade assess Francis Parkman the historian? His judgments, which deal with the corpus of Parkman's work rather than individual volumes, are found in the preface, the final chapter, and the epilogue of Heroic Historian. Wade's objective had been to make Parkman better known to his countrymen. To this end he had compared him with the most eminent American historians of the nineteenth century. Even in this exalted company Parkman stood out, Wade claimed, perhaps as the greatest in the grand design and execution of his life's work; certainly as the best writer. This had also been the mature judgment of the olympian Henry Adams, delivered after reading the final volume of Parkman's history. Parkman's greatness lay in his style and in the method he brought to his work. His romantic imagination allowed him to capture place, action and personality with arresting immediacy. The words, painfully arranged and rearranged in the mind of the almost-blind historian, sprang to life on the page. But great historical writing was more than vivid description. It required the collection and weighing of evidence. Wade properly called attention to Parkman's painstaking research methods. These were

18 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec by no means the standard practice among his contemporaries. Parkman scorned other historians' reliance on secondary accounts, insisting on an intensive study of original sources. Where they were not available to him in Boston he tirelessly collected them in other parts of the United States or had them copied in Canada or Europe. Van Wyck Brooks had correctly called Francis Parkman "ferociously accurate and savagely thorough."7 The final entry in Parkman's last journal, written shortly before his death, was a correction to be made in one of his published volumes: Jesuits, 257, correct "evening mass"8 It is difficult to imagine a more fitting testimony to the assiduous scholarship which Mason Wade found in Parkman. On the substance of Parkman's writing, Wade was less positive and less convincing. He was guarded on the over-arching theme of Parkman's history, the great struggle between liberty and authoritarianism which marked the English-French conflict in North America. Later historians have judged Parkman's view of the conflict simplistic and fallacious; Wade's comment is casual: "and so it was to a certain extent."9 This is an uncritical judgment which can only be partly justified by recalling that it was written in late 1941 or early 1942, a dark hour in the Second World War. "The struggle between liberty and absolutism has not yet been concluded," Wade muses, "and there are lessons to be learned from the past." And also, presumably from Parkman.10 Wade was on firmer ground in recognizing Parkman's blind spots, which he saw as being the products of his age and upbringing. Parkman shared with other wealthy Bostonians a contempt for the common man; he followed Puritan leaders in seeing Indians as treacherous savages; he shared the late nineteenth-century belief in the English-speaking world that Anglo-Saxon peoples were peculiarly fitted for self-government. But Parkman revealed other attributes which serve to establish his eminence as an historian. Wade identified them with enthusiasm. He pointed out that Parkman had attempted, in looking at Quebec under the French flag, to paint a picture of the entire society. He had described its institutions, its economy, the customs and behaviour of its people. History of such a broad compass, social history, was unusual in Parkman's day. John Fiske, Parkman's great contemporary in writing about colonial America, had recognized the merit of this approach. Parkman, Fiske said, "forgets nothing, overlooks nothing."11 By the tests of modern scholarship Parkman's attempts at social history were crude but the intention behind them places him in the front rank of nineteenth-century historians. Parkman also broke new ground, Wade states, in seeing New France and the British colonies as pawns in a world struggle for maritime and

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 19 colonial supremacy. He correctly noted that outcomes in North America would be determined by events in Europe and vice versa. Thus he anticipated the North Atlantic setting for Canadian and American history so brilliantly expounded in 1945 by one of Mason Wade's mentors, John Bartlet Brebner. Wade saw other strengths in Parkman's writing that he believed contributed to his enduring popularity among American readers. (In the first sixty years after the historian's death, 350,000 Parkman titles were sold.) Parkman's romantic temperament inclined him towards an emphasis on people, especially those who occupied a prominent place in the historical record. He saw history as periods dominated by a forceful personality: Champlain, Frontenac, La Salle. His accounts, consequently, possessed a human cast. This, combined with the attraction of his style, made his history readable. Wade pointed out that the writings of twentieth-century historians were often unappealing to laymen and difficult for them to comprehend. Thus history was being displaced by biography as a favoured form of historical reading. Parkman's works stood against this trend; he was almost certainly a popularizer of history. Yet few historians of the twentieth century could offer works which spoke so directly to their readers while respecting the evidence as Francis Parkman. Mason Wade's biography of Parkman has not held the field since 1942. Other biographies and critical commentaries have appeared, some relying on the tools of psychological analysis to probe the tension between Parkman the man of action and Parkman the sickly scholar. Other studies have probed the causes of Parkman's neuroses and physical afflictions. Wade has been criticized, by reviewers of the biography and its 1972 reprint, for failing to bring out Parkman as "a fully integrated personality."12 His edition of Parkman's journals has survived with greater respect. In preparing Parkman's notes for publication the young historian had delighted in the editor's task of annotation and elucidation. He brought not only enthusiasm to the task but also a careful and penetrating eye. Fifty years after publication, The Journals of Francis Parkman, edited by Mason Wade, remains the indispensable starting point for the assessment of one of America's greatest historians.

Historical Writing on Quebec before Mason Wade For most of Quebec's existence as a British colony and then a province of Canada, its history has been a fusion of nationalism and religion. The belief that this link was essential to survival emerged in the Frenchspeaking community on the St. Lawrence as it sought to establish its place within the British Empire. It came into prominence following the

20 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec shock of the Patriote defeat in the rebellions of 1837-38. Two circumstances helped to articulate the new spirit: the founding of the nationalist Saint-Jean Baptiste Society in Montreal in 1834, and the historical writings of François-Xavier Garneau. Following the failure of the 1837 rebellion, the Roman Catholic church in Quebec, deeply influenced by ultramontane views, assumed a position of leadership. It created and managed the educational system and the hospitals and presided over a network of social institutions. It influenced the political leadership and intervened in the economic development of the province. Under its guidance the history of Quebec came to be seen as a reflection of consensus among social groups. A common approach to the memory of the past ensured the continuity of the community. The leading role of the church in defining Quebec's historical tradition is well illustrated in the experience of French Canada's most respected historian, François-Xavier Garneau (1809-66). Stung by Lord Durham's remark that French Canadians were aa people with no history and no literature," Garneau set to work to disprove the charge. His Histoire du Canada (1846-52), written in four volumes, chronicled French-Canadian survival in North America from the heroic beginnings until 1840. Although immensely popular with the public, the work was seen as too secular in tone by the clergy. Garneau was persuaded to remove passages from later editions of his text to bring out more explicitly the prominent place of religion in Quebec life. Clerical historians such as J.B.A. Ferland, E.M. Faillon, and H.R. Casgrain, who followed him, continued this emphasis. Ferland, who gave perhaps the first university course in Canadian history as early as 1854, based his lectures largely on the writings of Garneau.13 By the first decades of the twentieth century historians were beginning to challenge the inward-looking nationalism of Quebec's historical tradition. Sir Thomas Chapáis (1858-1946), a Conservative senator who held the chair of history at Laval University after 1919, believed that the conquest of Quebec had been "providential" in saving the society from the errors of the French Revolution. Chapáis admired British political institutions, going so far as to say that their application to Quebec has guaranteed French Canada's cultural identity. His heroes were the French-Canadian leaders who were prepared to co-operate with their English counterparts: LaFontaine, Cartier, Laurier. Chapais's work, careful and well documented, enjoyed a considerable vogue for a time. A more clinical view of Quebec nationalism came from the brilliant French commentator and political thinker, André Siegfried (1875-1959). He visited Canada in the first years of the twentieth century, studying the country's divided political system. His dispassionate reports, Le Canada, les deux

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 21 races: problèmes politiques contemporains, appeared in Paris in 1906 and was translated as The Race Question in Canada a year later.14 A consensus among French Canadians regarding their history was successfully renewed by a priest who came to dominate the writing of history in Quebec. Canon Lionel-Adolphe Groulx (1878-1967) expounded the perils and prospects of nationalism in Quebec for over forty years. Although Groulx was descended from a rural family, he spent most of his life teaching literature and history, first at a college in Valley field, then at the University of Montreal. He occupied the chair of Canadian history at the latter institution from 1915 to 1949. He was active in youth organizations as well as being a prolific writer and an inspiring speaker. In the 1920s he became the editor of L'Action française, a nationalist journal, and in 1947 the founder of L'Institut d'histoire de l'Amérique française at the University of Montreal. The Institute's Revue, which Groulx edited in its early years, became the most influential historical journal in Quebec. Groulx's thinking about the past and future of Quebec was shaped during the years of intense language and religious controversy in Canada. In the 1890s there was the Manitoba schools question and later, during the First World War, the disputes over French-language teaching in Ontario and the conscription crisis in Quebec. Groulx came to see history as a weapon in the never-ending struggle of French Canadians to uphold their dignity against British domination. He believed that conflict with English Canadians was a stance that should be promoted, for it strengthened the will to survive. It was profoundly true, he frequently observed, that "nations do not love each other."15 Unlike Chapáis, Groulx regarded the conquest of New France as a disaster, the first step in a British effort to assimilate French Canadians and destroy their institutions. Military defeat made them dependent on the English-speaking majority in British North America. Confederation confirmed the dependence. Groulx excoriated those Quebec leaders who were prepared to join with political figures from the rest of Canada for the sake of a broader Canadianism. Thus his nationalism diverged from that of Henri Bourassa, Groulx's early hero, who saw Canada as a land based on the principle of cultural duality. Groulx's version of Quebec history was the heartening record of "la survivance" of "un petit peuple." Groulx devoted his life to this struggle, to promoting the language and culture of contemporary French Canada. The little priest succeeded Bourassa as the favoured orator on patriotic occasions in Quebec. There were two aspects of Groulx's thought which perplexed outside observers of Quebec such as Mason Wade. Was Groulx a racist? The evidence is equivocal. As a young priest studying in France he read

22 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Chateaubriand and the French romantic nationalists as well as ultraconservative Roman Catholic thinkers such as Barrés and Maurras. He claimed not to have read the infamous Comte de Gobineau, exponent of concepts of racial superiority. Yet Groulx's ardent Catholicism made him see French Canadians as possessing a special virtue over other peoples. They were the true Catholics, placed above other nationalities such as the Irish, the Italians, and the Acadians of the Maritime provinces. The renewal of the Roman church in the secular twentieth century would only come through the French in Quebec. Theirs was a divine mission.16 On the other question was Groulx a separatist? observers could be more positive. Groulx consistently denied the charge but the tendency of his writings moves inexorably in that direction. If "maîtres chez nous" was the only protection for the French-Canadian identity, then it could be more fully realized in a separate state. Could such a state exist as part of the Canadian federation? Groulx was never explicit on this point. Perhaps, like many Quebec nationalists of his day, he lacked confidence in Quebec's economic viability. If he were writing in the 1990s, it seems likely that he would espouse independence for Quebec. The power of Groulx's words in shaping the thinking of Quebeckers was demonstrated in his celebrated controversy with Abbé Arthur Maheux. This quarrel was raging when Mason Wade came to study Quebec. Arthur Maheux (1884-1967), born of a family which had come to Canada in the 1660s, had been a teacher and administrator at the Seminary of Quebec and at Laval University. An educational reformer, he was interested in broadening Laval's curriculum and in .opening the university to students from outside Quebec. He became archivist of the Seminary, teaching Canadian history in Catholic high schools and giving public lectures on the subject. Maheux believed that too much of the teaching of history in Quebec followed Groulx's views and promoted hostility to English Canada. The misunderstanding that resulted was damaging to Canadian unity and positively dangerous when the country was at war after 1939. He resolved to set the record straight as a contribution to the war effort. In 1941 Maheux published a series of his lectures, Ton histoire est une épopée, tome 1, Nos débuts sous le régime anglais. Here he brought out the fact (earlier documented by A.L. Burt in The Old Province of Quebec [1933]) that the French in Quebec had been treated with sympathy by the first British governors after the conquest. He contrasted the favourable condition of Quebec in the years following 1760 with the fate of European countries which had fallen under the rule of Nazi Germany. The little book was translated into English by R.M. Saunders of the University of Toronto under the title French Canada and Britain:

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 23 A New Interpretation and published in 1942 under the sponsorship of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. It was greeted enthusiastically in English Canada.17 Maheux was invited to lecture across the country as an agent of better understanding in a time of war.18 He spoke on the national radio service, his talks being published in 1943 as Pourquoi sommes-nous divisés? What Keeps Us Apart? Canon Groulx, aroused by Maheux's challenge to his interpretation of Quebec's history, was not slow to do battle. His response was Pourquoi nous sommes divisés, in which he damned English Canadians and their policies towards Quebec. It must be said that Groulx won the argument with his countrymen. Whereas Maheux's book sold less than ten thousand copies in a year, Groulx's rejoinder sold forty thousand in six weeks! More seriously, Maheux was subjected to a torrent of vilification which recalled the storm of the Guibord affair in the 1870s. Groulx's fierce nationalism possessed a firm hold on the minds of Quebeckers. Another controversy in the closing year of the Second World War threw more light on the defensive character of French-Canadian nationalism. The issue arose from a dramatic speech made by Senator T.D. Bouchard in June 1944. Bouchard had been a long-time mayor of St. Hyacinthe, a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly and a cabinet minister in the Taschereau and Godbout administrations. In his maiden speech in the Senate he endorsed a proposal made earlier by another senator from Quebec that a common history textbook should be used across Canada to promote harmony. Bouchard declared that the teaching of Canadian history should not be directed to the disruption of Canada and the erosion of democratic values. The broader Canadianism expressed by leaders such as Laurier, Bourassa, and Mackenzie King should be celebrated. Bouchard went on to accuse a secret society, l'Ordre de Jacques Cartier, which he claimed was influenced by totalitarian ideas from Europe, of plotting to establish an independent Catholic state in Quebec.19 He deplored the personal attacks on Abbé Maheux, declaring that they arose from the disruptive tendencies which the Jacques Cartier society had helped to create in Quebec. Bouchard ended his remarks with a plea for greater understanding among Canadians and a renewed faith in democracy. Quebec's sensitivity to criticism of its values erupted in denunciations of Bouchard. All shades of opinion condemned him, as did leaders of church and state. He was driven from his post as head of a provincial utility and obliged to abandon municipal politics in St. Hyacinthe. While French Canada was outraged by Bouchard's charges, English Canada regarded the senator as a victim of intolerance. The incident did nothing to promote greater understanding between French and English Canadians.

24 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec The controversies over the views of Maheux and Bouchard illustrated how powerful were the links between the church, nationalism, and the writing of history in Quebec. Writers from outside the province, even if they recognized the connections, tended to ignore them. They brought their own preconceptions to the study of Quebec's history, often seeing in it the preservation of values they admired. A good example of this attitude is found in the writings of George M. Wrong (1860-1948), probably the best-known English historian of Quebec at the time Mason Wade began his researches. Professor of history at the University of Toronto, Wrong had married a daughter of Edward Blake. The Blakes, in company with other wealthy Canadian and American families, maintained a summer home at Murray Bay on the cool shores of the lower St. Lawrence. Here Wrong became fascinated with the French Canadians, seeing in them a devout and conservative society whose qualities deserved to be preserved. He recorded the history of the settlement at Murray Bay, with a poet's feeling, in his best work, A Canadian Manor and its Seigneurs (1908). Wrong subsequently wrote a number of longer books on the history of Quebec, relying heavily on the writings of Francis Parkman. Wrong typified the attitude of many well-intentioned English Canadians who saw Quebec as a romantic relic of pre-revolutionary France. The fullest expression of this attitude can be found in the literature surrounding the tercentenary of the founding of Quebec in 1908. Led by the governor-general, Earl Grey, leading public figures from Canada and Britain came together in ceremonies in Quebec City to extol the province's heroic past. W.H. Blake wrote of the folkways of Quebec, while Maria Chapdelaine (1913), by a young French journalist, commemorated the enduring values of Quebec society. Quebec was a distinctive part of Canada, a part to be cherished. Bonne entente became the phrase on everyone's lips. Another point of view, more influential in shaping long-term EnglishCanadian perceptions of Quebec, is represented in the writings of Sir John Willison (1856-1927) and O.D. Skelton (1878-1941). In 1903 Willison, an influential Toronto journalist, published Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal P arty > the first English-Canadian study of the rise to power of the French-Canadian prime minister. It was an admiring work, painting Laurier as an exponent of federalism and civil and religious freedom. Above all, Laurier was a leader who had left behind the narrow provincialism of Quebec in order to embrace a wider Canadian unity. He had transformed the Liberal party into one of national consensus based on the principles of modern British liberalism. The reconciliation of French and English in Canada represented his life's goal. Skelton, the academic

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 25 turned senior public servant under Mackenzie King, adopted the same stance. In his classic biography, Lift and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier*0 Skelton praised Laurier for his attachment to national unity, for his willingness to try the way of compromise, for his belief in persuasion rather than coercion, above all for his rejection of "le nationalisme sauvage." Willison and Skelton were not interested in Quebec as a society in its own right but as an element in the Liberal party consensus that Laurier and others had constructed to govern Canada. The Quebec nationalist leader of their day, Henri Bourassa, they saw as dangerous because he challenged the Liberals' dominance in Quebec. Bourassa's nationalism was rigid and extreme, flawed in comparison with the more open form preached by Laurier. This view was unfair in many respects; that it was held by two prominent publicists of English Canada testifies to the partial understanding of Quebec's national consciousness held by many outside the province in the early twentieth century. Other English-language historians who followed Willison and Skelton undertook more searching analyses. Yet when they attempted a gen· eral explanation of Quebec's past they were often simplistic; when they looked closely at a particular aspect of the history they usually failed to bring out the larger context. A.R.M. Lower saw Canada as harbouring a clash of two philosophies: the English, based on materialism and efficiency; the French, Catholic and simple in character. This was the "primary antithesis" of Canadian life, one that could never be reconciled. Lower was sympathetic to French Canadians and their aspirations but, even as he wrote, the foundations of the Quebec he described were being washed away. More specialized studies of Quebec also appeared in English Canada and the United States. For example, A.L. Burt and his student Hilda Neatby examined Quebec under early British rule. Americans, taking up Parkman's lead, pursued similar specific inquiries. In 1937 a graduate of Columbia University influenced by J.B. Brebner, Elizabeth Armstrong, published The Crisis of Quebec, 1914-1918 ?l an account of the bitter struggle over conscription in the First World War. Sociological treatments followed: Horace Miner's St. Denis: A French-Canadian Parish (1939) (a portrait of Drummondville) and Everett C. Hughes's larger analysis, French Canada in Transition (1943). S.D. Clark, a Canadian social scientist, applied some of the techniques of historical sociology to explain Quebec's values and institutions. But, generally speaking, the gap between the English and French views of Quebec's historical traditions remained. The situation, when Mason Wade began his researches

26 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec in the Second World War, is neatly summed up in the title of Hugh MacLennan's popular novel of the period, Two Solitudes (1945).

The French-Canadian Outlook Francis Parkman had prepared himself for the writing of "Prance and England in North America" by eight or nine trips to Quebec and its neighbouring areas. He visited towns and historic sites, collected sources for his writing, and made the acquaintance of historians, antiquarians, churchmen, and journalists who could help him understand Quebec's past. Mason Wade followed Parkman's path, aided by the means and the inclination to spend a much longer period in the object of his study. A series of grants-in-aid, together with later periods as lecturer at Laval University and an appointment at the United States embassy in Ottawa made it possible for him to live and study in Quebec for extended periods up to 1953. During these years Mason Wade investigated the repositories of French Canada's history in Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa; travelled the province from the Gaspé peninsula to the Ottawa valley (with a special fondness for the Eastern Townships and the border region with Vermont and New Hampshire) and made himself known to many of those active in Quebec's intellectual life. He was aided in his research by several considerations. His French was never good but was adequate for his purposes; he came from New England, a neighbouring region in which many Quebeckers had settled; and he was a Roman Catholic. His personal background and experience combined to contribute to his entrée into Quebec life. Mason Wade's personal sources for an understanding of Quebec came mostly from the university and archival worlds. In writing Parkman he had become acquainted with Abbé Arthur Maheux, with the writer Aegidius Fauteux of the Montreal Public Library, and Pierre-Georges Roy, the archivist of Quebec. In addition to these older scholars he relied on a group of younger friends of a liberal persuasion: Jean-Charles Falardeau, a sociologist from Laval University, Jean-Charles Bonenfant of the Quebec Legislative Library, and F.R. Scott, the talented law teacher, civil rights advocate, poet, and socialist thinker from McGill University. There were other Quebec historians, such as Abbé Lionel Groulx and the group associated with him at the University of Montreal, who did not give the visiting American the same welcome. Just as Francis Parkman had encountered opposition from ultramontane circles in his day, so did Mason Wade from conservative and nationalist historians. In spite of good intentions, affability, and a genuinely inquiring manner, Wade always found certain doors closed to him.

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 27 Mason Wade's preliminary report on his inquiry into Quebec's history and prospects appeared in August 1946. The French-Can adían Outlook, a slim volume of less than two hundred pages, was published simultaneously in New York and Toronto by the Viking Press and the Macmillan Company of Canada. Within a year it had gone into a second printing. Canadian sales alone totalled over eighteen thousand copies within the first sixteen months, a sizeable number for an historical work in Canada in 1946. Subtitled A Brief Account of the Unknown North Americans, the book represented an "epitome" or an "interim report," as the author later described it, of his larger project. Years later, when the work was reprinted,22 Wade recalled that he had estimated that it would take five more years after the completion of The French-Canadian Outlook to finish his task; in the event it took nine years before The French Canadians appeared.23 He also reminded his readers that the first book had been prepared out of a sense of emergency provoked by the Second World War conscription crisis; ironically, when the preface to the reprint was being written, another Quebec crisis, which was to lead to the FLQ kidnappings, was brewing. The French-Canadian Outlook was directed towards a reading public in the United States. Its object, the author stated, was to show why French Canadians think and act in a different manner from Englishspeaking North Americans. There were three and a half million French Canadians living in Canada, Wade pointed out; in New England and Louisiana there were another two million people of French descent. The need to understand the "French fact" was not merely a Canadian responsibility but was also one borne by the United States. The latest historian of Quebec disclosed his sympathies even before he began his account. Laurier was the "greatest French-Canadian" and his judgment, "Quebec does not have opinions, but only sentiments," the key to understanding its experience.24 It was therefore necessary to delve into the psychology of the Québécois in order to interpret their actions in the past and understand their attitudes in the present. The purpose of The French-Canadian Outlook was linked to the time of its appearance at the end of the Second World War. During the recent conflict nationalist rivalries had been heavily engaged. Thus the prospect of a new international order, "one world," represented an attractive vision. An understanding of the diversity of people was crucial to this vision. Wade stressed this hope as a justification for his efforts. He ended his discussion of contemporary French-Canadian society with these wise words: 'The problem of Canadian union is merely a special case of the great world problem of our time, for mankind must learn to be equal without being identical, if it is to survive."25

28 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec The French-Canadian Outlook broke new ground in Canadian historiography. For the first time there was a history of Quebec in English in short compass, one that dwelt particularly with the post-Confederation period which historians had previously neglected. The book was based on extensive research in documentary sources (although the absence of references meant that this could not be confirmed until The French Canadians appeared); its judgments were sound; its central themes of survival, conflict and accommodation were kept steadily in view. In form an extended essay, The French-Canadian Outlook, in its succinctness and balance, exhibits the features of the model essay. Arguably it can be judged Mason Wade's finest work. The concluding chapter of the book, "Quebec, Today and Tomorrow," was a sharply-focused picture of Quebec at the end of the Second World War. It brought out the costs and benefits of the twin processes of urbanization and industrialization that were transforming the province from the simple rural society depicted in the classic Maria Chapdelaine. In Wade's view, the social structure of Quebec was still unbalanced, with a privileged elite based on family, education, and occupation and a large mass of people, economically and intellectually disadvantage«! New appetites were, however, emerging and the recent extension of compulsory education to age fourteen would strengthen secular aspirations. There was a need for a broader-based curriculum than that offered in the classical colleges and an urgent requirement for new leaders who were in touch with changing conditions. Nationalism was stronger than it had been before the war while at the same time the French Canadian was better informed and less apprehensive of currents swirling beyond his homeland. Summing up, the American observer found reasons for optimism regarding the social and economic prospects of Quebec. The French-Canadian Outlook was not translated, a circumstance that ensured that it would not be noticed in the limited circle of serious French-Canadian newspapers and periodicals. In English Canada, however, it was widely reviewed and enthusiastically received. The reaction of Richard M. Saunders, a friend of Maheux's, was typical. He praised the strong points of a "brilliant little book." The author broke with convention by emphasizing the importance of seventeenth-century French religious attitudes upon Quebeckers and the high place given the missionary impulse in New France. The new insights, especially on the neglected years since 1867, would be spelled out in the larger work to come, Saunders predicted.26 Another Toronto reviewer, Alexander Brady, was equally enthusiastic about this "brief but discerning analysis," Wade had not been afraid to identify the limitations of French Canada's parochialism, although his conclusion was that they were over-

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 29 shadowed by the strong points of social cohesion.27 B.K. Sandwell in Saturday Night claimed that Wade's book was another illustration of the truth that the best research on Quebec had been carried out by Americans. Wade had made an important point in stressing that Rome was French Canada's patrie. Quebeckers could not turn to Britain, as English Canadians did, nor post-revolutionary France. "Rome they could always cherish" ; thus the pre-eminence of ultramontane sentiment throughout much of the nineteenth century.28 A review of The French-Canadian Outlook by the eminent Chicago sociologist, Everett C. Hughes, repeated the praise bestowed by the Toronto critics. Writing in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science y Hughes described Wade's book as the best historical account of Quebec he had ever read. Its strength lay in the fact that it did not present its picture in blacks and whites. Its description of social change in Quebec may have been over-simplified. There were, after all, poor English and rich French inhabitants of Montreal during the Depression. It was good but condensed history. Did this mean, Hughes wondered, that it would not be understood by the reader who was not also an historian?29 Two French-Canadian reviewers gave the book high praise. In Culture (a bilingual journal founded in 1940 to promote better understanding among educated Canadians) J.C. Falardeau of Laval University called it a work of synthesis, rare in French Canada. Its appearance marked an important event, "la réorientation de l'historiographie canadienne." Reverend Henri Saint-Denis of the bilingual University of Ottawa, writing from the viewpoint of a believer in French-English understanding, stated that the book should be read by every Canadian.30 Taken together, the reviews of The French-Canadian Outlook were more than favourable. They were, however, largely from English Canadians committed to the task of attempting to understand Quebec's history and culture. Sympathetic to Quebec's distinctiveness in Canada, they welcomed the appearance of a brief accessible history of the "unknown North Americans." The nationalist historians of the Groulx school were to voice their distaste for Mason Wade's project and position in the years ahead.

The French Canadians Mason Wade's brief survey of the "unknown North Americans" went through several printings. The success of the book allowed its author to complete his researches and interviews and to begin the writing of what was to become his magnum opus. He worked on the large book steadily in the years after 1946. At the same time he continued to deepen

30 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec his knowledge of Quebec and its society. He lectured at universities in Quebec, in other provinces of Canada and in the United States; he attended numerous historical and academic conferences; he came to know scores of Quebeckers from every walk of life. While he was engaged in the writing of the larger history, Wade turned out a number of essays and papers. In some cases these dealt with subjects he had explored during his research but could not incorporate into the final work. In other instances he wrote overviews of French Canada's historical experience which helped him in organizing his enormous mass of material. An example of this type of writing was the first paper he delivered before the Canadian Historical Association in 1944. Entitled "Some Aspects of the Relations of French Canada with the United States/' the piece was a wide-ranging survey of Quebec's interaction with the United States from the days of New France and the Thirteen Colonies.31 It dealt mainly with political and economic relationships until the twentieth century, when it broadened out to look at United States-Quebec influences in sport, literature, and films. French Canada's opposition to American cultural influences, Wade concluded, was still based primarily on emotion. It relied on a dichotomy first expressed by the nationalist writer J.P. Tardivel in the nineteenth century: that there was a fundamental antipathy between a materialist United States and a Quebec which emphasized spiritual values. Tardivel's interpretation recalls A.R.M. Lower's "primary antithesis" between French and English Canadians; as a tool of analysis for contemporary times it was anachronistic with Quebec's transformation into a secular society. The truth may be, as a celebrated Quebec novelist once pointed out, that French Canadians are "simple and complicated . . . French and American." Another paper, delivered at a symposium marking the centenary of Laval University in 1952, offered a rapid examination of political trends in twentieth-century Quebec.32 The occasion was a satisfactory one for Wade because it brought him into closer association with a group of liberal Quebec social scientists who were gaining prominence in their respective disciplines. Historians such as Albert Faucher, economists and sociologists such as Maurice Lamontagne and J.C. Falardeau, were joined on this occasion by outside specialists on Quebec society and demography such as Everett Hughes and Nathan Keyfitz. For Wade it was to prove not only a congenial group but one useful in its advice. Other essays of this phase in Wade's discovery of Quebec were on forgotten figures: Henri Mazière, who tried to rouse the habitants to support the French Revolution and Abbé John (Jean) Holmes, a Vermont-born priest

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 31 who became a leading educational reformer in Quebec in the 1830s and 1840s.33 Finally, in January 1955, The French Canadians appeared. It was published by the Macmillan Company of Canada, a substantial volume of 1,136 pages, bound in green cloth and using an attractive open type, the product of a British printing house. It contained thirty-eight illustrations: few portraits of eminent Quebeckers but views of houses, churches, and market places as well as a selection of contemporary Quebec art. The illustrations and their captions were cleverly fashioned to complement passages in the text. Many reviewers drew attention to the handsome appearance of the volume while others commented on its remarkable price: $6.00!34 In the preface to the volume the author repeated the pledge made in The French-Canadian Outlook that his primary purpose in recording the history of Quebec was to dispel misunderstandings between the two founding races of Canada. His principal concern was to be fair and to this end he had correlated French and English sources in order to produce a balanced interpretation. He described his researches into widely scattered primary sources and acknowledged his inevitable reliance on secondary sources, those "which proved trustworthy."35 In his view these included writers such as Ulric Barthe and O.D. Skelton on Laurier; G.F.G. Stanley on the Riel troubles; the histories and biographies of Robert Rumilly and other historians as diverse as Lionel Groulx, Thomas Chapáis, and Guy Frégault. Wherever possible, important topics had been investigated from original materials. These included newspapers, parliamentary debates, speeches, collections of private papers, and information from the wartime Press Information Bureau in Montreal. The range of private sources was impressive although the list revealed that Wade had not spent enough time in Ottawa to make use of the Macdonald or Laurier Papers. The approach he had taken was a political and constitutional focus, with economic and social factors brought in as shading. The literary and artistic expressions of Quebec had been included to complete the picture of changing outlooks within a changing social order. The book was dedicated to J.B.B. (John Bartlet Brebner) of Columbia University, who had read the first draft. Special thanks were extended to the author's closest Quebec colleagues: Jean-Charles Falardeau and Jean-Charles Bonenfant of Laval University. Other acknowledgments recorded gratitude to specialists on Quebec from the province, other parts of Canada, and from the United States. Mason Wade's lengthy examination of Quebec's life had brought him into contact with many Canadian university people, journalists, and political figures. This led to a widespread knowledge of his project among

32 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec opinion leaders and a consequent interest in the results of his study. When The French Canadians appeared, therefore, there was released a veritable torrent of reviews. The flow was stronger in its English channel, reflecting not only the more numerous outlets for reviews in English Canada but also the broad sympathy for the point of view which Mason Wade expressed. In French Canada publishing opportunities for the review of contemporary works were limited, there was a problem of dealing with a book written in English, and there was a coolness (even hostility) towards an outsider attempting to chronicle the private struggle of the French in Canada. Some reviewers in English Canada were swept off their feet by their admiration for Mason Wade's project in nation-building. Hugh MacLennan, who knew Wade through summers at North Hatley in the Eastern Townships, wrote in Saturday Night that The French Canadians is "one of the most important books ever written about Canada by anyone." George Ferguson, the Manitoba journalist who was editor of the Montreal Star (and who should have known better than to utter such an opinion), claimed that Mason Wade had "done a job which no historian will have to do again."36 Most reviewers in English Canada characterized the book as an excellent synthesis of historical accounts written in and about Quebec. The book was praised for its emphasis on the period since Confederation, one reviewer commenting, approvingly, that half the volume dealt with the years since 1905. Another, in the Times Literary Supplement, stated that the best chapter in the book dealt with Quebec during the Second World War.37 The admirable balance between primary and secondary sources was remarked upon and the author congratulated for returning to original materials in his accounts of times of crisis. Yet there was a general feeling that The French Canadians was too long, too dense and too uncritical. "A great sprawling mass of information," A.R.M. Lower reported in the New York Times Book Review?* Wade was too fond of providing long extracts from the writings and speeches of leaders whom he admired. The views of Henri Bourassa, for instance, were given undue prominence compared to other FrenchCanadian leaders. One Quebec reviewer believed that Wade devoted a disproportionate amount of attention to Senator T.D. Bouchard's controversial speech in 1944. The reviewer claimed that Wade had defended Bouchard's views; a careful reading suggests that Wade was really upholding Bouchard's right to free expression. The chapter on.the conscription crisis of 1944-45 was largely based on the debates in the federal House of Commons, leading, as one reviewer slyly noted, to the use of one hundred ibids as footnotes, surely a record in scholarly documentation?39

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 33 Mason Wade's fondness for quotation had been noted by reviewers of Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian. In The French Canadians the tendency became even more marked subjecting, as one reviewer put it, the author's arguments to the "law of diminishing returns."40 The style of the book was considered uneven, with some passages exhibiting a very detailed treatment, others a cursory sketch. Sentences were often heavily loaded, making reading difficult. The unanalytical index made it difficult to trace specific points, although an annotated table of contents provided some assistance. Most reviewers deplored the length of The French Canadians, believing that it would limit the book's appeal to the general reader. In summary, reviewers uniformly praised the enormous labour and conscientious devotion to the task shown by the author. English-Canadian reviewers were almost unanimous in congratulating Wade for his commitment to a better understanding between English and French Canadians. He had provided the facts on which informed judgments could be made. In retrospect, The French Canadians has remained a solid work of reference, thoroughly used by two generations of EnglishCanadian university students. For the first time it provided a history of Quebec which opened a window on the views and actions of the great French-Canadian political personalities: Papineau, Bourget, Cartier, Riel, Laurier, Bourassa. Before Wade's book appeared it had been difficult for English-language students, hindered by the language barrier, to understand the motivations of these figures. Wade had taken the trouble to put their thoughts into English and thus make them credible figures for students outside Quebec. He had prepared a balanced account of Quebec's history, giving each period, each social movement, appropriate attention. Thousands of English-Canadian students, faced with an essay on some aspect of Quebec's history, would turn to The French Canadians. In the 1990s, thirty-five years after its original publication, Mason Wade's history still meets this test.41 The substance of The French Canadians drew a more mixed reaction. Here reviewers from Quebec departed from the favourable judgments of their English-speaking counterparts. All agreed that Wade had constructed his account on political and cultural foundations and had given less weight to economic and social factors. Some saw this as a failing. Social and economic history have emerged as leading fields of inquiry at the present time; Wade, in common with most of his contemporaries, did not employ this approach. He did, however, integrate a generous portion of intellectual and cultural history into his account. Few historians of the 1950s gave attention to these factors in a general history. That Wade wrote "elitist history," leaving out the "silences" in the record, in Jules

34 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Michelet's phrase, is also a charge that would arouse more sympathy now than in 1955. In fairness to Wade he should not be criticized for failing to bring out factors on which evidence was difficult to find in the 1950s and which he had little interest in pursuing. Wade's definition of nationalism was a central issue in the evaluation of The French Canadians. He applied the term to the Québécois as meaning "group consciousness and cohesiveness" arising "from a basic loneliness and insecurity." He compared the position of French Canadians to that of the Sinn Fein (ourselves alone) movement in modern Ireland.42 George Stanley, in a thoughtful review in Queen's Quarterly, declared that Quebec nationalism was really a synonym for civilization or culture. A high degree of sympathy was necessary to comprehend its roots and impact. Perhaps Wade was more neutral than sympathetic to Quebec's manifestation of its nationalism.43 French-Canadian critics took this point of view further. There was not one history of Canada, stated Guy Fregault, but two histories, one for French- and one for English-language readers. The French and the English in Canada were not like the British and the Americans after the Revolution; they were not separated members of a single family but two "foreign families."44 The Reverend Richard Ares, in the Jesuit publication Relations, dismissed Wade's attempt to understand French Canada. To be familiar with the course of events was not enough, he wrote; one must get under the skin of a people to comprehend their actions. He quoted Plato: "II faut aller à la vérité de toute son âme." Mason Wade, for all his effort, lacked the sympathy, "le coeur," which would have allowed him to penetrate the determining portions of the French-Canadian psyche.45 There was no easy defence against this line of criticism, as the present generation has discovered. It was, as Peter Wai te pointed out, as if Wade had trespassed upon the "privacy" of French Canadians and had been warned off the property.46 Yet Wade, the outsider studying French Canada, was but one of a long succession of scholars who had successfully interpreted the culture and politics of countries other than their own. To restrict the examination of a people to those within the group ran the risk of producing partial or self-seeking accounts. Nevertheless, Ares' condemnation was one that was to be made frequently as Wade's writings became better known in Quebec. A judgment capable of a more rational response concerned the impression that The French Canadians read as if it were the history of Quebec's relationship with Canada, not its domestic development. Thus it appeared to give prominence to crises in the relationship with Ottawa and the other provinces and to the views of extremists aroused by the

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 35 events. In part this comment derived from the particular sources Wade used (especially the writings of the conservative nationalist, Robert Rumilly); in part it arose from his attachment to the pan-Canadian viewpoint which he saw as desirable for the country's future. He made no secret of his sympathies: Bourassa over Mercier; Maheux over Groulx. Quebec nationalism in some incarnations could be narrow and defensive; the Laurier vision of Canadian nationalism was broad and open-hearted. The Wade position was staked out in his early writings and would be maintained tenaciously throughout the remainder of his working life.

Canadian Dualism With the publication of The French Canadians Mason Wade's major achievement in the interpretation of Quebec had been accomplished. After 1955 his participation in the study of Quebec's past and the contemporary scene was confined to essays on specialized subjects; to attending innumerable conferences in Canada and the United States as chairman, panel member, speaker, or discussant; and giving speeches and lectures before universities and organizations. His transfer to the University of Rochester as director of the newly established Canadian Studies program in the year of the appearance of The French Canadians brought him into an arena where large continental questions were discussed. He remained an authority on French Canada but he was now regarded in the United States as an expert on Canada as well. The proliferation of Canadian Studies curricula in the two countries in the late 1950s and in the 1960s brought Mason Wade to the fore as a frequent commentator on the Canadian-American relationship. This activity continued even after he moved to the University of Western Ontario in 1965. Not all these efforts at interpreting Quebec in North America and Canada as a neighbour of the United States were successful. Some were ephemeral, others pedestrian. Many utterances, inevitably for a busy university lecturer and administrator, went over the same ground as those before. Distinctive achievement was difficult under these circumstances. There was one project, however, in which Mason Wade figured as a guiding spirit and on which he left his mark. In conception it must be regarded as one of the most ambitious non-governmental attempts to study the dynamics of French-English relationships in Canada. The plan was to examine the whole range of the interaction between the two regions, identifying significant aspects within broad areas of human endeavour and assigning the discussion of each to an English-Canadian and a French-Canadian scholar. They were each enjoined to address the same concerns within their field of inquiry.47

36 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec The proposal to examine the two cultures systematically came into being as early as 1945 and was awarded Carnegie Corporation assistance in 1948. It moved ahead painfully slowly as the original core of contributors changed or failed to meet their commitments. In some cases papers written for the project were published elsewhere as the project languished. In 1954 the scheme was redesigned and given a less ambitious scope. In the end it became the responsibility of a committee of the Social Science Research Council of Canada (now the Social Science Federation of Canada) chaired by Wade's old friend J.C. Falardeau. Wade was appointed editor of the volume in which the contributions to the modified project were to appear. In collaboration with Falardeau he commissioned new papers and extracted others from scholars who had been associated earlier with the scheme. The volume finally appeared in 1960: Canadian Dualism/La Dualité Canadienne: Studies of French-English Relations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press; Quebec, Presses Universitaires Laval). Seven of the twenty essays in the collection appeared in French. Mason Wade wrote the introduction to the volume. The collection included papers on some of the most important aspects of French-English relations. The first group, on abstract factors, touched on the social outlooks of each community, then their traditions in religion, philosophy and law. J.C. Falardeau contributed a brilliant essay on the social philosophy of Quebec; the journalist George Ferguson, with the more heterogeneous subject of English Canada, fared less well. Then followed discussions of a group of material factors touching on demographic and economic considerations. Forms of association, limited strangely to politics and labour, were considered. It was for this section that the lively young professor of law at the University of Montreal, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, wrote his celebrated essay on the obstacles to the development of democracy in Quebec.48 A final section of the volume dealt with French-English interaction in regions outside Quebec such as the West, the Maritimes, Ontario, and New England. Here specialists on both sides of the linguistic divide were difficult to come by, with the result that a single investigator was assigned for each region. G.F.G. Stanley's essay on the West, the longest paper in the volume, represented a thorough attempt to probe linguistic duality on the Canadian prairies. The humanistic dimension of biculturalism, the relationship in art, literature, and education, was omitted from Canadian Dualism. It was to have constituted a second volume in the project, which never appeared. Inevitably there were shortcomings in Canadian Dualism. In the first place the project had taken so long to bring to fruition that some of the

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 37 information presented was out of date by 1960. This was particularly noticeable in the essays on economic and demographic trends, where material from as far back as 1951 was used as the basis for comment. A more serious limitation arose from the failure of authors to deal directly with points raised by their counterparts. In some cases, a reviewer noted, parallel essays on the same subject did not meet but simply "slid by each other."49 It was apparent that even a scholar of Mason Wade's experience was unable to direct all the contributors to the common task. Another limitation of the volume was its focus on French Canada, often to the detriment of the treatment of other parts of the country. Reviewers speculated on the reasons for this lack of balance. It was more difficult to be precise about English Canada's attitudes to Quebec, especially in regions where different ethnic groups mingled or where indifference seemed to be the prevailing mood. In addition, for some contributors the French-Canadian relationship with the rest of Canada was simply the more interesting side of the equation. Canadian Dualism was an important, if flawed, example of an EnglishFrench academic collaboration. Its objectives were commendable and Wade must be given credit for yet another attempt to promote better understanding among thinking Canadians. It is apparent that the project could never have been conceived and executed at an earlier point in Canadian scholarship. That it was carried out in 1960, in spite of the frustrations of multilateral academic co-operation, must be regarded as a tribute to Mason Wade's pioneering role. By 1960 he had become, as George Woodcock expressed it, "one of the most knowledgeable American authorities on things Canadian."50

French-Canadian Historical Writing after 1945 The French Canadians emerged at a time when historical writing in Quebec was entering a phase of vigorous growth. Over the next generation the historians of Quebec moved to a prominent place in the process that brought about the modernization of the province's institutions, the "Quiet Revolution." In their upbringing and attitudes the historians of the post-1945 years mirrored the changes that swept through Quebec following the death of Premier Maurice Duplessis in 1961. In the first place the new historians were laymen, in contrast to the priests who had so frequently written Quebec's history in the past. Many were anticlerical, finding the values of the church inappropriate for contemporary times. They were mostly urban-born, educated in Quebec universities and also, as in the cases of Guy Frégault and Marcel Trudel, at universities in the United States. For the first time they were professionally trained. They were interested in social and economic change, not in the

38 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec political and constitutional concerns of their predecessors. Many were intensely nationalist, prepared to use history as a weapon in the struggle for the survival of the French-Canadian people. The conditioning and outlook of the new historians differed greatly from the approach of Mason Wade. It is not surprising that they did not value his contribution to their common discipline. Canon Groulx lived on until 1967, the eminence grise of French Canada's historical thought. But his best writing had been accomplished and he served more as an inspiration than as a model for younger historians. The base for his influence was still the University of Montreal and the Institut d'histoire de Γ Amérique française. His celebrated quarrel with Abbé Arthur Maheux had brought him defenders, one of whom was a former student, Guy Fregault (1918-77). Fregault employed a high standard of historical scholarship to explore the social and commercial life of New France. He became convinced that the colony had possessed an active business class which had been dispersed through the British conquest in 1760. The shock of the conquest had destroyed Quebec's economic and social structure and had led to its tragic destiny as a beleaguered French-speaking community in North America. Fregault, a university teacher in Montreal and Ottawa, the author of numerous books and articles on the French regime, later became an influential public servant in the Cultural Affairs department of the Quebec government. His view that a sense of history could buttress French-Canadian nationalism was given effective expression through his varied career. Another of Groulx's disciples was the more detached Maurice Séguin (1918-84). Examining Quebec's lack of economic strength, he laid the blame not only on the British conquest but on the restrictive web of trade laws imposed by Britain on Quebec after 1763. Quebec's weakness had encouraged members of the elite, such as L.H. Lafontaine and G.E. Cartier, to collaborate with the dominant English. Their actions had led to further dependency, political as well as economic, within the larger Canadian confederation. Séguin's writings were more limited in subject than Fregault's but, in company with his teaching, were very influential. He brought out forcefully the impact of what he called the "decapitation" of the French-Canadian bourgeoisie in 1760, the catastrophe from which he believed Quebec's later problems derived. For Séguin an independent Quebec homeland was the destiny for French Canadians, although he was skeptical as to whether the province had the economic strength to stand alone. A colleague of Séguin's at the University of Montreal, Michel Brunet (1917-85), married a passionate nationalism with Séguin's historical interpretations. Half polemicist, half historian, Brunet brought Séguin's

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 39 ideas to a wider public. He challenged the views which had previously been associated with French-Canadian nationalist historical writing. They were, he asserted, "myths" which the church had propagated for its own ends. For example, it was unrealistic to glorify rural life in the twentieth century; the people of Quebec should not be taught to fear the power of the godless state; Quebec did not have a mission to bring its civilizing culture to other North Americans. The acceptance of views such as these had led to Quebec's debilitating sense of inferiority. Brunet accepted Séguin's view that the conquest had destroyed New France's middle class. He passed harsh judgment on those Quebec leaders from LaFontaine to St. Laurent who had been prepared to work with English Canadians, calling them "dupes* or "vendus." Canada was formed from two nations which would always be in tension. Coexistence and national unity were impossible, for in such a situation the majority group would always dominate the minority. Confederation had been a trap for French Canada. Although Brunet's thought led directly to separatist conclusions, the historian stopped short of propounding this option. English Canada would never accept Quebec's leaving the federation, nor did the province possess the courage to take this step. Instead he advocated that Quebec should strongly defend its provincial autonomy, concentrating firmly on the advancement of its own interests. It could only weaken its position, Brunet believed, by giving aid to French Canadians living in other parts of Canada. Biculturalism for Canada was a trap which Quebec should avoid at all costs. Brunet's nationalism was exclusive and uncompromising, a far cry from the vision of Canada held by Mason Wade. Standing somewhat apart from the university historians was the deeply conservative nationalist historian Robert Rumilly (1897-1983). In fortytwo volumes of narrative treatment written from 1940 to 1964, Rumilly traced the history of Quebec from Confederation until his own day. He followed Groulx in emphasizing Quebec's mission to be a centre for Roman Catholic influence in North America. As Groulx had done, he called for strong leaders to mobilize and guide nationalist sentiment in Quebec. In his histories and biographies he dwelt on the role of powerful individuals such as Honoré Mercier and Maurice Duplessis. Rumilly was not an academic historian. He did not trouble to disclose his sources, although there is the supposition that he received private information from important public figures. His writings were mined by other historians of Quebec, including Mason Wade, especially on the topic of the conflict between French-Canadian nationalism and the imperialism of English Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

40 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec The nationalist historians, Groulx and his disciples, were not without critics in Quebec. Gustave Lanctot (1883-1975), for many years an archivist at the Public Archives (now the National Archives) in Ottawa, wrote many books on the French regime in Canada. He relied on original sources to present history that was as objective as possible, free from the racial bias which he believed infected Groulx's writings. He deplored the tendency to see New France in heroic terms. A younger historian who took a similar course was Marcel Trudel (1917- ), a Laval graduate who taught there for twenty years before moving to Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. Trudel also believed in the importance of primary sources and used them with precision to present a thorough and balanced picture of living conditions in New France. This he felt the nationalist historians had failed to do. Trudel differed from Lanctot in subscribing to the methods of Ecole des Annales in Paris. The Annales approach gained wide credence among the younger generation of Quebec's historians. It rejected the descriptive and narrative methods of older historians, which it claimed emphasized the activities of only one group, the elite, in society. Instead Annales historians believed history should attempt to present the totality of a society, especially focusing on the life of the "silent majority," Marxist ideas of class and economic power were important tools for the Annales' analysis of societies. In France Fernand Braudel and Robert Mandrou made efforts to "quantify" history, using long series of documents to provide explanations of change over "la longue durée." The approach of the Annales school is best exemplified in the historical writings of Jean Hamelin and Fernand Quellet. Hamelin (1931- ), in an important work on the economic and social history of New France published in 1960, used quantitative methods to show that the colony's economy at the time of the conquest was stagnant. The bourgeoisie was dead, not because of the shock of the conquest but because it had never put down roots in the paternalistic authoritarian society of New France. The restrictions on French colonization in Canada and the close control France had maintained over the St. Lawrence settlements had condemned New France to economic weakness. Thus Hamelin, a Laval historian, challenged Brunet of Montreal on the most sensitive topic in Quebec's history: the effect of the conquest on the economic vitality of New France. A more sweeping condemnation of the Montreal nationalist historians came from another Laval graduate and teacher, Fernand Quellet (1926- ). An archivist before he began university teaching, Quellet later migrated to Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, and York University. He showed a mastery of statistical material to demol-

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 41 ish the claim that there had been an active bourgeoisie in New France before the conquest. Bourgeois values could not survive in the paternalistic atmosphere of the colony. The economy of New France had never been strong. It had always been directed by French merchants, not by a Canadian commercial class. The fur trade, indubitably, produced prosperous merchants, but their goal was social advancement, not commercial success. British policies after 1760 had not hampered Quebec's economic life but had provided a market and a stimulus that had never been present before. Quellet went on to attack the notion that nationalism had been a constant element in Quebec's history. It had emerged, he showed, in the 1820s, promoted by the professional middle classes as a means of advancing their own interests. He gave the subject a class rather than the racial basis so dear to Canon Groulx and his disciples. Quellet took a skeptical attitude towards the driving force of nationalism in Quebec's history, believing that it, together with clericalism, had represented drags on the progress of French Canadians. In writings on L.J. Papineau he showed distrust of the role of nationalist leaders in Quebec. It is not too much to state that Fernand Quelle t's books and articles, coming forth in a steady stream after 1966, revolutionized the writing of history in Quebec. For the first time an historian of major intellectual capability had challenged the predominant nationalist interpretations of Quebec's past. Ouellet's position was well-received by academic historians, both in French- and English-speaking Canada, although it did not dislodge the dominant nationalist interpretation of Michel Brunet and his associates.

Mason Wade and the Nationalist Interpretation of Quebec's History Mason Wade largely removed himself from the heated controversies that erupted between the nationalist historians and their critics. After the appearance of Canadian Dualism in 1960 his writing on Quebec subjects concentrated on narrower topics. In 1963, for instance, he gave two lectures before the Institute of Canadian Studies at Carleton University on Olivar Asselin, Henri Bourassa's youthful associate and an independent nationalist thinker. The lectures were workmanlike accounts of the intellectual wanderings of a neglected Quebec figure.61 A little later he offered an introduction to French-Canadian intellectual history in a lecture opening a series at McGill University.52 Other papers in the 1970s dealt with the work of Roman Catholic clergy in the Maritime provinces and with the return of the Acadians to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Bay of Chaleur region.53 By this time Mason Wade had turned his inter-

42 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec est in original research to the Maritime provinces and to their Acadian inhabitants. Quebec was no longer his primary subject of study. Wade's limited participation in the historical controversies of the 1960s and 1970s was confined to exchanges at learned conferences. Yet his published works were not immune from discussion. Extreme nationalist historians such as Michel Brunet chose to dismiss Wade's writing, while other Quebec historians took issue with aspects of it. Their responses often reflected their academic affiliations. Wade's message that Quebec's place lay within a larger Canada was viewed with sympathy at Laval University but scorned at the University of Montreal. The history department at the latter university did not confine its hostility to Mason Wade but excoriated other English-language historians who cast doubt on the nationalist interpretation. How did Mason Wade's judgments on the sensitive points in FrenchCanadian historiography compare with those made by the writers engaged in the post-1960 controversies? The burden of Wade's writing puts him squarely among those critical of the nationalist approach. The treatment by the British of the French-speaking inhabitants of Canada after 1760 had long been a subject testing the differing approaches to Quebec's history. The respected Garneau had branded British policy as harsh and arbitrary. Groulx had taken the same line. During the Second World War Abbé Maheux had defended the first British governor and his officials against these charges. In going over the evidence Wade found that the two most recent protagonists, Groulx and Maheux, had each selected passages from the papers of Governor James Murray to buttress predetermined interpretations. His own judgment was unequivocal. Murray had protected the French Canadians, the "new subjects" of the Crown, from the adventurers and opportunists who had descended on the colony following France's defeat. He had ensured a peaceful transition to British rule and in so doing had assisted the survival of the French-Canadian language, religion and culture. The passage of the Quebec Act in 1774 had confirmed the victory of the "new subjects" over the attempt to assimilate them into an alien British Empire. Of the nature of the society under the old regime in Quebec, Wade had no doubt. There was "no real bourgeosie"54 in the colony but a polarity of two classes. The ruling elite was composed of military officers, officials, the clergy, and a few seigneurs; the mass of the people, habitants and town dwellers, formed an underclass. The commerce of New France was dominated by the merchants of the mother country and their agents in Canada. An independent bourgeoisie was impossible in Canada.

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 43 The form of government in New France was another point of contention between Wade and the nationalist historians. They had assailed him for echoing Parkman's dictum that New France, as a political entity, was "all head."55 In point of fact, in The French Canadians Wade questioned Parkman's charge of over-government. The administration of the colony was carried on by 208 officials whose salaries were paid by France. Bearing in mind the colony's vast extent and scattered population, an administrative cadre of this size did not appear excessive. Military government and the semi-feudal social structure which accompanied it provided the values by which New France lived. Parkman had viewed the British-Fïench conflict in North America in the eighteenth century as one between a feudal, militant and Catholic France and a democratic, industrial, and Protestant Britain. Remove the religious ingredient, said Wade, and the struggle reduces itself to one between the past and the future. Superficially this judgment may appear dependent upon a Whig interpretation in which liberty triumphs in the North American setting. Yet it is still true, as Mason Wade pointed out, that New France possessed a paternalistic and centralizing government. In the circumstances of a small struggling colony, paternalism was essential and, on occasion, could be constructively flexible. The first chapter of The French Canadians, "The Heritage of New France (1534-1760)," makes abundantly clear the military and administrative values which shaped the life of the colony. In dwelling on this point Wade softens the extreme position taken by Parkman while bringing out aspects of the life of the colony which later revisionist historians have judged to be important.56 It is in his. classification of heroes and lesser men that Wade decisively parts company with the nationalist historians. Wade's test of greatness is made clear as he introduces one of his heroes, Louis H. LaFontaine.57 In LaFontaine's newspaper, Le Revue Canadienne, in 1848, there was expressed for the first time, Wade asserts, the antithetical conceptions of nationalism dividing French Canadians. One view Wade claims to be that held by "ultra-nationalist extremists," a position resisting change and influence from outside and "lapsing into racism" ; the other the will to promote the survival of French Canada while being prepared to collaborate with English Canadians to forward common interests. In words which have a dated ring today, Wade goes on to state that most Quebeckers are extreme nationalists in their youth but grow out of this attitude as they become older. He compares the process to the transition from socialism to a more conservative position experienced by many persons as they gain in years. Later, in presenting Henri Bourassa, he develops the point. The narrow-minded nationalists look to a world en-

44 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec compassed by a French and Catholic Quebec; their nationalism is really "provincialism" in disguise. Those who favour a "dual culture" are no less intent on preserving the language and institutions of Quebec but are also subscribers to a vision of a "broad Canadianism" which is based on an acceptance of the equal partnership of French- and English-speaking Canadians.58 Wade chooses his heroes from among those French Canadians who have endorsed the broad pan-Canadian form of nationalism. The list is a notable one, including some leaders whose stand on national issues caused them to forfeit support among their own people. First in point of time is Louis-Joseph Papineau, a staunch nationalist in Wade's eyes but one prepared to work closely with the English of Upper Canada in the cause of political reform. Then there is Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, partner of Robert Baldwin in the coalition ministry which achieved responsible government in the 1840s. There is Georges-Etienne Cartier, who guided French Canada into Confederation and who urged his countrymen to see the move as a step into a more assured future. Cartier made a greater personal sacrifice for his belief in a wider Canada than any other of the fathers of Confederation. There is the appealing Laurier, with his message of "conciliation, harmony and Concord," a political leader who was not afraid to use the same language in Quebec as he did in Ontario. Of all the major French-Canadian figures in public life, to Wade, Laurier is the most impressive.59 Henri Bourassa is clearly one of Mason Wade's heroes and many pages of the final chapters of The French Canadians are devoted to examining his views of Canada and the place of the Quebec community within it. Wade makes the point about Bourassa that at moments of crisis, his broad Canadianism would revert to a narrow Quebec nationalism. This happened in 1905, when Bourassa threw himself into the parliamentary struggle over minority rights in the newly created prairie provinces. Joseph Levitt believes Wade went too far in condemning Bourassa as a leader who, when his deeper emotions were aroused, could become a "latent racist."60 Yet, of all his heroes, Bourassa is given the most opportunity, in The French Canadians, to expound and justify his views. Wade would have endorsed enthusiastically Ramsay Cook's judgment that Bourassa is "one of the most impressive intellectual figures in our history."61 Later French-Canadian political leaders are treated more cursorily. Louis St. Laurent enters The French Canadians as a war-time colleague of Mackenzie King in the final chapters. There is little assessment of his achievements but it is clear that St. Laurent's vision of the "dual culture" of Canada is one which Mason Wade found attractive. The

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 45 advent of Pierre Elliott Trudeau is too recent to be noticed in Wade's writing but again his form of nationalism would place him among Mason Wade's select band of French-Canadian heroes.

Conclusion "All history is contemporary," wrote Benedetto Croce. This judgment has particular force when it is applied to the writing of history in Quebec. The struggle for the survival of the French language and culture has given the study of the past a compelling raison d'être. From the earliest days of French settlement, Mgr. Camille Roy has asserted, "notre littérature canadienne-française est un service national."62 The writing of history in Quebec has been a means by which the past has been subordinated to the needs of the present. From the past French Canadians have drawn inspiration for their continuing struggle against the eroding forces of an English-speaking continent. They are not unique in holding a presentist view of history. English-Canadian historians have also interpreted the past to bring out the elements in their successful political and economic survival. Yet the attachment of English Canadians to a particular view of the past has not been as pervasive or as limiting as that of their French-speaking counterparts. The nationalist interpretation of Quebec's history, deriving from the work of Canon Lionel Groulx and his colleagues at the University of Montreal, has become the prevailing viewpoint among historians in Quebec. University departments are staffed by nationalist historians; textbooks used in the schools advance their views. The history of other regions in Canada is lightly treated in favour of a concentration on Quebec and its relationship with the rest of the country. Quebec's school and university students receive, throughout their years of instruction, a "Quebec-based" view of Canada's past. The work of Quebec historians which does not accord with the nationalist interpretation is dismissed or severely attacked. An example is the writings of Fernand Quellet, which are seen by many nationalists as marginal to the proper understanding of Quebec's past. It is not surprising that much of Ouellet's career has been spent outside Quebec, in Ottawa and Toronto. Historians of Quebec coming from beyond the Quebec milieu face a double jeopardy. If they do not subscribe to the nationalist interpretation their writing is suspect; if they are not Québécois by birth or upbringing they may be seen as alien, unable to understand the nuances of the Quebec experience. Mason Wade met this double criticism. Michel Brunet and his colleagues effectively damned Wade by laying down the dictum that no foreigner should be allowed to study French Canadians.63

46 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec The Brunet view of who should be allowed to study Quebec's history contradicts a universal principle of scholarship: that the pursuit of knowledge knows no bounds. Unfortunately the restrictive view put forward by Brunet has gained a certain vogue in contemporary writing. Interest groups, ethnic minorities, and religions have taken it up. Thus it is argued that only blacks should write about black society, only native Indians about the culture of the first peoples, only women about the experience of half of humankind. To state the proposition is to bring out the manifest limitations of such attitudes. Beyond the challenge to scholarship as it has traditionally been conducted, the Brunet view contains sinister implications. History subjected to a selective memory may easily be abused. A view that continually looks inward is bound to have scant regard for those outside its focus. Indifference to outside groups may be followed by suspicion and hostility. In the end xenophobia prevails. The preservation of the cultural distinctiveness of a majority can bring danger to minorities in a pluralistic society. Quebec is not, and since the eighteenth century has never been, a homogeneous region. The nationalist historians, by emphasizing French Canada's exclusivity, may have laid the basis for a future Quebec in which the norms of liberal democracy would be set aside. Mason Wade deplored both the methods of the nationalist historians and the dangers which their writings threatened. Their methods, he believed, were unsound. The study of the past with an eye always on present concerns was not a valid approach for the historian. It was fundamentally "unhistorical." He would have recognized, albeit sadly, the relevance of Ernest Kenan's observation that "getting its history wrong is part of being a nation." Historians, he was convinced, had a higher duty. Their inescapable responsibility was to attempt not to get history wrong. Wade's guide for the true historian was the dictum of Kenan's great contemporary, von Kanke, that the historian should view the past free from the prejudices of the present, "wie es eigentlich gewesen" ("as it actually happened"). This doctrine had been brought to Harvard from Germany in the 1870s; in Wade's time at the university it was still the ruling norm. The young historian of Quebec had proudly inscribed, in the preface to The French Canadians, the demanding injunction of Pope Leo XIII: "the first law of history is not to lie, and the second not to be afraid to tell the whole truth."64 Mason Wade was not above drawing on the writings of the nationalist historians, such as Kumilly, for material. It was the political purposes of their writing which he condemned. Wade's second criticism of the nationalist historians was equally crucial. They sought to undermine the broader Canadianism which he saw as the chief purpose for Canada's survival. The healthy functioning

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 47 of the Canadian federation depended upon mutual respect between the founding races as well as an honourable place for minority groups. There had to be a recognition, across the country, of regional diversity. Above all there had to be goodwill and the conviction that there were shared assumptions about the country which mattered. Mason Wade's heroes, in the French-Canadian pantheon, were leaders who had accepted these aspirations. The nationalist historians viewed "bonne entente" as a threat to Quebec's nationhood. To Mason Wade it was the reverse: a state of mind which confirmed a separate identity for French Canadians. Rereading Mason Wade in the decade of the 1990s, one has the impression that his views are somehow "out of joint," perhaps even oldfashioned. The Quebec he describes no longer exists, changed almost beyond recognition by the Quiet Revolution and the triumph of secularism. The principals in his record of Quebec's development belong to a different world, the greatest among them not far enough removed in time to be seen in ample historical perspective. In the final decade of the present century Mason Wade's vision of a bicultural Canada appears far away and indistinct. The collective rights of Quebec as a "distinct society" confront the federal authority's policy of individual linguistic rights honoured across Canada. A Quebec-Canada governing structure is proposed as a viable proposition, even to a looser federation. The centre of French culture in North America, following Brunet's advice, turns its back on the aspirations of French-speaking minorities in other parts of Canada. Le Devoir, the paper Henri Bourassa founded to give expression to his dream of a bilingual Canada, comes under the editorship of an advocate of Quebec's sovereignty. If there is to be any long-term basis for Canadian unity, it is argued, it is only to be found in the material links of economic association. The reality of Canada in the early 1990s appears worlds away from the hopes advanced by Mason Wade when he began his work on Quebec during the Second World War. If Wade's vision of a tolerant bicultural Canada seems distant, what is his legacy as an historian? The answer must lie in the great achievement of his lifetime: the first general account, in English, of Quebec's history since the conquest of 1760. Mason Wade referred many times to Pierre Chauveau's striking reference to the staircase at the Chateau Chambord as a symbol for French-English relations in Canada. In Chambord two persons using the staircase could do so without ever meeting except on the landings. To Wade this had been the reality for too long in Canada. His goal was therefore to bring English and French Canadians together at other than moments of crisis in their relationship. He was one of a handful of English-speaking commentators on Quebec who possessed a genuine sympathy for French Canadians and a desire to understand their

48 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec culture in the whole. He believed with all his heart in the proposition that communities can be equal without being identical. This conviction gave his writings on Quebec a rare and illuminating insight. In the preface to The French Canadians Mason Wade wrote that history, like any branch of scholarship, is a "cumulative process." There is, he declared, "an ungrateful tendency on the part of the laborer of the eleventh hour to disparage earlier workers in the vineyards."65 He made the point in acknowledging his own debt to earlier writers on Quebec's history. Now, thirty-five years after the appearance of the work to which he devoted the best years of his life, it is time to give him credit as one who laboured to bring Quebec's history into a broader compass.

Notes 1 Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History, Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing, 1900-1970 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976), x.

2 Margaret Fuller, Whetstone of Genius (New York: The Viking Press, 1940) and The Writings of Margaret Fuller (New York: The Viking Press, 1941). Both volumes were reprinted without change by Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers, in 1973. 3 Review by Perry Miller in The New England Quarterly, xill (September 1940), 560-62. 4 Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian (New York: The Viking Press; Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1942); The Journals of Francis Parkman, 2 vols., (New York: Harper and Brothers; London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1947). The biography was reprinted by Shoe String Press, H am den, Connecticut, in 1972. 5 Wilbur Schramm, review of Heroic Historian in New England Quarterly, XVI (June 1943), 334-36. 6 Grace Lee Nute, review of Heroic Historian in American Historical Review, XLVIII (July 1943), 748-49; review of Journals in ibid., L1V (January 1949), 438-39. 7 Van Wyck Brooks, New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915,5th repr. ed. (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1946), 175. 8 The Journals of Francis Parkman, II: 598. 9 Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian, 445. The faults inherent in Parkman's interpretation of the Anglo-French Struggle for North America have been brought out by many historians, both English- and French-speaking. For a trenchant verdict on Parkman as an historian see W.J. Eccles, "The History of New France According to Francis Parkman," William and Mary Quarterly, VIII (April 1961), 163-75. W.J. Eccles has pointed out that English Canadians writing on Quebec in

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 49 the first part of the twentieth century relied heavily on Parkman. A good example is G.M. Wrong's The Rise and Fall of New France (1928): "little better than paraphrased Parkman." France in America (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers [New American Nation Series], 1972), 257. 10 Francis Parkman, Heroic Historian, 445. 11 Quoted in Howard Doughty, Francis Parkman (New York: Macmillan Company, 1962), 340. 12 R. Flenley, review in Canadian Historical Review, XXIV (June 1943), 196; Dale Miquelon, review of reprint in ibid., LV (March 1974), 87. 13 The best accounts, in English, of the development of historical writing in French Canada are by Serge Gagnon: Quebec and its Historians, 1840-1920 (Montreal: Harvest House, 1982) and The Twentieth Century (Montreal: Harvest House, 1985). See also Ramsay Cook's collections of illuminating essays, Canada and the French-Canadian Question (Toronto: Macmillan, 1967), and The Maple Leaf Forever, Essays on Nationalism and Politics in Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1971). His French-Canadian Nationalism, An Anthology (Toronto: Macmillan, 1969) contains many extracts from French-Canadian historians. 14 Siegfried's book was reprinted in the Carleton Library series, with an introduction by F.H. Underhill (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966). 15 Quoted in R.M. Saunders, "History and French-Canadian Survival," Report of the Canadian Historical Association, 1943, 31. 16 P.M. Senese, "Catholique d'abord!: Catholicism and Nationalism in the Thought of Lionel Groulx," Canadian Historical Review, LX (June 1979), 154-77. See also Mason Wade's review of Groulx's Mes Mémoires, tome l, 1878-1920 (1969) in Canadian Historical Review, LII (September 1971), 321-23. 17 The approval of two leading historians of the day is contained in J.B. Brebner, review in American Historical Review, XLVII (October 1942) and in A.L. Burt, review in Canadian Historical Review, XXII (December 1941), 436-37. 18 As an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia, I remember a lecture by the tall courtly Abbé Maheux in 1943. It was the first occasion I had heard French spoken at a public meeting in Vancouver! 19 L'Ordre de Jacques Cartier had been founded in 1926 to promote Frenchlanguage education, strengthen the church, and counter Communist views. It had won adherents among the elite of the province but it was not the sinister force Bouchard had described. 20 First published in 1921; reprinted in the Carleton Library series, 2 vols. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1965). 21 Reprinted in the Carleton Library series (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1974). 22 Carleton Library series (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964). The paperback reprint of the work has sold over 24,000 copies since it was first published. 23 For the 1968 revision of The French Canadians Wade confirmed that the

50 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33

34

35 36 37 38

manuscript had actually been completed in 1950 but it had taken five more years to publish the massive work, (preface to The French Canadians, 1968 edition, xvii.) The reasons for this long delay are unclear. The French-Canadian Outlook, 12. Ibid., 182. R.M.Saunders in Canadian Historical Review, XXVII (September 1946), 317. A. Brady, "Letters in Canada — Social Sciences, 1946," in University of Toronto Quarterly, 16 (April 1947), 314. B.K. Sandwell in Saturday Night, 61 (31 August 1946), 12. E.G. Hughes in Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XIII (February 1947), 128-29. J.C. Falardeau in Culture, VII (September 1946), 376-77; Henri SaintDenis, o.m.i., in Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa, 17 (1947), 119-20. Mason Wade, "Some Aspects of the Relations of French Canada with the United States," Annual Report of the Canadian Historical Association, (1944), 16-39. Mason Wade, "Evolution politique du Québec," in Jean-Charles Falardeau (ed.), Essais sur le Québec contemporain (Québec: Les Presses Universitaires Laval, 1953), 145-64. The commentary on Wade's paper was by Lorenzo Pare, a journalist with Le Soleil, Quebec, 165-67. Mason Wade, "Quebec and the French Revolution of 1789: The Missions of Henri Mazière," Canadian Historical Review, XXXI (December 1950), 345-68, and "The Contribution of Abbé John Holmes to Education in the Province of Quebec," Culture, XV (March 1954), 3-16. Mason Wade, The French Canadians, 1760—1945 (Toronto: Macmillan, 1955). Reprinted with corrections in 1956. A slightly revised edition in two volumes was published in 1968. It added a final chapter and a postscript covering the years from 1945 to General de Gaulle's visit to Quebec in 1967, as well as new maps and a lengthy bibliography. (The first edition had not contained a bibliography.) A French-language version of the work, translated by Adrien Venne, Les Canadiens Français de Î760 à nos jours, was published in two volumes in 1963 (Montreal: Le Circle du Livre de France). For the first edition in 1955 6,000 copies were printed, of which 500 were for the United States market and an equal number for Great Britain. A further 4,500 copies were required by December. The printing of the expanded 1968 edition amounted to 10,000 copies; a paperback edition in 1975 in Macmillan's Laurentian Library series had a print run of 2,500 copies. The French Canadians, vii. Hugh MacLennan in Saturday Night, 70 (12 March 1955), 9-10; G.V. Ferguson in Beaver, Outfit 286 (Summer 1955), 55. Anonymous review in Times Literary Supplement (13 May 1955), 250. Evidence suggests that the reviewer was Gerald S. Graham, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King's College, University of London. New York Times (15 May 1955), 16.

Wade as Historian of Quebec / 51 39 Gilbert N. Tucker in Bulletin of the Canadian Library Association, u (April 1955), 222-24. 40 Goldwin Smith in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLII (December 1955), 556. 41 This is the opinion of, among others, Ramsay Cook, a close student of historical writing about Quebec. Ramsay Cook, "French Canada" in J.L. Grantstein and Paul Stevens (eds.), A Readers' Guide to Canadian History, Vol. 2, Confederation to the Present (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 254. 42 The French Canadians, vii. 43 G.F.G. Stanley in Queen's Quarterly, 62 (Summer 1955), 257-59. 44 G.F.G. Stanley in Queen's Quarterly, 62 (Summer 1955), 257-59. 45 Reverend Richard Ares, S.J. in Relations, 15 (April 1955), 105-6. 46 Peter B. Wai t e in Dalhousie Review, 37 (Spring 1957), 90, 92. 47 A perceptive reviewer, Harry S. Ferns, had suggested this approach at the time of the publication of The French Canadians. Mason Wade had not asked the right questions, he wrote. He had concluded that "French Canadians are different because they are different." What he should have done was to try to discover, in measurable terms, whether and in what ways French Canadians are different (H.S. Ferns in History, XLI (1956), 241). 48 Trudeau wrote the essay in August 1956. Impatient at the slow pace of Canadian Dualism towards publication, he placed the piece in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXIV (August 1958), 297-311. 49 Miriam Chapín, in Saturday Night, 76 (18 March 1961), 39-40. 50 George Woodcock in Canadian Literature, 10 (Autumn 1961), 89-90. 51 The lectures were later published in R.L. McDougall (ed.), Canada's Past and Present: A Dialogue, Our Living Tradition, Fifth Series (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), 134-57, 158-79. 52 Printed in Laurier LaPierre (ed.), Four O'Clock Lectures, French-Canadian Thinkers of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1966), 9-22. 53 These papers are found in the collection, Study Session, 1972, of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association, vol. 39, 9-33 and The American Review of Canadian Studies, V (Spring 1975), 42-65. 54 The French Canadians, 36. 55 Ibid., 34. 56 W.J. Eccles, also an outsider as an historian of the old regime in New France, emphasizes aristocratic and paternalistic values as setting the tone for the society of Quebec in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He agrees with Wade and Quellet that a bourgeoisie did not exist in the colony, but sees the dominant group as a military and official class which engaged in commerce to pursue its social improvement. It was this class which was "decapitated" by the conquest. W.J. Eccles, France in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 213-14. The point is also discussed by Michael Cross in his article, "Canadian History," in C.F. Klinck (gen. ed.),

52 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec

57 58 59

60 61 62 63

64 65

Literary History of Canada, Canadian Literature in English, 2nd ed., Ill (Toronto: university of Toronto Press, 1976), 75-6. The French Canadians, 262-63. Wade spells the name "Lafontaine" but modern usage prefers "LaFontaine." The French Canadians, 496. Mason Wade's attachment to the causes for which Wilfrid Laurier fought is eloquently brought out in a lecture he have at Carleton University in the first group of the series, Our Living Tradition. It was later published in C.T. Bissell (ed.), Our Living Tradition, Seven Canadians (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), 89-104. Joseph Levitt, "Images of Bourassa," in Journal of Canadian Studies, 13 (Spring 1978), 103-4. Cook, Canada and the French-Canadian Question, 105. Quoted in Rev. Archange Godbout, "Les Préoccupations en histoire et les thèses de M. l'Abbé Maheux,» Culture, IV (1943), 31. This charge against Brunet is made by Serge Gagnon in Quebec and its Historians, The Twentieth·Century, 171, n. 32. It is based, Gagnon states, on an examination of numerous reviews by Brunet and his colleagues appearing in the Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française. The French Canadians, ix. Ibid., viii.

An Introduction to Mason Wade's Maritime Melting Pot G.A. Rawlyk Mason Wade's monumental The French Canadians 1760-1945 was published in 1956. He then began to work on yet another major study, "The French in North America," which, though completed, would never be published. An important part of this manuscript dealt with the Acadians of the Maritime Provinces. Mason Wade decided in the early 1960s to transform his Acadian section into a major book, which he provisionally entitled "The Maritime Melting Pot." This book, like the French Canadians, was to cover the broad survey of Maritime development, from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the middle of the twentieth. A very rough draft of this manuscript was completed just before Mason Wade's death in 1981. In the late spring of 1961 I decided to do graduate work at the University of Rochester largely because Mason Wade was teaching there. I first met Mason in August of 1961, at Mount Allison University at the French Canada Today Summer Institute which had been organized by the Public Affairs Committee of Mount Allison, at which university I had taught for the previous two years. At the institute Wade presented a very provocative paper, "Two French Canadas: Quebec and Acadia." In it Wade cogently and lucidly presented a bold preliminary probe into his new research. For the following two decades, he assiduously fleshed out his major themes for the "Maritime Melting Pot" despite a myriad of complex and difficult problems which engulfed him. By the early 1970s, he had published two chapters from his proposed book — one entitled "The Loyalists and the Acadians" in E. Schriver (ed.), The French in New England, Acadia and Quebec (Orono, 1973) and the other "After the Grand Dérangement: The Acadians' Return to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to Nova Scotia," in the American Review of Canadian Studies, 5 (1975), 42-65. What especially delayed the final completion of the "Maritime Melting Pot" was the remarkable explosion in the post 1967 period of theses, articles, and books dealing

54 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec with the Maritime region in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Mason valiantly attempted to respond to the new Maritime historiography, revising some sections of his manuscript and significantly redrafting others. And just at the moment when the blending of the old and the new had begun to bring about a major writing breakthrough for Wade, he died. Some of the "Maritime Melting Pot" is still relevant within the context of Maritime historiography. What follows is Wade's Mount Allison overview, then his "After the Grand Derangement." I have added what I consider to be three of the better unpublished chapters from the manuscript. The first, "Outpost of New France and New England," covers the 1603-1713 period and clearly shows the influence of J.B. Brebner's New England's Outpost — Acadia before the Conquest of Canada (New York, 1927). Brebner, it should be pointed out, was one of Wade's closest friends and he played a key role in encouraging Wade to do serious work in the area of Canadian history. The second, "The New England Planters and the American Revolution in 1749-1783," is also significantly influenced by Brebner, but this time by The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia, published in 1937. The third chapter, 'The Coming of the Loyalists," owes a great deal, a very great deal, to Esther Clark Wright's important volume, The Loyalists of New Brunswick, first published in 1955. A close reading of these three chapters and others in the manuscript reveals, of course, that Mason Wade was indeed very dependent upon what a few other scholars had previously written. Often his buccaneering research strategy and perhaps his photographic memory made it difficult for him to distinguish clearly between what others had already written and what he had, in fact, researched on his own. He could be a first-rate researcher in the archives and his best work reflects this fact. Wade, however, all too often seemed eager to avoid this kind of research, taking advantage instead of the work of others. Despite Wade's weaknesses as a scholar, I am still indebted to him. At a crucial turning point in my academic career, Mason provided me with strong and empathetic encouragement. He had a deep faith in me when many others doubted and he carefully shepherded me through my PhD. program. He was always available when I needed him even though I may not have reciprocated when he needed me. I am pleased to be associated with this memorial to Mason Wade — an influential teacher, a friend, and a man, despite his flaws, of faith.

3

Two French Canadas: Quebec and Acadia

After the warnings you have received against American encroachment and cultural invasion, it is with some trepidation that I» as a damned Yankee, or maudit Bastonnais, venture some observations on French Canada, following after the eloquent statements you have heard today from the most authoritative spokesmen of Quebec and Acadia. When I learned the task that had been assigned to me in this Institute, and the distinguished speakers who were to precede me, I concluded that my anti-climactic function was to be a burnt offering if any friction should develop between the views of Quebec and Acadian spokesmen, or rather to serve as a common target for Acadiens and Québécois. For nothing makes French Canada close ranks faster and more completely than outside criticism. It would be indeed presumptuous of me to criticize the views that have been so well expressed today. I can merely comment on some of them, giving the reactions of one who, though a foreigner, has spent twentyone years studying Canada, and more particularly French Canada, first Quebec and more recently Acadia. I think you will grant that Canadians show no notable reluctance to express their views about my country and its internal problems. So I trust you will tolerate an American view of the Canadian problems which have been so ably discussed today from inside Quebec and Acadia. Sometimes a fresh perspective can be stimulating, though it may be irritating. I take it that my role, like that of the other speakers, is to be provocative, in the interest of stimulating the informal discussions which are to follow. So, provocative I shall be, though, I trust, not irritating, at the risk of inviting a new and reverse expulsion, a petit rather than a grand dérangement. First of all, the title of this talk is my own choice, if my place on the program is not. Despite all that . . . [has been said], I still feel Paper given at the French Canada Today Summer Institute, Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, 1961.

56 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec that there is more than one French Canada, and indeed that there are more than two, for the French Canadians of Ontario, of the Prairies, of British Columbia, and of Newfoundland — and my compatriots, the Franco-Americans, if they are to be considered part of French Canada, as I think they are in a historical and cultural sense — also have different outlooks and problems to my mind, although they are all parts of the great French-Canadian family in North America and have certain basic interests in common. Their differences have deep historic roots, and despite all the influences which in recent years in a more fully bicultural Canada have tended to unite all French-speaking Canadians, I think these differences persist and are still important, though not as important as they once were. Only in Quebec do the French Canadians represent an overwhelming majority of the population, 80 per cent; and only in Quebec do they have complete constitutional guarantees under the letter of the British North America Act. The French groups in the other Canadian provinces are of widely varying numerical importance, the highest percentage, 40 per cent, being here in New Brunswick, and the lowest, less than 3 per cent, in Newfoundland. In the past they have enjoyed special privileges as one of the two basic peoples of Canada to varying degrees, under the spirit rather than the letter of the BNA Act. Essentially their position depended upon the tolerance shown by the majority to the minority. As Kathleen McNaughton has pointed out in her admirable study of education in New Brunswick, "There was nothing in the Constitution which obliged the provincial authorities to accord to the French Canadians any rights and privileges in the legislature or the schools, nor were they placed under any compulsion to restrict the use of French as the language of communication and study in the schools of Acadian districts." In some provinces, in the bad old days when the old English proverb that any man who speaks two languages is a villain prevailed, such a compulsion was felt. But instead of achieving the objective of making Canada a unbilingual nation of one culture, it merely stimulated the French Canadians' profound instinct for survival as a cultural and ethnic entity and roused their resistance to assimilation. English-Canadian intolerance produced a reaction in the form of a narrow French-Canadian nationalism. Out of the difficulties which ensued, which at their height threatened to destroy Canada, came an increasing recognition on both sides of the ethnic fence of Canada's basic dualism: the fact noted by Jean-Charles Falardeau in his recently published Flaunt Lectures at Carleton University, that "Our nation is made up of two people, the English-speaking and the French-speaking. Even though both have participated in common experiences, have given allegiance to a few similar symbols, and are held together by the same

Two French Canadas / 57 political structure, each has its own sense of identity, its characteristic norms and motivations — in a word, its own culture." Professor Falardeau goes on to observe that "The history of contemporary Canada is the history of the contacts, oppositions, tensions, conflicts, and gradual rapprochement between the two. As one of Canada's most brilliant essayists, Malcolm Ross, has written: 'We are inescapably, and almost from the first, the bi-focal people'. Canada as a political entity is largely the result of adjustment between these cultural universes, between the two peoples whose association has often been referred to as a 'mariage de raison999 (Roots and Values in Canadian Lives, 15, 48-49). There is much more to be said about Canadian dualism, in terms of English-speaking and French-speaking Canada, but you will find some penetrating studies of various aspects of it by many able Canadian hands, both French and English, in a book which was published last autumn and which I had the privilege of editing. I do not think such a book could have been put together before 1945 (Canadian Dualism/La Dualité Canadienne, [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Les Presses Universitaires de Laval, I960]). One of the most striking phenomena in recent Canadian history has been the breaking down of what Hugh MacLennan, nearly twenty years ago, rightly called the "Two Solitudes," and the development of co-operation and closer contacts between the two cultures, and the general acceptance of Canadian co-existence. Today we are concerned only with Quebec and Acadia — by Acadia I mean the French-speaking, French-cultural world of the Maritimes, or rather the Atlantic provinces, for today as in the colonial days the boundaries of Acadia are vague and undetermined, though it is clear that they disregard provincial boundaries. I shall leave aside the other French-speaking groups in Canada and their kinfolk in the United States, merely making the parenthetical suggestion that perhaps the Acadians have more in common with these other minority groups than they do with the Quebec majority one. Having devoted a thousand pages largely to the French Canadians of Quebec, I propose to confine myself upon this occasion principally to the Acadians, though with some mention of their relations with Quebec. My case for calling Quebec and Acadia two French Canadas is largely historical. I shall try to demonstrate that history has not only shaped the past and present, but promises partly to shape the future as well. Acadia was first settled by Frenchmen before Quebec. But soon after these settlements the tide of French exploration, trade, and settlement shifted to the St. Lawrence. Thereafter Acadia was largely neglected by its mother country, except for a brief period in the 1730s and 1740s when France created a North American Gibraltar at Louisbourg. The Acadi-

58 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec ans came from different regions of France than the settlers of Quebec; they were largely from the southwest rather than the north and center. From the first they were more exposed to attack from the English colonies in America, and from across the Atlantic, and their fate was to be the most frequently captured pawns in the great imperial struggle of France and England for control of North America. The French regime in peninsular Nova Scotia, the original heart of Acadia, closed in 1713, half a century before it did in Quebec. It had lasted little more than a hundred years, with considerable intervals of English rule, compared to Quebec's century and a half, broken only by the Kirkes' brief interlude as masters of Quebec as well as Acadia. For the most part neglected or ignored, as the French empire spread westward across the continent from its base at Quebec, Acadia had not flourished. But the Acadians had become deeply attached to their land, and were reluctant to move to Cape Breton or the mainland at the urging of French officials or some of their missionaries. For the most part they left their original homes only when they were forced to do so, in the expulsion of 1755, the grand dérangement (the French phrase is as neutral as the Acadians had become), a great human tragedy for which Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Americans must all take some responsibility. The Acadians were scattered to the four winds. Many were deported to the American colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia; others to England, and eventually to France, whence many later went to Louisiana, to join their compatriots who had found their way there over the Appalachians. Others took to the woods and found refuge in Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, only to suffer a second expulsion in 1758. Some found their way to the North Shore of New Brunswick, the Magdalen Islands, and the Gaspe coast; some even settled on the old French shore of Newfoundland, where their descendants still remain. Other groups of Acadian refugees settled in Quebec, where several "I/Acadies" record their memory of the map. But as soon as the British authorities showed a disposition to tolerate their return to their original homeland, from 1764 onward, the Acadians displayed an incredible homing instinct, making their way by canoe and small boat along the coast and overland on foot through the forests to their old homes. But finding these in may cases already occupied by pre-Loyalists from New England or immigrants from Britain and Hanover, they tended to settle in modern New Brunswick rather than in Nova Scotia, except in Clare, the French shore of the latter province. Here in New Brunswick, in the St. John Valley, and on the Fundy shore, they had to give way before the great Loyalist influx of the 1780s, retiring to the upper St. John Valley and the North Shore. After their dispersal in 1755 they were always a minority and a small one at

Two French Canadas / 59 that, in a partitioned Acadia divided into the separate governments of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. But they had a tenacious will to survive, and survive they did, despite a sometimes hostile environment. Today they constitute nearly 40 per cent of the population of New Brunswick, nearly 15 per cent of that of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and 3 per cent of that of Newfoundland. They number nearly 300,000 in the Atlantic Provinces, and represent 18 per cent of the total population. Forgive this hasty sketch of matters which are doubtless familiar to you in much more detail. But this background is essential to my argument that the Acadians were at once more isolated from France during the French regime than the French Canadians, and much earlier in contact with an English majority, which has never existed in Quebec. It was necessary for the Acadians to accommodate themselves to the English presence far earlier than it was for the French Canadians of Quebec. It also should be noted that until the beginning of major British immigration late in the eighteenth century and the great influx after 1815, this English presence was largely represented by newcomers from the American colonies, who had a great intolerance for everything French and Catholic as a result of the colonial wars, which at times had been fought as wars of religion, because of the intensity of eighteenth-century "anti-papist" feeling, which was perhaps most vigorous in the American colonies. Under these circumstances the Acadians tended to isolate themselves from the English-speaking, Protestant world, and to follow their own way of life in such remote corners as the newcomers did not desire. They rebuilt their shattered nation in Clare, where they won the favour of the Halifax officials by showing more zeal to volunteer against threatened American invasion during the American Revolution than did their Yankee neighbors; here on the Isthmus of Chignecto, where they followed the same course, and on the Fundy shore; in the Madawaska country, where they long supplied the communications between the Maritimes and Quebec whose exposure worried imperial military men until the completion of the Intercolonial; and around the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where Thomas Robin, the enterprising Jersey fishing entrepreneur had summoned them from exile. Living largely in isolation, in a world dominated remotely by Englishspeaking people, and in one in which they tended to be regarded as second-class citizens, they gradually developed a new national consciousness as a separate people, expressed in the formation of an educational system of their own, a press of their own, a national society, a national flag and anthem. These developments came half a century later than they did in Quebec. They were in part a direct reaction to the New

60 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Brunswick Schools Law of 1871 and the ensuing educational troubles, and in part a sympathetic reaction to the agitations which arose in Quebec as a result of the Guibord case, the execution of Louis Riel, and the crusade of D'Alton McCarthy against the French language. But their sense of separateness was very strong, and it prevailed at the first national convention of the Acadians in 1881, when after vigorous debate they decided to form their own national society, instead of making common cause with the St. Jean-Baptiste Society of Quebec, as some of their leaders wished. By choosing Our Lady of the Assumption as their patron saint instead of St. John the Baptist; the Feast of the Assumption (August 15) as their national day instead of St. Jean-Baptiste Day (June 24); their own flag adopted from the tricolor of republican France rather than from the old French royal flag as Quebec's "drapeau de Carillon" had been; and their own national anthem, the ancient Gregorian hymn "Ave Maris Stella", which reflects their deep piety; they expressed their conviction that they constituted a distinct and separate group from other French-speaking Canadians. They had lived for nearly two hundred years as a separate people, with their own special trials and tribulations, and they were very conscious of their separateness. The distinction between French Canadian and Acadian was carried to the United States by the many Acadians who migrated along with the French Canadians in the great exodus from 1870 to the 1890s. In New England, as in Canada — not to mention Louisiana, where distinctions between "Cajuns," French Canadians, and Frenchmen from France or the French West Indies still persist — there is a dual system of Acadian and French-Canadian national societies, national parishes, and so on. This separate sense of identity did much to make possible the renaissance of the Acadian people, and remains, I think, a potent force. But as [has been] pointed out, the old isolation of the Acadians has broken down to a considerable degree, both in terms of their relations with Quebec and with the English-speaking world. With the growth of Canadian national feeling, with greater acceptance of biculturalism by English Canadians, with fuller Acadian participation in Canadian national life generally and with other French-speaking groups in particular, there has been questioning of the old Acadian isolationism. There has been a growing realization that the Acadians have much in common with other French-speaking Canadians: the same Catholicism; the same French language and culture; the same Canadianism; the same ancient mother country; a similar colonial status under both French and early British rule; and the same tradition of being a conquered people forced to struggle to preserve its religion and language which were not those of the conqueror. The debate between those who continue to favour

Two French Canadas / 6 l Acadian isolationism and those who wish fuller co-operation with other French-speaking Canadians and with the English-speaking world is not yet resolved, but as has [been] pointed out, there is much to suggest that the wind has shifted in favor of fuller participation in the life of French Canada as a whole, as well as in that of Canada generally. I suspect that part of the old Acadian feeling against the Québécois reflected the mixed feelings of the poor country cousin who enjoyed the largesse of his prosperous and successful city relative. Resentment of airs of superiority was mixed with gratitude for badly needed assistance. While Quebec continues to aid the Acadians, as it does the other French minorities, and indeed proposes to do more with the institution of its new Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Acadia now also gets substantial assistance for some of its most pressing needs from Ottawa. It was Ottawa, not Quebec, acting under the recommendations of the Massey and Fowler Reports, that has furnished much needed financial assistance for the Acadian universities and colleges, and that has supplied the Frenchspeaking Maritimer with French radio and television, those two potent mass media which represented new threats to French cultural survival when they were available only in English in the Maritimes. Acadians now play their part in a wide range of federal govenrment activities and participate in a host of other private Canadian activities. But despite the growing bonds which unite all French-speaking Canadians, and the strong Canadian nationalism which unites all Canadians, and the strong Canadian nationalism which unites all Canadians regardless of origin, I find that the distinction between Québécois and Acadien persists. Last Tuesday, on the national day of the Acadians, L'Évangeline published as its lead story a report of the first Acadian national convention, which chose to assert Acadia's separateness from Quebec. History cannot be wholly forgotten — though students sometimes manage to forget a lot — particularly when the cult of the past and fidelity to tradition have been carefully cultivated for a century. And different traditions and different environments and different influences cannot shape peoples to the same pattern. What are some of these differences between the Acadiens and the Québécois? The Acadians are still far more a people of farmers, fishermen, and lumbermen, with a proportionately smaller elite or professional class, and fewer skilled industrial workers, than the Québécois. To be sure, the situation is changing: as in Quebec, agricultural colonization is no longer regarded as the answer to population problems, but industrialization has been much later and slower in arriving in the Maritimes, and has had much less impact upon the region than upon Quebec. In the

62 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec past the French Canadian's economic position was described as one of inferiority and dependence. This has changed greatly since 1939 (and presumably will change even more in the future). The Acadians' economic position was described in 1942 as subordinate, rudimentary (that is, most Acadians held humble jobs), and badly balanced (that is, most Acadians tended to choose certain trades or professions, while neglecting opportunities in others). The Acadian still has the thinnest slice of the thin Maritime pie, while Quebec enjoys nearly half of the rich, deep-dish central Canadian one. Since the Acadian is poorer than the Quebecer, he cannot speak as loudly in a world where money talks, since he has neither the amassed wealth nor as rich and as sought-after natural resources. And he still has an inferiority complex to overcome, which has deep historic roots. After 1755, English capital and English officials naturally favoured the English Maritimer rather than the Acadian, who has forced to follow his traditional occupations of farming and fishing. Gradually Acadians drifted into business, but as clerks and small shopkeepers rather than as builders of great enterprises; and into industry, but as unskilled or semi-skilled workmen or white-collar workers, rather than as managers or executives. Aside from notable successes in the insurance and credit union fields, and in the co-operative movement, the Acadian has largely lived outside the main economic currents in the Maritimes, and, as there used to be in Quebec, there is also a psychological factor involved; the Acadian was perhaps more convinced, and certainly longer convinced than the French Canadian that the English had a special genius for business, that they were more practical, better men of action. By way of consolation for an inferior economic position the Acadian tended to claim that he was naturally more given to thought than to action, more idealistic than the materialistic English Canadian, more individualistic, more interested in peaceful security than in hard-won fortune. It has been suggested that Acadians suffered from a Janenist tendency to distrust material comfort and prosperity, to accept fatalistically and stoically a lesser economic lot. But the intellectual revolution of French Canada in recent years, with its profound changes in the educational system, with new emphasis on the natural sciences, the social sciences, technical and commercial training, has also been felt in Acadia, and its effects are beginning to become evident. In fact, Hugh Thorburn notes in his recently published Politics in New Brunswick that "The Acadians have increased in selfconfidence, wealth, and political power, while the English have declined as the Maritimes have tended to become an economic backwater." One great current Acadian question is whether the old political and cultural

Two Ftench Canadas / 63 nationalism will survive in the face of a widespread demand for economic betterment. There is more concern with competence, with training more Acadians in the skills of our time, than with the old mathematic nationalism which devoted much effort to calculating whether the Acadians had their proportional share of public jobs. It is perhaps significant for future developments in Acadia that in Quebec the post-1945 focus of nationalism has been on social and economic goals rather than political ones, though the hardy perennial separatists are currently being heard from again. Old-style oratorical political nationalism is virtually dead in Quebec, and I suspect it is extinct in the Maritimes, though Acadians share with English Maritimers a highly articulate sense that they enjoy an unequal share of Canadian prosperity. Yet, since the Acadians lack economic power and influence, they must use political means to find solutions for their pressing economic problems. And in the political world the difference between Quebec and Acadia is perhaps most marked. Here in New Brunswick, where there is the largest proportion of Acadian population, the division between French and English corresponds to the situation in Canada at large rather than to that in Quebec — as Premier Louis Robichaud has pointed out. The Acadian cannot dictate any course of political action, as majorities can; though they should not, for majorities have special responsibilities in justice and tolerance to minorities. In any case, the Acadian is not inclined to do so, for he has learned the value of slow and peaceful evolution, rather than rapid and aggressive attempts to remake a largely English-speaking North American world which poses special problems for the French-speaking Canadian. Recent French and English students of the Maritimes agree that English-French relations are remarkably amicable. This augers well for the future. Sir Wilfrid Laurier once wisely observed that it was suicidal for a minority to try to make itself a power bloc, for by so doing it ran the risk of uniting a majority which normally was itself divided. Canada has been built by compromises, not by intransigence. I venture to suggest that Canada could not have survived as a nation without accepting the idea that it was made up of two peoples and two cultures, and not one; and that it can only continue to exist if this bicultural ideal is fully honored everywhere in Canada. Biculturalism has its difficulties, but it also has its compensations. There should be no fear of English domination or French domination anywhere from sea to sea, if the lessons of the past have been well learned, and if English and French Canadians alike respect the right of the other to follow his own way of life, while working together for the common good of Canada.

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4

After the Grand Dérangement: The Acadians5 Return to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to Nova Scotia

As early as the summer of 1756 it became evident that the expulsion of the Acadians and their dispersal among the English seaboard colonies was not working out as Governor Charles Lawrence and Chief Justice Jonathan Belcher of Nova Scotia had anticipated. While he learned that the Acadians were returning 'by Coasting from Colony to Colony', Lawrence issued another circular to the 'Governors of the Continent': . . . as their success in this enterprise would not only frustrate the design of his Government in sending them away at so prodigious an expense, but would also greatly endanger the security of the Province, especially at this juncture, I think it my indispensable duty to entreat your Excellency to use your utmost endeavours to prevent the accomplishment of so pernicious an undertaking by destroying such vessels as those in your colonies may have prepared for that purpose, and all that may attempt to pass thro' any part of your government, either by land or water, on their way thither. I would by no means have given your Excellency this trouble were I not perfectly well assured how fatal the return of these people is likely to prove to His Majesty's interest in this part of the world.1

The Lords of Trade agreed with Lawrence that 'nothing can have been more absurd or blameable' than the conduct of the southern governors in letting the Acadians make their way back to Nova Scotia, since 'there is no attempt however desperate and cruel which might not have been expected from Persons exasperated as they must have been by the treatment they have met with.'2 This not unreasonable fear of Acadian retaliation, coupled with the hysterical francophobia which characterized the final stages of the long Anglo-French struggle for North America, helps to explain the relentlessness with which the Acadian manhunt was pressed by the Nova Scotian authorities up to the Treaty of 1763, and This chapter was originally published in American Review of Canadian Studies 5 (1975), 42-65.

66 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec their continuing opposition thereafter to the return of the Acadians to their native land. It is important to note that the first postwar governor, Montague Wilmot, like his predecessor Jonathan Belcher, wanted to rid Nova Scotia of all Acadians forever, but was restrained by orders from London to the effect that 'Care should be taken to provide proper Settlements for them, as much to Their Own Satisfaction as may be consistently with the Public Safety/3 While there were various Halifax-favoured plans for resettling the Acadians in France, Canada, or the West Indies, there was also another project, opposed by Wilmot, which was to have lasting efforts in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Gaspé, and even on the North Shore of Quebec. On May 24, 1763, Jacques Robin, a Huguenot merchant of St. Aubin in the Isle of Jersey, wrote to the governor of Nova Scotia, saying that he was about to make a settlement for farming and fishing at the mouth of the Miramichi River. He enclosed letters, offering lands there, which he requested should be forwarded to the leaders of the Trench Neutrals'. If any should be interested in joining him, they would be required to take the oath of allegiance before obtaining the land. He proposed to wait upon the governor upon his arrival in America within two months. In another letter of the same date to one Guiguinen at Halifax, Robin repeated his proposal and said that he would protect Catholics. He stressed that the success of the project depended upon fidelity to Britain. Robin also wrote to one Broussard dit Beausoleil, whom he had seen in England, saying that he expected to leave within a month for Gaspé or Pabos, and hoped to find upon his arrival 'all the Acadians and French ready'. Guiguinen was to bring salmon nets and hay to winter a few cattle.4 In his enclosed letters to the Acadian leaders Robin invited them, 'from all quarters wherein dispersed' to settle on his lands, of which he would make ample distribution, and where they would be given 'a sufficient supply of provisions' and enjoy 'the free exercise of their religion'. He would do his best to bring with him a 'French priest named Manach'. This last name was a red rag to Wilmot, who informed the Board of Trade: This Man Manach has formerly been a missionary from France amongst these people; and his furious Zeal in Religion and Politics became so turbulent and he altogether so negligent of any Decorum, that the Government of this Province about two years ago, found it highly necessary to Arrest and send him to Europe in one of the King's Ships; but I find his zeal is not abated, for he has, in the most pressing manner, wrote to the leading Acadians, entreating them to use their supplications with the Government for his return, and promising to quit his habit and wear that of a layman, on condition of such a liberty.5

After the Grand Dérangement / 67 Wilmot conveyed his total opposition to the Robin project in the following terms: That the people who are to form this Settlement are a very numerous people, and in the highest degree bigotted to France and the Church of Rome. They hold a strong confederacy with the Indians and in proportion to these attachments their Antipathy to the English is very high. This place of settlement would be very advantageous for them to pursue every scheme which could be immediately or hereafter beneficial to France, and to the detriment of His Majesty's Subjects, for the employment of whom on future enterprises, it would be very easy to lodge considerable quantities of Military Stores, and effectually conceal them. In the meantime, their situation for the importation of French commodities would be most inviting, with which whilst they supplied our Colonies, to the great detriment of the English Trade; they would be enabled to make large returns to France, in Furs obtained partly by their own Industry, and their wide extended Intercourse with the Indians.

Wilmot does not seem to have been aware that Robin was a Jerseyman, and that he had already submitted a petition to Lord 'Schallburn' (Shelburne), president of the Board of Trade, on May 24, 1763, to support his request of April 20 for a grant of a seigneury at Miramichi.6 In any case 1,000 acres there were subsequently granted to William Davidson and John Cort of Inverness by the Nova Scotian authorities on October 31, 1765, and there at the Forks of the Miramichi the Scots engaged in the fishery and the fur trade in which Robin had been interested. Confident that his grant was practically in hand, in June 1763 Robin had written Louison Petipas in London and James Vigneau at Boston, urging them to come to the Miramichi with any Acadians who wished to settle there.7 He also asked them to communicate the news to the Acadians at Halifax and elsewhere. Though the Lords of Trade did not make the grant requested by Robin, in December 1763 they recommended the concession of a tract south of the Bay of Chaleurs and the mouth of the Caraquet River to John Marteilhe and François Mounier of Quebec.8 The Channel Island merchants were clearly proposing to take over the rich fisheries of the Gulf, now abandoned by the French except for those of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The Channel Island merchants were naturally anxious to employ Acadians who knew these waters and enjoyed relations with the Indians, who might furnish furs to supplement the fisheries. Not until May 1764 did the Board of Trade inform Robin that he was not to be permitted to make the proposed settlement at the Miramichi, because of his 'questionable proceedings' and the 'subsequent confirmation of suspicion against him'.9 Wilmot was instructed that if any

68 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Acadians should return in response to Robin's invitations, the governor might grant them small lots among other settlers, 'so that they cannot create disturbance and annoyance'.10 Lord Halifax supported this new policy of Acadian settlement rather than removal early in June, and on June 19 the Lords of Trade advised the King that the Acadians should be permitted to become settlers upon taking the oath of allegiance, although they should be dispersed in small numbers and at a distance from Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, so that they could keep in touch with the French there. An order in council to this effect was passed on July II.11 The era of expulsion was over, and the new age of re-establishment of the Acadians had opened. It was ironical that the first vigorous steps in that direction were taken by a French Protestant who seemed to be immune to the endemic anti-papist feeling of the Englishmen ofthat day; but then Jerseymen had long played the role of the 'Neutral French' in the English Channel. Jacques Robin finally fulfilled in 1764 his intention of coming to Nova Scotia, grant or no grant. In November Wilmot reported that he had left Halifax and was then at Louisbourg.12 Here he evidently found a more cordial reception, for his son John established trading houses at Arichat and Petit de Grat on Isle Madame in 1766, while another son, Charles, began to trade at Paspébiac and Bonaventure on the Gaspé coast and at Caraquet on the North Shore of New Brunswick in the same year.13 Thus was founded the business still in existence today under the name of Robin, Jones & Whitman, Ltd. These careful Jersey traders kept admirable records14 which throw much light on the history of the whole Maritime area and on its involvement with the rest of North America and with Western Europe from the 1760s onward. The surviving record of the Robins commences with Charles's second voyage in 1767. He sailed from Jersey late in March, put in at Halifax for water, and arrived at Isle Madame on May 16. Here he took aboard his 118-ton scow Recovery, some timber which a Jersey 'employ servant' named Peter LeBoursier had cut during the winter for the building of a fishing stage at Paspébiac, and also 700 'Rhynes', the great strips of birchbark which were used in wet weather to cover fish drying on the flakes. He sent a small boat ahead to Caraquet to inform JeanBaptiste Jiraux of his coming. He had probably arranged with this Jerseyman to provide the Acadian fishermen there with salt and other goods. But Robin went first to Bonaventure on the Gaspé coast and made arrangements to supply the Acadian 'planters' there with salt, before touching at Paspébiac and reaching Caraquet on June 4. Here he took on board thirty quintals (1 quintal =112 pounds) of dry codfish and a varied lot of furs. He returned to Paspébiac and then went farther up

After the Grand Dérangement / 69 the Bay of Chaleur to Tracadigueche (Carleton), where he sold seventy hogsheads of salt to the Acadian 'planters', who combined subsistence farming and fishing just as their descendants continue to do. He then went on up the bay to the Indian settlement at 'Ristigouche', where the Indians caught and dried their fish 'on Flakes the same as we do'. They also brought along the furs they had acquired during the winter in the interior, as 'this is the place where Merchants generally deal with them.' Robin noted: Ί came too late all their Furs were gone, as there had been several Dealers before.' Just as at Caraquet he had found a Halifax sloop trading with the Indians, here he round a Louisbourg fishing schooner. Robin was anxious to get on good terms with the Indians, and went to Mission Point to present a letter of recommendation to the 'King of the Restigouche Indians' from Père Bonaventure, the Recollet missionary of the region, whose base was at Paspébiac. Here he fell in with Lieutenant John Pringle, who, as a member of Captain Samuel Holland's survey party, was running a survey from Pabos on the Gaspé coast to Miscou Point. Pringle had surveyed Isle Madame the previous year and visited the Robin establishments there. The surveyor had been invited by the Indian chief to a 'Grand Festin', and took Robin along with him to dine on moose meat, fat, and guts, and to watch the Indians sing and dance. Robin reported that they went away 'very well pleased of the Entertainment'. He was even more pleased the following day, for he 'gathered in here about 100 weight of Furrs'. Sailing back to the Point, he paid off the Indian pilot who had guided him through the shoalchoked Restigouche with a pound of powder, two pounds of shot, half a pound of tobacco, and a rosary, which 'very well satisfied' his Christian guide. On his way back to Paspébiac Robin sold four barrels of butter at Tracadigache. Sending off his smaller vessel on a fishing voyage, Robin set off for the Miramichi on June 9. The diary lapses here until July 29, when he was again off the mouth of that river, perhaps on a second trip after the intervening time had been devoted to building an establishment at Paspébiac. After difficult navigation in the river, he reached Boishebert's old camp, today known as Beaubears Island. Here he traded with the Acadians for furs and 105 quintals of dry cod, which he later picked up at Tracadie, and also sold goods worth 15£ 15s. to an Indian trader named Loubert in exchange for furs. He found a Boston schooner which had come for the salmon and bass fishery, and dined with a Mr 'Morray' (Murray?), one of its owners. Early in August he returned to the Gaspé coast, where he acquired seventy 1/2 quintals of cod in exchange for his advances of supplies and agreed to deal with five 'planters' the following year. On August 16, a Sunday, he noted with some weariness, 'employed

70 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec in posting my dealings at Miramichy, Tracadie, Grand River, and Port Daniel. . . which is often the Way of resting on this day, especially at this time of year'. He bought a small shallop built by Joseph LeBlanc the previous year, before again visiting Caraquet and Miscou to pick up fish on his way back to Paspébiac. At Miscou he reported feelingly, 'it is impossible at present to keep out of doors for the Musketoes, the air is quite thick with them,' while at Caraquet it was 'blowing so hard we could not ship Fish. . . but the Wind has drove away the Musketoes.' Early in September he went to Bonaventure to settle accounts with the firm of Moore & Findlay of Quebec. Here he found the harbour crowded with a 300-ton English ship and a 200-ton sloop also loading red-pine masts for London, as well as an eighty-ton brig loading fish for the Straits of Gibraltar, and another of 100 tons carrying fish and lumber from Quebec to the West Indies. The magnate of the place was Hugh Montgomery, the local justice of the peace, who was in partnership with Alexander McKinsay of Quebec; while William Smith, a former agent of Moore & Findlay at Bonaventure, who had set up in business for himself in 1766, was loading two other small vessels with fish for the Straits and fish and lumber for the West Indies. The ships that came here also called at Gaspé, where the Bonaventure merchants also had establishments. Robin reported that the 'planters' here had cut 900, 'many of them 70 feet long and big in Proportion', and he noted 'there are vast many more standing near this Place, if that Branch of Trade answered well.' But Charles Robin was to stick to fish and furs and forswear timber, except for the materials required for his shipbuilding at Paspébiac, where trawlers are still being built two centuries later on the Robin beach. On September 18 he sailed for Arichat where he was to spend the winter, leaving the Jerseyman John Le Goûteur in charge on the Gaspé coast, with another Jerseyman, Thomas Filleul, as companion. From the start the Robins employed only Jersey men as the managers of their establishments and as skippers of their shops. The firm's records were kept in English, although instructions to skippers might be given in Jersey French. The senior employees were all bilingual, and business was carried on in either French or English. The apprentices sent out from Jersey were not allowed to marry, to fornicate, to gamble, or to frequent 'ale-houses, taverns, playhouse, or other places of debauchery',15 of which there could not have been many in the Bay settlements at that time. In short, the young Jerseymen's only relations with clients were to be business ones, and there was to be no possibility of personalities conflicting with the firm's interest. The final entry in Charles Robin's diary for 1767 is a copy of an order for merchandise for the following year to be sent out from Jersey. It

After the Grand Dérangement / 7 l

indicates how general was his business. 400 barriques (hogsheads) sel, 15 barils lard pour vendre, un tonneau beurre. Near the same quantity of strouds we had last year, two thirds blue, one third red; half the blankets, 2 1 / 2 points and 3 points, two pieces blue cadiz, two pieces white, two pieces brown. Four pieces half311 Calamanco, broad stripes; one dozen deep pewter dishes of two sizes, three dozen deep plates ditto, two gross different sorts of garters; half gross spring knives with bone handles; one mill superfine black flints; 1400 mill of sharp point nails from 3 inch to 1 1/2; three dozen axes as per sample; one dozen hatchets; one dozen hand saw nies, 1/2 dozen ship saw ditto; twenty one hundred weight shots, ten hundredweight cannon powder of the best; 6 pieces sail cloth No. 7, half piece 9/8 sheeting, one piece ditto whitened, three herring and two mackrel nets of 30 fathoms, no bank lines, no ditto hooks, five hundred mackrel hooks; 6 anchors of 40 to 60 Ibs, 6 graplins of about 50 Ibs.; no pitch, no piglead. 12 pair boots: 4 dozen men's shoes with a high instep, two pairs of them very long: two dozen ditto boys, one dozen Women's, two dozen children's, four dozen yarn stockings; half a dozen gloves, one and a half dozen shag breeches; gaffs and pews; four shallops rudder irons; four dozen bandana handkerchiefs a quarter coloured; six knit Jackettes, three tin kettles, half cwt,. cork, 4 dozen cotton handkerchiefs, proper certificates for the above cargoes; 5 cwt. strong tobacco, all per Recovery, one English gauging rod. Above list of what is to be shipped by the Seaflower to be delivered to Charles Robin in A rich at, to go trading along the Coast of Acadia. She must be dispatched by the latter end of February if possible; also if possible a license for settling store in several places among Indians; Half of the goods fit for the Indian trade in the foregoing list, the other per Recovery.16

From the first the Robins conducted a general-store business, as well as buying fish for European markets. Charles Robin expected to acquire some of his trade goods from Quebec, and these accounts were to increase with the years. Shortly before leaving G aspé in September 1767 he sent an order to Quebec for the following year: M. Benjamin LeConte, Québec Comme Messieurs Robin, Pipón & Co. de Jersey m'ont envoyé cette année dans la Baye des Chaleurs avec un bâtiment pour faire la pêche de la morue et la Traite. Dieu Mercy la pêche nous un peu favorisé, ce qui nous donnera courage de revenir l'année prochaine, dans ce cas j'aurai besoin des marchandises cydessous, sy vous aviez la bonté de me les procurer pendant le cours de cet hyver & les envoyer par la première occasion pour ce endroit, donnant la préférence du Fret à M. Bourdages s'il voulait le prendre à aussi basse concession que d'autres. Vu, M., que vous ne me connaissez pas je donnerai avis à Messieurs deGruchy et LeBreton de Londres qui sont intéressés dans cette Société pour qu'ils confirment mes orders. L· ces Messieurs vous

72 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec donneront ordre de tirer sur eux. Sy ces marchandises tardaient à venir le printemps prochain cela désappointerait beaucoup. Sy je n'étais pas arrivé dans Baye aussitôt comme les marchandises il faudrait les délivrer à Jean LeCouteur un jeune homme qui hyvernera pour moi à Tracadigache, Baye des Chaleurs. Je suis établi à Passpébiac. Je conclus et je suis sincèrement Ch: Robin 200 barils Farine; 15 barils Pois. Une Permission du Gouvernement de Québec pour moy à faire la Traite avec les Sauvages. Les quarts pour la farine doivent être de la basse qualité vu que nous n'en faisons rien.17

In a second letter three days later Robin ordered only 50 barrels of flour if the price exceeded twenty the barrel; stressed his need for an Indian trading licence; and noted that he was leaving for the 'Coast of Louisbourg', where at his brother's trading post he expected to embark 1,000 quintals of cod in addition to the 1,200 he had acquired in the Bay of Chaleur. Thus the total value for the year of the Robins' fishery operations was only £600,18 but the stress on the Indian trading licence suggests that the furs acquired from them loomed large in the company's concerns. The emphasis on trading licences and proper certificates for trade goods brought from Jersey resulted from the seizing in May 1767 by the Royal Navy of 122-ton brig Endeavour, consigned to John Robin, which was taken to Halifax. A complaint had been lodged with the commissioner of customs at Boston, presumably by some disgruntled rival in the developing Gulf of St. Lawrence trade: Two brothers of the name of Robin which come yearly from Jersey to Ille Madame and the Bay of Chaleur bring with them whole cargoes of Prohibited goods and therewith carry on an illicit trade with the inhabitants of those places and also in their trade with the Indians impose upon them in the vilest manner, contrary to law.

Charles Robin's comment was: 'Which falsehood I hope we shall be able to clear up in the course of time.'19 The matter was complicated. The Navigation Act of 1764 had rescinded the Jersey port authorities' privilege of clearing their own outward-bound vessels, and required that this be done at English ports. The Jersey Chamber of Commerce made strenuous efforts to have this measure rescinded, as it was by order in council in 1769. Meanwhile the Jersey shipowners simply disregarded this intrusion upon their immemorial rights. In June 1768 the Robins suffered a crippling blow to their trade when Edward Manweiring, the customs officer at Gaspé, came to Paspébiac with an officer of H.M.S. Glasgow, treated Charles Robin 'very roughly',

After the Grand Dérangement / 73 and seized the papers of the Recovery and the Seaflower. An inventory was taken of Robin's stock at Paspébiac, and he was shown a letter from the Customs Commissioner at Boston, 'wherein we were reported, my brother and I, as downright Smugglers & Villians'. The officers informed him that his ships were seizable both for bringing English goods from Jersey instead of England, and for failure to enter their cargoes at Gaspé. 'They laughed at our Certificates and called them that gave such great Fools.' Captain Allen of H.M.S. Glasgow promised Robin to be 'as favourable as he could as he was convinced that I was a fairer Dealer than my Enemies', but in the end the broad arrow was put on both Robin vessels, which had been reloaded with the cargo they had brought in both years, and they were sent off to Halifax. Robin asked Captain Allen 'whether he could leave me and all my people without provisions & none to be purchased in the Bay', and Allen permitted him to keep some supplies, after Robin gave a note payable at the rate the goods should sell for at Halifax. For his part Manweiring gave Robin a permit for another vessel, the Sophia, to sail with all furs that had been acquired, and also a blank permit to load 'Fish, Oyl & c' if Robin could acquire another ship. Charles Robin, having sent a small boat off fishing, then sailed in the Sophia to Arichat to confer with his brother John on this disastrous blow to their fortunes. On his return voyage with John's brig the Hope and some of the latter's stores, Charles passed the two seized ships en route to Halifax; 'it was very hard for us to be obliged to haul wind & to avoid two vessels which but twb weeks ago were our own & pass Time, I say obliged to shun them for the preservation of the Sophia who had carried part of the Seaflower's cargo to Bay of Chaleur.' In August Charles was careful to call at Percé, while he knew as 'Split Island', to get clearance papers for the Hope and a permit for the Sophia to go from Paspébiac to Arichat with Oyl, Fish & a hogshead of W. India Rum'. Here he encountered some Guernsey people, who after taking 300 quintals of fish the previous year were having no luck this season; and also a Gloucesterman, One Mr. Clary, a merchant from Cape Ann, he keeps seven Schooners fishing, he was loading one of them, she carries 2000 quintals in her hold.' Clearly New England fishermen were already well established in these waters. Gaspé was still a fishing station with scarcely any fixed population, although several large grants had been On the way back to Paspébiac Charles stopped in at Pabos, which Colonel Frederick Haldimand, late military governor of Trois-Rivieres, had acquired as a seigneury in 1765 and where he now maintained an agent to collect his seigneurial dues (2 quintals offish per annum) and to manage the settlement, which boasted several houses, a sawmill, a wharf, and

74 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec an eighty-ton schooner. Halimand had brought Acadian settlers from St. John's Island (P.E.I.) to farm the 'very fine land', as well as to conduct the fishery.20 Upon his return to Paspébiac Robin found a Philadelphia schooner with provisions for him. He sailed back to Bonaventure to see whether it could be unloaded without first entering at G aspé; but the master, receiving contradictory advice from the justice of the peace and a Gaspé merchant, decided to take no chances and to proceed to G aspé. Winding up his affairs for the season, Charles sailed for Arichat, where he found the Recovery, which John had bought in Halifax for £307, and another ship which John had chartered jointly with Captain Balleine, another Jerseyman at Petit de Grat, and Lawrence Kavanagh, the Irish fish merchant of Louisbourg. It was agreed that Charles was to winter at Cape Breton, while John returned to Jersey in the recovered Recovery. In 1773 the Robins stated in a petition to Lord Dartmouth that 'they had sustained losses of upwards of two Thousand Pounds, Sterlg.' in 1768 by the seizure of their ships for violation of the Navigation Acts: notwithstanding the Petitioners had unmolested traded with necessary articles for the Fishery from Jersey to America without such clearance ever since the passing of these Acts, and although they had not been guilty of any fraudulent Practices, but had carried on a fair and lawful Trade under the inspection of the Officers of His Majesty's Customs and of the Commanders of His Majesty's Ship stationed there, who had frequently examined their ships and ladings and till then had never objected to their Clearance being out of Jersey.

The Treasury Lords had ordered the restitution of the 'King's Part' of the sale in 1771, but the Robins had only been able to recover about £250, 'which with other Losses and Disappointments had nearly obliged them to forsake the Settlement they had formed in the said Bay of Chaleurs in Canada and had reduced them to apprehend that unless they were protected and favored they would at last be forced to leave an Undertaking which had cost them the greatest Trouble and Expense/ Therefore, since they 'had been the first since that part of America belonged to His Majesty who attempted to make a settlement there, by which means great numbers of Inhabitants and Fishermen who were preparing to abandon that Country had been induced to remain', and since they 'might form a very useful Settlement in that part of America almost uninhabited and procure the Improvements of Lands which lay barren and unprofitable, as they could by means of the Fishery they carried on give Encouragement to Planters to come and settle there (great many having applied to them for the purpose) provided they could give them Lands where to retire to in Winter and raise a comfortable Sustence',

After the Grand Dérangement / 75 the Robins requested a grant of the 'Bank' beach of Paspébiac, where they had their fishing establishment, and of 1,000 adjoining acres, as well as 5,000 acres to the eastward on the banks of the Riviere Paspébiac. Though the request was renewed in 1784, they never received the grant, and their successors had to acquire the beach piecemeal over the years, as well as a large tract at nearby Hopetown.21 Relations between the Jerseymen and the Acadians appear to have been cordial enough at this time, although later the name Robin was customarily qualified by 'maudit' in fishermen's mouths, for Charles Robin spent the Christmas holidays of 1769 with the Petit de Grat and Arichat planters'. He noted: 'This day the French drink pretty plenty if they have liquor, but observe it strictly. They don't even dance, although they do this on Sundays nor do they amuse themselves by any other Division.' But New Year's Day was another matter. . . Until spring loosened the ice in the harbour and brought New England fishermen and whalers to these waters, there was little enough for all to do except to keep merry and warm.22 The Recovery arrived from Jersey on May 3, but John Robin in the Hope was delayed by ice off the coast and had not yet arrived when Charles left for the Bay of Chaleur on May 24. On these spring voyages Charles traded along the coast, for the diary notes that late in May 1770, he went first to Cheticamp, where the Robins now had another establishment, and then on to Miramichi, Tracadie, Shippegan, Caraquet, Bonaventure, and Tracadigueche, before reaching Paspébiac on June 6. Since their ships had been delayed by ice, both in the voyage out from Jersey and in the Gut of Canso and the Gulf, Charles found that the Gaspé merchants and New England traders had already contracted with the fishermen of the coast for that season's catch. He was only able to count on the catch of four shallops of his own and a few small lots of dry cod from the Acadian fishing centres. These he supplemented with salmon salted on the Miramichi by Samuel Pitts of Boston, for which he paid in beaver and marten pelts. At the end of September, as he sailed for Arichat for the winter, he noted: left the Hope in the Road of Paspébiac, having delivered Captn. Hamon his orders, he is to sail the first fair weather for Santander with — quintals Dry Codfish, 86 Tierces 10 Barils Salmon & 47 Barils Cod Oyl, being all I could gather, after a great deal of work IL vexation, coming late in the Spring missed the Sales of part of our Salt, the Bay being full of New England Traders all the summer with Provisions.23 Soon there were also too many fishermen as well as traders for his taste; he noted some fifty sail in the Bay and observed 'They will destroy the Cap Ian/ which was vital for bait. Furs were still in good supply; that year he acquired 142 beaver pelts, 33 otters, 24 red foxes, 8 silver foxes,

76 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec 152 martens, and 1 wolverine. He was facing brisk competition from William Smith at Bonaventure, who got the Tracadie people's fish and furs because of Robin's lack of Russia sheeting which he had promised to bring them and because his shrouds were too narrow. Thus Robin lost '700 Ibs. Beaver & a quantity of other valuable Furrs, all of which I sh'd have had, had I six pieces of Russia Sheeting*. He found many New England fishermen engaged in Whaleboat fishing at G aspé and Bonaventure Island. They refused to put him ashore, since they wished no competition, and besides 'they are naturally ill-natured and cross, they are chiefly Road (Rhode) islanders.' Charles nonetheless thought the Yankees might become customers of his firm: I found that if these fishermen were sure to find salt at two Shillings Halifax per bushel they would bring none from home, as also hooks, Lines, Leads, Nets & other fishing Gear, the price of their fish is half guinea per Quintal.24 The following year he found them 'very indifferent to sell', unless they could get this price in drafts on Boston, where he evidently had some connections, for he had collected a debt due Thomas Gray of that place in 1772 from John Urquehart of Nipisiquit (Bathurst). In the spring of 1773 he came to the Bay aboard a schooner from Boston, where he had evidently established an agency, for he shipped his furs there that year. Robin was still concerned about establishing Acadians on the G aspé coast, for in May 1774 he brought out from Jersey a number of them recruited at Saint-Malo, only to encounter the same opposition from the Quebec authorities that the Halifax ones had earlier offered to the Acadians' return: May 10, 1774. . .our Captns returned from Bonaventure with permits to land their Cargoes, they brought me a letter from Mr. Smith telling me he could not give permits from the Acadians & their Baggage. . .as there was nothing mentioned of them in our papers without I give him a Bail to be answerable to the Government of Quebec; I set out that moment for Bonaventure by Land, with all the Acadians at 3 p.m. went to Van Felson a Justice of the peace who arrived there late last fall he had been in the Bay at different times these last ten years. They offered to take the Oath of Allegiance & Fidelity to the King but he refused to Administer it, till he had orders from the Governor, he was wrote to the Governor against us; Gave a Manifest of the Acadians & their Baggage to Mr. Smith & in consideration of a bond of £400 Stng. that I should stand to what the Government would order he gave us permits to land them.25 Smith came to Paspébiac three days later to confer with Robin, who determined to send one of his skippers to Quebec: Ί hope he'll be there

After the Grand Dérangement / 77 before Felson's Letter comes to the Governor as it is not yet gone, & before he is prejudiced against us: we may be able to settle our affair.' The next day some of the Acadians were sent to Bonaventure, and the following one four families of them to Tracadigueche. With these new additions to the population of the Chaleur coast, it was necessary for George Allsopp of Messrs Boone & LeMerchant of Quebec to buy a vessel to bring down the provisions which Robin had ordered. It is clear that the Robins deserve considerable credit for developing the Bay of Chaleur fisheries and for providing employment for the Acadians whom they either found there or induced to settle there. These 'planters' soon developed a mixed economy of fishing and subsistence farming. The latter enterprise rarely flourished since good land was scarce in the region; and sometimes crop failure was total, so that the Robins often had to advance provisions from their stores to keep the populace alive until the fishing season began. But this industry itself was also cyclical, and waters which had produced rich catches one year might prove barren another, which meant more credit had to be extended. If the traditional view of the fishermen was that the Robins exploited them by buying fish cheaply and selling provisions dearly and so keeping them always in debt, there was also another side to the story; for when competition was brisk the fishermen who had accepted advances might take their fish to another merchant who offered better terms or more attractive goods. Recovery of debts from fishermen was difficult, if not impossible, and this fact proved the downfall of most of the Robins' competitors in the long run; And then, in addition to the risks of a risky trade, there were other hazards implicit in the business, notably shipwreck and fire. A conflagration destroyed Charles's dwelling and records in 1772 when he was absent from Paspébiac, leaving him with only a 'pair of Breeches & a few things at my Laundress & what I had with me at Caraquet'.26 Despite the fact that they were staunch British Protestants, the Robins had a difficult time with colonial officials who distrusted Frenchmen and Catholics in general and Acadians in particular. Long after Whitehall decided that the Acadians should be allowed to return and be granted lands, the Nova Scotia officials formally protested the imperial policy, and privately favoured instead newcomers from the American colonies or from Britain, or 'Foreign Protestants' from Europe. There were recurrent alarms about French intrigues among the Acadians and Indians, and it was long before the latter got the French-speaking priests whom they had repeatedly requested to minister to them. A gathering of the Indians at Isle Madame to receive the ministrations of a priest from Saint-Pierre in 1765-they had not seen one for five years—produced a panic among

78 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec the new settlers, which was echoed when the Indians again gathered in Cape Breton in 1766. That year Lieutenant Governor Michael Francklyn of Nova Scotia applied for permission to obtain two priests from Canada for them, in order to break off their communication with Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. Governor Palliser in Newfoundland shared Francklyn's fears about the preservation of French influence over the Indians and 'the rebellious and more dangerous Acadians', as well as the dangers of clandestine trade between the French islands and Cape Breton.27 As late as November 1765 the Board of Trade had rejected the petition of Stephen Landry and other Acadians in Maryland and Pennsylvania for leave to settle in Nova Scotia or Quebec, by preference in G aspé or on the Bay of Chaleurs. Their Lordships advised the Secretary of State that it would also be well to remove the settlers at Gaspé further inland, 'to keep them from continuing their connection with the Ftench'.28 But the tide soon turned in favour of the Acadians. Michael Francklin, whose wife Susannah was the daughter of Joseph Butineau of Boston and closely connected with Peter Faneuil, the eminent Boston Huguenot merchant, was not given to hysterical francophobia like most of his predecessors. His policy of granting lands to the Acadians driven by the French from Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in 1767, and to others already in the province as squatters—on the basis of eighty acres to heads of families and forty more to every other member of the family, subject to taking an oath of allegiance—was heartily approved in Whitehall, despite Chief Justice Jonathan Belcher's stubborn objection that lands could not be legally granted to Catholics. The Secretary of State informed Francklyn that 'every encouragement, consistent with the public safety, was to be given them; and that it was His Majesty's intention to compensate them for the deprivation of the benefits they had so rashly forfeited.'29 Hillsborough held that 'The laws of Great Britain which prohibit papists from taking or holding grants by grant or purchase, do not extend to the plantations; His Majesty's pleasure therefore is that his Acadian subjects who shall comply with the requisition in the proclamation published in November last, shall have grants in fee in Nova Scotia.' The Acadians were henceforth to be welcome settlers in their own land. Francklyn added his own assurance that 'the Government has not the least Design to molest or disturb them on account of their Religion,'30 and in July he exempted them from militia training, 'which they conceived as a hardship, being unprovided with arms. . . ' He added: 'It is the King's intention, and I do expect, they be treated by the Officers of Government will all Possible Mildness and Tenderness upon every occasion to the end that they may not have the least cause to repent of their having submitted in so ample a manner to his Majesty's Government'.31

After the Grand Dérangement / 79 But Francklyn did simultaneously warn Governor Guy Carleton of Quebec that a few Acadians who had refused to take the oath were going to Quebec, 'hoping to mix themselves, unnoticed, among the Canadians' and he urged Carleton to deal as he saw fit with 'such obstinate perseverance in withholding the allegiance due to the king, and so contrary to the example of the rest of those people'.32 Francklyn also found 'irreproachable' the conduct of the first post-Conquest Catholic missionary in the Maritimes, the Abbé François Bailly de Messein, subsequently coadjutor bishop of Quebec, and thought it promised to be 'of great benefit to this Province by quieting the minds of the Indians. . .and reconciling the consciences of the Acadians who have lately taken the Oaths of Allegiance to His Majesty's Government'. He also rallied to the defence of Père Bonaventure of Restigouche, the Recollet who had been Of great use in preventing differences between the People who Fished thereabouts and the Indians'.33 All French-speaking priests were no longer to be considered potential LeLoutres. The pattern of encouraging resettlement of the Acadians, set by the Robins, Haldimand, and Michael Francklyn, was also followed by J.F.W. Des Barres, a Swiss Huguenot, who was engaged in surveying the coast of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton in preparation for his great mariner's guide, The Atlantic Neptune, when in 1768 he obtained a grant of Acadian lands on Cumberland Basin, which he called the Menudie Estate or 'The Elysian Fields'. It consisted of 7,000 acres, of which 3,000 were dyked lands, cleared upland, and orchards. That same year he installed ten families there, giving each 200 acres. The eighteen original tenants were all Acadians, bearing such familiar, if misspelled, names as Burg, Bourg, Melancon, Babin, Foret, Léger, Como, and Brin. The marshes were to be drained and dyked at Desbarres's cost and thereafter maintained at the tenants' cost. He supplied his settlers with breeding stock and was to get half the* increase, one-third of the grain, and one-quarter of the proceeds of the mills, half of whose cost of construction he paid.34 These were not harsh conditions for an eighteenth-century landowner to lay down. In 1795 Captain John Macdonald made a notable report to the absentee landlord Desbarres on the state of 'Fields' and its Acadian tenants. He observed that their dwellings were not impressive, though their barns were 'Sumptions'. He judged them to be: Ignorant, & therefore, as well as because several in the County are not the best people in the world, Suspicious of almost everyone. They kept at a distance from the Intercourse of others, by which, if they improve less in some respects, they degenerate less in other respects. They have customs of their own, of which they are tenacious, some of which are worse & some better than our Customs.

80 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec The Acadians were criticized as bad farmers, but Macdonald observed: 'the whole County are bad farmers & do not seem Likely to do Justice to the lands, and if the Acadians are worse in some points, they are better in others.' He made a memorable analysis of the attitude of the English-speaking settlers towards the Acadians: They readily see the Imperfections on the part of the Acadians as the British in Canada do the faults of the Canadians, because we are a Saucy Nation too ready to despise others—because we have happened to be the Conquerors—We are of a different origin, Religion &c. &c. Having taken them in an early stage, we have destroyed them and the course of their prospective Improvement in their own way, & all that has succeeded since we proudly attribute to ourselves instead of giving any credit for the unavoidable Improvement & growth in America of 36 Years more time; While we do not perceive the faults on our own Sides, because they are ours and their ways differ from ours. Sure I am we are not more virtuous or happy than they are and I fear we have made them worse men and less happy than they have been.35

Captain Macdonald's account of the Acadians thirty years after their return reflects a tolerance rarely found earlier in the Maritimes. Thus it was that thanks to Jersey fishing entrepreneurs, a Swiss professional soldier, a Huguenot lieutenant-governor, and a Swiss surveyor and placeman, the re-establishment of the Acadians in the land of their fathers began in the 1760s, after imperial instructions had ended the Nova Scotian officials' policy of exiling them forever. During their exile their old lands had largely been taken up by the new Protestant settlers favoured by the officials in Halifax, and in many cases when the Acadians made their tortuous way back to the Maritimes they found their old homes occupied by the newcomers and had to start from scratch in less favoured regions. They were to suffer further dislocation from later waves of immigrants, first the Loyalists and then the Scots and the Irish, but they were also to find some good friends among the newcomers who aided their slow but persistent recovery from the Grand Derangement.

Notes 1 Thomas B. Akins (ed.), S elections from the Public Documents of the Province of Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1869), p. 303, Lawrence-Governors, 1 July 1756. 2 Ibid., p. 304, Lords of TYade-Lawrence, 10 March 1757. 3 Ibid., pp. 342-3, Halifax-Wilmot, 11 February 1764. 4 Nova Scotia A 71, p. 32, Robin-Governor, 24 May 1763; p. 37, Robin-

After the Grand Derangement / 81 Guiguinen, 24 May 1763. 5 Akins, N.S. Doc., 340, Wilmot-Board of Trade, 10 Dec. 1763. 6 NS A 71, pp. 41-4, Robin-Schallburn, 24 May 1763; A 71-1, p. 190, RobinLords of TYade, 20 April 1763. 7 NS 71, pp. 57-60, Robin-Petipas; Robin-Vigneau, 10 juin 1763. 8 NS A 72, pp. 163, 167. 9 NS A 75, p. 23, Lords of Trade-Wilmot. 10 NS A 74, Halifax-Wilmot, 9 June 1764; ibid., p. 83, Lords of Trade-King. 11 NS A 75, p. 16, order in council. 12 NS A 75, p. 100, Wilmot-Lords of Trade, 5 Nov. 1764. 13 PAC, 'Journal of Charles Robin, 1767-87* [microfilm]. 14 I am greatly indebted to Arthur G. Legros of Paspébiac, P.Q., for the opportunity to study these documents, and for his kindness in sharing with me his vast knowledge of the Robin enterprise. I am also indebted to Lady Phyllis McKie of London for permission to use Charles Robin's journal, now deposited in Jersey but available on microfilm at the PAC. 15 Arthur, G. Legros, 'Charles Robin on the Gaspé Coast, 1766' Ch. Ill, Revue de l'histoire de la G as pesie (RHG), II, p. 3 (juillet-sep. 1964), 146. 16 Ibid., p. 148. 17 Ibid., pp. 149-50. 18 At 10 shillings a quintal; Mr. Legros's estimate On the high side'. 19 Paper by R.S. Saunders, read at meeting of La Société Jersiaise; cited by Legros, ibid., p. 148. 20 Akins, N.S. Docs., Wilmot-Captain Williams, 2 Dec. 1765. 21 Legros, Ch. IV, Pts. l k 2, RHG, III, 1-2 (jan-mars-avril-juin 1965). 22 Legros, Ch. V, Pt. 1, RHG, III, 3 (juillet-sept 1965), p. 152. 23 Legros, Ch. V, Pt. 1, RHG, III, 3 (juillet-sept 1965), p. 152. 24 Ibid., p. 15. 25 PAC, 'Charles Robin's Journal', p. 245. 26 Legros, Ch. V, Pt. 22, RHG, IV, 1 (jan-mars 1966), pp. 11-12. 27 NS A 78, p. 83, Francklyn-Lords of Trade, 13 Sept. 1766; ibid., p. 151, Palliser-Francklyn, 16 Oct. 1766. 28 NS 76, p. 187, Lords of TVade-Conway, 8 Nov. 1765. 29 NS 81, p. 125, Francklyn-Shelburne, 20 Feb. 1768; p. 129, HillsboroughFrancklyn, 26 Feb. 1768; p. 131, Hillsborough-Francklyn, 21 June 1768. 30 Akins, N.S. Does., 354, Francklyn-Deschamps, 1 June 1768. 31 Ibid., pp. 354-5, Francklyn-Col. H.D. Denson, 4 July 1768. 32 Ibid., p. 355, Francklyn-Carleton, 4 July 1768. 33 Ibid., p. 356, Francklyn-Carleton, 18 Aug. 1768. 34 PAC, MG 23, F 1-2, J.F.W. DesBarres Papers, Menudie Estate 1768, Tatamagouche Estate, 1795, Second Séries. 35 Ibid.

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5

Outpost of New France and New England

From its known beginnings, the Acadian region was the scene of interaction between French and English, and French and English had been living together there under British rule for half a century when New France finally passed into British hands in 1760 with the Capitulation in Montreal. This past has done much to shape the present, and so must be summed up here, before entering upon the detailed history of the later period with which this work is chiefly concerned. Whether or not the Vikings made an early settlement at Anse-aux-Meadows in Newfoundland, ocean-going fishermen from France and Britain had sailed westward in search of unknown island and lands for years before Columbus "discovered" America for Spain. Shipmasters in the pay of Bristol merchants sought the "island of Brasylle" and the "Seven Cities" in the 1480s and 1490s, and Robert Thome and Hugh Elyot may have reached Newfoundland in 1494. The Genoese John Cabot, sailing for the Bristol merchants with a commission from Henry VIII, made his American landfall on June 24, 1497, probably on the southeastern shore of Newfoundland, but perhaps at Cape Breton. He was confident that he had reached northeastern Asia, and returned the following year to the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, vainly searching for Marco Polo's Cipangu. He found no treasure on land, though he reported that the sea was "swarming with fish"; and it was not until 1509 that his Englishborn son Sebastian was able to find Bristol backing for another voyage, during which he coasted southward past the Banks to Cape Hatteras. Stimulated by the treasure of gold and silver which Cortez had found in Mexico, and by Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe in 1522, Francis I of France sent out Verrazano late in 1523 to find a northern passage to Asia. This Florentine navigator seems to have made land along the New Jersey coast, to have mistaken Delaware or Chesapeake Bay for the Pacific Ocean, and to have explored New York harbour, Narragansett Bay, and the coast of Maine. Upon his voyage rested France's subse-

84 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec quent claims to the region, as England's did upon the Cabots' voyages and those of John Rut and Master Höre of London in 1527 and 1536. In his first three voyages of 1534, 1535, and 1536, Jacques Cartier, who may have sailed with Verrazano and certainly had the benefit of French fishermen's knowledge of the "Great Bay", formally asserted the French claim to the Gulf and Valley of the St. Lawrence. But the disastrous joint expedition in 1541 of Cartier and Roberval whose barrels of "fine gold" and "precious stones of great value", turned out, upon their return to France, to be fool's gold and corundum crystals, dampened further royal interest in the New World for half a century in France torn by the religious wars. (Rebelias referred scornfully to "un diamant du Canada.") Yet during these years, growing numbers of French and British fishermen frequented the Grand Banks, and Basques and Frenchmen launched the whaling and fur trade at Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay. By the turn of the century, the swelling St. Lawrence fur trade attracted Royal attention in France, and Samuel de Champlain, newly appointed a Royal geographer on the strength of his report on the Spanish West Indies, was sent out to survey the St. Lawrence in 1603. On his return to the Gulf from the now deserted site of Cartier's Hochelaga (Montreal), Champlain was told by the Sieur Prévert, of rich mines of copper, silver and iron in the Bay of Fundy. Searching for these mines and a shorter and less difficult route to the interior by some river leading from the Atlantic coast, Champlain established the first permanent French colony in North America at Port Royal in 1605, after the disastrous first attempt at settlement at Sainte-Croix the previous winter. But France's claims to the southwestward, based upon Verrazano's voyage and Champlain's careful survey of the coast as far south as Vineyard Haven; and England's claims to the Maine coast, based upon John Wallace's trading at Penobscot about 1580, Bartholomew Gosnold's expedition to Massachusetts in 1602, George Weymouth's to the Penobscot in 1605, and the foundation of the shortlived Popham colony on the Kennebec in 1607-8, began the long AngloFrench conflict for dominion over the Maritime area, which was only concluded with the Peace of Paris in 1763. In letters patent of 1606 and 1607, James I granted to the Companies of London and Virginia all the territory from the 34th to the 45th degree of latitude, disregarding the French establishments within these limits. Just what was meant by the "ancient boundaries of Acadia", was in dispute between the two rival empires from the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 until an obscure clash in the Ohio country launched the final round of the American Hundred Years War in 1754.

Outpost of New France and New England / 85 The rival claims of French and British based upon early exploration and attempts at settlement are perhaps best described in the opening lines of Edward Hayes' Voyage of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 158S: Many voyages have been pretended, yet hitherto never any thorowly accomplished by our nation of exact discovery into the bowels of these maine, ample and vast countreys, extended infinitely into the North from 30 degrees of Septentrional! latitude, neither has a right bene taken of planting a Christian habitation and regiment upon the same, as well may appeare both by the little we yet do actually possesse therein, and by our ignorance of the riches and secrets within those unto this day we know chiefly by the travell and report of other nations, and most the French, who albeit they can not challenge such right and interest unto the sayd countreys as we, neither these many yeeres have had opportunity nor means so great to discover and to plant (being vexed with the calamities of intestine warres) as we have had by the inestimable benefit of our long and happy peace: yet have they both waies performed more, and had long since attained a sure possession and setled government of many provinces in these Northerly parts of America, if their many attempts into those forren and remote lands had not bene impeached by their gar boils at home.1

Gilbert's annalist was quite convinced that "the English nation onely hath right unto these countreys of America from the cape of Florida Northward by the privilege of first discovery", and that "the French did but review that before discovered by the English nation, usurping upon our right, and imposing names upon countreys, rivers, bayes, capes, or head lands, as if they had been the first finders of those coasts." The French were to complain of the English habit of doing the same thing. The Anglo-French conflict was natural and inevitable, because of the region's strategic geographical position, as important for trade and for warfare. It was the portion of the mainland which projected farthest east toward Europe and was closest to the rich fishing banks, while Cape Breton Island was a stepping stone to the farthest outpost of North America, Newfoundland. Unlike much ofthat bleak latter island, Acadia was heavily wooded, with hardwoods as well as fir, and offered abundant fur and edible game. It also had many good harbors for careening ships and drying fish. The extraordinarily high tides of the long, narrow Bay of Fundy created marshes, which when dyked provided cleared land of great fertility. For fisherman, furtrader, and colonist alike, Acadia had attractions as a New World base. Since it was equally accessible from the route to the St. Lawrence from France and the route from England to New England, it became the eastern outpost and flank of both empires in North America. The rivalry for control of this key area began early and continued until the end of the French empire in North America. Eight years after

86 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec DesMonts and Champlain founded Port Royal, Captain Samuel Argall of Virginia completely destroyed the French settlements both there and at Saint-Sauveur on the Maine coast, although Poutrincourt's son Biencourt and some companions escaped to the woods. Since the Virginians made no attempt at colonization and did not return, Biencourt was able to come back to Port Royal in 1615, and continue the fur trade and fishery, along with some farming, the land being "good to work, game abundant, and fish aplenty."2 He was backed by La Rochelle merchants who sent out a vessel annually with provisions and tradegoods, which returned to France with a cargo of fur and fish. Pont-Grave's son likewise continued to trade with the Indians for fur at a post 6 leagues up the Saint John River. The fur trade of Acadia, which produced 25,000 skins in 1616, attracted other French traders from Bordeaux, while Virginia attempted to drive all the French merchants off the coast. In 1618 Biencourt appealed to the aldermen of Paris to send out colonists annually with provisions, "to preserve the liberty of the fishery, which is worth each year a million in gold to France." This appeal fell upon deaf ears in France, though the Acadian trade was profitable enough to involve Biencourt in brushes with his rivals in Acadia and lawsuits in France. When Biencourt died in 1623 or 1624, his colleague Charles Turgis dit La Tour, son of one of Poutrincourt's soldiers at Port Royal, took possession of his chief's estate, thus incurring a later lawsuit from Biencourt's mother. La Tour abandoned Port Royal in favour of Cape Sable, at the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia, where he built a post called Fort Lomeron. Meanwhile Acadia had become Nova Scotia for Englishmen, when the Scottish poet and courtier, Sir William Alexander, obtained in 1621 a grant from his friend King James I, of all the region north of New England and east of the St. Croix River as far as the Gulf of St. Lawrence. James was not worried about conflicting grants, for a month and a half later he granted to one Robert Gordon de Lochinvar as the barony of Galloway the north shore of Acadia, Cape Breton and the Gulf Islands, an area included in the Alexander grant, which itself embraced all the French claims. Despite the loss of £6,000 sterling in an abortive colonization attempt in 1622, Alexander persisted in his venture and obtained from Charles I in 1625 the right to create baronets of Nova Scotia, who in return for payment of three thousand marks3 obtained title to domains of 300 square miles, on condition of establishing six colonists. Having disposed of 43 baronetcies at the later cut rate of a thousand marks, Alexander sent out a fleet of four ships in 1627 and landed 70 colonists at Port royal, which was renamed Scots' Fort. Early the following year Alexander persuaded the king to make a further grant of all territory

Outpost of New France and New England / 87 form the Gulf of St. Lawrence to California. That fall he combined with the Kirkes, Huguenot merchants of London, to form the Scottish and English Company for trade in the St. Lawrence, which early in 1629 received a monopoly of that trade. Meanwhile Charles La Tour, finding his modest enterprise at Cape Sable losing ground to French competition and also threatened by the Scottish establishment at Port Royal, appealed to Louis XIII and Richelieu for assistance, "for the preservation of the Coast of Acadia", a land he declared to be rich in forests, mines, fish, and fur. This message, carried to France by his father Claude de La Tour, produced for the new Company of 100 Associates to which Richelieu had granted a monopoly of the trade of New France including Acadia, simply the right to trade freely, provided he turned over all his furs to the Company at a fixed rate. The elder La Tour was captured by David Kirke on his return voyage and taken to England, where he was persuaded to pass into English service. In 1630 the Scottish and English Company sent out two fleets, one of which under David Kirke, completed the conquest of New France, while the other under the younger Alexander, accompanied by Claude de La Tour and Lord Ochiltree, the representative of Robert Gordon, headed for Port Royal. Ochiltree landed on Cape Breton and built a post for his 50 colonists at Port-aus-Baleines (Whale Cove), which was soon captured and destroyed by Captain Daniel of the Company of New France. The latter then established a French post on the east coast at Grand-Cibou (St. Ann's), where he left a garrison of 40 men, before sailing home with his prisoners. Young Alexander reprovisioned the Scots' Fort and engaged in the fur trade along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, while Claude de La Tour soon persuaded his son to make common cause with the Scots. According to an agreement signed at Port Royal in October 1629, the La Tours were granted "all the country and coast of Acadia" from Yarmouth to Lunenburg, in exchange for their promise to be "good and faithful subjects and vassals" of the British Crown. In the fall, Alexander and the elder La Tour returned to Britain, where the latter was made a baronet of Nova Scotia. The following spring both La Tours, father and son, each received a barony, while Charles was also created a baronet. But in the spring of 1630 the Company of 100 Associates, which was pressing through diplomatic channels for the return of Quebec and Acadia to France, sent out four ships, two of which were to trade and fish at Cape Breton, while the others landed at Cape Sable. The commander of the latter, Captain Marot, bore letters from one of the Associates, Jean Tufet, who urged La Tour not to be taken in by the English and offered to provide him with provisions, arms and men. Accompanied by

88 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec the news that Louis XIII was determined to obtain the return of New France, these letters were sufficient to persuade Charles de La Tour to accept the offer, and to protest that he would have chosen "death rather than to condescend to such wickedness" as his father had proposed in attempting to woo him to English allegiance.4 With filial piety, Charles then sent word to his father of the turn of events in Europe and urged him and his wife to come to Fort Lomeron when occasion offered. Charles promptly received his reward for turning his coat once more and resuming his original allegiance, for in the spring of 1631 he was given a commission from the Company naming him as an Associate and as "Lieutenant-General" in the Country of Acadia, Fort Louis, Fort de La Tour and the places depending thereon", with the right to command and trade there. The Company also sent other vessels to trade at Miscou on the Gulf and to provision the French post Fort Sainte-Anne at Cape Breton (Grand-Cibou). Since Port Royal, unlike Quebec, had been captured before the end of the war, England refused to surrender it until France paid the dowry of Charles Fs wife, Henrietta Maria of France, sister of Louis XIII. Long drawn-out negotiations were finally concluded by the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye in March 1632, under which both Quebec and Acadia were to be surrendered to France that summer in exchange for the payment of 400,000 livres of the dowry. Alexander, burdened by debts and losses, was promised a Royal grant of £10,000 which was never paid, though on April 22, 1635, the Council for New England granted him "all that part of the mainland in New England from St. Croix, adjoining New Scotland, along the sea to Pemaquid and up the river to the Kinebequi to be henceforth called the Country of Canada."5 The Scottish colony at Port Royal had dispersed and their fate is not definitely known, but there is a persistent legend they were absorbed into the French population, as indicated by such Gallicized Scottish names as Melanson (Mallinson), Kuessy (Kessie), Fesselet (Paisley), and Pitre (Pétrie). In May 1632, Isaac de Razilly was commissioned by the Company of New France as govenor of Acadia, and for four years he did much to develop the colony, settling between 100 and 200 colonists, who with a few later immigrants became the ancestors of the Acadian people. After his death in 1636, a bitter conflict broke out between his lieutenant, Charles de Mènou, Sieur D'Aulnay de Charnisay, and Charles de La Tour. Their competition for control of the fur trade was complicated by a confused royal ruling of 1638, which gave D'Aulnay the rich furtrading area of the north shore of the Bay of Fundy, but not the post at Saint John; while La Tour got the peninsula of Nova Scotia, but not

Outpost of New France and New England / 89 Port Royal, where D'Aulnay had moved his base from La Hève on the coast. D'Aulnay and La Tour then began to wage war against each other in the manner of "feudal lords'* of the Middle Ages, in Parkman's phrase, with an almost total disregard of national allegiance. Each called in the assistance of the Bostonians, whose merchants became increasingly interested in the Acadian trade. La Tour borrowed money in Boston by mortgaging all his property to Major Edward Gibbons, but D'Aulnay finally succeeded in discrediting La Tour in Boston and thus emerged victor in their long struggle. Both men held royal commissions as lieutenant-general of Acadia, and both bombarded the King with complaints against the other. Finally in 1642, D'Aulnay received orders to arrest La Tour and send him home to France. For this purpose he blockaded Saint John, but in June 1643, La Tour managed to evade the blockade and flee to Boston, where he had earlier sent Huguenot envoys seeking free trade, armed aid against D'Aulnay, and the right to import English merchandise. Only the first request was granted by Governor Winthrop, who agreed with John Endicott that "as long as La Tour were to come out on top, we should have in him a bad neighbor, and I fear we should be little subject to be content to have had dealings with these idolatrous French."6 However, the stern Puritan governor was not one to allow principle to stand in the way of profit, and he permitted La Tour to charter four armed ships and a pinnace, manned with 70 New England volunteers and 140 Huguenots from La Rochelle. This rented fleet enabled La Tour to break up D'Aulnay's blockade of Saint John and to pursue his rival to Port Royal, where the invaders burnt a mill and killed some of D'Aulnay's men. On the return voyage La Tour captured a pinnace from Pemaquid belonging to his rival, which was loaded with 18,000 livres worth of fur. While Boston wrangled over theological justification for the aid Winthrop had granted to La Tour, D'Aulnay carried his cause to France. Upon his return, in accordance with royal orders, he signed a treaty of friendship and commerce with Winthrop in 1644, which was subsequently ratified by the recently formed confederation of the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. In supporting this agreement, Winthrop argued that by it "we were freed from the fear that our people were in, that M. D'Aulnay would take revenge on our small vessels or our plantations."7 It is clear that New England was already deeply interested in the Nova Scotian fur trade, which was soon to become of increasing concern to it. Learning in April 1645 that La Tour had gone to Boston to seek further aid, D'Aulnay besieged Fort Saint-Jean. Despite the stout re-

90 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec sistance inspired by Madame La Tour, the outnumbered garrison were forced to surrender. D'Aulnay hanged some of his prisoners, and according to Nicolas Denys, forced Madame La Tour to watch their execution with a noose around her own neck. She is reportred to have died three weeks later "of spite and rage", and with her death, La Tour's fortunes declined. He sought from the French in Newfoundland, the aid he had been denied in Boston, and then turned quasi-pirate. But when he came to Quebec in 1646, he was received with honor and lodged in the Château Saint-Louis, the governor's residence, presumably to keep him in the French interest. D'Aulnay continued to demand reparations from Massachusetts for the losses he had suffered as a result of Boston's aiding of La Tour, and finally signed a new treaty of friendship after being appeased by the gift of a splendid sedan chair, belonging to the Viceroy of Mexico, which had been captured in the West Indies by a Boston privateer. D'Aulnay's death in 1650 brought La Tour back to Acadia the following year. He promptly married his rival's widow and resumed possession of Fort Saint-Jean. Less than a year later he received the same full powers as lieutenant-general and governor of Acadia, as well as a monopoly of the fur trade from the St. Lawrence to Virginia, which D'Aulnay had been given by the French king in 1645, as a reward for subduing his rebellious rival. But D'Aulnay's chief backer in France, the La Rochelle merchant Emmanuel Le Borgne, held a large claim which he satisfied by taking possession of Port Royal and by frightening D'Aulnay's widow into acknowledging the debt on behalf of herself and her children. Le Borgne then captured Nicolas Denys' post at Saint-Pierre in Cape Breton, and burnt the establishment at La Hève. Le Borgne was prepared to attack La Tour, when he found himself suddenly attacked by the New Englanders. For in 1654 Major Robert Sedgwick of Massachusetts led an expedition, which had been organized on Cromwell's orders to attack the Dutch at New York, against Acadia instead, since "It was conseaved that to spend a lytle time upon ye coast in lookinge after ye French might torne to some accompt."8 Sedgwick and his force of 900 men captured La Tour at Fort Saint-Jean, took Port Royal out of hand, and won La Hève after meeting vigorous resistance. Nicolas Denys, who in 1653 had received a large grant from the Company of New France, running from Canso to G aspé in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and who had also been named governor of this coast and of the islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and Saint-Jean (P.E.I.), was not disturbed by the English. In 1658 he established a sedentary fishery at Chedabucto, but he was ruined in the end by a series of trade wars with Ftançois Doublet and the Sieur de La

Outpost of New France and New England / 91 Giraudiere and by the destruction by fire of his principal post at SaintPierre, in the year before his death in 1688. Denys had also established fisheries at Port Rossignol and Chedabucto on the south shore of the peninsula, as well as a timber camp at La Hève. With his family's customary flexibility about allegiance, Charles La Tour changed sides once more after Sedgewick's conquest of Acadia. In 1656 he obtained from Cromwell a concession running from La Hève to the St. George River in Maine, which he held in common with Colonel Thomas Temple, nephew of Lord Keeper Tiennes, and Willaim Crowne, a rich Boston merchant. The three partners were to give security for the mortgage which Major Gibbons of Boston still held on La Tour's goods and for the £1,812 which the state had expended on the military conquest of Acadia. All products of Acadia were to be exported to Britain; the laws of England were to prevail "so far as the Condition of the place shall admit" ; and Cromwell was to receive annual feudal dues of twenty moose skins and twenty beaver skins.9 La Tour almost immediately sold out his interests to his English partners, in exchange for a twentieth share of their profits. Colonel Temple, the new governor, spent £16,000 restoring the French trading posts. In 1658 Le Borgne's son Belle-Isle captured Temple's new post at La Hève, but was soon captured in turn and taken prisoner to Boston. Emmanuel Le Borgne had obtained from the Company of Newfoundland in 1657 a concession running from Baie Sainte-Marie (Bay of Fundy) to New England and was named governor and Lieutenant-General of Acadia by Louis XIV, but failed to win the return of his properties from Cromwell, despite the Anglo-French treaty of 1655. Le Borgne de Belle-Isle finally won control in 1668 of the Acadian territory which had remained in French hands. Perhaps fortunately, considering his much-turned coat, La Tour died four years before Acadia was returned to France under the Treaty of Breda (1667). Like La Tour and D'Aulnay before them, Temple and Crowne soon fell out and divided Acadia between them, with Temple getting Nova Scotia south and west to the Machias River and Crowne Maine west from that river to Muscongus Bay. Temple's proprietorship of Nova Scotia was attacked by the heirs of Viscount Stirling, the Kirkes, and the agents of Boston traders. Fortunately he was befriended and supported by Viscount Say and Sele and Thomas Povey, leaders of the new overseas entrepreneurs in England. In the end Temple's arguments against the restitution of Nova Scotia to France failed to prevail, and on January 10, 1671 he finally reported the surrender which he had previously failed to make in 1668 to the accredited French emessary, Mourillon du Bourg. Forced to rely on Boston suppliers, he had come to see matters through New England eyes, and protested to

92 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec the last against the confusion of Nova Scotia with Acadia. He and the New England merchants associated with him, were interested not only in the fisheries, but in naval stores and the fur trade. His heir, John Nelson, was to besiege the Lords of Trade with petitions pointing out the advantages of New England's possession of Nova Scotia and the disadvantages of French occupation of the region. Nelson suggested the St. George River, between the English and French empires, and urged a delimitation of coastal waters for the fisheries.10 These were realistic measures, which foreshadowed future developments. But for the time being, and for forty years to come, Acadia was in French hands for the most part. The first Acadian census of 1671 showed a population of 440, of whom three-quarters were concentrated at Port Royal, where 417 arpents were now under cultivation and there were 829 cattle and 400 sheep. There were still handfuls of Frenchmen at Miscou and Nipisguit, at Sainte-Anne and Saint-Pierre in Cape Breton, and at Chedabucto and La Hève on the South Shore. The English had driven the French from Pentagouet and Saint-Jean, but the peninsular French still traded with these places for furs and manufactured goods. Nicolas Denys was of opinion that Acadia could produce more for the King "in a year, than Quebec in forty years";11 but distrupted by private wars, religious rivalry, royal geographical confusion, and above all neglect by France, Acadia had failed to flourish, despite a better environment for colonization than that of the St. Lawrence Valley. Like New France, but seven years later, it passed under royal government after private enterprise had failed to accomplish the essential tasks of colonization. Though Colbert showed a flicker of interest in Acadia at first, and Talon proposed to open a road to it from the St. Lawrence, the region was once more neglected by a France which was chiefly concerned with the development of the St. Lawrence colony, more fertile and less exposed to English attack. Henceforth, as French expansion pressed westward and southward on the continent, defenseless Acadia became the target for New England's reprisals for Canadian raids on the English frontier settlements. In 1670 royal government in Acadia began under the command of the Chevalier de Grandefontaine, a veteran captain of the Carignan Regiment. The new governor established himself and his guard of 25 soldiers at Pentagoet (Penobscot) close to the frontier, confident that with the aid of the Abenakis, well disposed to the French and hostile to the English, he could protect the colony, whose 500 Frenchmen faced an expanding New England's 75,000 people. In 1671 Colbert sent out thirty young men and thirty girls to swell the slender population, and instructed the governor to encourage both new farms and unrestricted fishing. Colbert

Outpost of New France and New England / 93 favored friendly relations with New England, and declared that English fishermen should be allowed to fish on the same terms as the French. But no funds were supplied to implement Colbert's orders, and Talon had to send provisions from Quebec to Acadia and beg the home government to provide tools and arms. Following his instructions, Grandefontaine allowed the New Englanders to fish off the coast, and of necessity traded furs for food from Boston. His lieutenant, Joybert de Marson, with whom he had quarrelled, promptly reported to France that the governor favored the English and was furtrading for his own account while the people starved. Grandefontaine asked to be relieved of office and resumed his military career in 1673. Another Carignan Regiment captain, Jacques Chambly, who had constructed the fort on the Richelieu which later bore his name, was appointed commander in Acadia in 1673 and commissioned governor in 1676. Following orders from Frontenac, the governor of New France restricted foreign trade and fishing in Acadia, and thus provoked reprisals from Boston. In August 1674, the Dutch buccaneer Juranien Aërnauts attacked Pentagoet with a frigate manned by 110 men, and the outnumbered garrison was forced to surrender unconditionally. Aërnauts pillaged the fort and also captured Marson at the post of Jemseg on the Saint John, before returning to Boston to leave his prisoners. Frontenac vigorously protested that Boston was "harboring pirates", but paid the heavy ransoms which enabled Chambly, Marson and their men to return to Acadia. Chambly decided that Pentagoet was too exposed to English attack, and retired to Port Royal, where he was succeeded in 1677 by Marson, who died the following year. Continued French neglect of Acadia is indicated by the facts that no new governor was then appointed for five years, and no supplies were sent out from France. But Frontenac named as commander in Acadia, the Canadian-born Sieur de la Vallière, who had been granted the seigneury of Beaubassin at the head of the Bay of Fundy in 1676. Not until 1683 was he commissioned governor of Acadia. Meanwhile, the Abenakis, had become incensed by English encroachments on their territory and the New Englanders' custom of selling their Indian prisoners as slaves. In 1676, the Indians destroyed the settlements of Casco and Sagadahock, and hostilities continued for two years, until under the Treaty of Casco, Massachusetts recognized the Abenakis' right to the land east of the Kennebec. In feudal fashion, it was provided that each English settler in Indian territory was to pay a yearly rent of a peck of corn. Though the Treaty of Breda (1667) had fixed the boundary on the Kennebec, thirty leagues west of Pentagoet, the English had continued to settle east of it, and by 1671 their frontier farms reached as far

94 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec east as the St. George River. In 1678 they built Fort Pemaquid, east of the Kennebec, and claimed all the land west of the St. George. As their commissioner Edward Randolph admitted in a report to the Board of Trade, "the limit to their claims is fixed by their convenience or interest, and they never fail to claim a right to any region which suits them."12 While English agricultural colonization pushed steadily eastward, the Bostonians were also busy in the fur trade of Maine, which they had controlled from 1658 to 1670. They even traded cloth and tools for Acadian cattle at Port Royal, moving the Intendant de Meulles of New France to report in 1683 that the people of Port Royal "did all their business with Boston".13 Even more attractive to the New Englanders, were the Acadian fisheries, which they gradually monopolized, supplying themselves with wood and water and drying their fish on the French shore, without paying permit fees. They also helped themselves to boatloads of Cape Breton coal. When this situation became known in France, the King fell back in 1682 on the old remedy of establishing a trading company, which was to have a monopoly of fishing and hunting on a concession between Canso and Cap Rouge, and the right to trade freely with all the French islands and colonies in America. This Acadia Company established a base at Chedabucto, where flax, hemp, vegetables, fruit trees, and vines were planted. Once more the New Englanders resorted to piracy when barred from the fisheries, and captured six Port Royal ships and threatened the new establishment at Chedabucto. In 1684 Louis XIV issued an order, barring all foreigners from trading in Acadia and fishing in Acadian waters, and a copy was duly dispatched to New England. The Huguenot manager of the Acadia Company, Clerbaud Bergier, quarreled with the governor and complained to the Minister of the Marine, that the governor was selling fishing licenses to the English "in order to have something to live on". La Valliere was replaced in 1684 by Talon's nephew, Francois Perrot, who had been dismissed as governor of Montreal for illegal trading. Not surprisingly, the new governor found that "the colony could not get along without the English";14 so he issued fishing permits to the Bostonians, and even set up business himself, selling linen and wine to Boston. Dismissed from office in 1687, the enterprising Perrot remained in the colony and continued his profitable trade with Boston. In 1687 the French court finally devoted serious attention to Acadia and appointed as governor, the Chevalier de Menneval, one of the great Turenne's favored officers and a man of unimpeachable integrity. He was ordered to regard the Kennebec as the western frontier of the colony, and forbidden to grant fishing or trading licenses to foreigners. He was given 30 additional soldiers, making a grand total of 90 men to defend the

Outpost of New France and New England / 95 whole of Acadia. However, a frigate was also sent out from France to police the fishing grounds and drive off English intruders, while the engineer Pasquine was commissioned to build defense works at Port Royal. The Acadia Company bought French goods at Port Royal, but these, less abundant and dearer than English wares, did not find favor with the inhabitants. The English once more replied with warlike measures. Governor Andros of New England pillaged the French fort at Pentagoet in 1687, and the post at Chedabucto was captured the same year, while New Englanders continued to fish and trade along the Acadian coast. France lodged formal diplomatic protests against these actions, while the Abenakis, under the leadership of Chambly's lieutenant, the Baron de Saint-Castin, who had married into the tribe and settled at Pentagoet in 1676, retaliated more directly by raiding Casco in 1688 and capturing Dover, Maine, early 1689. Later that same year Saint-Castin and the Abenakis besieged and captured the heavily armed English fort at Pemaquid, which was defended by only 30 men, though it boasted 20 cannon. Before the English could send a relief force from Boston and Plymouth, Saint-Castin and the Abenakis sailed homeward in the captured English ships. Secure behind this Indian frontier force, which was encouraged by the French governors in Quebec to keep the expanding New England frontier in bloody turmoil, the peaceful Acadian farmers doubled in numbers between 1671 and 1686, opening up new lands in the Minas Basin and Cobequid Bay, Beaubassin, and the Peticodiac Valley as far west as Shepody, using the dyking techniques (aboiteaux) they had developed to drain the marsh lands about Port Royal. Though governors and intendants at Quebec granted seigneuries in Acadia, the segneurial system was even more relaxed there than along the St. Lawrence, and the Acadian farmers paid little heed to governor or seigneur. In 1704 it was said of them that, "they lived like true republicans, not acknowledging royal or judicial authority/'15 They had already become the "Neutral French" of Acadia, while Canadians and Indians maintained the French cause on the New England frontier. Then, goaded by the raids on the frontier settlements of Schenectady, Salmon Falls (Berwick), and Casco which Frontenac had instigated during the winter of 1689-90, the English colonists decided to attempt the conquest of Canada at an intercolonial congress held in New York in May. The plan was a combined operation by land and sea, the same strategy which was followed again and again in the American Hundred Years War and finally brought about the downfall of New France when the difficult dual operation was well coordinated. An English fleet, carrying regulars, was to capture Acadia and then sail up the St. Lawrence to Quebec, while 2,000 colonial mili-

96 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec tia, backed by 1,500 Iroquois, marched on Montreal by the ChamplainRichelieu route. Though British aid could not be obtained because of the threat of a French invasion of Ireland, a colonial army was raised; Sir William Phips, the Maine ship's carpenter who had won a fortune and his knighthood by raising a sunken Spanish treasure galleon in the West Indies, was given command of the fleet which New England mustered, and which Phips helped to equip out of his own pocket. Phips sailed from Nantasket early in May with 7 ships and 400 men, hoping to rescue Casco from the French and Indian siege, but finding that the place had already fallen, continued on to Port Royal, which he reached on May 20. Here, as elsewhere in Acadia, the fortifications were in ruins, and there were only 72 defenders to man them. Acadia had been almost totally neglected by France for years. The engineer Pasquine had recommended the fortification of La Heve, Canso, and Penobscot, and the abandonment of Port Royal, which he thought too far removed from Cape Breton, Newfoundland, or Canada to be relieved in case of sudden attack. He had also urged the completion of the road from Quebec to the Penobscot which Talon had commenced. But with its usual lack of haste in American matters, the French court was still considering these recommendations when Port Royal was attacked. Since the French were in no position to resist, Menneval obtained an honorable capitulation from Phips, who then promptly violated it by pillaging the settlement and burning the church. The New England admiral forced the inhabitants to swear allegiance to King William and named six magistrates to rule over them until an English governor should be appointed. Massachusetts did not name a governor, Colonel Tyng, until October 1691, and he and two traders, John Nelson and one Alden, were captured at sea by Villebon. Nelson was the heir of Colonel Thomas Temple and the holder of the Stirling claims to Nova Scotia. He was a wealthy merchant, who after a visit to Quebec in 1682, had been authorized by the French governor to issue licenses to New England vessels frequenting the Acadian coast. He was well treated as a prisoner at Quebec until he bribed two discontented Frenchmen to warn New England of the attack on Pemaquid. Then, until the peace of 1697, he languished in the dungeon where he evolved plans for a rational commercial settlement of Acadian problems. Phips also sent Captain Alden to seize La Hève and Canso and to devastate the French fishery at Percé in Gaspe. Taking Menneval, two priests, and fifty-nine French soldiers with him and leaving only a skeleton garrison at Port Royal, Phips then returned to Boston early in June to prepare for his expedition against Quebec. This easy victory was indecisive, as was usually the case in Acadia, for a few days later Villebon, the new French governor, resumed possession

Outpost of New France and New England / 97 of ruined Port Eoyal and then established himself on the Saint John River. After being forced to flee to Quebec and to seek help in France when his ship was captured, Villebon returned in 1691 with presents and arms for the Abenakis, whom from his new base at Nashwaak on the Saint John, he instigated to launch a series of devastating raids on such English settlements in Maine and New Hampshire as Wells, York, and Cochecto. In 1694 the Sieur de Villieu with a large party of Abenakis wiped out the settlement at Oyster River (Durham, N.H.); and Phips' efforts at making peace with the Abenakis at Wells in May 1695 were broken up by Saint-Castin and Father Thury. King William had finally agreed in 1693 to supply the military aid which Boston had been seeking since Phips' defeat at Quebec in 1690. An English expedition against Martinique and Canada was organized for the following winter. But General Wheeler's force lost more than half its strength from yellow fever in the West Indies; and after bringing the plague to Boston, the fleet returned to England after doing no more than shelling Plaisance in Newfoundland. After waging war successfully on the English in Hudson Bay, Iberville proposed to drive them from Newfoundland and the Acadian frontier. He argued that by destroying the English fishing stations on the eastern shore of Newfoundland, their commerce could be ruined, while their threat to Acadia could be eliminated by capturing Pemaquid, which had been strongly rebuilt to intimidate the Abenakis. It had served its purpose, for at a conference there in August 1693 with Phips, the Abenakis agreed to "throw their hatchets into the sea."16 With orders to accomplish the objective he had suggested, Iberville arrived at Quebec in the spring of 1696 with two ships. Here he enlisted 80 soldiers, and then returned to Cape Breton to pick up a force of Indians for the attack on Pemaquid. There he found letters from Villebon, with word that a blockade by English ships had forced him to retire up the Saint John River. Iberville promptly attacked the English squadron off Saint John in mid-July, capturing the Newport, a 24-gun frigate, while the other New England vessels escaped in a thick fog. Returning to Saint John, he picked up a small French force there and continued to the Penobscot, where his men were joined by 247 Abenakis led by the Baron de SaintCastin. Iberville's objective, Fort William Henry at Pemaquid, with twelvefoot stone walls guarded by 16 cannon and 95 men, had been built at the cost of £20,000 by Massachusetts to guard the frontier. When summoned to surrender, its commander, Captain Pascal Chubb, grandly replied that he would not yield "though the sea were covered with French vessels and the land with Indians." But soon after the first French can-

98 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec nonballs fell on the fort on August 15, he changed his mind and capitulated after one day's fighting. Iberville razed the fort and sailed back to the Penobscot to land his Indian allies. Leaving there, he escaped from a Boston squadron which had been sent to intercept him, and safely make his way to Newfoundland for the next phase of his one-man continental war against the English. On his voyage, he drafted a plan for an attack on Boston, which the French attempted the following year. But after Iberville had reduced Pemaquid, the English promptly sought revenge on Acadia. One month later Major Benjamin Church with 400 New Englanders and 50 Indians, sacked the settlement of Beaubassin at the head of the Bay of Fundy, despite Phip's guarantee in 1690 of neutrality to its inhabitants, upon their promise not to bear arms against the English. The Acadian settlers were forced to seek refuge in the forest. On his way home to Boston, Church met another New England force commanded by John Hawthorne, who had orders to capture Villebon's fort at Nashwaak on the Saint John. But the French governor drove off the attackers after a two-day siege late in October. Upon his arrival at Plaisance, the French fishing centre on the southeastern shore of Newfoundland, in mid-September Iberville had to await the return of Governor Brouillan, who had set out with one royal ship and eight St. Malo fishing craft to surprise St. John's, the center of the English settlements on the eastern coast. Finding a large English fleet in port, the governor returned to Plaisance. He quarreled with Iberville, and the proposed joint expedition almost fell through completely before it was agreed that Brouillan would attack St. John's by sea, while Iberville moved against it by land. The two French forces met at Bay of Bulls, and took two English forts at first assault. The English governor, left with only a third fort which was in bad repair, surrendered on December 1, on condition that his people would be transported to Bonavista or to England. St. John's was sacked, and Iberville and his Canadians spent two months mopping up all the other English settlements except Bonavista and Isle Carbonniere, which could not easily be reached in winter. In May, Iberville received orders to proceed to Hudson Bay, after nearly wiping out the great English fishery, which quickly recovered, however, from this incomplete French conquest of Newfoundland. Stimulated by these successes, the French in 1697 launched the attack on Boston which Iberville had earlier planned. The Marquis de Nesmond's fleet of fifteen ships was first to stop at Plaisance and intercept an English squadron bound for Hudson Bay, which was reported to be off the Newfoundland coast; the fleet was then to proceed to the Penobscot, where it was to joined by 1,500 troops from Canada and a force of Abenakis before descending upon Boston. But the fleet was

Outpost of New France and New England / 99 late in sailing from France and then was delayed by headwinds, so that it only reached Plaisance at the end of July. In August a council of war agreed that it was too late in the season to attack Boston, since the Canadians could not reach the Penobscot by land until early in September. Nesmond returned to France without firing a shot. This great French expedition against Boston had proved as much of a fiasco as General Wheeler's against Quebec in 1693; both had attempted too much and both failed completely, because of the complications of timing in combined operation by land and sea in an age of poor and slow communications. In the Treaty of Ryswick of September 1697, France and England concluded peace, since both were exhausted by the heavy losses of the war. France, which had won the mastery of the seas, agreed to a return to the prewar status in America, except that it kept Iberville's conquests in Hudson Bay. Commissioners appointed under the terms of the treaty later set the St. George River as the boundary between Acadia and New England, instead of the Kennebec. The French frontier was shrinking in the face of English expansion. The peace had hardly been concluded when the English resumed trading and fishing in Acadia, and Villebon remonstrated to Governor Stoughton, the Massachusetts governor, against these violations in 1698. France sent a frigate to patrol the coast of the following year, but within another year the Minister of Marine authorized the sale of permits to English fishermen, provided they took on board a Frenchman who could thus learn English fishing methods. With the coming of peace, France cut down on its presents to the Abenakis, who found that they could trade more cheaply with the English. Disgruntled with the French in 1699, they signed a peace treaty with the English; and Saint-Castin, in the absence of ships from France, traded exclusively with Boston. In 1700 Villebon died at his new fort at the mouth of the Saint John, and was replaced as governor the following year by Brouillan, who razed this fort and used its materials to build a new one at Port Royal. Saint-Castin was called back to France on family business the same year, and with his permanent departure the French lost the man whose influence over the Abenakis had long saved Acadia from English occupation. Nine years of war since 1680 had seen little growth of population, the ravaging of the Beaubassin and Minas settlements, and the destruction of the Chedabucto fishing station, while the new posts on the Saint-John had proved short-lived. Acadia was ill equipped to face the next round of the continuing Anglo-French conflict, which opened with the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession in May 1702.

100 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Governor Brouillan promptly proposed a neutrality pact to New England, in what originated as primarily a European conflict, like the earlier King William's War and the later King George's War. But with the expansion of both the English and French colonies in North America, this series of European conflicts, produced by the struggle to maintain the balance of power between England and Holland on one hand and the French and Spanish Bourbons on the other, became in America an interimperial conflict, "a single protracted one, broken by intervals of truce", as Parkmam put it.17 And Acadia became a principal battleground, both because of its strategic importance and because of the attraction of its natural resources. The Bostonians boldly rejected Brouillan's offer, since he had coupled with it an assertion of the French monopoly of fisheries within sight of the Acadian coast, as guaranteed by the Treaty of Ryswick. They declared that they would regard any molestation of their fishing vessels as acts of war, and they prepared to enjoy an even more profitable trade with an Acadia cut off from French supplies by the European conflict. It was Canada, and not Acadia that New England and New York feared, after their experience with French and Indian border raids, but Acadia was a tempting and highly accessible target for reprisals. Colonial leaders on both sides in the imperial conflict began to realize that they faced a fight to the finish, and both developed plans for conquest of the other's colonies. In France, the aggressive Iberville and Saint-Castin proposed projects for the conquest of New England in 1701 and 1702, thinking it certain that "the King can very easily conquer and ruin New England"18 by taking Boston and New York. But these plans called for ships and troops from France, which Louis XIV, hardpressed by Prince Eugene, Marlborough, and Heinsius, was unable to supply. With only 60 regulars and 300 militia to defend Port Royal, Brouillan had to rely on Indian allies, to whom he promptly sent envoys with presents. The English rebuilt Fort William Henry at Pemaquid and signed a new treaty with the Abenakis at Casco in June 1702. But the Indians were soon won over to the French interest again by the Jesuit missionary, Sébastien Rasle, and in August 1703 they took part in Beaubassin's expedition against all the English settlements from Wells to Casco, killing and capturing over 100 settlers and burning many houses. The English rallied and drove Beaubassin back from Saco and razed the French post at Pentagoet. But French and Indian raids, from both Acadia and Canada, kept the 200-mile frontier ablaze the following fall and winter. In 1704 the English offered a bounty of £40 for the Indian scalps, to incite the frontiersmen to retaliatory raids on the Abenakis, and Englishmen rivaled the Indians in collecting these grisly trophies.

Outpost of New France and New England / 101 Resentment and fear of French and Indian raids on the Maine and Massachusetts frontier, notably Hertel de Rouville's savage attack on Deerfield the previous winter, inspired Colonel Benjamin Church's major expedition against Acadia in the summer of 1704. With three warships, fourteen transports, and thirty-six fishing craft, Church and his 550 militiamen first raided the Minas settlements, where they burnt fifty houses and the church, before they laid unsuccessful siege to Port Royal for fifteen days, despite Governor Dudley's orders to the contrary. After burning twenty houses at Beaubassin, the New Englanders retired to Boston. They had accomplished little, beyond breaking the dykes of the marsh meadows and ruining the crops with seawater. They were more successful in a winter raid led by Colonel Hilton against the Indian village of Naransouak, which provoked the Abenakis to complain to the French that they were being left to bear the brunt of the war. These complaints were met by new supplies of lead and powder, as Vaudreuil ordered the missionaries to stimulate the Indians' resistance to the English. At Port Royal, Brouillan quarrelled with his subordinates; the soldiers complained of ill treatment; the laborers of low pay; and the people generally of everything. When Brouillan returned to France to seek medical care, the people petitioned for his replacement, and for secular priests instead of the "autocratic Recollects."19 The colony was "starved for everything", and had to rely on its own resources and those produced by bartering furs for Boston goods. In October 1706, Subercase, the former governor of Newfoundland, was appointed to replace Brouillan and attempted to restore order and harmony to the unhappy colony which was soon to face another New England attack. As early as 1704, Governor Joseph Dudley of Massachusetts had begun urging another expedition against Quebec, on the grounds that, "in the last two years the Assembley of Massachusetts has spent about £50,000 in defending the Province, wheras three of four of the Queen's ships and fifteen hundred New England men would rid us of the French and make further outlay needless."20 This idea had also occurred to the fiery Governor Thomas Dongan, of New York as early as 1685. But before so ambitious an efort was tried, in 1705 Dudley sent to Quebec, Captain Samuel Vetch, a Scottish adventurer who had recently engaged in the Acadian and Newfoundland trade with his father-in-law, Robert Livingston of New York, to propose a treaty of neutrality between New France and Massachusetts and to arrange an exchange of prisoners. Governor Vaudreuil welcomed the proposal, on the conditions that the other British colonies should join in the treaty and that the English should be excluded from the fisheries of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Acadian waters. The negotiations21 dragged on for several years, thus producing

102 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec a lull in frontier warfare. Vaudreuil, who was himself suspected of negotiating with Dudley for private commercial pruposes, suspected Vetch of engaging in illicit trade during his stay in Quebec. Whether or not this was so—and he was later fined £200 in Massachusetts for trading arms and ammunition to the French—Vetch, who had visited Canada before, certainly studied the St. Lawrence carefully against future eventualities. The French court at first favored a treaty of neutrality, for Pontchartrain felt that "the English want only peace, aware that war is contrary to the interests of all the Colonies", though the minister later changed his mind and encouraged border raids.22 But the conclusion of such a treaty was made difficult by Vaudreuil's insistance that all the English colonies be parties to it, for as yet there was little unity among them; and it was made impossible by his demand that Massachusetts renounce the Acadian fisheries. Despite the activities of French privateers, the Bostonians continued to fish in these waters, and a lively illicit trade with Acadia was maintained. Dudley was accused of conniving at this trade by the Puritan faction headed by the Mathers, and though they failed to win his removal, they did secure the conviction in August 1707 of six prominent Bostonians, including Vetch, for trading at Port Royal under cover of negotiating an exchange of prisoners. The conviction was promptly annulled in England. While thus under fire, Dudley proposed in March 1707 a joint colonial attack upon Port royal, counting upon aid from England which failed to appear. Massachusetts raised 1,000 men; Rhode Island and Connecticut supplied small contingents; while New Hampshire would do nothing. Under the command of Colonel John March, the expedition which consisted of two warships, twenty-three transports, and many smaller craft, sailed from Boston on May 13 and landed at Port Royal on June 6. Its inexperienced leaders were unable to maintain discipline and were divided in their councils. Subercase and Saint-Castin's son used small detachments of Acadians and Abenakis to repel the English landing parties, and the invaders' batteries were not able to open fire until the 16th. An unexpectedly vigorous defence from Subercase's outnumbered garrison, and rumors of French reinforcements, led the New Englanders to break off the siege the next day, after losing 50 dead compared to 3 French casualties. The Yankee fleet retired to Casco Bay. When work of this fiasco reached Boston, the governor ordered the force to stay where it was, and dispatched reinforcements and three members of his council to advise Colonel March in a fresh attack. Early in August the expedition again proceeded to Port Royal, where after skirmishing for a week against a reinforced garrison, it sailed for home. A court martial was ordered for the expedition's leaders, but so many

Outpost of New France and New England / 103 officers were implicated that there was not enough of their colleagues left to try them, and proceedings were dropped,23 despite the outcries from New England merchants, fishermen, and frontier settlers who were intent upon the destruction of the French base in Acadia. This vain and expensive effort against Port Royal, coupled with a devastating French and Indian raid on Haverhill, Massachusetts, in August 1708, strenghtened support for Samuel Vetch's plan for the conquest of both Canada and Acadia. While Vetch was in England seeking to quash his Massachusetts conviction for illicit trading, he was authorized by Dudley to seek backing for this scheme, which was soon expanded to include the conquest of Newfoundland, as well as Canada and Acadia, and even Pensacola, Florida, so that Queen Anne should be "sole empress of the vast North American continent." Vetch was recommended to the Whig Junto by Dudley's agent as "an old Buccaneer, tho* a young man."24 Francis Nicholson, who had served as lieutenant-governor of New York, Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia in turn, and who was imbued with the idea of a fight to the finish with the French for North America, also brought pressure on the Board of Trade for British assistance to end French encirclement of the expanding British colonies. The Massachusetts General Court in October 1708, sent a memorial which pointed out: "The Force of the Enemy is Chiefly bent against this Your Majesty's Province and Province of New Hampshire whilst we are a Barrier to the others" ; "the very great Disadvantage. . .by reason of Port Royal remaining in the hands of the French. . .the Situation whereof makes it a Dunkirk to us. . .for the Interception of all shipping. . .a fit receptable for Privateers. . .also to Annoy Our Fishery" ; and argued for its restoration "to Your Majesties Obedience" on the grounds of its importance for naval stores and strategical security.25 The English government yielded to the mounting pressure from the colonies, and they were promised five regiments of regulars, while New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut were ordered to furnish a colonial force of 1,500 men, who were to assemble at Albany in May 1709. Nicholson was named to command, with Vetch as his deputy, and both were sent out in March to help raise the colonial contingent. Delayed at sea, they only reached Boston at the end of April. They quickly enlisted the support of the New England colonies and New York—the latter cheerfully abandoned its neutrality at the prospect of taking over the French fur trade—while Pennsylvania and New Jersey offered little or no help, regarding the expedition as an affair of the northern frontier colonies. Word of the English preparations quickly reached Montreal through the Jesuit missionary Father Lambreville, who abandoned his Onondaga flock when they succumbed to the blandishments of Abra-

104 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec ham Schuyler. Joncaire, however, kept the Sénecas neutral, while the Mohawks informed the French they only took up the hatchet because they were forced to do so. Nicolson was to command the attack by way of Lake Champlain, and had everything in readiness for an advance as soon as word arrived that the British fleet and regulars had reached Boston. Late in the fall of 1709 Vaudreuil still thought "we were on the eve of a most sanguinary war in this country."26 But Nicholson's force had been devastated by dysentery and finally was forced to retire to the Hudson, while the New England militia had drilled all summer at Boston without any sign of the expected fleet. Finally, early in October, Governor Dudley was informed that the promised force had been sent to Portugal instead. The New England governors sought to persuade the captains of some English frigates then in Boston to join in an attack on Port Royal at least, so that the great colonial effort should not go wholly for naught. But the captains refused, on the grounds of the lateness of the season and the absence of orders from England. The New Englanders then proposed to attack the place themselves the following year, if England would supply four frigates and 500 soldiers by the end of March. Ftench privateers had become a great plague to New England shipping, and Governor Dudley's secretary urged upon the Board of Trade the necessity of carrying through the original plan "in Especiall manner referring to Port Royall, that Nest of Spoilers so near to us."27 Nicholson went to London to plead the cause, and was soon followed by Peter Schuyler of New York with five Mohawk chiefs, whose vogue in London aroused interest in America and created a favorable attitude towards Nicholson's proposals. But it was not until May 1710, instead of March, that Nicholson was dispatched with a fleet of six warships and transports, carrying a regiment of marines and munitions for the attack on Port Royal. The promised fleet arrived at Boston only in July instead of May; and Lord Shannon's force of 3,000 men, under orders to attack Quebec instead of Port Royal, never reached Boston at all. Meanwhile Massachusetts had raised 900 men; and Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island 600 more. These, together with 400 marines who had accompanied the British squadron, finally embarked for Port Royal on September 18. Six days later the fleet of thirty-six sail, filled the beautiful basin of Port Royal. The troops were landed, and after six days of preparations for assault, skirmishing, and cannonading, the vastly outnumbered Subercase, who had only 258 men to defend a crumbling fort, accepted a summons to surrender. A capitulation was signed on October 2, under which the garrison was to be returned to France, while the inhabitants living within three miles of the fort were to be unmolested

Outpost of New France and New England / 105 for two years if they chose to remain, provided they took the oath of allegiance to Britain. The others were to have leave to go to Newfoundland, Canada, or the French West Indies. Nicholson renamed the place Annapolis Royal by way of compliment to Queen Anne, and left Vetch there as governor with a garrison of 200 marines and 250 provincials, who were outnumbered by the French habitants?* Port Royal, already twice captured by New Englanders, now came permanently under the English flag; and with its fall most of Acadia soon ceased to be under French rule. Before returning to Boston late in October, Nicholson sent Major John Livingston to Quebec in the company of the younger Saint-Castin, with news of the fall of Port Royal and a threat to retaliate upon the Acadians for any further raids on the New England frontier. The Acadians had become hostages in the Anglo-French struggle for domination in North America, and they were to be exploited by both sides for the next fortyfive years. While Livingston remained in Quebec to seek information useful for an expedition against the French capital,29 Governor Vaudreuil sent Hertel de Rouville and Dupuis to Boston by way of Albany with an answer, "being very glad to employ these two officers on this occasion in order to obtain information through them of the movements of our enemies, and at the same to make them acquainted with the country and the most favorable routes to send parties thither."30 Saint-Casin was sent back to Acadia to command the French there, and to maintain the French allegiance of the wavering Abenakis, while Vaudreuil sent work to all the Acadian missionaries that he would aid them as much as possible. The disastrous shipwreck at Egg Island, in the St. Lawrence, of Admiral Hovenden Walker's expedition against Quebec late in August 1711, strenghtened the war-weary English ministry's determination to negotiate a peace, and a preliminary agreement was signed on October 8. On January 19, 1712, a truce was proclaimed in Europe, though the IVeaty of Utrecht was not concluded until April 11, 1713. By it the 75-year-old Louis XIV renounced his rights to Acadia, as well as Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and the Iroquois country, retaining for France only Isle Royale (Cape Breton), Isle Saint-Jean (P.E.I.), and the right to catch and dry fish on the northern shores of Newfoundland. The French had zealously sought to keep Acadia, whose importance was increasingly recognized by them, but even the offer of Saint-Christophe and other islands in the Antilles, as well as a renunciation of French rights in the Newfoundland fisheries, failed to persuade the English to abandon their conquest. The French then decided to act upon the earlier proposals of the Intendant Raudot that Cape Breton should be fortified and colonized,

106 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec in order to retain command of access to the St. Lawrence and to serve as an entrepôt of trade between Canada and the Antilles, and between France and the English colonies. Cape Breton was to be peopled from the lost colonies of Acadia and Newfoundland. Under Article XIV of the treaty, the Acadians were permitted to leave their homes within a year or to remain as British subjects, enjoying "the free exercize of their religion according to the usages of the Church of Rome, as far as the laws of Great Britain do allow the same." The handful of French fisherfolk in Newfoundland were promptly ordered to remove to Cape Breton, while great efforts were made to persuade the Acadians and Abenakis to join them. But despite the exertions of two special French envoys, La RondeDenys and Pensens, in 1714 and those of their missionaries backed by a pastoral letter from Bishop Saint-Vallier, the Acadians were not inclined to leave their homes. Though the English distrusted them, as a result of their attempt in July 1711 to invest Annapolis Royal with the aid of the Abenakis, who had been incited to raid the place by Saint-Castin and Father La Chasse, the diminished and neglected English garrison relied upon Acadian labor and provisions, and was not anxious to see the Acadians leave to reinforce Cape Breton, whose threat to the feeble English outpost was soon realized. Thus, while the Treaty of Utrecht marked a significant decline in the French empire in North America, it left unsolved the problem of the boundaries of Acadia—still simply referred to as "its ancient boundaries", and still unsettled in 1754 when England and France entered upon the last round of their American Hundred Years War. More important, it left unresolved the problem of the Acadians themselves, who remained pawns in the inter-imperial struggle which continued in the ensuing thirty years of nominal peace.

Notes Mason Wade's own idiosyncratic footnote style is used throughout this chapter and from the following two from his unpublished manuscript. It should also be pointed out that Wade's research has not, in any way, been updated by the editors. Wade's manuscript remains, very much, the manuscript that he authored in the late 1960s and 1970s. 1 H.S. Burrage, Early English & French Voyages, 179-180.

2 Lanctot, I, A History of Canada (Toronto 1961), 138. 3 One mark = two thirds of a pound sterling. 4 Lanctot, I., 145

Outpost of New France and New England / 107 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

PANS, AI, 40; cited Brebner, New England's Outpost, 27. Paikman, Old Régime in Canada, I, 30. Winthrop. Brebner, Outpost, 31, Capt. John Leverett-Cromwell, 4 July 1654, Cromwell papers. Brebner, Outpost, 32. PAC, M 381, No. 12; Brebner, Outpost, 36. Lanctot, I, 305. Lanctot, II, 169. Ibid. Ibid, 170. Brebner, Outpost,47. Lanctot, II, 175. F. Parkman, A Half-Century of Conflict, (Boston, 1899), I, 3. N.Y. Col. Docs., IX, 725-29, Projects against New England, 1701"; ibid., 729-35, "Mémoire of M. D'Iberville on Boston and its dependencies, 1701." Lanctot, II, 182. Parkman, Half-Century, I, 103, Dudley letter, 26 Nov. 1694. N.Y. Col. Docs., IX, 770-2, 776, 779, 809, 812, 815. Ibid., IX, 775, Vaudreuil & Beauharnois-Pontchartrain, 15 Nov. 1703; 805, Pontchartrain-Vaudreuil, 30 June, 1707. T. Hutchinson, The History of Massachusetts Bay (Cambridge, 1936), II, 123-7. G.M. Waller, Samuel Vetch: Colonial Enterpriser (Chapel Hill, 1960). Brebner, Outpost, 54 n. 2; CO 5, 865, No. 16 (i). N.Y. Col. Docs., IX, Vaudreuil-Pontchartrain, 14 Nov. 1709. Brebner, Outpost, 55, CO 5, 865, No. 24, Addington-Popple, 26 Oct. 1709. See also No. 36 (XVI). Hutchinson, II, 136-7; N.S. Historical Collections,!, "Nicholson's Journal." CHR I, 1 (March 1920), J. Kenney, "A British Secret Service Report on Canada, 1711". N.Y. Col. Docs., IX, 854, Vaudreuil-Pontchartrain, 25 April 1711.

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6

The New England Planters and the American Revolution (1749-83)

Overshadowed by the massive influx of Loyalists in 1783 and 1784, the earlier pre-Loyalist immigrants from the American colonies tend to be the forgotten people of Maritime history. They were not as many in number, but they set an enduring stamp on the region which was noted in the 1830s by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, "the old stock comes from New England, and the breed is tolerably pure yet, near about one half apple sauce, and the other half molasses, all except to the Eastward where there is a cross of the Scotch."1 Acadia had long been "New England's Outpost," as J.B. Brebner called it, and once it passed from French to British rule and was freed of the threat of French and Indian raids, there was an exodus towards the Maritimes of the land-hungry from the overpopulated New England colonies, particularly eastern Massachusetts, eastern Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the islands off the coast. New Englanders weary of rockbound fields had long looked with covetous eyes on the rich dyked lands of the Acadians. Such good farmland as southern and eastern New England had was now taken up, while fear of the unsettled frontier, so long exposed to hit-and-run French and Indian raids, still deterred expansion westward and northward. The men of the New England seaboard had become familiar with Acadia in their fishing and trading expeditions; others who served in the conquest of Louisbourg in 1745 had acquired first-hand knowledge of a rich British province without British settlement, in which a conquered people were prospering without feeling any obligation to their new rulers. When Halifax was founded in 1749, Britain was becoming distrustful of the too independent New Englanders, and so preference was given to former soldiers and sailors and European Protestants as assisted settlers. But New England traders benefited by the demand in Nova Scotia for building materials and supplies, and some New England tradesmen responded to the demand for skilled craftsmen, while the New England rangers and militia who had served

110 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec in the recent campaigns were offered the same inducements given to European settlers.2 The thousand immigrants from the American colonies in Halifax's first year were officially described as "the best of settlers,"3 much preferable to "the king's bad bargains" from Europe, who had to be supported from the public stores for nine years before they could support themselves. Halifax' population actually declined from 5,000 in 1750 to 1,500 in 1755, in part because of the transfer of 1,500 Germans and Swiss, "Foreign Protestants", to Lunenburg, but also because of widespread desertion to the American colonies, thus inaugurating a migrating pattern which has continued to the present day.4 The New Englanders became the dominant element in Halifax, leaders in public as well as commercial life and shrewdly profiting from the huge British military expenditures which averaged £57,263 annually from 1749 to 1757. They did not neglect their old, illicit, and highly profitable trade with the French at Louisbourg. In the minds of both the British officials and the New Englanders the Acadians, with their ties to France and to the Indians, were the principal obstacle to the progress of British settlement. And the British military ^officials, encouraged by the Yankees, decided to expel the Acadians and replace them with a loyal and industrious population accustomed to New World pioneering, for which ex-soldiers and sailors and German and Swiss peasants had proved notably unsuited. No sooner had Louisbourg fallen and St. John's Island been cleared of Acadians that Governor Lawrence issued a proclamation on October 12, 1755, indicating his readiness to receive proposals "for the peopling and cultivating, as well as the Lands vacated by the French, as every other Part of this valuable Province." The available lands were thus glowingly described: upwards of One hundred Thousand Acres of interval Plow Lands, producing Wheat, Rye, Barley, Oats, Hemp, Flax &c. These have been cultivated for more than a Hundred Years past, and never fail of crops, or need manuring. Also more than One Hundred Thousand Acres of Upland, clear'd and stock'd with English Grass, planted with Orchards, Gardens, &c. These lands, with good Husbandry, produce often, two Loads of Hay per Acre. The wild and unimproved Lands adjoining the above, are well timber'd and wooded, with Beach, Black-Birch, Ash, Oak, Pine, Fir &c. All these Lands are so intermixed that every single Farm &c may have a proportionable Quantity of Plow-Land, Grass-Land, and Wood-Land; and all are situated about the Bay of Fundy, upon Rivers navigable for ships of Burthen.5 Here was Acadia indeed. When this alluring prospectus rather surprisingly failed to produce much response, since nothing was said about the form of government and tolerance for local institutions, Lawrence was

The Planters and the American Revolution / 111 moved to issue another proclamation on January 11, 1759, which explained the constitution of Nova Scotia and the franchise requirements, and provided a guarantee of civil and religious liberties.6 The response this time was'prompt, and a migration of considerable proportions got under way. Land associations were formed by prospective settlers, who sent their agents to Nova Scotia to inspect the offered lands. Before their departure from Halifax, land grant forms were drawn up, and free transport and limited stocks of provisions were offered to new settlers. In general, the sheltered coastal Bay of Fundy lands, particularly those brought to a high state of cultivation by the Acadians, had the greatest appeal, while only groups primarily interested in fishing and lumbering favored the South Shore and the Cape Sable district. The Massachusetts settlers chose Annapolis and Granville; Rhode Island and Connecticut farmers established the townships of Horton, Cornwallis, Falmouth, and Newport on the Minas Basin; while other Massachusetts men founded Cumberland and Sackville townships on the Isthmus of Chignecto, on ground which their militia-men had conquered from the French. Fishing townships were formed at Liverpool, Harrington, and Yarmouth by Cape Codders, Nantucketers, and Rhode Islanders. By August 1, 1759 Lawrence was able to inform the Nova Scotia Assembly: Very extensive grants of the vacated lands on the Banks of the Bay of Fundy have been lately granted away to Industrious and substantial Farmers, applications for more are crowding in upon me faster than I can prepare the grants, and I have no doubt but that the well peopling of the whole will keep pace with our warmest and most rapid wishes.7

In its reply the Assembly, in addition to voicing its "inexpressible joy" on "the Glorious and Successful events that have attended His Majesty's Arms under God, and the Vigilance and Good COnduct of our Admirals and Generals," expressed its appreciation of "your Excellency's paternal care in the wise and prudent steps taken to engage such great numbers of substantial and reputable Protestant families from the neighboring Colonies to settle on the vacated and other lands of this province. . . [which] cannot fail speedily to render this a rich and flourishing Colony."8 While most of the migrants sought lands on the peninsula, a company of agricultural settlers from Essex County, Massachusetts, established themselves on the rich intervales of the Saint John Valley south of the mouths of the Nashwaak and the Oromocto, while the Newburyport trading firm of James Simmonds, James White, and William Hazen set up an establishment in 1762 at the river's mouth, trading with the settlers and the Indians, importing British manufactures, and supplying credit to fishermen. On Portland Point, the site of La Tour's fort, they laid the foundations of the city of Saint John.

112 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec When Lawrence's proclamations reached the Board of Trade, they sent him an extraordinarily testy reply, finding the second one irregular in mixing the evacuated lands with the uncultivated ones. His duty with respect to the former, which had not been taken into account in his instructions to encourage settlement, was "simply to receive and transmit proposals, but not to make grants of them.'*9 All further proceedings were to be deferred until His Majesty's pleasure was known. Replying in September 1759, Lawrence reported with pride that the success of his proclamations had been so great that he had feared to dampen the enthusiasm by awaiting further instructions. He indicated that 3,250 people would be settled in 1760; 6,000 in 1761; and 3,000 in 1762; and he stated his belief that all the cleared lands and the whole Atlantic coast southward to Cape Sable would soon be settled.10 In a further somewhat crestfallen communication in December, Lawrence expressed his mortification at the disapproval of his conduct in peopling the lands, and in his own defense cited his 1756 instructions and the Board's letter of February 7, 1758, which had urged him to advertise the vacant lands in New England and to signify his readiness to consider plans of settlement. He reported that the fertile lands which would form the frontier had not yet been granted, and these would be available for the military settlers whom the Board favored upon the event of peace.11 But by this time the Board was advising him that his proceedings in granting Horton and laying out ten other townships had given "great satisfaction" subject to confirmation by the King, who might decide to reserve part of these lands to reward disbanded officers and soldiers. In their representations to the King they referred to the crowning of the zealous endeavours of the Governor by "a Success greatly beyond Our Expectations and almost equal to Our Wishes," and they declared with satisfaction that "Nova Scotia will be a splendid colony frontier and in a very short time will cease to be a burden and become a great source of profit by its exports."12 Lawrence clearly had the useful knack of disregarding his instructions —he deferred until 1758 instituting the assembly which he had been instructed to call on March 27, 1756, and he had certainly refused to follow the Board's desires in the matter of expelling the Acadians in 1755. On this occasion, as soon as he knew he was free of the Board's displeasure, he suggested that disbanded soldiers would do better along the Mohawk River and at German Flats in New York, though he dutifully sent a list of places in Nova Scotia where they might be settled. He also warned that they would need considerable assistance, since they were the least qualified to become settlers in new districts.13 After the costly Lunenburg experience the Board was very leery of providing support for

The Planters and the American Revolution / 113 settlers, and had censured Lawrence for providing transport and seed corn for the New England settlers of the first three townships granted. The increasing influence of the New Englanders in Halifax was indicated in 1763, when the Halifax Council employed the good offices in London of Joshua Mauger to prevent the Essex settlers on the Saint John from being ousted in favour of disbanded soldiers. Mauger was a Jersey merchant whose family had long been engaged in the North American trade. He had made a fortune in the West Indian trade and from contracts with the Admiralty during the British occupation of Louisbourg, and he established the first distillery at Halifax in 1751. Its product was so popular by 1766 that Admiral Colville, commanding on the North American station, made representations to the Secretary of State concerning "the evils caused by the number of licensed houses in causing desertion &c among the seamen."14 With New Englanders in the saddle at Halifax, both in the Council and the Assembly and on the bench, the some 7,000 New England planters who came to Nova Scotia in the early 1760s were favored over the newcomers from other parts of the world. The influx faltered in 1763, after assistance to settlers was prohibited by the Board of Trade and the difficulties encountered by the settlers in the first establishments from summer droughts, early frosts, and numerous vermin had dampened enthusiasm. It revived in the following year and reached full flood in 1765, thanks to Colonel Alexander NcNutt, a Virginia Ulsterman whose earlier schemes for populating Nova Scotia with Ulstermen from Ireland and the Londonderry settlement in New Hampshire were checked in 1762 by an Order in Council prohibiting the granting of Nova Scotian lands to Irishmen, except for those who had lived there or in the other North American colonies for five years, since there was a danger of depopulating Ireland.15 The ebullient McNutt, the forerunner of a long line of Nova Scotia developers and land speculators, then proceeded to look for associates and settlers in the middle colonies. And in January 1765 at Philadelphia he entered into an agreement with several "gentlemen", including Benjamin Franklin, to whom 200,000 acres at or near Port Roseway were granted on March 6. A city was to be erected there under the name of Jerusalem. In OCtober Franklin received further grants of 100,000 acres on the Saint John River and the same amount on the Petitcodiac, as a result of a survey in the spring of 1765 by young Anthony Wayne, who had been sent to Nova Scotia by Franklin and his associates and introduced to Governor Wilmot and members of the Council by McNutt. Wayne reported to Franklin's associate, John Hughes, a pioneer Philadelphia ironmaster, that there were "great bodies of Iron ore on the river Petitcoodiak and the bay

114 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec of Vert, but nobody to carry on the Iron works for want of Money."16 Nine German families from the Schuylkill had migrated to Petitcodiac in 1763, including Stiefs [Steeves] and Lutzes, and there were many other Pennsylvania Germans who might be expected to respond to the inducement of cheap land. Wayne later reported that "the sixteen townships is left to me to choose which can't be attended with any Disadvantage to our Side," and that McNutt had "embibed a notion in many of the Gentlemen of the Council here that he will be the only man that is Capable of Complying with the terms of Settlement, and Has done his Endeavours to make the Other Companys Insignificant and not Equal to the Undertaking.''17 Wayne obtained further grants for Philadelphians in 1766, and "Benjamin Franklin, Ll.D." received still another grant of 20,000 acres in May and June 1767. But William Franklin reported to his father in October of the latter year that the lands were ill managed, and "in short it appears that the company wants a head to contrive and conduct matters for them, and that they are too parsimonious and contracted in their views for such a design." He doubted whether his father would recoup the grant fees. Franklin himself had only this to say: Those many principal persons in Pennsylvania whose names and associations lie before your Majesty in Council for the purpose of making settlements in Nova Scotia have several years since been convinced of the impracticability of exciting settlers to move from the middle colonies to settle in that Province, and even those who were prevailed upon to go to Nova Scotia the greater part have returned with complaints against the severity and the length of the winter.18 The proprietors were not able to settle the required one person per two hundred acres within ten years; and the chief fruit of the speculation was the settlement of Pictou Township, known as the Philadelphia Plantation, in 1767 by 30 men, women, and children. One of the shareholders, the Rev. John Witherspoon, the new president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), became associated with John Pagan of Greenock, Scotland, in the removal to the Maritimes of Highlanders driven from their homes by the Enclosure Acts. The same ship which brought many Highlanders to New England in 1770, the Hector, brought 189 of them to Pictou in 1773, launching the Scottish migration which made this Philadelphia Plantation the beginning of a true Nova Scotia.19 For the exodus from the American colonies to Nova Scotia ceased in 1768 with the opening up of the Ohio country for settlement by the Treaty of Stanwix. A reverse flow from the Maritimes even began that same year, for many merchants, laborers, and campfollowers departed from Halifax for southern ports when a large part of the garrison was

The Planters and the American Revolution / 115 transferred to Boston to awe the rebellious populace.20 Halifax had already complained that "all the scum of the colonies" was being unloaded on Nova Scotia, and doubtless did not mourn the puncturing of the land boom which had given the province 6,913 American inhabitants out of a total population of 13,374 by January l, 1767.21 The coming of the pre-Loyalists aided, ironically, in the re-establishment of the Acadians and helped to change the mind of the Council, which was still of the opinion in March 1764 "That the safety of this Province depends on the total expulsion of the French Acadians."22 For the resettlement of the province was checked by the effects of the terrible gale of November 1759 which leveled timberlands along the South Shore and by raising the high fall tides of the Bay of Fundy another ten feet flooded vast expanses of dyked lands with salt water, thus making them "this Three Years to come incapable of bearing Grain."23 The dykes, which had been neglected since the expulsion of the Acadians, were largely destroyed. When Lawrence visited the Minas townships the following year, he set on foot the rebuilding of the dykes by the new settlers, troops from Fort Edward, and Acadian prisoners "who were best acquainted with works of this kind."24 Since the latter were the only persons with know-how in the matter, they directed the continuing work in the spring of 1761. The Acadians were converted into a labor corps for work on the dykes and roads. When the Board of TVade refused to pay their wages, the government and proprietors continued to use the Acadian "prisoners of war" for the restoration of the dykes.25 To Belcher this was only a temporary reprieve for the Acadians, since "it appears extremely necessary that the inhabitants should be assisted by the Acadians in repairing the Dykes," but he remained firm in his opinion that they should be expelled once the emergency was over.26 The Acadians became indispensable both as technicians and common labor, for fourteen English settlers of Horton, Windsor, Falmouth, and Newport petitioned the governor in 1765 to maintain the "military" provision allowance so that the Acadian laborers could work for lower wages, since "we find that without their further assistance many of us cannot continue our Improvements, nor plough nor sow our Lands, nor finish the Dyking still required to secure our Lands from Salt water."27 The Acadians had literally become hewers of wood and drawers of water for the new owners of their old lands. Though many remained in this role in the old Acadian country about the head of the Bay of Fundy, to which the returning exiles seem drawn like homing pigeons, others ventured to accept lands in the new township of Clare which was laid out for them by Francklyn in July 1768.28 Joseph Dugas of Annapolis had explored the Fundy shore region from

116 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Church Point to the Sissiboo River in 1767, and had been struck by the rich beds of giant clams at the mouth of a river which he christened Grosses Coques. The following year he set off overland with his wife, 4-year-old daughter, and a horse loaded with provisions and tools, following a Micmac trail. He reached Baie Sainte-Marie (St. Mary's Bay) on September 5, 1768, and ten days later his wife gave birth to a son. He was joined there the following year by the hardy survivors of a party of some 140 Acadian families from Massachusetts, who had made their way back to Nova Scotia on foot. Some remained on the Saint John River, where they found other fugitive Acadians, while forty families decided to settle at Memramcook. Seventy others continued on by way of Cobequid and Grand Pré to Annapolis, where they spent the winter. In the spring some came by sea and others by land to Dugas' settlement. Among them were Prudent Robichaud, Jean Belliveau, René Saulnier, Yves Thibault, Pierre Mélanson, Joseph Comeau, Joseph Gaudet, and Pierre Doucet. By 1771 there were 24 families or a total of 98 persons settled in Clare. Church Point was settled the following year by two families, those of Pieree Le Blanc and Francois Doucet, which came by sea from Salem, Mass. Grants were made to the Clare settlers in 1771 on condition of clearing or draining three acres of each fifty, or building a dwelling and maintaining cattle, and paying quitrents of a farthing an acre after the first two years.29 The Clare settlers began by planting potatoes, and then as their lands were cleared, they turned to wheat and oats. They relied on the sea for much of their food, and by the 1780's one of them, Captain Pierre Doucet, was trading by sea to the West Indies. On the "French Shore" thus founded grew up the largest and most prosperous Acadian group in Nova Scotia. As the tide of unrest rose in the American colonies, official opinion of the pre-Loyalists shifted from high favour to dark suspicion. Even though the Assembly was generally dominated by Halifax members from the start, because the country members found it both difficult and expensive to attend, there was an increasing tendency for the Assembly to interfere in what the governor and council had come to regard as their own affair, the conduct of public business.30 The Council did its best to repress the development of New England-style self-government, despite the assurances made in Lawrence's 1759 proclamation that Nova Scotia's form of government was the same as New England's. The Liverpool settlers protested in 1762: Freemen and under the same Constitution as the rest of His Majesty's King George's other Subjects not only by His Majesty's Proclamation, but because we are born in a country of Liberty in the land that belongs to the Crown of England, Therefore we conceive we have Right and Authority

The Planters and the American Revolution / 117 invested in ourselves (or at least we pray we may) to nominate and appoint men amongst us to be our Committee k to do other offices that the Town may want. His present Excellency your Honr and the Council of Halifax have thought proper to disrobe & deprive us of the above Privilege which we first enjoyed. This we imagine is encroaching on our Freedom and Liberty, and depriving us of a privilege that belong to no body of People but Ourselves. . . [which privilege] we must insist on as it belongs to us alone to rule ourselves as we think ourselves capable.31

Some sixty-three New Englanders of King's County made a similar protest in December 1762: Our principal Inducement [to immigrate] was the Assurance of the Protection of the Government in all our civil and Religious Rights and Liberties, as we enjoyed them in the Governments from whence we came.3^

Wilmot and the Council persisted in Belcher's effort to crush New Englandstyle local institutions, though in the remote settlements the inhabitants continued to handle their own affairs without much interference from Halifax. Even in that capital of privilege, there were dissenting voices expressing New England ideas. Governor Wilmot reported a general absence of "Opposition or Obstruction" to the Stamp Act when it was put into force in November 1765, though he admitted that "Some Publick Marks of Discontent were Shewen" at Liverpool, where there had been no "Violence or Outrage" despite the fact that it was a New England settlement.33 The Halifax newspaper, the semi-official Gazette, produced by Anthony Henry, an Alsatian veteran of the Louisbourg campaign in 1758, and young Isaiah Thomas, a runaway Boston printer's apprentice, conducted a vigorous campaign against the Stamp Act from October onward. The Gazette was customarily made up of news reprinted from the English and American colonial papers. It now gave detailed reports of resistance of the Act in Philadelphia, Virginia, and Boston. On December 5 it came out in heavy mourning borders and continued the practice until February, with some numbers carrying a skull and crossbones in place of a stamp. The vigilance of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia patriots, lest the gospel of submission to the iniquitous act be spread by Halifax skippers, was reported. Thomas was rebuked by Secretary Bulkeley in November, and reminded that he was not in New England. He reported that he was almost tricked into admitting complicity in the decoration of Citadel Hill with a gallows from which were suspended effigies of a stamp man, a devil, and a boot, with a picture of Satan directing Lord Bute, and written confessions from the stamp man (Hinshelwood) and Bute. Thomas was discharged and left Halifax in March, while Henry

118 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec was replaced as printer of the Gazette in August.34 Henry, however, began publishing the Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser, which zealously reported colonial news, in 1769 and by the following year forced his rival to quit. Henry then merged the papers as the Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Chronicle, and continued to report sympathetically news from the rebellious colonies. There was certainly widespread Nova Scotian sympathy for those who opposed imperial tyranny. The repeal of the Stamp Act was greeted with boisterous enthusiasm at Liverpool, as the Connecticut merchant Simeon Perkins noted: Day of rejoicing over the repeal of the Stamp Act. Canon at Point Lawrence fired, colors flown on shipping. In the evening the Company [of militia] marched to the home of Major Doggett, and were entertained. People made a bonfire out of the old house of Capt. Mayhew, a settler here, and continued all night, and part of next, carousing.35

But Nova Scotia did not participate in the colonial non-importation agreements. When in February 1768 the Massachusetts House of Representatives sent to Speaker Nesbitt of the Nova Scotia Assembly an account of its proceedings and of its plans for a united front against taxation without representation, Nesbitt took the letter to Lieutenant Governor Francklin, who sent it on to the Secretary of State in London without allowing it to be read to the Assembly or answered. He commented optimistically: "No temptation however great, will lead the Inhabitants of this Colony to show the least Inclination to oppose Acts of the British Parliament."36 The colonial boycott of East India Company tea in 1773-4 produced an agreement in London between the Company and Joshua Mauger, Brook Watson, and Robert Rashleigh to make John Butler the Halifax agent for the sale of tea. The Company "agreed that the Company's teas, which may be rejected at Boston, and other places in America, should be sent to Halifax." Two New England merchants who were justices of the peace in Halifax, William Smith and John Fillis, opposed acceptance of the Company's tea, since "the people would be prejudiced against it." The two merchants, who had called a meeting to consider the question, were summoned before the governor and council and removed from all their offices, while Legge issued a proclamation against "Meetings & Assemblies of the People.. . call'd and held for various purposes contrary to the Public Good &c &c." By October, Legge reported that the tea had been disposed of, and Solicitor General James Monk Jr. added: "the Governor has effectually cut the throat of Rebellious Faction, in this Country & destroyed the seeds of Sedition, sewn among the People, who were Irritated to Town Meetings &c on the arrival of some Tea, by a Mr. Smith." But Simeon Perkins noted in his diary that "John Thomas,

The Planters and the American Revolution / 119 who took 300 Ibs. of tea from here [Liverpool], lost the whole lot by the Sons of Liberty at Plymouth, destroying it on deck."37 Anthony Henry filled the Gazette with accounts of resistance in the American colonies to the landing of tea, and published a full narrative of the Boston Tea Party on December 28, 1773. Simeon Perkins commented on the Boston Port Act in January: "This Act is due to destruction of East India tea last fall. The Act appears to have been made in a hurry, if not in some heat, and I fear will be productive of disagreeable consequences."38 New England made rather too much of Nova Scotian resistance, which was largely in spirit rather than practice where there was money to be made by carrying tea to New England. Nova Scotia, unlike the New England colonies, was dependent upon the old merchantilist system, and upon the financial empire which Brook Watson and Joshua Mauger operated from London.39 New England's outpost had become and was to remain London's, and ultra-loyalism prevailed in merchant as well as official circles in Halifax. Elsewhere in Nova Scotia the sentiment was somewhat different, and sufficiently so to give the rulers of the colony some horrendous night-mares when smouldering economic resistance in the American colonies burst into the flames of rebellion. The people of the outports were notoriously independent of anti-smuggling laws and Barrington and Yarmouth did not even bother to report the collection of customs duties, while the Liverpool collector complained in 1772 that "the Magistrates there, instead of assisting him in his Duty, held in Contempt the Laws, and the People there will not pay any duties."40 When Governor Legge and his eager disciple James Monk began to reveal the network of corruption which the Halifax Establishment and spread across the province, the governor found himself assailed from all sides, and in turn became suspicious of all. He was not particularly reassured that the Nova Scotia Assembly had taken no notice of the resolutions of the Continental Congress in favour of non-intercourse with provinces that did not adopt the measures of Congress, since "the inhabitants had held a meeting to make resolutions in favour of their rebellious neighbors."41 He was hopeful that the banning of the rebellious colonists from the fisheries would benefit Nova Scotia, "as many wealthy persons who do not approve of the conduct of their countrymen are preparing to remove to Nova Scotia to engage in the fishery."42 Four companies of the 65th Regiment were dispatched from Halifax to Boston on April 30 after Lexington, and with their departure Legge became more concerned about incidents that revealed rebellious sympathies in Halifax. There had been a suspicious fire in the sail loft at the dockyard in February, and Legge's own desk was rifled in March. At

120 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec the beginning of May a large stack of hay destined for Gage's dragoons in Boston was burnt, and on July 8 the navy yard was again set on fire.43 By the middle of May Legge was reporting that "owing to the unhappy state of affairs in New England, many of the King's subjects were moving into the Province; vessels with families who escaped are already arrived and others are preparing to follow, among them persons of wealth and ability who have vessels engaged in fishing and the West Indian trade."44 Though he anticipated good effects from such respectable additions to the population, he thought it necessary to make newly arrived applicants for fishing licenses take the oath of allegiance. General Gage soon added to his fears by warning him that "persons were emigrating from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, carrying their seditious principles with them."45 Gage shortly recommended that Legge try to win over the Indians and Acadians to military service in a proposed regiment of "Royal Fencible Americans," to be recruited principally among recently settled Highlanders. Gage also complained of the "Most shameful advantages" taken of his need for provisions by the people of the Nova Scotian outports.46 Legge became increasingly alarmed by the "repeated efforts of a turbulent party to interrupt the harmony between him and the Assembly," and was prepared to prejudge, as having a bad effect, an address to the King secretly prepared by the Assembly.47 This remarkable address, dated June 24 and appropriately forwarded by Speaking Nesbitt to Lord Dartmouth on July 4, was occasioned by the motion of the trader John Day, whom Legge thought had "imbibed republican principles" while resident in Philadelphia, that the Assembly should grant revenue to the British Parliament by a duty on foreign luxury goods, while petitioning for the relief of grievances. The House authorized such an address, provided that it acknowledged "the Supreme Authority of the British Parliament," which it did in the most fervently loyal terms. But implicit in the address was the suggestion that Nova Scotia might join the rebellious colonies unless the requested privileges and relief of grievances were granted. It was ignored in England, while Legge saw in it nothing but an attempt "to lessen the power of the Governor, Council, and officers of Government, to throw the whole weight of power into the hands of the Assembly."48 The petitioners shrewdly urged: "as the Humble Friends of our King and Mother Country may we not point out those Measures which may best tend to preserve the Inhabitants of this province in Loyalty and Allegiance. . . in a Country, whose peculiar situation and advantages are such, as may probably induce Government to order it to be the Head Quarters of the British Land and Sear Forces in America."49 Halifax was prepared to be loyal, if it could profit by the presence of the British forces.

The Planters and the American Revolution / 121 But Legge had little confidence in the loyalty of Nova Scotians. In addition to his proclamation of June 23 that new arrivals must be examined by a magistrate and must take the oath of allegiance, he issued another on July 5 forbiding aid to the rebels. At the end of July he reported to Dartmouth that "Most of the inhabitants on the borders and at Annapolis, Cornwallis, Horton, Falmouth, And Newport are from New England, so that little or no dependence can be placed on the militia there/' and that "many in Halifax are disaffected."50 He proposed to raise 1,000 men, to guard the navy yard and supplies for Boston, from among the "Germans, Neutrals, and Irish" of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. To confirm his suspicions, Francklin reported in August "that a Great part of the Militia of the Bay of Fundy had no inclination to oppose their Countrymen" if an attack were made on Nova Scotia.51 Legge was beset by rumors that the people of Machias, who had attacked the King's armed schooner Margaret in June, were fitting out a sloop to intercept Nova Scotian vessels taking supplies to Boston, and apparently were interested in an attack against the forts at Annapolis and on the Saint John River. Again in the middle of August, Legge assured Gage that "the militia of the province are not to be depended on in case an attempt should be made from the eastern part of New England, as most of them came from there." He moved the military stores at Halifax on board vessels protected by H.M.S. Tartar, since there had been attempts at arson and persons in the town were corresponding with the rebels.52 In October Joshua Mauger in England defended the loyalty of the inhabitants of Nova Scotia, but feared an attack on the province because of its refusal to join the other colonies, with consequent destruction of the unguarded dockyard and stores. That same day the Secretary of State informed Legge that one of the five regiments ordered to North America had been sent to Halifax late in September, and that the 40-gun Rodney had sailed for the capital three weeks before. Legge was authorized to raise his 1,000 men, and when he felt strong enough, to disarm the New Englanders settled in the Bay of Fundy and elsewhere.53 On hearing from Gorham in Boston that a rebel force of 1,500 had marched to the eastward, intending a descent on Nova Scotia as well as on Canada, and that Quebec was despaired of in the face of the American invasion down the Richelieu River and the French Canadians' refusal to join the British, Legge declared martial law. The Machias rebels had burned Fort Frederick at Saint John and seized a vessel loaded with stores for Boston. Both houses of the Assembly produced loyal addressed on October 28, "testifying their zealous attachment to the King and their abhorrence of the daring spirit of rebellion." A militia bill was passed and a loyal association was formed, but the militia refused to serve except

122 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec at Halifax, Lunenburg, and St. Mary's Bay, where the Acadians formed two companies, and the loyal association found most of its members in Halifax. Legge proposed to raise two more Acadian companies at Chignecto, and another of Halifax inhabitants. Captain John Stanton of Legge's regiment returned from Annapolis the day before martial law was declared on December 5, and reported that since the New Englanders there were republican almost to a man and hoped for an invasion in the spring, "It would be imprudent in the highest degree to embody the militia, even in an actual invasion."54 When heated by argument or drink, they declared that "they would sooner kill an Englishman than a dog." Legge soon had word that some militia companies at Annapolis had refused to answer his summons, and at Liverpool Simeon Perkins found a general refusal to accept militia commissions. At La Have "All refused to be drafted or to enlist." The "Neutral Yankees" had emerged to replace the once "Neutral French", who were now zealous to do military service. The extent and reasons for this Yankee neutrality are revealed in the moving memorial of the inhabitants of Yarmouth, after they had been raided by two armed American schooners which had carried off the militia officers engaged in raising two companies at Cape Sable: We do all of us profess to be true Friends & Loyal Subjects to George our King. We were almost all of us born in New England, we have Fathers, Brothers & Sisters in that Country, divided betwixt natural affection to our nearest relations, and good Faith and Friendship to our King & Country, we want to know, if we may be permitted at this time to live in a peaceable State, as we look on that as the only situation in which we with our wives and Children, can be in any tolerable degree safe.55 The Council refused their request as firmly as earlier Councils had rejected the Acadians' plea to be considered neutrals because of their divided loyalties. Legge had already become embroiled with the regular officers who on Gage's orders were recruiting in Nova Scotia for the Royal Highland Emigrants and Royal Fencible Americans, as well as with the captain of H.M.S. Somerset, when he attempted to assume command of all the forces in Nova Scotia. Legge had to content himself with the colonelcy of a regiment of volunteers, which was to be used for local defence only, under the control of the commander-in-chief. Recruiting went very slowly — the regiment numbered only 60 men in April, when Legge was recalled to London to answer the numerous charges which his enemies had brought against him. Francklin wrote him in March, suggesting that Nova Scotians would be glad to fight in defence of their homes, although they were reluctant to be sent out of the province, and requested that

The Planters and the American Revolution / 123 he be authorized to raise volunteers to serve under his command among the Fundy settlers, to whom he was well known. Legge was glad to agree to this proposal, with the concurrence of the Council. Francklin succeeded in raising some 450 men in King's County by August, the number demanded for the Fencibles having been reduced to 500.56 Early in January 1776 Legge received petitions against the Militia Act and the tax for the support of the militia from inhabitants of Truro, Cumberland, and Onslow, which he regarded as expressing the views of the people in general: "it will require the most diligent attention to prevent them from joining the enemy in case of an invasion."57 He was relieved by the arrival of regular troops, but of a total of 980 only half proved fit fur duty, and he anticipated a rebel attack in the spring. He had recommended the garrisoning of Forts Annapolis and Cumberland, but Howe thought it dangerous to divide the military forces. The governor pleaded for more naval strength when he was left with only one careened frigate to guard the port of Halifax. There were reports of rebel privateers being fitted out to prey on the supply ships bound for Boston, and they might be used to attack the province when they learned of the absence of ships of war. By February he was reporting to London treasonable meetings in Cumberland which adopted resolutions inviting the Americans to invade the province. The council had decided that Fort Cumberland should be garrisoned with 300 men, and the troops had been requested from General Massey. The spring attack seemed even more imminent, and Legge urged that transports with troops being sent to Boston should call at Halifax in passing. But London had already decided on his recall and replacement by Marriot Arbuthnot, the naval commissary at Halifax.58 While Legge's enemies "vautingly, my Lord, go about & say, they have got the Governor dismissed, and that this is the third Governor, M auger's interest has turned out," Legge was reporting his rival Francklin's success in raising men in the Fundy townships, and thought "this may prevent many disaffected from joining the rebels." Continental Congress emissaries were said to be busy in Cumberland in "meetings and consultations of a very treasonable nature," and "about fourteen of the Inhabitants had gone to New England, supposed with an intent to Invite the Rebels into this Province." General Massey would allow only a captain and 50 men as garrison for Fort Cumberland. Legge had been advised by General William Howe that 200 families, "many of them necessitous," would shortly leave Boston for Halifax, and he urgently requested provisions, which were not to be had locally. On April 10 he reported the arrival of 50 transports with refugees from Boston, and of the troop transports, which had evacuated the garrison from Boston on

124 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec March 17. Measures were taken to secure the provisions in the province and to prevent extortion.59 Arbuthnot, on taking over from Legge, thought that less than 2,000 men would not suffice to defend Halifax, and about 500 would be needed on the frontier. But by the beginning of June he felt Nova Scotia was secure, thanks to "the dispersal of the rebels from before Quebec/' On June 18 the Assembly adopted an address lamenting the extent and progress of the "unjustifiable resistance" of the American colonies, and declaring that "the people of Nova Scotia are ready with their lives and fortunes to stand forth in support of His Majesty and family and to maintain the constitutional powers of the Government." But after Howe sailed for Newport, Rhode Island, with his army later in June, Halifax found itself burdened with "the vast number of women and children left behind," whose distress Massey proposed to relieve "as cheaply as possible." Some Boston refugees and six disgruntled Yorkshire immigrants were sent to ENgland with invalid soldiers and their wives and children.60 Shortly thereafter Halifax was plunged into alarm after its euphoric interlude of military occupation. Early in July an express brought word from colonel Joseph Goreham, in command of 200 men at Fort Cumberland, that 1,700 rebels and the Saint John Indians were within three days' march of his post. Massey doubted the truth of the report, after Car letón's success in Canada; but he sent reinforcements to Windsor to be ready to embark for Chignecto if it proved true. Arbuthnot put a price of 20 guineas on the heads of four leaders of the Cumberland rebels. In early August word was received at Fort Cumberland that the rebels had finished a road from the Saint John to Shepody, where 800 Indians were waiting to join them in an assault on the fort and a subsequent attack on Halifax. Michael Francklin went to Fort Cumberland with a small escort, and two companies were sent to Cobequid. The reports proved to be false alarms.61 There was ample reason to be alarmed, however, about a prospective American invasion, for such men as the Rev. James Lyon, a New Hampshire Ulsterman of Cobequid; John Allan, a Scot allied by marriage to the Cumberland New Englanders and anew member of the Assembly; Josiah Throop, a former Cumberland member; Jonathan Eddy, a Massachusetts immigrant who had preceded Allan as the Cumberland member; and the Rev. Seth Noble of the Massachusetts colony at Maugerville, had all been busy preparing the ground for an attempt to make Nova Scotia the Fourteenth Colony. The center of rebel activity was Machias, the fishing and lumbering settlement on the eastern Maine coast which had been established in 1763 by 16 men from Scarborough, who obtained a grant from Massachusetts in 1770 after twice being refused one by Nova Scotia.62

The Planters and the American Revolution / 125 Here Lyon took up residence in 1771 and in 1775 organized a Committee of Public Safety, which included Captain Stephen Smith, delegate to Congress, and Jeremiah and William O'Brian. Jeremiah O'Brian led the attack on the armed British schooner Margaret and the seizure of two sloops loading lumber for Boston in June 1775, for which actions Congress adopted a resolution of thanks on June 26.63 The Machias men thereafter took an active part in efforts to prevent the British forces in Boston from being supplied from the Fundy settlements. In August 1775 they took the offensive under Stephen Smith's leadership by capturing Fort Frederick at Saint John and its four defenders, as well as a Boston provision ship. They already planned to invade Nova Scotia: "the people at Mechias declared that they only waited until the Hay and Corn in Nova Scotia were cut down & collected and then they would come and carry it off."64 But their proposal to proceed to Windsor, "captivate the Tories," and then go on to destroy the dockyard and town of Halifax did not find favour with General Washington, who rejected it on August 11 as "a measure of conquest, rather than defence, and may be apprehended with very dangerous consequences."65 Washington thought such an incursion might be easy enough and for a short time might interrupt the flow of provisions to the British at Boston, but the same force would have to be maintained in Nova Scotia for any lasting effect. He was very conscious of "our weakness and the enemy's strength at sea." It was this last consideration that in the end determined that Nova Scotia should remain British, for without the British Navy it would have been an easy prey to either internal rebellion or attack from without. The naval defense was organized by Sir George Collier as commander of the Halifax naval station in November, after two armed New England schooners, sent to Canso to intercept provision ships, raided Charlottetown, plundered its few houses, and carried off the administrator, the surveyor general, the records of the Supreme Court, and such booty as they could find. On this same cruise the New Englanders captured no less than 22 vessels. The agitation, nourished by these early successes, spread. The Passamaquoddy settlers had formed a Committee of Safety in November 1775 and applied to Congress for admission "into the association of the North Americans for the preservation of their rights and liberties." On November 10 Congress decided to send two men, Aaron Willard and Moses Child, to Nova Scotia, "to enquire into the state of that colony, the disposition of the inhabitants towards the American cause, and the condition of the fortifications, dockyards, the quantity of artillery and warlike stores, and the number of soldiers, sailors, and ships of war there and to transmit the earliest intelligence to General Washington." Intim-

126 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec idated by Legge's proclamations, the two agents prudently proceeded only as far as Campobello, where they took a long-range view of the situation and reported: "From our own knowledge, and the best information of others about eight parts out of ten of the inhabitants of Nova Scotia would engage in the common cause of America, if they could be >>66 protected Without waiting for the Millard-Child report Eddy returned to Machias, enlisted there Captain West and 20 men and started off to conquer Fort Cumberland, hoping to increase his force at Pasamaquoddy and Maugerville. At Machias on August 13 he got discouraging reports from John Allan, who had spent the summer among the Micmacs. The Indians had decided to adopt a neutral course. But if the Rev. James Lyon is to be believed, the Machias men were raring to go: I ask for a small army to subdue Nova Scotia, or at least that some person, or persons, may have leave to raise men & go against that Province, at their own risque. I believe men enough might be found in this country who would cheerfully undertake it, without any assistance from Government. The People this way are so very anxious about this matter, that they would go in whale boats rather than not go. Provided they might call what they took their own in common with the good people of that Province. I confess that I am so avaricious that I would go with the utmost cheerfulness. I hope, however, I should have some nobler views, for I think it our duty to relieve our distressed brethren & bestow upon them the same glorious privileges, which we enjoy, if possible, fe deprive our enemies, especially those on this Continent, of their power to hurt us. With these views the Committee of this place once petitioned for leave to against that Province. And had our request been granted, in all probability, that country had now been entirely ours, & vast quantities of provision would have been cut off from our enemies.**7 The Rev. Mr. Lyon went on to point out what an invaluable acquisition Nova Scotia would be to Massachusetts, and that "Now it is at most defenceless & nearly nine tenths of its inhabitants would bid us a hearty welcome, & now it may be taken without much loss of blood if any, but hereafter it may cost us very dear." He highly approved of "the noble spirit and resolution of Capt. Eddy," and declared that "The reduction of that Province is a matter of the utmost consequence to this place, & would relieve us of many of our distresses."68 But the promise of a warm welcome from the Cumberlanders and the prospect of booty from the loyal and prosperous Yorkshiremen only enabled Eddy to raise a total of 72 men, before he set off from Maugerville in whaleboats and canoes. On October 29 he captured Goreham's outpost at Shepody Point, and then went on to Memramcook to enlist the support of the Acadians, "who Readily joined us, although they saw the

The Planters and the American Revolution / 127 Weakness of our Party."69 The Sackville settlers "Express'd their Uneasiness at seeing so few of us, and those unprovided with Artillery," but nonetheless "unanimously joined us." Eddy successfully isolated the fort before its garrison was alarmed by seizing two supply vessels, occupying the Windsor ferry terminus at Partridge Island, and occupying Fort Lawrence as a supply base. He was joined by about 100 New Englanders and Acadians of the region, so that the attackers numbered fewer than Goreham's garrison. A battle of proclamations preceded the fighting, with Goreham issuing one on November 7 threatening any inhabitants who aided the invaders with "immediate Military Execution"; Eddy summoning Goreham to surrender on November 10 or "abide the consequences"; and Goreham's prompt refusal to surrender "my command to any Power, but that of my Sovereign."70 The inhabitants sent a curious reply to Goreham's proclamation on the following day: The inhabitants of the County of Cumberland have given incontestable Evidence of their Peaceable Disposition, but if the Garrison came here to defend & protect them, 'tis very Late to be informed of it, four of five days after a Number of People from the Westward in Arms appeared amongst them with an Intention to take the Fort, and destroy our Families if we do not join the Common Cause whatever therefore may be done by the inhabitants is warranted by the Law of self preservation. We are not so insensible and stupid as to run Mad in a Wild Affair inconsiderately but cast ourselves on the Providence of God and expect His Blessings & protection. We are averse to the shedding Blood. We have ever prayed and still do for a speedy and happy settlement of the present and unhappy troubles. But since Your Manifesto threatens us for what is already done with a Military Execution We have no encouragement to retract-We had rather die like Men than be Hanged like Dogs.

The militancy of this statement from the "Neutral Yankees" doubtless was Josiah Throop's, for the counter-manifesto was in his handwriting.71 With these rhetorical preliminaries out of the way, Eddy launched a night assault with 80 men on November 12, but "finding the Fort to be stronger than we imagined (occasioned by late Repairs)," retired after two hours to his camp a mile away. Between three and four o'clock in the morning of November 22, Eddy's men succeeded in setting fire to Loudoun's old barracks in the spur of the fort; the following night they burnt the remaining outlying dwellings and the hospital; and they then drove off the garrison's cattle. But later that morning H.M.S. Vulture arrived, immediately landed some marines and the following day the remainder of some 200 reinforcements. On the early morning of November 30 some 150 men, half marines and half fencibles, made a surprise attack

128 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec on the rebels' camp, and pursued them some four or five miles down the Baie Verte road, burning 12 houses and 12 barns in which the greater part of the rebels' supplies had been stored. Eddy claimed that he lost only one man, and killed or wounded fifteen of the British force; while Goreham reported his men "killed several Indians, French Acadians, and Rebels," with a loss of two killed and one wounded. The British commander explained that the soldiers "set fire and consumed almost all the buildings from the fort to bloody Bridge," since the rebels had fired from them and since it was reported that William Howe and other rebel leaders had agreed "with the Indians and French Acadians who have been very mischievous and revengeful in the Rebellion to burn all the houses belonging to the Yorkshire Familys and other Government friends." Eddy's council of war promptly determined to retreat to the Saint John and make a stand there, hoping to be reinforced by Massachusetts. For his part Goreham abandoned plans to cut off the rebels' retreat at Westcock and Memramcook and destroy their boats, with "the weather turning out rainy, the Roads excessive bad, and not half the men of the Regt a shoe to their feet." So ended the attempted military conquest of Nova Scotia, which its projectors had depicted as so easy. The people reverted to their wonted neutrality at once: . . .a letter was received by Mr. Charles Dixon of Westcock who informed that most of the people of that district which had been in Arms were convinced of their errors and desirous of surrendering to the king's Mercy and further representations and Petitions presented from most all the Yorkshire Familys and other friends of Government who were threaten'd that if any more Houses should be burnt the Indians and French would absolutely sett fire to them which they could easily effect during the night and that the continuance of this firing on both sides must soon terminate in the destruction and ruin of the whole Country, and drive a number of people with their numerous Family to their last recourse of recovering their support fc protection from the Garrison.72

Goreham therefore on November 30 wisely issued a proclamation of amnesty to all who should surrender in four days, save for Eddy, Allen, Samuel Rogers, and William Howe, on whose heads a price had already been put. On December 1 he increased the reward for the apprehension of Eddy to £200 and that of the other three ringleaders to £100. On December 3 Zebulon "Roe" (Rowe) was exempted from the amnesty and a price of £100 put on his head as well. On December 10 Goreham proclaimed that he would receive no further submissions and outlawed all those who had not as yet submitted.73 Allen himself reported that "Many outrages were committed by some who came with Mr. Eddy, some of the property of the Friends of America was taken." William

The Planters and the American Revolution / 129 Howe and some deserters from a man of war robbed the house of a magistrate after the amnesty had been proclaimed, causing Goreham to issue his harsher second proclamation.74 Plunder was certainly an objective of Eddy's force, for a detached party seized the ship Molly in Pictou harbor, where it was loading lumber for Scotland, on November 29, proposing to sail it to Baie Verte and then to Chariottetown to procure some cannon reported to be buried at Fort Amherst. Goreham managed to recapture the vessel at Baie Verte and put it in the care of Captain Boyle of H.M.S. Hunter. Some 59 of the Cumberland people who had most thoroughly compromised themselves retreated with Eddy, including Captain Beaudreau (Boudreau) and thirteen other Acadians. Half of these refugees stayed in Machias, while the other half went to Cambridge to urge the Massachusetts General Court to launch a second expedition or at least arrange for the removal of their families. Josiah Throop had already been dispatched to Cambridge on November 13 with the following petition from the Cumberland people: That the Counties of Cumberland & Sunbury in Nova Scotia may be taken under the protection of this State [Massachusetts] till that Province can be subdued. That coasting vessels for the future may clear out for Passam aquoddy, the River Saint John and Cumberland, and that certificates from these places to any port in this State may secure them from American privateers. That our army now in Cumberland may be considered as part of the continental army and taken into continental pay. That a colonels commission be sent to Jonathan Eddy Esq to command the forces now raised and to be raised this winter for our purposes. That blank commissions for officers for about 500 men be sent to our committee to nil up for such men as shall be chosen by the soldiers.75

The Cumberland Committee further requested that Machias be garrisoned to serve as a retreat for their women and children if need be; and that cannon, ammunition, provisions, and three armed vessels be sent in the spring. If such assistance were granted by Massachusetts, "we doubt not but by the Divine Blessing and your friendly assistance we shall soon add another stripe to the American flagg and another colony to the United States." The General Court's committee approved the proposal, adding a captain's commission for Throop, and referred the whole matter to Congress. That body voted Mr. Throop $200 for his expenses and referred the whole question back to Massachusetts. After the collapse of Eddy's catch-as-catch-can effort, John Allan pressed more elaborate proposals upon Congress, involving a force of 3,000 men and eight armed schooners and sloops. Fort Cumberland was to be taken, and Halifax captured or cut off from the rest of the province. Saint John was to become the base of American efforts. Al-

130 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Ian himself proposed to go to the Saint John Valley and win over the Indians there and the Micmacs to the American cause. These proposals were approved by Congress and referred to Massachusetts on January 8, 1777, with promise of Congressional support for 3,000 men, but Congress reduced the number to 500 in April unless the New Hampshire and Massachusetts quotas for the Continental Army should be filled. Washington thought "the whole scheme very ineligible," since he needed all available men to meet Burgoyne's impending invasion. Allan was heard in the General Court on March 15, and it was then recommended that two battalions be raised in Massachusetts and one in Nova Scotia to serve on the continental establishment for one year. Nothing came of this, and so Congress resolved on May 13 to authorize the Massachusetts council to raise 500 men, "in such places as will least interfere with raising their quota of troops for the continental army." Recruiting efforts made in June and July brought less than a 100 men, mostly from Machias, to the Saint John under Colonel Francis Shaw, Captain Henry Dyer, and Captain Jabez West. The command had been refused by Moses Little, and the actual leader was Colonel John Allan, appointed by Congress as their agent to the Eastern Indians, with instructions to trade with them, secure intelligence, and keep General Washington informed.76 But while Congress and the General Court of Massachusetts had been passing the Nova Scotia project back and forth, the British had been busy putting Nova Scotia's defences in order, after their bad scare the preceding fall. Massey had become disillusioned about the loyalty of the inhabitants, when Michael Francklin had been unable to get a single man from Windsor to help to dislodge the rebels from Partridge Island in November. He was of opinion that "the rebellious spirit in the Province will continue, so long as Presbytry is not driven out."77 Although Collier was scornful of the "small number of hastily armed banditti" and thought Halifax "perfectly secure" because the rebels had no cannon, he regretted that the Indians had espoused the rebel cause, because of lack of attention to their chiefs.78 Goreham managed to send alarming expresses to Halifax by sail during the siege after those "who understand a Birch Canoe"-evidently imperfectly- had been intercepted. Arbuthnot doubled the patrols in Halifax, but was chiefly concerned about American privateers along the coast which had "done mischief to the fishery and shipping."79 As more information arrived at Halifax, Massey reported that inhabitants of Cumberland had "almost to a man joined the rebels," while those of Cobequid and Pictou had joined "the Irish Presbyterian rebels." Arbuthnot on the other hand still thought the people generally loyal, "except the sectaries, who will never be so until their clergy are under some

The Planters and the American Revolution / 131 control." He was confident that he could manage the rest, "except the New England people and the Acadians, who are bitter bad subjects."80 Goreham sent in five rebel prisoners, one of whom, a former ranger captain, died on the way at Windsor of a wound. The other four were Dr. Parker Clarke of Fort Lawrence, Captain Thomas Falconer of Cobequid, James Avery of Cobequid, and Richard John Uniacke, a recent arrival in Nova Scotia from Ireland. Clarke and Falconer were tried and convicted of treason, but their execution was delayed and they escaped from jail, as did Avery before trial, while Uniacke was spirited out of the country by his friends—to go on to a distinguished political career in Nova Scotia.81 With the Bay of Fundy blocked by ice, the authorities relaxed during the winter. Massey reported that Eddy, Rogers, and Howe were among the Indians on the Saint John, and that he hoped to capture them in the spring. Collier proposed a plan to secure all avenues of approach by water to the interior of the province and keep the inhabitants in order by stationing ships at Saint John, the entrance of the Bay of Fundy, Annapolis, Minas Basin, Shepody, and Cobequid Bay. In May 1777 Colonel Arthur Goold of the Council and Major Gilfrid Studholme were sent from Annapolis to the Saint John in the Vulture. Goold reported that all the inhabitants there "cheerfully" took the oath of allegiance. He held a conference with the Indians, speaking to them in French and promising them the services of a priest, the Acadian Father Bourg, then at the Bay of Chaleur. The Vulture captured a whale boat and two schooners loaded with supplies for Allan's proposed Indian trading post. Howe and Preble, the leaders of this advance guard, escaped in the bush, and a reward of £100 was offered for their capture. The inhabitants of Maugerville protested to Goold that they had only submitted to Massachusetts the previous year under threat of being harried by privateers and Indians, and because of their lack of arms. But Seth Noble, Elisha Nevins, Jacob Barker, and Israel Perley, the hottest rebels, fled after taking oath. Studholme seized their cattle and possessions. Massey still felt that "the inclination is to join any faction, prevented by the strict watch kept."82 While Massey was congratulating himself that all was quiet and Arbuthnot on the success of Goold's mission, Allan with a force of 43 men set out from Machias, picked up some Indians at Passamaquoddy, and reached the Saint John on June 1. He was shortly joined by Colonel Shaw with 42 more men. After the Vulture's visit, the inhabitants were afraid to assist them. Blaming Hazen, Simmonds, and White for bringing the British, Allen took Hazen and White prisoner and established himself among the Indians. But the British returned in force at the end of June with a man of war, two sloops, and a force of troops under

132 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Major Studholme, and on July 1 Francklin brought 150 more men from Windsor. Allan and his Indians retired up the Oromocto and then cross country to Machias. In August Massachusetts decided to abandon the whole Nova Scotian affair, instructing Eddy to disband his recruits and naming Allan to command the forces defending Machias. For in the middle of the month Admiral Collier launched with four ships a punitive expedition against Machias, which Massey regarded as "the nest of pirates and rebels." The marines captured the fort on August 14 and destroyed provisions assembled for the abandoned attack on Nova Scotia, as well as small vessels and the mill. If Massey had been able to spare troops, the admiral noted, the destruction of the town would have been complete, but the rebels seemed prepared, probably having been warned from Halifax.83 While the general and the admiral quarreled over whether the expedition would have been more successful if there had been better cooperation between them, the governor arranged for the establishment of a garrison at the mouth of the Saint John, to be protected by a frigate. Major Studholme established his post there in December. While Collier's naval patrols were able to ward off any further American expeditions to the Bay of Fundy, and Studholme's garrison protected the lower Saint John Valley, John Allan and Michael Francklin competed for the favor of the Indians, who were wooed with presents, trade goods, and flattery from both General Washington and the British authorities. In this diplomatic duel Francklin was the more successful, for he knew the language and wangled presents and supplies for his Indian charges on a scale that Allan could not equal. He was aided in his task after 1778 by Father Bourg, who was resolutely loyal to the British. In July 1779 the British took the offensive by attacking Penobscot, to anticipate an expected attack on Nova Scotia from Massachusetts. General Ftancis McLean, who had succeeded Massey in the military command at Halifax, promptly found himself besieged there by American land forces of 2-3,000 men, as well as 17 ships. But admiral Collier came up from Sandy Hook in August with six men-of-war and dispersed the rebels, destroying 41 American ships, including transports and supply vessels. The British remained in possession of Fort Majebigwaduce (the old Pentagoet and modern Castine) until the end of the war. Although the threat of invasion of Nova Scotia from New England was removed, the British at Halifax were repeatedly fearful of attack after the French alliance, and much public money was spent in fortifying the weakly garrisoned capital. Far more serious than the threats of full-scale assault which never materialized was the hit-and-run warfare conducted by American privateers, which virtually closed down the Gulf

The Planters and the American Revolution / 133 of St. Lawrence fisheries and brought heavy damage to many outports along the South Shore. Canso was the first fishing station to suffer from American attacks, but privateers were active in the Gulf and Bay of Chaleur as early as 1776, and a convoy system was in force the following year. Charles Robin reported to his brother Philip in Jersey in June 1777: We lost much time with convoy, but she was of service as we saw an American Rover, the same that ruined us last year at Neireichak. Dorey, who was to windward of the fleet, was taken by her, but the convoy appearing, together with her French papers, he got clear. Brother John also met an American Rover, but his French disguise saved him. Biculturalism paid dividends in those days. But continued aggression by American privateers made Charles very much of a Britisher. Early in June 1778 the Americans descended upon the main Robin establishment at Paspébiac: On the llth instant at about 11 o'clock two American privateers schooners of 45 tons, 2 carrige guns, 12 swivels, and forty-five men each put alongside of the Bee and Hope and boarded them, there were but three men on board each, being all employed in the fishery and not expecting a visit from them so early, as otherwise the Bee could have kept them off had all the people been on board, she being the only vessel arrived for some time was unloaded in a week which obliged us to put her guns in her hold as she would not bear them on deck in so wild a road without ballast & it could not be the case without we had determined to make no fishery ourselves, an object of Qtls. 2,000, which I thought was worth our attention. The Hope had Qtls. 1,400 fish on board, was to take Qtls. 200 more the next day IL sail for Lisbon in a few days. They [the Privateers] sent her off on the 13th & began to take everything out of the stores & ship them on board the Bee—she was rigged & going off on the 15th; after which departure the Americans came to our Habitation to take me away, but I had fled to the woods, mistrusting it. However, that morning three ships appearing, viz.: His Majesty's ships Hunter & Viper & Mr. Smith's ship Bonaventure—the latter was here first and fired at them, on their approach the Americans took in their Privateer all the dry goods they could come at and went away. I had concealed a little quantity (a third of the goods) which they could not come at. They had found the best part of our furs which they put on board but having coiled the cable on powder and am munition-which I did not expect—neither that they would leave the ship without setting her on fire—both Privateers having been taken since at Restigouche, so that I have recovered my goods to at rifle which they bartered with the Indians for canoes for their escape. I am to pay 1/8 salvage on the Bee. The Hunter & Viper were laying in G aspe but being informed by Captain Fainton of Percé of the Privateer[s] being here they set out—however they were too late to retake the Hope.

134 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Captain Boyle of the Hunger promised to leave a man-of-war in the Bay of Chaleur for protection of the fishermen, while Robin kept ten more on board his ships by day and thirty by night to repelí attack. The fishing shallops also came into port at night. But despite these precautions the privateers struck again in July: The shallop Neptune left for Miscou to collect fish—was taken the next day by American Privateer of 2 Guns & 26 swivels with Qtls. 1050 fish which they put in their Privateer & sank the shallop. They also took another vessel belonging to this place, which shallop has since been retaken by His Majesty's armed ship St. Peter, the Privateer escaped. Although there are armed ships of war stationed in the Gulf, these small Privateers find means to be along the shore. The Bee is still fully armed & you may be persuaded we shall do our very utmost to defend ourselves & our property—these are very embarrassing times & heavy charge upon my weary shoulders, this is no more a place for an Englishman, the inhabitants being all inclined towards the Americans.84

After herding the American privateers to the head of the Bay, H.M.S. Viper and Hunter cornered them off Pointe à la Garde and forced them to surrender after an hour and a half of fighting. The Americans had also captured Mr. Smith's schooner with £2,000 worth of fur on board. Captain Boyle reprimanded the Indians "in very harsh terms" for aiding the Americans to escape by selling them canoes. Despite the presence of a guard ship at Paspébiac, Charles Robin departed for Jersey in September, leaving his stock in trade in charge of Charles Dugât fils at Tracadiguéhe (Carleton), saying that he counted on him as his brother "after the friendship you have shown me for ten years." Discouraged by his heavy wartime losses, Charles Robin did not return to Gaspé until the conclusion of the war in 1783.85 Even the cheerful participation of Nova Scotians in contraband trade with New England-Massachusetts issued special orders to privateers to spare the Cape Sable shore, where vessels with both Massachusetts and Nova Scotian papers did a thriving trade with New England in fish, lumber, salt, manufactured goods, and stranded privateersmen86—did not prevent attack on their homeports as privateering became more and more akin to piracy. If hands were short, the privateer would destroy the captured ship and its contents and maroon the crew. Land raiding often proved more profitable than sea ranging, and safer when local sympathizers provided information, as they frequently did to prevent being plundered themselves. Privateers even ventured into the supposedly well guarded Bay of Fundy, but the South Shore settlements suffered the most. Simeon Perkins, who himself indulged in contraband trade although he attempted

The Planters and the American Revolution / 135 to encourage loyalism, was reduced by 1781 to 7/32 interest in one vessel out of the six which he had once owned. Liverpool was finally given a garrison of 57 regulars, after Perkins had obtained some arms to be distributed, according to a suspicious Halifax, only "to the bet ter most people" of the place. With repeated attacks on Liverpool ships and on the town itself, the "Neutral Yankees" finally became belligerent and armed a privateer of their own.87 It was in vain that plundered Nova Scotians appealed to the Council of Massachusetts: "we in this Harbour. . .have done so much for America. . .have helped three of our hundred prisoners up along to America and given part of our living to them and have concealed Privateers and prizes too from the British Cruisers in this harbour."88 The lawlessness encouraged by war gradually turned the "Neutral Yankees" against their fellow Americans and made them British-minded. One of the most notable privateer raids was that on Lunenburg on July 1, 1782. Ninety men from six American ships descended upon the town, which was protected only by a corporal's guard, since most of the menfolk were away. The raiders burnt Councilor John Creighton's house and took him and the soldiers prisoner. Having gathered up all moveable plunder, they exacted a bond for £1,000 as the price of not burning the town before sailing away. This raid proved an adequate corrective for the "dutch insensibility (which) is little interested for either Party," according to Captain John Macdonald's report of October 30, 1776.89 Another notable raid was that on the New England settlements at Annapolis and Gran ville in August 1781.90 With the Halifax authorities zealous in repressing American sympathies, though their hand did not bear heavily on the independent outports, and even the Cumberland and Cobequid rebels were readmitted to citizenship by 1782, Nova Scotia gradually swung out of the New England orbit and into that of Britain. It was London rather than Boston that henceforth was to be the metropolis of the colony, as New England, satisfied with the St. Croix boundary laid down in the peace settlement, turned its expansionism westward and abandoned its hopes of taking over its onetime outpost.

Notes 1 Sam Slick, The Clockrnaker: First Series (1836). 2 News-Letter, 29 June, 6 July, 17 Aug. 1749; Hansen & Brebner, Mingling of the Canadian & American Peoples, 26. 3 Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, 1749/50-1753, 4, 116; Hansen & Brebner, 26.

136 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec 4 CAR 1004, 289-300, "Description fc State of the New Settlements in Nova Scotia in 1761." 5 Published by order of the Council of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in Boston News-Letter, 29 June, 6 July, 17 Aug. 1749; Hansen L· Brebner, Mingling of the Canadian & American Peoples, 26. 6 Boston News-Letter, 15 Feb. 1759; TRSC 1911, II, 23-115, W.O. Raymond, "Col. Alexander McNutt & the Pre-Loyalist Settlements of Nova Scotia." 7 Akins, N.S. Archives, 736. 8 Ibid., 740-1. 9 N.S., A 63, 64, Lords of Trade-Lawrence, 1 August 1759. 10 Ibid., A 63, 89, Lawrence-Board of Trade, 20 Sept. 1759. 11 Ibid., A 63, 124; Lawrence-Board of Trade, 10 Dec. 1759; A 60, 91 Lords of Trade-Lawrence, 8 July 1756; A 62, 87, Lords of Trade-Lawrence, 7 Feb. 1758. 12 A 63, 161, Lords of Trade-the King, 20 Dec. 1759. 13 A 64, 141, 153, Lawrence-Board of Trade, 11 May 1760. 14 A 77, 155, Richmond-Gov. of Nova Scotia, 18 June 1766. 15 A 67, 193, Order in council, 29 April 1862. 16 Saw telle, 274. 17 Ibid., 275, Wayne-Hughes, 9 July 1765. 18 Ibid., Sparks, Franklin's Writings, IV, 354. 19 Ibid., 282-3. 20 Hansen fc Brebner, 36-7. 21 N.S. Hist. Soc. Colls., VII, 56, "Return of the Several Townships, Jan. 1, 1767." Tabulation by Dr. Benjamin Rand, St. Croix Courier, 29 Sept. 1892; Sawtelle, 267. 22 N.S., B 13, 4, Council, 24 March 1764. 23 N.S., A 63, 116, Memorial, Annapolis Twp., 3 Dec. 1759; 140, Memorial, Liverpool, 11 Dec. 1759. 24 PANS, Vol. 37, Govs. of N.S.-Board of Trade, 1760-1772, 1776-1781, No. 2, Belcher-Lord of Trade, 12 Dec. 1760. 25 N.S., A 64, 178, Lawrence-Board of Trade, 16 June 1760; 262, BelcherBoard of Trade, 12 Dec. 1760; A 65, 189, Belcher-Lords of Trade, 14 April 1761. 26 N.S., 136, 32, Belcher-Col. Forster, 18 June 1761; cited J.S. Martell, «PreLoyalist Settlements around Minas Basin," (unpublished M.A. thesis, Dalhousie 193). 27 A 76, 56, Memorial of the inhabitants of King's County, 23 March 1765. 28 N.S., 136, 115. 29 R.P. P.-M. Dagnaud, Les Français du Sud-Ouest de la Nouvelle Ecosse: le R.P. Jean-Mandé Sigogne, Apôtre de la Baie Sainte-Marie, 1799-1844 (Valence, 1905), 15-27; ibid., 27-29, grant of 17 Aug. 1771. Αρ. I, "Premiers Habitants de la Baie Sainte-Marie," gives details of grants from 1771-75. 30 J.B. Brebner, The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia (New York, 1937), 20810. 31 N.S., B 12, 43, Council, 24 July 1762; Brebner, Yankees, 214-5.

The Planters and the American Revolution / 137 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

BM, Brown MS 19069, f. 54; Brebner, Yankees, 214-5. N.S., A 76, 197, Wilmot-Board of Trade, 19 Nov. 1765. Brebner, Yankees, 158-63. H.A. Innis (ed.), Diary of Simeon Perkins, 1766-1780 (Toronto, 1948), I, 3, 3 June 1766. N.S., A 82, 1, Francklin-Shelburne, 29 March 1768; A 81, 103, Letter from the Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, 11 Feb. 1768. A 90, 10, Dartmouth-Legge, 5 Feb. 1774; F.S. Drake (ed.), Tea Leaves (Boston, 1884); A 91, 19, 56, Legge-Dartmouth, 30 Sept., 18 Oct. 1774; A 91, 136, Monck-Dartmouth, 10 Nov. 1774; Perkins Diary, I, 84, 3 Oct. 1774; Brebner, Yankees, 167-70. Perkins Diary, I, 74, 26 & 27 May 1774. Brebner, Yankees, 292-3. N.S., D 9, 206, 7 July 1772. A 93, 158, 173, Legge-Dartmouth, 6 & 18 March 1775. A 93, 190, Legge-Dartmouth, 24 April 1775. Brebner, Yankees, 301-2. N.S., A 93, 244, Legge-Dartmouth, 12 May 1775. A 94, 128, Gage-Legge, 24 May 1775. A 94, 131, Gage-Legge, 7 June 1775. A 94, 303, Legge-Dartmouth, 27 June 1775. CHR XV, 2 (June 1934), 171-81, J.B. Brebner, "Nova Scotia's Remedy for the American Revolution"; A 94, 48, Legge-Dartmouth, 31 July 1775. CHR XV, 2 (June 1934), 177. NS., A 94, 58, Legge-Dartmouth, 31 July 1775. N.S., B 16, 141-3, Francklin-Legge & Council, August 1775. A 94, 150, 156, 160, Legge-Gage, 16 Aug., 18 Aug. 1755. A 94, 213, Mauger-Pownall, 16 Oct. 1775; A 94, 201, Secretary of StateLegge, 16 Oct. 1775. A 94, 272, Stanton-Legge, 4 Dec. 1775. A 94, 300, Memorial of the Inhabitants of Yarmouth, 8 Dec. 1775. A 95, 193, Francklin-Legge, 3 March 1776; B 17, 29-30, Council, 16 March; A 96, 127, Arbuthnot-Germain, 15 Aug. 1776. A 95, 49, Legge-Dartmouth, 11 Jan. 1766. A 95,103, Legge-Dartmouth, 15 Feb. 1776; 118, Germain-Legge, 24 Feb. 1776; 122, Germain-Arbuthnot, 24 Feb. 1776. A 95,161, Burrow-Dartmouth, Feb. 1776; 185, Legge-Dartmouth, 18 March, 295, Legge-Germain, 10 April 1776. A 95, 309, Arbuthnot-Germain, 26 April 1776; A 96, 13, ArbuthnotGermain, 5 June; Massey-Germain, 27 June 1776. A 96, 88, Massey-Germain, 5 July 1776; Arbuthnot-Germain, 92, 8 July; 139, Baker-Capt. Barron, 8 Aug.; 143, Massey-Germain, 5 Sept. F. Kidder, Military Operations in Eastern Maine and Nova Scotia during the Revolution (Albany, 1867), 35-6. Memorial of the Centennial Anniversary of the Settlement of Machias (Machias, 1863), 46-8.

138 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec 64 N.S., B 16, 149, Deposition of William Shey, 16 Aug. 1775; D.C. Harvey, "Machias and the Invasion of Nova Scotia," CHAR 1932. 65 P. Force (ed.), American Archives, 4th Series, III, 90; D.C. Harvey, "Machias and the American Revolution," CHAR 1932, 17-8. 66 Force, American Archives, 4th series, IV, 1149. 67 N.S., 364, 16; Harvey, 20. 68 N.S., 364, 18; Harvey, 21-2. 69 N.S., 364, 33; Harvey, 22-3. 70 A 97, 53. 71 Brebner, Yankees, 324 n. 88. 72 A 97, 17, Goreham's Journal, 4 Nov.-22 Dec. 1766. 73 Ibid., 53-59. 74 Harvey, 24. 75 Ibid., 25 N.S., 364, 30. A second petition, made jointly for Cumberland and Sunbury, dated 17 Dec. 1776, was also presented. 76 Ibid., 26-7; Brebner, Yankees, 325. 77 A 96, 342, Massey-Germain, 21 Nov. 1776. 78 Ibid., 316, Coliler-Germain, 21 Nov. 1776. 79 Ibid., 362, Arbuthnot-Germain, Nov. 1776. 80 Ibid., 382, Massey-Germain, 20 Dec. 1776; 388, Arbuthnot-Germain, 31 Dec. 1776. 81 Harvey, 27. 82 A 907, 191-208, Gould-Arbuthnot, 28 May 1777; 170, Massey-Germain, 10 June 1777. 83 A 97, 267, Collier-Germain, 16 Aug. 1777. 84 Charles Robin-Philip Robin, 21 June 1777; Charles Robin, 30 June 1778; Charles Robin, 25 July 1778; A.G. Legros, "Charles Robin," Revue de l'histoire de la G as pesie (G aspé, 1966). 85 H.M.S. Viper's Log; Legros, ibid. 86 Brebner, Yankees, 314-7. 87 Diary of Simeon Perkins, I, 17 Sept. 1776; 16 Oct. 1776; 28 Sept. 1777; 7 June 1778; 30 July 1779; 23 Oct. 1780; 5 May 1783. 88 N.S., Shelburne Records, Miscellaneous, petition of four Nova Scotians plundered at Ragged Islands, 25 Sept. 1779. 89 N.S., A 96, 304; Brebner, Yankees, 336 n. 121. 90 W.A. Calnek & A.W. Savery, History of the County of Annapolis (Toronto, 1897), 163-4.

7

The Coming of the Loyalists (1776-1785)

The coming of some 35,000 Loyalists to the Maritime Provinces had even more drastic effects upon the English-French society which had been slowly developing in the region since 1713 than did the arrival of some 6,000 of them in the old Province of Quebec. The arrival of the Loyalists did not create, as it did in Quebec, an Anglo-French society in the Maritimes. There was already one there. It did, however, make permanent the alteration in the balance between French and English in the Maritimes which had resulted from the deportation of the majority of the Acadians in 1755. In 1775 there was a total population of between 17 and 20,000 settlers of European descent of whom perhaps 2,000 were Acadians. Henceforward the Acadians were to be still more of a minority in a region which was to pride itself upon being pre-eminently loyal, "British to the core." Unlike the situation in Central Canada the arrival of the Loyalists did not necessitate the division of an old province into one predominantly English and one predominantly French. It did, however, produce an equally drastic territorial change. The newcomers promptly forced the division of the old Province of Nova Scotia and the creation of the provinces of New Brunswick (1784) and Cape Breton (1784), while St. John's Island, which had a population of only 271 in 1768, was so strengthened by the arrival of 600 Loyalists and a subsequent influx of Scottish settlers that its population had risen to 4,400 by 1798, when it was renamed Prince Edward Island. Nova Scotia was henceforward restricted to the peninsula, with the New Brunswick boundary following the old French-English military frontier on the Isthmus of Chignecto. Cape Breton failed to flourish as a separate province, despite an influx of Scottish settlers who left the Acadians isolated in enclaves at Isle Madame and Chéticamp; and so it was reannexed to Nova Scotia in 1820, when its population was still only some 6,000. The Loyalists were predominant in New Brunswick and at first, a considerable force in Nova Scotia, while after the division of Nova

140 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Scotia the Acadians were thoroughly dispersed into little French islands of population as lost in an English-speaking sea as the bitterest enemy of the "Neutral French" in pre-expulsion days could have desired. Not until recent times have they been able to overcome the effects of their dispersion among three provinces. In only one of which do they form a significant and influential minority, constituting 36 percent of the population of New Brunswick with an unofficial capital in Moncton where once Benjamin Franklin proposed a Pennsylvania-German settlement. The lines between rebel and loyalist, which had been traced in 1774 when the struggle between Whigs and Tories grew violent in the Thirteen Colonies, were indelibly drawn by the bloodshed at Lexington early in 1775. The course of events produced refugees from the earliest days of conflict and was part of the process that, as Esther Clark Wright so clearly saw, would turn Tories into Loyalists.1 For the purposes of the present narrative much of the history of the Loyalists can be illustrated by the career of Edward Winslow, one of the most articulate of those who finally settled in New Brunswick and who has left us innumerable letters which document the mental landscape of one Loyalist.2 Winslow belonged to one of the best-known families of colonial Massachusetts. Descended from the first governor of Plymouth Plantation, he was born in 1746 on land which had been in the possession of his family since 1620. His father, the elder Edward Winslow, was at once Collector of the Port of Plymouth, Registrar of Probate, and Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in the pluralistic tradition of the eighteenth-century oligarchy. After graduating from Harvard in 1765, young Winslow shared the latter office with his father in the cosy nepotistic fashion of his class and time, and was also named naval officer of the port. But the seemingly secure career of privilege which lay before him was shattered by the political struggle which became acute in Massachusetts in 1774. Like other notable colonial families, the Winslows were divided by the issue, for while young Winslow and his father were staunch Tories and therefore supporters of the King, his uncle General John Winslow, who had reluctantly participated in the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, was an active Whig. The Winslow's social circle was also split. In Massachusetts, as in the other older colonies where political development was well advanced, the ruling class was far from being unanimously Loyalist. If Loyalism seemed strongest among the upper classes, most of the Revolutionary leaders were also men of birth and position, such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and John Adams. And the great body of the Loyalists were humble folk, for the most part recent immigrants. It is doubtful whether half of them spoke English, for there

The Coming of the Loyalists / 141 were many Palatine and Pennsylvania-German farmers among them, as well as many Gaelic-speaking Scots. Edward Winslow made his opinions public early in the struggle, explicitly and at a relatively young age. He was barely twenty-six in 1773 when he authorized the "Plymouth Protest" in which he condemned the Sons of Liberty. Not content with words alone he also set about organizing a company of Tory volunteers to keep order in Plymouth with the result that by October 1774 he had made himself so "obnoxious" to his countrymen that he was stripped of his public offices. Winslow then sought service with General Thomas Gage, the British commander in chief in North America who had taken over the governorship of Massachusetts in May 1774 under the punitive Massachusetts Government Act, and had begun fortifying Boston in September. In April 1775 Winslow served as guide to Lord Percy's force which was dispatched to seize the rebels' military supply depot at Concord. He was especially commended by that officer for his conduct at Lexington. General Gage made him Collector of the Port of Boston and Registrar of Probate for Suffolk County. Like other active Loyalists, Winslow accompanied the troops to Halifax when the British evacuated Boston in March 1776. But he did not remain there long. He accompanied the two Howes' expedition against New York in June, 1776, and in August was appointed "MusterMaster-General of the Provincial Forces taken into His Majesty's Pay within the Colonies lying on the Atlantic Ocean from Nova Scotia to West Florida inclusive." At first the duties of the post were not as extensive as the title, for there was then only one Loyalist corps, the New York Volunteers. But the provincials were to reach a maximum strength of 125,000 men before the end of the war. Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow had to appoint deputies, among them his Harvard friend Ward Chipman, whose later career was to be linked with his in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Winslow's sonorous title not only represented his own considerable and growing work-load. It also was a sign of the developing military activity of the Tories. Many able-bodied male refugees were drawn into military service, or some other employment directly connected with the hostilities. Clark has estimated that some 8,000 officers and men served in the more or less regularly embodied corps of provincial troops, such as Delancey's Brigade, the New York Volunteers and the King's American Regiment.3 Others acted as volunteers without regular pay or provisions. Still more found some other employment directly connected with the hostilities, such as work in the Civil Departments of the British Army or in furnishing supplies for the British forces.

142 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec The complexity of events between 1776 and 1783 involved not only increasingly intricate politics of interchanges between the Congress and the ministers of the Crown but also the emergence of European, in particular, French activities. The recognition by France in February of 1778 of the Independence of the United States brought the struggle fully into the field of international events. For Britain, the struggle against rebellious colonies was now to be seen not only as an internal matter of empire but as a major part of the standing of British power in Europe and in the world generally. In these circumstances there was a strong argument for attaching military, as well as political importance, to those colonists who would openly demonstrate their loyalty to the Crown. Appointments such as Winslow's were not the sole connecting link between those engaged in supporting the position of the Crown. There were both military and civil associations of those dedicated to the aims of opposing the Patriots. In late fall, 1775, the Boston Loyal American Associators, had been formed as a result of General William Howe's proclamation that it had become "the indispensable duty of every loyal and faithful citizen to contribute all in his power for the preservation of order and good government within the Town. . .".4 From this root, particularly through the work of George Leonard, at that time a Boston merchant and shipowner, later an important New Brunswick citizen, the organization of Loyalists would develop. It was Leonard's work in the early months of the war which would be the background for Winslow's active service in 1779. Leonard had enthusiastically provided backing for the British. A Memorial which he despatched to one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, Lord George Germain, noted that he had purchased and manned 10 vessels with 408 men, a private fleet which "afforded supplies of fresh provisions for the hospitals and garrison at Rhode Island: and in other respects aided and promoted his Majesty's service." Leonard received a commission from Admiral Collier, in 1776 the officer in charge of the naval defence of Nova Scotia but who in 1779 was named commander of the North American squadron. Leonard and his associates "annoyed the enemy, obtained supplies of fresh provisions, and were at all times a faithful band of guides and pilots to the King's army and navy, having made it their invariable practice to desist from private pursuits, to give convoy and protection to transports, victuallers, etc., as well as to co-operate with the army in making descents on the coast, whenever called upon. . . ."5 Leonard's force helped to blockade New London and to guard other harbours on Long Island Sound, to convey troops to New York, to cover Tryon's landing in Connecticut, to subdue Nantucket, and to transport the British garrison and Loyalist refugees to New York from Newport. All this was done at Leonard's

The Coming of the Loyalists / 143 own expense, except for a donation of 550 guineas from General Richard Prescott, under whose immediate command he served. Winslow also served under General Prescott and in the spring of 1779 he was appointed to command a detachment of "Provincial Forces and Refugees ordered on a Secret Expedition," a body of men much similar to those organized by Leonard.6 Their orders were for marauding and privateering operations on the Rhode Island and Massachusetts coasts. It was precisely this sort of guerilla warfare which made the Loyalists so thoroughly hated by their former friends and neighbours. Its raison d'être was, after all, harassment of the perceived enemy and the acquisition of booty which would provision the British forces. At first, there was some hesitation about the strength of these detachments and Winslow reported that General Prescott "pointedly ordered me not to contend with superior force and suggested that in the infant state of our party 'easy conquest ought to be our object.'"7 However, by the 10th of June, 1779 Winslow reported that his band of Associated Refugees had captured 5 ships, 120 boats and 35 prisoners, as well as 134 horses, 1, 843, 642, 38 calves and 11 hogs.8 While this was less than a tenth of that accomplished by the Yankee privateers for the Patriots before 1777 it was nevertheless an important contribution both materially and symbolically to the Crown's cause. Over the summer of 1779 Winslow served with Colonel Edmund Fanning of North Carolina and New York, who was to be appointed Lieu tenant-Governor of Nova Scotia in 1783. Most of the officers and men who were with Winslow at this point settled in New Brunswick after the hostilities. By mid September, 1779, Winslow reported that "in subsequent excursions, the Refugee vessels had taken thirteen prizes, three of them armed vessels, and that the account of sales of property taken from the Rebels, by the Agent's certificate, amounted to the sum of £23,427/183/6d."9 As Christopher Ward wrote, "the spring of 1780 was for the Americans one of the most doubtful of the whole war; for the British one of the most hopeful."10 For men like Leonard and Winslow it was an obvious watershed and Winslow, in particular, was skating about the leadership of the British. He considered that the supercilious attitude of the regular army officers to those not within their circle exasperating in the extreme. He defended the worth of the Provincial units, declaring that "the British have gained near as much from their observations of the Provincial and American troops as the latter have acquired from them," and he complained of the preference given British officers in the Provincial corps, denouncing some of them as "Coxcombs-Fools-and Blackguards" who had no consideration for their men. He had little use for Sir Henry Clinton, noting: "Tis unnecessary to observe that a cam-

144 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec paign in which all the Grenadiers of the Army are employed in digging, and half the Dragoons foraging on foot among peaceable inhabitants, could not be productive of capital acquisitions." He also wrote, though he thought better of it and struck it out: "For my own part as I never despond, I indulge a hope that I shall yet have a chance of seeing a Gen· eral that's neither a Rebel or a Historical Fool at the Head of a British Army in America & when that happens I shall have no doubt that the war will terminate as every true friend to the constitution wishes".11 It was partly this general disillusionment with the conduct of the war and partly the specific tactics of Clinton in withdrawing from Newport, Rhode Island in October 1779 that persuaded George Leonard to propose a new scheme for the use of Loyalist strength in the spring of 1780. As Paul H. Smith has pointed out "The Loyalists never occupied a fixed well-understood place in British strategy" ,12 This new proposal would be yet one more of the "ad hoc responses to constantly changing conditions and [would be] like British strategy throughout the war"13 something conceived to meet the particular exigencies of the instant. Leonard was, at this point, the navy agent and contractor for the Associate Refugees. He presented his suggestions in a memorial entitled a "Proposal for Reviving the Association of the Loyalists in North America, and making that respectable Body essentially useful for the public service".14 He argued for the establishment of a Board of Commissioners to direct the operations of the Loyalists, designed to "be most essentially useful on distressing the enemy, and keeping the country in continual alarms".15 The proposal found favour in London and was recommended to Clinton by Lord George Germaine on April 21, 1780. Commissions were to be granted to Loyalist commanders, "but without Pay or Rank in the Army or Command over other Corps," and each Associated Loyalist was to receive a free grant of 200 acres when the rebellion was suppressed. The Board of Directors included Governor William Franklin of New Jersey, George Duncan Ludlow of New York, Timothy Ruggles of Massachusetts, and George Leonard, all of whom were to take active roles in the Maritimes after the war. The Board was established in December 1780, with Franklin as president and Sampson Salters Blowers, a Boston lawyer, as secretary. On December 28 the Board issued a declaration of the benefits and rewards available to Associators, stressing that : "It will also be an Object of their immediate Care to put a Stop to those Distinguished Cruelties with which the Colonial Loyalists are generally treated, when they have the Misfortune of falling into the Hands of the Rebels. . .(and) to make the Enemy feel the just Vengeance due to such Enormities."16 Leonard's activities in this crucial year could be seen as having a specific impact on Loyalist fortunes. For Winslow, however, 1780 was

The Coming of the Loyalists / 145 less productive. He had been offered the command of a proposed sec· ond battalion of the King's American Regiment in September 1780; but Winslow, his old friend Joshua Upham of Brookfield, Mass., who had served as Winslow's major in the Rhode Island campaign, and Daniel Murray proposed to raise a New England brigade, whose command was offered first to General Timothy Ruggles and then to Governor John Wentworth of New Hampshire. Upham's farsighted hope was that "In this way all the men of influence within and some Friends without the lines from the Eastern Provinces may at the close of the war find themselves on sure ground of provision; you & I shall have it in our power to provide for our Boys &c. . .we shall with the Regiment of Dragoons employ every Gent'n from that country who would wish to be recommended, by which means we shall extend an influence to all parts of the country."17 But the only result of this scheme was the establishment of the King's American Dragoons, with first Murray and then Upham as second in command to Benjamin Thompson of Rumford, (Concord, N.H.). In December 1780 Winslow sent a memorial of his services to Sir Henry Clinton, requesting an increase in pay and leave of absence to go to England, getting as his only reply: "It can't be now."18 He complained to Wentworth that his emoluments had been "screwed down to the last peg by the Strainer of Gnats and Swallower of camels who at present commands."19 Winslow's bitterness in December 1780 stemmed as much from his continued exasperation with the conduct of the war as from his personal circumstances. With the victory at Camden, South Carolina in August of 1780 it looked for a moment as if the expected victory for the Crown was in reach. In October, however, came the battle of King's Mountain, North Carolina. Here on October 7th came an engagement that was, with the "exception of one British soldier"20 a bloody and savage combat between Americans. It was a Patriot victory and in the opinion of Ward it was of "immediate and 'great importance' ". It turned the tide of the war in the south."21 It was followed by the further defeat for the Crown at Cowpens in January 1781. From this time forward there was "an unbroken chain of consequences to the catastrophe at Yorktown which finally separated America from the British Crown."22 During these months the actions of those known as the Associated Loyalists who were directed by the Board of Commissioners, which had been established through the initiative of Leonard, are not easy to disentangle. Part of their exertions were directed to combatting violence suffered within communities. Tarring and feathering, being ridden on rails, imprisonment in chains and summary execution were the fates of many Loyalists; and their fellows soon tended to retaliate in kind, in

146 / Masón Wade, Acadia, and Quebec New Jersey, for example, where strength allowed the Loyalists to vent their resentment about the ill-treatment accorded those of their views taken prisoner. They hanged one man and pinned the following notice on his body: We the Refugees having with Grief Long beheld the Cruel Murders of Our Brethren and finding Nothing but Such Measures Daily Carrying into Execution. We therefore Determine not to Suffer without taking Vengeance for numerous Cruelties and thus begin and have made use of Captain Huddy as the first Object to present to your Views, and further Determine to Hang Man for Man as Long as a Reffuggee is left Existing.^

This action produced protests from Washington to Sir Guy Carleton, who had succeeded Clinton as commander-in-chief on the 2nd March, 1782 and exchanges between Carleton and the Associated Loyalists. Though they were pledged to avoid "Excesses, Barbarities or Irregularities, contrary to the acknowledged Laws of War as practised by civilized Nations," the Loyalists were not guiltless for their part. Civil wars are perhaps the bitterest of all wars, and are noted for their atrocities. There is no record of the number of Associated Loyalists or of the expeditions they undertook, but they were active in incursions into Connecticut and Delaware from their base on Long Island, where they garrisoned the fort at Lloyd's Neck. When Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781 the result was both the destruction of Loyalist morale and of the British desire to continue the war. As Smith has written "foreign intervention, political pressures and poor intelligence led "the British" to the adoption of a policy which had major limitations at best and grave defects at worst."24 Bitter as the defeat in battle the resolution of the House of Commons on March 4th, 1782, made acceptance of the reality inescapable for Loyalists. The House voted to "consider as enemies to his Majesty and the Country all those who should advise or by any means attempt to further prosecution of offensive war on the Continent of North American." An augur of what the future would now bring was the American reaction to the attempt made by Cornwallis in the articles of capitulation at Yorktown to exempt those who had joined the King's forces from punishment. The American authorities refused, saying the issue was a domestic matter. In the face of this knowledge, no assurances could allay Loyalist fears of Rebel retribution. Clinton wrote to Franklin on March 16, 1782 that he had the "King's most gracious approbation of my Intentions to give the loyal Subjects on this Continent who have borne Arms in Support of the Constitution the strongest Assurances that no Post, Place or Garrison, in which Loyalists are joined with the King's Troops, should be surrendered on any Terms which might discriminate between them

The Coming of the Loyalists / 147 and put one on a worse Footing than the other."25 Instruction to Sir Guy Carleton, who along with Rear-Admiral Robert Digby had been named one of the two commissioners "for restoring peace and granting pardon to the revolted provinces in America" on March 21, 1782 had emphasized that the Loyalists must be told that "their interests and security should be considered."26 But the news that the commissioners brought with them when they arrived in New York in May, 1782 was sufficient to give substance to the worst fears of the Loyalists. In a letter that was immediately also circulated to the principal Loyalists, Carleton informed Washington that negotiations for peace had commenced in Paris, upon the basis of independence for the Thirteen Colonies, "however, not without the highest Confidence that the Loyalists should be restored to their Possessions, or a full Compensation made to them for whatever Confiscations may have taken place."27 This letter, of which copies were sent to the principal Loyalists, produced consternation "even on the probability of so calamitous an Event taking place" and a statement of their firm belief that "there yet exists a Majority of the People throughout the Provinces, who are ardently desirous to be again reunited under His Majesty's just authority and Government." Yet if independence must come, the spokesmen of the "Loyal Inhabitants and Refugees within the British Lines at New York" entreated "Your Excellencies' Interposition with His Majesty, by every consideration of Humanity, to secure, if possible beyond the mere form of Treaty, our Persons and Properties; that Such, as think they cannot safely remain here, may be enabled to seek Refuge elsewhere."28 The handwriting on the wall was becoming faintly visible even to those who could not bring themselves to believe that the first British Empire was about to be dismembered. Guy Carleton was much concerned about the future of the Loyalists and he was to prove a staunch friend to them over the years to come. Born in Ireland in 1724 to a family that well-connected but in modest circumstances he had already had an outstanding career as an army officer and colonial administrator. Now fifty-eight he was perhaps the most knowledgeable Englishman in the field of North American activity. He remained in New York form May 1782 until November 1783 and his work during this period meant the evacuation of some 30,000 troops and up to 27,000 refugees. He quickly realized both the thorny nature of the issue of the Loyalists for Anglo-American relations as well as the divided opinions and strong emotions of the Loyalists themselves. In August, 1782 he wrote to London that some Loyalists were inclined to make overtures to the Americans, while others were determined "to abide any extremity rather than submit either to the Domination or

148 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Principles of their domestic Foes. The Passions of these I have endeavoured to moderate by turning their Views to other Settlements, if the most reasonable Expectations should fail them here."29 A group of Associated Loyalists from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware declared in one and the same breath that they would assist "in restoring the King's Authority in these Provinces and Counties, as repeatedly offered, to the last drop of their Blood," but if Britain should withdraw "from an inglorious and dishonest despondency," they would consider themselves "as a deserted People, left in a State of Nature and a Liberty to become the Subjects" of the new powers that be.30 Others, even before negotiations were concluded, convinced that they could not make their peace with the victorious Rebels after waging war against them, began to think of possible refuges after the withdrawal of the British forces. Nova Scotia was the British possession nearest to New York City and hence the most favoured; for Canada was a distant and overwhelming French colony, and Florida and the West Indies were ill thought of because of their tropical climate and the danger of yellow fever. Carleton himself wrote to Governor Sir Andrew Snape Hammond in Halifax, April 22, 1782 that many refugees would need to be reestablished and that it would be "an act of necessary caution" to reserve as much land as possible for them in Nova Scotia, "to answer demands which are likely to press, both on the generosity and good faith of the public."31 The actions of the Loyalist groups on Long Island and the Jersey shore during the summer of 1782 under-lined the prediction. They made plans for the future and in so doing built upon the various Loyalist Associations born during the war. Those from Lloyd's Neck, Long Island sent a number of agents to Nova Scotia. Those named were Benjamin Thompson, Edward Winslow, Sampson Salter Blowers, the Reverend John Sayre of Fairfield, Conn., Amos Botsford of Newtown, Conn., and Captain John Moseley. A Board of Agents was established, with Dr. Samuel Seabury, chaplain of the King's American Regiment, as president and Blowers as secretary. "Articles of Settlement in Nova Scotia" were draw up, and Seabury and Thompson were appointed to present these proposals to Carleton on behalf of the Loyalists who proposed to emigrate thither.32 They requested shipping and convoy to their destination, provisions for the voyage and for one year, farming tools, 300-600 acres for each family, 2,000 acres for the support of a clergyman, and 1,000 acres for that of a school, and arms and ammunition "to enable them to defend themselves against any hostile invasion." Lists were drawn up of those who were willing to move that fall some 600 and three agents were chosen to sail with the fall fleet to look over the land and to report to the Board on conditions of settlement in Nova Scotia. Carleton gave the Loyalist

The Coming of the Loyalists / 149 agents a letter of recommendation to Hammond, requesting his favour and protection for them, and assistance in exploring the country. Carleton enclosed lists of those who, "relinquishing all Hope of repossessing their former property in the revolted Provinces," desired to emigrate. He suggested that land grants to them should be made without payment of fees since such grants might be "considered as well founded Claims to Justice rather than of mere Favour" .33 The subsequent insistence of the Nova Scotian officials on receiving their usual prerequisites came near wrecking the whole project of resettling the Loyalists. Before Carleton's letter arrived in Halifax, Hammond had been replaced as governor by John Parr. In acknowledging receipt of Carleton's letter Parr assured the general that no "assistance which possibly derived from this Government, shall be wanting to those who have made so great a Sacrifice to their Loyalty, and that they shall receive every accommodation that I can afford them." But it was only in his power to provide land, since no housing was available in Halifax, fuel and lumber were scarce, and the same was true of any other part of the Province. He warned of "the many inconveniences and great distress these people must suffer, if any of them come into this Province this Winter," and expressed the hope that "no necessity will compel these people to further suffering and calamities."34 Upon further reflection Parr wrote to Secretary of State Townsend in London, informing him of Carleton's requests, and asking for new instructions, since gratuitous grants were contrary to his old ones.35 Meanwhile Parr was reporting to friends that he had found "everything better than expected," and that "with good fishing, plenty of Provisions of all sorts except Flower, with a very good French Cook to dress them, a Cellar well stock'd with Port, Claret, Madeira, Rum, Brandy, Bowood Strong Beer &C, a neat income (including a regime of Provincials of which I am Colonel) of £2200 Sterg p Annum, an income far beyond my expectations, plenty of Coals & Wood against the Severity of the Winter, a house well furnish'd, and Warm Cloths, that upon the whole my Dear Grey, your friend Parr is as happy and comfortably seated as you could wish an old friend to be. . .1 am determined to be happy and to make everyone so who comes within my lines."36 But "Cock Robin" John Parr's effort to keep his comfortable nest untroubled by refugee Loyalists was doomed from the start. Three hundred refugees from New York arrived at Annapolis before the end of October, and 501 from Charleston, South Carolina, at Halifax early in December. Par complained to London that he had not a hut to shelter them, and that "Those from Charlestown are worse off than the refugees from New York, as they come almost naked from the burning sands of South Carolina to the frozen coast of Nova Scotia."37

150 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec On January 14,1783 the three Loyalist agents reported from Annapolis to the Board of Agents in New York in glowing terms. The country from Annapolis to St. Mary's Bay had very good soil and fisheries. They had also inspected the St. John's Valley as far as Oromocto: There are many settlers along this river upon the interval land. They are chiefly poor people who come here and get their living easily. The interval lies upon the river, and is a most fertile soil, annually manured by the overflowings of the river, and produces crops of all kinds with little labour; and vegetables in the greatest perfection; parsnips of great length, &c. They cut down the trees, burn the tops, put in a crop of wheat or Indian corn, which yields a plentiful increase. These intervals would make the finest meadows. The uplands produce wheat both of the summer and winter kinds, as well as Indian corn. Here are some wealthy farmers, having flocks of cattle. The greater part of the people, excepting the township of Maugerville, are tenants, or seated on the bank without leave or license, merely to get their living. ... Some of our people chose Conway (Digby, N.S.), others give the preference to St. John's. Our people who came with us are settled here for the winter; some at the fort, some in the town, and others extend up the Annapolis river nearly 20 miles, having made terms with the inhabitants; some are doing well; others are living on their provisions; their behaviour is as orderly and regular as we could expect. They also reported they had gone up the Kennebacasis, where there was a large tract of ungranted interval and upland: it is under a reserve; but we can have it. . . . A title for these lands may be procured sooner than for such as have already been granted, such as Gage, Conway, &c, which must be obtained by a regular process in the Court of Escheats. The lands on the river St. John are also sufficiently near the cod fishery in Fundy Bay, and perfectly secure against the Indians and Americans. The inhabitants are computed to be near one thousand men, able to bear arms. Here is a county and court established, and the inhabitants at peace and seem to experience no inconveniency from the war.38 This report did much to arouse Loyalist interest in the Saint John Valley, particularly among the Massachusetts refugees who had experienced Halifax' reluctant hospitality in 1776. Though the articles of the peace treaty were signed in Paris on November 30, 1782, a copy did not reach Carleton in New York until March 19, 1783, and the terms did not go into effect until signed by Congress in September. Three articles were of particular concern to the Loyalists. Under Article 5 Congress agreed to "earnestly recommend to the Legislatures of the respective States, to provide for the Restitution

The Coming of the Loyalists / 151 of all Estates, Rights and Properties which have been confiscated" of British subjects and others "resident in Districts in the possession of His Majesty's arms, and who have not borne Arms against the said United States." Congress was also to recommend to the States that "Persons of any other Description" should have "free Liberty to go to any parts, of any of the Thirteen United States, and therein to remain unmolested in their endeavours to obtain the restitution of such of their Estates, Rights and Properties as may have been confiscated." Congress was further to recommend a "Reconsideration and Revision of all Acts or Laws regarding the premises," in accordance with justice, equity and "that spirit of Conciliation, which on return of the Blessings of Peace should universally prevail." The difficulty with this highminded provision was that Congress had no power to compel the States to honour it, and in the event they did not do so. Article 6 stated that no more confiscations should be made by the Americans, "nor any prosecutions commenced against any person or persons, for or by reason of the part which he or they may have taken in the present War;" no one was to suffer any "future loss or damage either in his Person, Liberty or Property;" any persons in confinement on such charges were to be freed immediately and prosecutions discontinued. Little attention was also paid to this provision by the triumphant enemies of the Loyalists. Article 7 declared a "firm and Perpetual Peace between his Britannic Majestic Majesty and the said states, and between the Subjects of the one, and the Citizens of the other." All hostilities were to cease; all prisoners to be released; and the British forces were to withdraw from the United States "without causing any destruction, or carrying any Negroes, or other Property of the American Inhabitants.. ,"39 The Loyalists failed to honour this last stipulation, for many of the Southerners brought slaves to Nova Scotia. The New York Loyalists seem to have had advance notice of the terms of the treaty, for five days before Carleton received them a memorial was drawn up and presented on behalf of the Provincial Regiments by their commanders, including Benjamin Thompson, Major John Coffin, Edward Winslow, Gabriel Ludlow, Beverley Robinson, Stephen DeLancey, and other leading Loyalists. This memorial Esther Clark Wright considered to have been the work of Thompson and Winslow.40 It declared that from the "purest principles of Loyalty and attachment to the British Government their Sovereign and the British Nation," they had "persevered with unabated zeal through all the vicissitudes of a calamitous and unfortunate war, their hearts still glowed with Loyalty, their detestation to the republican system was unconquerable." They judged

152 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec that it would be impossible for them to remain in the United States: "The personal animosities that arose from civil dissentions have been so heightened by the Blood that had been shed in the Contest, that the Parties can never be reconciled." Therefore they asked grants of land in His Majesty's American Provinces and assistance in making settlements; pensions for the disabled, widows, and orphans; permanent military rank for the officers and half pay when the regiments were mustered out. All these requests were granted in the end, and the provincial regiments were established in the Saint John Valley, largely through the activities of Edward Winslow. Henceforth there were two groups among those who had espoused the King's cause, the Loyalists and the Provincials, the civil and the military refugees. Carleton appears to have been involved in the proposals of the Provincials, which he may even have inspired. Edward Winslow compiled a memorandum, dated March 15, of a meeting of the provincial corps commanders to consider Carleton's proposals for the granting of Crown Lands "to such of His Majesty's Provincial Forces as shall be willing to remove to Nova Scotia or any other part of His Majesty's American Dominions for the purpose of making a Settlement." It was proposed that each private should receive 300 acres, a corporal 350, a sergeant 400, with the same allowances to officers as after the last war: 1,000 acres to each field officer, 700 to each captain, and 500 to each subaltern. It was further suggested that the non-commissioned officers and soldiers should be allowed pay, provisions, and clothing for three years, arms and ammunition, and farming tools and building materials. Carleton forwarded the memorial to the Secretary of State on the same day, describing it "as a measure I think necessary both for the dignity of the Crown and the interest of Great Britain." Everything should be done to encourage a cordial connection with the loyal provinces; "every source of jealousy, or suspicion, should be done away for ever." He suggested that quit rents and fees of office should be dispensed with; that Great Britain should not impose taxes, and permit none "but for their own benefit, and for their provincial defence and security, till their strength becomes respectable, and their wealth will readily enable them to contribute to the general support of the empire." He was hopeful "that the provinces which are to remain under His Majesty's dominion will suddenly become powerful, and objects of envy to those who in the present moment, madly renounce the most equitable and wise system of government, for anarchy and distraction".41 The world might have been turned upside down at Yorktown; but Carleton, like Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe of Upper Canada, could not believe that the American colonists would not eventually come in their senses if given

The Coming of the Loyalists / 153 the example of enlightened English colonial rule. It has been suggested that Chief Justice William Smith of New York may have been responsible for the colonial sympathies evident in this and other Carleton letters. Smith was later to serve as respected advisor to Carleton in England and in Quebec. Already, as has been noted, in the fall of 1782 Carleton had an appreciation of the extent of the movement of people that would occur and had so advised both London and Halifax. For the Maritimes, to those who had removed in the fall of 1782, the first of the main migration began when on April 26,1783, the "Spring Fleet" sailed from Sandy Hook with over 2,300 men, women, children, and servants for "St. John River" and "Port Roseway" (Shelburne), as well as 267 men of the King's American Dragoons and their families, who were to encamp at Saint John. Carletón wrote General Paterson, the military commander in Nova Scotia, recommending that he give every assistance in his power to the provincial officers who were taking this opportunity to look out places for future settlement for their regiments. Carleton also suggested to Governor Parr the establishment of a military frontier on the St. Croix River: The establishments which are now forming in your province I conceive to be of the highest importance to the British Empire, and very much will depend on the present arrangements, which should have in view both advantages and security, and settlements to be now made with such wisdom and foresight as that the whole may take permanent root, and grow up together into the most desirable System. I cannot therefore excuse myself, on occasion of sending thither the Provincial Regiment which is now embarked, from recommending to your Excellency the consideration of establishing a strong frontier on the river St. Croix, and reserving land for a strong military post at the mouth of that river; this front line might be strengthened by establishments in its rear, and on St. John's river, with reservations likewise, which security and the civil uses of the province may hereafter require; and to this purpose, the making of such grants in those places, as may resemble the cantonments of an army, with such distinction of favour to the Officers, as will enable them to preserve their authority, and collect the whole, if need should require, into all the arrangements requisite for defence. A communication with Canada should also be attended to, as of great importance. The Officers of the Provincial Corps have among them, men of the first families, and therefore entitled to be distinguished beyond the ordinary portions which are to be given to mere Settlers, considered as such. Besides the regiment which is now embarked, I reckon that not less than three thousand provincial military, will soon pass into your province. Such a body, interested to preserve their own property, will, I trust, make a very respectable Frontier; but whether for defence cultivation or trade, it is in vain to look for prosperity or security on any other foundation, than that of a common Interest zealously

154 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec engaging the whole in one mind. These are considerations which I beg leave to recommend to your Excellency's most serious attention, nor can any one article be more effectually employed to excite industry and to obtain defence, than a wise and judicious distribution of land, wherein the Occupier shall be freed from all burthens, except what the defence of his own property, and that of the province may render necessary.42

The number of those who proposed to emigrate increased as those refugees in New York who attempted to return to their homes met with harsh treatment. Communities advertised in the newspapers their intentions of giving Loyalists a warm reception; the inhabitants of Poughkeepsie proclaimed on May 17 that: "If they [the Loyalists] had removed from our coasts forever, we would have forgot their crimes; but the idea of again beholding them pollute a land with their presence (now sacred to liberty) fills us with indignation." Another community served notice that "those who formerly resided in this precinct, and voluntarily joined the arms of the British King, and aided and assisted in the base attempt of subjugating this country to arbitrary and despotic power, shall never have our consent to live in this precinct: and in case they are so hardy as to return, they shall not be permitted to continue longer than SEVEN DAYS, after being duly warned to retire, on pain of experiencing the just punishment due to such infamous parricides."43 As Edward Winslow's sister Sarah wrote to her cousin Benjamin Marston that April, the Loyalists seemed to have no resource "but to submit to the tyrany of exulting enemies or settle a new country. . . What is to become of us, God only can tell/'44 The result of the vindictive spirit displayed towards the Tories was not only to increase the number in the British zone asking to be sent to Nova Scotia, but also to produce an additional influx into the British lines in New York. The officials charged with the Loyalists' removal and reestablishment became more and more harried as the number swelled far beyond the original anticipation. On June 15 a second fleet of refugees left New York, carrying 1,654 persons to Saint John River, 205 for Annapolis, 122 for Port Roseway, and 491 for Cumberland. The Adjutant-General's office estimated on June 17 that 7,656 persons had applied to leave since May 26 for the following destinations: 3,656 for Saint John, 1,218 for Canada, 681 for Halifax, 615 for England, 342 for Annapolis, 160 for Ireland, 115 for Island of St. John's (Prince Edward Island), 93 for Jamaica, and 19 for West Florida. Another fleet left early in July, with 1,335 for Nova Scotia and 516 for Canada. On August 5 still another convoy carried 669 Loyalists and 295 Negroes to Port Roseway; and 54 Loyalists and 4 negroes to Halifax. In another sailing on August 26, 554 persons left for Saint John. Brook Watson, the Army Commissary-General, who had earlier

The Coming of the Loyalists / 155 suggested to Carleton that the Loyalists be provided with tents from the King's Stores to provide immediate shelter in the harsh Nova Scotian spring, arranged in August to charter any available ships, which cleared from New York singly, instead of in fleets with the exception of the mass sailing of the Provincial regiments on September 15. Watson later commissioned Winslow to compile an account of Nova Scotia to attract British investment. On October 6 Carleton reported that "almost all those Loyalists who expected assistance from Govern't in removing from hence" were gone from New York; and on November 29 Ward Chipman wrote Edward Winslow that he had watched the surrender of New York to the American forces: "I walked out and saw the American Troops under General Knox march in, and was one of the last on shore in the City; it really occasioned most painful sensations, and I tho't sir Guy, who was on parade, looked unusually dejected. . . A more shabby ungentlemanlike looking crew than the new Inhabitants are I never saw. . . . Scarce any of our friends or any man of respectability remains at New York, they are principally embarked for England."45 In April 1783 winslow, Lieut. Col. Isaac Allen, and Major Thomas Millidge were chosen by the commanding officers of some of the Provincial regiments as agents to solicit and secure grants of land in Nova Scotia for the Loyalist corps. Winslow promptly sailed for Annapolis, where he established his wife and children in a rented farm at Granville; and then he proceeded to Halifax, where Governor Parr showed him "very particular marks of attention." Winslow thought him "a most frank, honest, worthy man," and recommended his cousin Benjamin Marston, a former magistrate at Marblehead, to him as one on whom the governor could rely for information about the Port Roseway settlement.46 Though his friends Joshua Loring, Sir William Howe's Commissary of Prisoners, and Benjamin Thompson kept urging him to come to London, where the Loyalists and Provincials were vying in petitions and memorials for assistance, Winslow continued in his role as agent for the Provincials, crossing the Bay of Pundy to Saint John in late June or early July. Meanwhile Judge George Duncan Ludlow and Ward Chipman in London had secured for him appointment as secretary to Brigadier General Henry Fox, who on July 18 was appointed to command at Halifax. Winslow, for his part, was urging Chipman to come to Nova Scotia: -I do think this province ere long will be a good stage for abilities like yours to exhibit upon. The present Att. General here (Richard Gibbons) is an ignorant harmless nincompoop and the Sol. Gen. (Richard John Uniacke) is a great lubberly insolent irish rebel, indeed I do not find that there's a man of any consequence in the profession.47

156 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Winslow reported that he had taken the appointment as agent of the Provincials since he "had no plans and my prospects were blacker than hell." Besides it gave him consequence in Nova Scotia; he had been well received by the governor and the general, and "there's not a man from this quarter that presumes to solicit form head Quarters without my recommendation." In addition to making his family comfortable at Granville, he had taken three town lots on the Carleton side of Saint John harbour for himself, Major Coffin, and Colonel Gabriel Ludlow, while engaged in laying out a township for the King's Royal Americans at Conway (Lancaster), which had "a prospect superior to anything in the world. . .the most romantic and magnificent scene I have ever beheld." He proposed to transmit his survey of the region to Lord Percy in London, and "to distinguish myself by proposing a plan which affords the grandest field for speculation ever offered." This part of Nova Scotia was naturally detached from the rest: Consider the numberless inconveniences that must arise from its remoteness from the metropolis and the difficulties of communication. Think what multitudes have and will come here, and then judge whether it must not from the nature of things immediately become a separate government, and if it does it shall be the most Gentleman-like one on earth.48

This is apparently the first time the idea of the division of Nova Scotia and the creation of a new province appears to have been written down. In the summer months of 1783 it was but one of a number of ideas concerning the settlement of the new-comers. A prodigious correspondent even for an age when letters were above all necessary for personal and political relationships, Winslow continued to write his impressions of the new lands. In July, 1783 he wrote to Major Joshua Upham, formerly of the King's American Dragoons and since September 1782 aide-de-camp to Carleton, that his old regiment, under Major Daniel Murray's command, was cutting and clearing a road from Saint John Harbour to the new town of Conway, where they were to be settled "with as much expedition as possible." He and his fellow agents had decided that tracts of land must be divided into as many farms as they could contain, so that the agents would be "prepared to point out the Provincial Regiments as they arrive here the tracts of Land on which they may settle." He censured the mismanagement of the affairs of the Refugees, which was "the cause of extreme distress to those who have already landed here. They are at present crowded in one spot without covering, and totally ignorant where they are eventually to settle, altho' two townships containing near 300,000 acres of the best land on the River St. John's has been long escheated at their application." He thought the

The Coining of the Loyalists / 157 Reverend John Sayre, who was supposedly in charge of Refugees though still in New York, "certainly unequal to the task, and those who are doing the duty here are not the right kind of men."49 It should be remembered that Winslow had left New York, in the spring of 1783, as an agent for those to follow. His position was ambiguous, in that the had no official status with the government in Halifax, his influence depending on his personality and his social standing. Now, during the months of summer, he spent time exploring what would be his new country. With Major Thomas Barclay of the Provincial Light Infantry, and Colonel Isaac Allen, he journeyed one hundred and twenty miles up the St. John in a schooner, returning "delighted beyond expression" by the fertility of the valley. Finding Chipman's letter with news of his appointment as aide to General Fox upon his return to St. John on July 22, Winslow rushed off to Halifax, which he reached on August 1, the day after Fox's arrival. He promptly fell in with the official plans to leave the mouth of the St. John to the Refugees and to settle the Provincials up river. On August 7 Colonel Allen begged his assistance in confirming a grant the former had obtained of 3,000 acres on the Kennebaccasis, on which he had settled ten of his New Jersey Volunteers. Allen also asked for 2,000 acres in Wilmot in Annapolis County, suggesting that Winslow should take a portion of his own land there. Allen also proposed that if Bliss, who with Major Murray was to come in for the 2,000 remaining acres of the Kennebeccasis tract, should decline, Winslow might take up 1,000 acres for himself. On August 8 Winslow wrote Murray, formally conveying General Fox's orders "to remove the King's American Dragoons to that part of the District which has been allotted to the regiment by the agents for locating lands for His Majesty's Provincial Forces," since they could not remain where they were "without inconvenience to the great number of Loyalists who are forming settlements at the mouth of the River St. John's."50 Winslow could well write Chipman that "I aver that in my present situation it is as much in my power to assist my friends as any one man in the province of Nova Scotia." With the first rush of business out to the way, Winslow wrote Chipman in more detail: I really do think that the River St. John's is the pleasantest part of this country and I am sure the land is better than any I have ever seen. I therefore intend to take my estate upon that river, and as I love you just as exactly as I do myself, I intend that you shall fare precisely as I do. When I left it there had been no survey for the Provincials. Since I have arrived here I have obtained in order for C. Murray and his regiment to take possession of a particular spot, in the neighborhood of which I am determined to lay out farms for half a dozen of my friends, and when they are surveyed and bounded I will apply for the Grants, and—what's

158 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec more—I will obtain 'em. I am induced to this for a thousand reasons, one of the most powerful is that the regiment will assist so essentially in clearing. &c.51 The newcomer had quickly learned the old Nova Scotian game of using office to feather one's own nest. Winslow's loyalty to his friends and cronies seems to have outweighed any concern for the Provincial veterans. In September General Fox and Winslow journeyed up the St. John 130 miles to the Township of Prince William, where Fox and Generals Musgrave and Clark were each to take out 1,000 acres, as were Winslow and Chipman. The generals also took out town lots at Saint John, neighboring those which Winslow had earlier secured. Winslow obtained General Fox* support for his father's memorial to the Loyalist Commissioners for compensation and losses suffered during "the late contest between Great Britain and America."52 The elder Edward Winslow and his family had arrived in Halifax on September 14, to find that his son had secured a "neat box" for them," though it is almost impracticable to get a house to put your head in."53 During the trip up the St. John Valley Winslow and Stephen DeLancey devised a plan of settling the other Loyalist regiments, which arrived at Saint John early in October, on 12-mile-square townships or blocks on both banks of the river, commencing at St. Ann's Point (Fredericton) and running upstream. The regiments were to draw lots for their sites, and then to divide them into land lots, which in turn would be drawn for. Surplus lots would remain at the disposal of the government. Approval of this proposal had not yet been obtained from the governor, although the Loyalist agents had supposedly been busy for five months preparing the way for the arrival of the regiments. In fact, when the men, women, and children of the regiments arrived in the "Fall fleet" at the end of September 1783, all was confusion. Colonel Richard Hewlett of the 2nd Battalion of DeLancey's Brigade, who was in command of the Loyalist corps sent to St. ohn River, reported to Carleton that the want of small craft was delaying the sending of the men upriver from their temporary encampments above the Reversing Falls. When the delayed Esther arrived in mid-October, the wife of one of the New Jersey Volunteers reported "some living in log houses, some building huts, and many of the soldiers living in their tents at the Lower cove." Winslow himself gave a vivid picture of the plight of the Loyalist soldiers in a later letter to Chipman: I have seen my dear Chipman (in the country which I have previously described to you), a vast collection of valuable men, respectable for their conduct, with their families and the little remains of their property— unattended to, and ungoverned. I saw all those Provincial Regiments,

The Coming of the Loyalists / 159 (which we have so frequently mustered) landing in this inhospitable climate, in the month of October, without shelter and without knowing where to find a place to reside. The chagrins of the officers was not to me so truly affecting as the poignant grief of the men. Those respectable Serjeants of Robinson's, Ludlow's, Cruger's, Tanning's, &c., (once hospitable yeomen of the country) were addressing me in a language which almost murdered me as I heard it. "Sir we have served all the War. Your Honour is witness how faithfully. We were promised land. We expected you had obtained it for us, —We like the country —only let us have a spot of our own, and give us such kind of regulations as will hinder bad men from injuring us.-54

Colonel Robert Morse of the Royal Engineers neatly summarized the reasons for the plight of the Loyalists thus: First, their arriving very late in the season; second, timely provision not having been made by escheating and laying out lands; thirdly, a sufficient number of surveyors not having been employed; but lastly and principally, the want of foresight and wisdom to make necessary arrangements and steadiness to carry them into execution.55

Winslow, as the appointed and paid agent of the Provincial regiments, was clearly implicated in the last and principal charge, if innocent of the others. The evacuation of the Loyalist troops from New York had been delayed by force of circumstances from the spring of 1783 to the fall, and in fact their own uncertainty about their future plans had involved them in the difficulties which they faced when they disembarked at Saint John. Still larger a share of the blame for ensuing troubles lay upon Governor Parr, who chose to disregard Carleton's warning about the impending influx and his proposals for settling the newcomers. As soon as Parr received the latter, he had questioned them in a letter to the Secretary of State, pointing out that gratuitous grants were contrary to his instructions.56 He delayed in having a memorandum prepared until April 23, 1783, which estimating that there were 12,349,891 acres of cultivable ungranted lands in the province.57 Instructions from Whitehall about grants to the Loyalists were not forthcoming until June 1783, and these could not be carried out until the Surveyor-General had set aside Crown reserves.58 Instructions for granting lands to disbanded provincial troops were not sent from Whitehall until August. At the end of that month, with 12,000 refugees from New York already arrived, Parr was still protesting that he had no instructions to regulate his conduct; and by September 30, when he acknowledged their receipt, he believed that the number of refugees had risen to 18,000 with "8,000 or 10,000 more ... forced from the violent temper of the American Committees (of Public Safety) to seek an asylum in Nova Scotia."59 He constantly protested

160 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec that he was doing all in his power to aid them, but that "many are very unreasonable, and complain." On second thought, he reported that the Loyalists "have greatfully acknowledged his attentions, except a few worthless characters whose sordid wishes are not to be gratified," and then painted in glowing colours the mushroom growth of Shelburne with upwards of 12,000 inhabitants, two towns being organized on the Saint John River, and another on Passamaquoddy Bay, with Annapolis enlarged and a new town building near it, and every harbour on the coast being settled by fishermen.60 On the last day of the year he called Carleton's attention to the conduct of one Elias Hardy, an attorney was "striving to excite disaffection among the Loyalists at Saint John River; they have received every possible attention, and Sudholme's judicious conduct has been conspicuous."61 Governor Parr seems to have been somewhat muddled about the views of Elias Hardy, an English-born lawyer from New York who had taken an active part in opposing the plans of the "Fifty-Five," a group of eminent Loyalists in New York who on July 22, 1783, had applied to Carleton for grants of 5,000 acres each in Nova Scotia. They were of the modest opinion that "the Settling such a Number of Loyalists of the most respectable Characters, who have Constantly had great Influence in His Majesty's Dominions will be highly advantageous in diffusing and supporting a Spirit of Attachment at the British Constitution, as well to His Majesty's Royal Person and Family." The "Fifty-Five," of whom three-fifths were from either Massachusetts or New York, claimed that they were entitled to the same allowance of land as field-officers had received after the Seven Years War, in view of their special services and the dignity or importance of their social status. The list of signers included such landed magnates as Philip John Livingston and four clergymen, among whom as Dr. Charles Inglis, later the first Bishop of Nova Scotia.62 Ward Chipman had signed the petition, but repented of it a few days later, having "found several names upon the list which do not comport with my ideas of the business at all."63 A counter-petition was promptly drawn up by over 600 Refugees, who protested that the "Fifty-Five" were mostly in easy circumstances, that some were bound for Britain rather than Nova Scotia, and that they were "with some Exceptions were distinguished by the repeated favors of Government than by either the Greatness of their sufferings or the importance of their Services."64 The agents of the "Fifty-Five," the Rev. John Sayre, Philip Livingston, and Nathaniel Chandler, arrived at Annapolis on August 17. Sayre went to Saint John, and so the others added Stephen Skinner to their number before proceeding to Halifax. Parr gave them a warrant of survey for 5,000 acres each that month; but

The Coming of the Loyalists / 161 the following April he wrote to Nepean recommending that they should receive no more than 1,000 acres each in accordance with his latest instructions, should complaint be made, "as otherwise great discontent would be caused among the other Loyalists."65 Discontent during the winter and spring, 1783-84 was almost inevitable. The emigrants, for the most part, left their former homes under duress and even if the welcoming officials had been of the wisest sort the very magnitude of the undertaking would have meant considerable discomfort. Parr, who at the age of fifty-six had been appointed to govern Nova Scotia was a former soldier of moderate ability who had no previous experience of North America. Parr was a product of eighteenth-century England and he attracted much adverse comment by his practice of wining and dining the Loyalist notables at Halifax for which he requested an additional allowance and neglecting the rank and file elsewhere. Winslow, who as secretary to General Fox was in a better post of observation at Halifax than most Loyalists, soon lost his initially favourable impressions of Parr, writing to Chipman in December 1783 of "the scandalous impediments and shameful delays of the public officers here."66 A few weeks later he assured his closest friend in London "how impossible it is to effect any business under the present system," and urged him to "effect a removal of the present Governor and procure other alterations."67 Winslow was clearly sympathetic to the views of Joseph Aplin, who early in March 1784 wrote to Chief Justice Smith of New York, then also in London, giving a vigorous picture of Loyalist discontent.68 Though Aplin had come to Nova Scotia out of necessity rather than from choice, he had found its natural advantages better than the policy or administration, which could be remedied. Policy should have urged paying the utmost attention to the Loyalists. But on landing at Saint John he found uneasiness occasioned by the "people" not getting their lands, although they had raised 1,500 framed houses and 400 log ones on land to which they could get no title, to their virtual despair. Most of them had never planned to settle there, but rather on farmlands upriver. They had wasted their resources in building temporary accommodation at the mouth of the river. There was general discontent at the delay in granting lands, due to selfish and political purposes, and at the demands for fees for separate grants. He alleged that the motive of the Assembly in voting £500 to the governor and £400 to the chief justice for their services to the Loyalists had been to veil the treasonable practices of some of the old settlers. Lenity to the rebels should have been delayed until the United States showed it to the Loyalists by complying with the peace treaty. The Assembly had lost the confidence of the Loyalists, because

162 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec of the prevalence of republican ideas among its members, who had held their seats for fifteen years. There appeared to be an effort to prevent the Loyalist newcomers from obtaining the vote before a new election. The bad state of affairs on the Saint John arose from the neglect of the Assembly and delays in granting lands. He described the chief justice in highly unfavorable terms, and urged his removal to the West Indies and his replacement by Smith. Finally he urged Smith to use his influence on behalf of the people of Saint John, "who, although betrayed into stronger symptoms of discontent than prudence could justify, were grateful for what Carleton had done for them/'69 In the spring of 1784 Parr decided that official recognition had to be taken of the various complaints being made over the allocation of the lands. Chief Justice Bryan Finucane and his brother Andrew ("Brother Toady" to Winslow's friend John Coffin at Saint John), along with Elias Hardy (who had spent time in Halifax fighting the petition of the "FiftyFive") were appointed to deal with the complaints made against those in charge of the distribution of town lots. The Chief Justice received twenty-nine charges against such notables of the Loyalist elite as George Leonard, the Rev. John Sayre, Colonel Allen, Colonel Tyng, General Arnold, Colonel Gabriel DeVeber, Major Murray, Major Menzies, and other lesser lights. The charges were drawn up by Hardy's brother-in-law Tertullus Dickinson, and submitted by the Chief Justice to Leonard for an answer.70 At the outset it looked as if this move by Parr would bring to an end all dreams of a separate province and further difficulties for such critics as Winslow and Leonard. Winslow wrote to Chipman, June 8th, 1784 "we are also told here that Mr. Andrew Finucane who floated up the River St. John 80 or 90 miles and then floated doan again affects to have acquired a perfect knowledge of the country, dams the soil, climate, etc., and reprobates the idea of its being formed into a province."71 Leonard rebutted the charges rather haughtily and summarily, discrediting Dickinson as a late arrival who in New York had opposed the movement to the Saint John, "but finding that money may be made here in trade concluded to stay."72 In a letter informing Winslow of the Chief Justice's redistribution of the town lots, including Winslow's, Leonard complained. those who have hitherto had the direction of matters here are in a strange and indelicate way sent for before him, and in the presence of that Man [Hardy] charged in the language and tone of a Bashaw with wrong and partial conduct, without any regular mode of enquiry into it.. . I will venture to say there is not three gentlemen that approves of the least alteration in the place, but wish that fellow to the D—1 and all his party [meaning

The Coming of the Loyalists / 163 Hardy] . . .For God's sake let us have in our new-expected Province a Chief Justice that will not give credit to every idle report from Barbers and Grog shops, as this man has done since he had been here. . . My dear Sir, why was not that good man Lieut.Governor Fanning requested to go on this important business, if it was thought of such importance by the Governor. The decrees of Colonel Fanning, right or wrong, would have been well received from the great opinion we have of him here.73

The impact of the visit of Finucune and Hardy was to prove of considerable importance in the short run, especially for the personal fortunes of men such as Leonard and Winslow. The redistribution had much intensified local disagreements. Major Thomas Barclay, however, judged matters well when he wrote to Winslow, 30th April, 1784 that "his [Finacune's] wish is to reconcile parties; an impossibility, and in pursuit of which he will displease both."74 John Coffin, one of those whom MacNutt has called a "Patrician Loyalist", no doubt reflected the feelings of the old ruling class at Saint John when he wrote to Winslow, 5th May, 1784: "The time I hope is not far distant when I expect to see everything undone and Mr. Hardy thrown neck & heels with his party, into the River. Its infamous and disgraceful to a degree."75 For his part, Winslow informed Chipman in a letter from Halifax, 12th May, 1786, that The operations of the Chief-Justice have terminated exactly as expected —the hauteur and parade which distinguished him had not the intended effect—such men as our old friends Hewlett, Deverber, Coffin, Leonard, Tyng, &c., are not easily dazzled by such superficial nonsense, and they have treated him with perfect contempt. I have endeavoured to soothe these men by repeated assurances, that a Government will be immediately established there, & I verily believe that unless that event takes place immediately, that Country will exhibit such signs of desperation & distress as were never before read of.

He went on to paint an alarming picture of the state of Nova Scotia: "37,000 people crying for provisions—Magazines empty— & no provisions at Market. That's the situation of the Country at present. Add to this a Governor without abilities—a Council of Republicans—combating with every weapon in their reach the whole corps of Loyalists, fc embarrassing them by every possible impediment. This is not a pretty picture, but alas it is a true one."76 Less than a month from the date of this letter Parr as the governor of Nova Scotia would be informed of the restructuring reorganization of his province. Looking back at the turn of events nearly thirty years later Carleton, having been in the meantime raised to the rank of a baronet,

164 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec considered that the coming of the Loyalists made political reorganization of Nova Scotia inevitable. "The great concourse of Loyalists that resorted to it on the evacuation of New York," he wrote, "came here in the full confidence of the establishment of a separate government, having at that time, conceived from various causes, a strong aversion to living under the jurisdiction of the province of Nova Scotia." While Parr was rejoicing that the efforts of Finacune had satisfactorily dealt with the major discontents of those settling the St. John, those who wished for a separate province were active in London. Their efforts were greatly strengthened with the arrival of Sir Guy Carleton in London who did not hesitate to offer his opinion that "The only firm hold that Great Britain has upon the remains of the American Dominions is certainly by means of the Loyalists."77 He showed himself deeply concerned with the problem of resettling the Loyalists to their satisfaction and no one in England was regarded as a greater authority on North American affairs. A further ally in the complex world of London politics, was the thirty-year old General Fox, who had been converted to Edward Winslow's dream of creating the "most Gentleman-like" government on earth during his brief stay in the colony; and when he returned to England in 1784, he joined forces with Ward Chipman in urging the division of Nova Scotia and the creation of a new province north of the Bay of Fundy. Charles James Fox, the brother of the General, had lost formal power just before Christmas 1783, with the fall of the ministry of Lord North. However, the circumstances of decision making in mid-eighteenth century politics made the General useful as one who helped define public opinion among the elite of London society, even if not one with major influence on the incoming government. That would be headed by William Pitt and as far as Sir Guy Carleton was concerned, his pre-eminent position in North American matters would continue to be high in the eyes of the new leader. Carleton had formed a poor impression of Parr, considering that the influx of Loyalists to Nova Scotia could have been more efficiently and more humanely handled over the past months. The Loyalist spokesmen in London made adequately clear their dim view of Parr and the desirability of a division of the province which would cut down Parr's government to a size in accordance with his abilities rather than his weight of 260 pounds. Though Fox could no longer count upon the governorship of the proposed new province, as he had upon departure from Halifax,78 he had conveyed Winslow's views of Halifax officialdom to Lord Sydney, and was called upon to give his advice upon the matter of the division of Nova Scotia, when it was considered in March. Colonel Willard, Dr. Samuel Seabury, the former chaplain of the King's American Regiment who was soon to be named first bishop of the Episcopal Church in the

The Coming of the Loyalists / 165 United States, and Major Joshua Upham also presented the views of the Loyalists. "Lord Sydney," Chipman reported to Winslow, "has said 'Nova Scotia shall be made the envy of all the American States.'"79 Chipman was already confident that Nova Scotia would be divided, and thought it not "improbable at all" that General Fox would get the governorship of the new province. He also thought that Carleton would be made governor-general "over all the British Settlements." This was the plan favored by Chief Justice William Smith for the "better regulating of the British colonies." Later in March the Rev. Charles Mongan, late chaplain to the Royal Americans, reported to Winslow: "The papers &c., which I gave to the ministry (added to General Fox's representations) have been the means of rousing the government towards Nova Scotia, and I have now some foundation for hoping that matters will go well." He, too, thought Fox would be named governor; while Parr would be recalled and Lieutenant-Governor Fanning left in charge of Nova Scotia, with Sir Guy Carleton as governor-general of all three provinces.80 In mid-April Chipman reported to Winslow that the division of Nova Scotia had been decided; General Musgrave was to be governor at Halifax and Fox at Saint John, while Sir Guy Carleton was to be governor-general over both provinces and Canada as well. Carleton had mentioned to Fox that he wished to provide legal offices for Ludlow, Upham, and Chipman himself. Ludlow was to be chief justice, while Upham was to have a seat on the Supreme Court. Chipman feared that he would have many competitors for the attorney generalship which he desired.81 William Franklin was not to get one of the new governments, despite vigorous lobbying. Chipman also warned Winslow that part of his letter, suggesting that the Loyalist regiments should settle upon their lands in all events, and oppose by force any effort to dispossess them: Nothing so suddenly alarms Government, now grown very skittish, as the idea of an opposition to the measures of its servants. So sore are they with the event of the late contest, that they instantly connect the idea of rebellion with any such enunciations.82

The future of Parr and the organization of Nova Scotia was a matter of much debate and politicking. A long letter to Winslow from General Fox, dated the 14th of April, 1784, was full of wishes, predictions and general gossip. He agreed with Chipman on the impact of Winslow's passionate rhetoric, warning Winslow that he was "too Warm" and that Carleton had been "much displeased" at his notion of the Loyalists defending their lands, although Winslow's friends had straightened matters out. For himself, Fox had decided to accept the government of the new province if Carleton took the governor-generalship, or if Carleton and he could veto any of the principal appointments. There did not seem

166 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec to Fox much prospect of things going well unless Carlëton accepted the governor-generalship, and at present the general did not seem so inclined. Ludlow was to be chief justice if Fox became governor, and Upham, Chipman, and Blowers would be "thought of." Fox hoped that Winslow would accept the secretaryship of the province, as discussed before his departure from Halifax, and that he would secure "some Hovel at Maugerville" for Fox's immediate use if appointed. But finally Fox urged Winslow: "For Heaven's sake keep the whole of this Letter to yourself, fc be not too sanguine or violent until something is determined upon," as "there a thousand things may happen to prevent the intended arrangement taking place, particularly if Sir Guy Carleton does not go out as Governor General"83 Chipman also cautioned Winslow a few days later that "It will be of consequence that the least possible irritation should take place on the part of the officers of Government there [Halifax], and the less is said upon the subject the better, till we find ourselves established in new Government, and able to defy the attempts of our enemies to injure us."84 Nevertheless Winslow seems to have written of Fox's impending appointment to William Hazen and Dr. William Paine. Hazen replied from Fort Howe on May 3: "I hope it will be very soon," and promised to send him information about the swelling Saint John trade in lumber with the West Indies, to be forwarded to England to prevent the repeal of the Navigation Acts and the opening of the West Indies trade to the Americans. Winslow had already written Chipman that he was "perfectly satisfied in his own mind that the Countries of Canada and Nova-Scotia can supply the British West Indies with every article they want," an opinion shared by Colonel Fanning and Dr. Paine.85 It was clear by the first week of May, 1784 that official opinion in London had accepted partition. On May 10th, 1784 the Privy Council formally proposed the division, giving as its reason the difficulty of communication between Halifax and the outlying regions. Preoccupied by domestic problems and beset by rival Loyalist factions,86 the government then called upon William Knox, the former under-secretary for American affairs, who in a long official career had enjoyed the confidence of Bute, Granville, North, and Germaine, to draft a plan for the reorganization of British North America. He had one ready in his files, for in 1779 he had proposed the creation of a "New Ireland", extending from the Penobscot to the St. Croix, as a Loyalist haven in the north which would overshadow rebellious Massachusetts. Germaine was prepared to establish this new province, with Chief Justice Peter Oliver of Massachusetts as governor, in the summer of 1780, after Britain established control over eastern Maine. But Attorney-General Wedderburn objected that this

The Coming of the Loyalists / 167 territory had been granted by royal charter to Massachusetts Bay, and the plan was not carried through. Now Knox agreed to revise his scheme, on the understanding that the colonies were to be kept dependent upon Britain. He proposed that a governor-general should have authority over all the remaining British colonies from Cape Breton to Canada. He suggested the Isthmus of Chignecto as the boundary between Nova Scotia and a new continental province which would include the Gaspé Peninsula (this feature was dropped, since it would call for amendment of the Quebec Act). The form of government was to be modelled on that of Nova Scotia, but "there should also be given to the colonies on the part of Great Britain a clear and explicit exemption from all taxation except by their own legislatures" The American Revolution had not been fought in vain. There were to be no quitrents on land granted to the Loyalists. A bishopric was to be established to bolster loyalty and confute "enthusiasm" , (i.e., evangelical religion) as urged by the flock of Loyalist clergy in London and supported by Carleton. Religious toleration, however, was to be granted to Catholics and dissenters, as a means of undermining the republicans of Nova Scotia, "who are principally composed of Prebyterians." Knox later deplored the fact that three Anglican sees were established in British North America, when an earlier foundation there might have drawn many more High Church Tories from the American colonies. Knox's opinion that the new colonies could support the West Indian trade was backed by Brook Watson, now in London. The name Knox proposed, "New Ireland", was rejected by the ministry, and "New Brunswick" was chosen instead, because of the far greater favour enjoyed at court by the King's German than Irish dominions.87 On May 29 the Secretary of State informed Parr of the separation of New Brunswick from Nova Scotia, and of the annexation of Nova Scotia of Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton, though both former provinces were to have lieutenant-governors with suitable establishments. Parr was told that his own appointments would not be reduced; and that if he did not choose to remain under the new order, Sydney would be "very glad to do anything to provide for him in any way that may be more agreeable."88 London wished to appoint immediately "a person on the spot to settle matters without the delay of referring everything to Great Britain," and offered the governor-generalship of British North America to Carleton. He refused the position at that time and General Fox therefore refused the governorship of New Brunswick. He was not willing to place himself in a position where he would be subject to the orders of a governorgeneral who would be uncongenial. It was colonel Thomas Carleton's, Sir Guy's younger brother who finally accepted the governorship of New Brunswick. He accepted this appointment on the understanding that he

168 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec would shortly be moved to Quebec as governor, something that never transpired. He took the oaths of office on July 28th, 1784. It was at this that Parr realized fully that his appointment was in process of being radically altered. He decided that the best course was to continue in a diminished office. In mid-August, 1784 he wrote to London to ask that "some mark of the King's favour should be given him to show some of the designing rascals that His Majesty thinks he has done his duty."89 He continued to defend his conduct toward the Loyalists, and to report that accusations against him were laughed at in Nova Scotia, since "his whole study has been to serve these unfortunate people." He was assured that Whitehall had a good impression of him, and remarked dryly: "Some dissatisfaction is natural to men driven from their homes with their families and reduced to an inferior position from that formerly held."90 Parr's enemies among the Loyalists were delighted at the promised new order and the prospect of escaping from his influence, even though "the assault on St. James was more successful than the assault on St. John", and even though the chief offices of the new provinces were to go to the Loyalists who had sought office in London rather than land in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia. The secretaryship of the new province went to the Rev. Jonathan Odell, former Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionary in New Jersey, Loyalist poet and propagandist, assistant secretary of the Associated Loyalists, and translator to Sir Guy Carleton in New York. His wartime chief had offered him the post which Winslow had desired. The chief justice was George Duncan Ludlow, former judge of the Supreme Court of New York, Loyalist superintendent of police on Long Island, and Associated Loyalists leader, another favorite of Sir Guy's. Ludlow's brother Gabriel, former commander of DeLancey's Brigade, had made his home at Hampstead a center for Loyalist gentlemen in England. The three assistant judges, who had won the far lesser prizes of £200 salaries, were James Putnam of Massachusetts, Isaac Allen of New Jersey, and Joshua Upham of Massachusetts, while the unsalaried solicitor-general was Winslow's confidant, Ward Chipman. Carleton recommended him for the attorney-generalship when Sampson Salter Blowers of the "Massachusetts interest" decided to remain in Halifax as attorney-general of Nova Scotia, but the prize again eluded Chipman and went to Jonathan Bliss of Massachusetts. The surveyor-general, George Sproule of New Hampshire, did not come to New Brunswick until 1785. Carleton's executive council of twelve members included Edward Winslow, Abijah Willard, Beverley Robinson of New York, Major Gilfred Studholm of Fort Howe fame, William Hazen (the only pre-Loyalist so honored), John Coffin, and George Leonard.

The Coming of the Loyalists / 169 This was indeed perhaps "the most Gentlemanlike" government on earth that Winslow had prophesied, but he had to content himself with a number of minor and relatively profitless offices such as Surrogate of New Brunswick, Muster Master General for New Brunswick, and his councillorship, while retaining his military secretaryship under General Campbell at Halifax. On Governor Carleton's request he was given leave from the latter duties to attend the first meeting of the council of New Brunswick, and instructed to investigate the present status of Crown lands there and the expenditure of the government departments at the outposts, and to act as a member of the Provision Boards established to prevent abuses in the distribution of supplies to needy Loyalists.91 But as early as August, Winslow had applied to O dell, in congratulating him upon his appointment "although I had anticipated the same appointment myself and had made arrangements for a comfortable enjoyment of it", for "one of the offices in the gift of the Governor and Council—such as Provincial Registrar, Judge or Probate, &c., &c." He professed his willingness to "dash across the Bay of Fundy the ins't an appointment by which I can exist is announced to me," since circumstances had given him "a kind of knowledge which may render me useful there, moreso than almost any other individual, and I am anxious to contribute everything in my power to forward the settlement of it."92 Winslow, by his own account, regarded his military secretary-ship as "an employment not so enviable for its emoluments (10s. a day) as for the frequent opportunities it affords of relieving the distresses of unfortunate."93 In a letter to his wife he described his daily round in Halifax: It is not possible for any pen or tongue to describe the variety of wretchedness that is at this time exhibited in the streets of this place, and God knows I am obliged to hear a large proportion of it. This is what we call a board day, & the yard in front of my House has been crowded since eight o'clock with the most miserable objects that ever were beheld. As if there was not a sufficiency of such destressed objects already in this country the good people of England have collected a whole ship load of all kinds of vagrants from the streets of London, and sent them out of Nova Scotia. Great numbers died on the passage of various disorders—the miserable remnant are landed here and have now no cover but tents. Such as are able to crawl are begging for a proportion of provisions at my door. Two other ships were loading with the same kind of cargoes. Heaven only knows what will become of 'em. As soon as we get rid of such a sett as these, another little multitude appears of old crippled Refugees, men and women who have seen better days. Some of 'em tell me they formerly knew me, they have no other friend to depend upon, and they solicit in language so emphatical and pathetic, that 'tis impossible for any man whose heart is not callous to every tender feeling, to refuse their requests.

170 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Next to them perhaps comes an unfortunate set of Blackies begging for Christ's sake that Masser would give 'em a little provision if it's only for one week. "He wife sick; He children sick; and He will die if He have not some." I am illy calculated for such services. These applications make an impression on my mind which is vastly disagreeable. I cannot forget them. It is not possible to relieve all their distresses. I long to retreat from such scenes. My views are humble, I ask no more than a competency to support myself, my wife, and children decently and to live and enjoy them I care not where. This has hitherto been out of my power but I flatter myself that the time is not far distant when I shall be gratify'd in this first wish of my heart.94

But however distressed by the miserable refugees, he did not forget to inform his wife that while Loyalists were only to receive two thirds of allowance of provisions, the disbanded Provincials were to receive a full allowance until October 24, and "you are to consider yourself as a disbanded Muster-Master-General, & of course will draw full rations for yourself and family to the 24th of October. There can be no difficulty on the question, but I would settle with Mr. Williams to that period after which you will share the same fate as your neighbors and be at two thirds allowance."95 Yet in the minds of the "Ladies at Sheet Harbour" Winslow was known for his "esteemed, humane, & polite character in sympathyzing with the distressed" when they appealed to him for the same bounty to the wives and children of reduced subalterns as had been granted to those of disbanded soldiers.96 Winslow's real estate speculations in New Brunswick had been brought to a halt, like those of other Loyalists, by Governor Parr's refusal to make any new arrangements or grants there, after he had been officially informed of the setting-up of the new province. But Winslow assured his friend John Coffin that "I have not (for twelve months past) built a castle or anticipated a pleasure but what has centered there;" and the new government was only three months old when he was urging Chipman to follow up the personal representations he himself had made to Odell for Generals Fox' and Clarke's grant on the Pokiok River, since Carleton had disallowed grants to absentees. Winslow proposed to build a saw mill on Coac Stream in Queensbury, in partnership with David Easton, a pre-Loyalist settler in Annapolis who had formerly been Superintendent on Indian affairs on the Saint John.97 Chipman obtained for him a 1,000-acre grant, including the desired mill site, with the aid of the surveyor Davidson, though he distrusted Eason as a man who "does not like work much himself V and feared that Winslow, with his delight "in grand systems," might "run too fast."98 Despite the fact that Winslow had taken an active part in proposing large grants to absentees in 1783, he supplied Chipman with a long disquisition on "the irregular manner

The Coming of the Loyalists / 171 in which Grants have been made," with particular reference to the extensive grants near Gagetown obtained by Captain William Spry while chief engineer of Nova Scotia. Spry's claims for reward for his public service Winslow thus dismissed: He was Chief Engineer in a Camp of Repose. He never heard a Cannon but at a public Salute. He erected a Citadel which was calculated to annoy only the (War) Chest which paid for it. He ammas'd immense wealth, liv'd like a Prince, and retir'd like a Nabob."

Should not such grants be forfeited, he asked, "especially at a time when hundreds of the faithful and Meritous servants of the King are literally suffering for want of Bread which that ground would produce in abundance?" Winslow went on to observe: "A lunatic Governor may in an hour of frenzy convey all the sea coast to a single person, but surely (without a republican idea, which God knows I abhor) the public have such control over the actions of their officers, as to prevent the unsalutary effects of such dement at ion. The general principles of the Constitution will interfere to prevent Injuries so gross."100 He opposed on such grounds Frederick Hauser's grant of 800 acres at Gagetown and Chief Justice Finucune's grant of Sugar Island above Frederic t on, the latter within the limits of the land already assigned to the Provincials and in the actual possession of Colonel Isaac Allen and his New Jersey Volunteers. Winslow observed: "It is melancholy indeed that two such instances should have happened. Integrity blushes at the recollection of 'em, and the most intrepid Friend to Government will shudder at the indignation which arises on contemplating the probable consequences of iniquity— but enough under this head, I wax warm." Even in Nova Scotia, "where they 'swallow camels without a hiccough,'" it was a question if a grantee did not forfeit by non-compliance with the conditions of the grant; and Winslow went on to add: "I feel a degree of anxiety about the Government of New Brunswick that exceeds anything I ever experienc'd before. The eyes of the world seem to be fixed on that country, the exalted reputation of the Governor, the abilities and integrity of the public officers have produced a universal confidence, and mankind appears to expect a detection of frauds, encouragement of industry and virtue, and an impartial distribution of justice." It was doubtless because of these feelings that he sent to Chipman, to be presented to the Council Chamber, the royal coat of arms which he had brought from the Council Chamber at Boston: "They (Lyon & Unicorn) were constant members of the Council at Boston (by mandamus) ran away when the others did have suffered are of course Refugees, & have claim for residence at New Brunswick."101 These arms long hung in IWnity Church, Saint John, and are now in the Saint John Court House.

172 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec But much as Winslow wished to go to New Brunswick, he could not afford to leave Halifax: "My office there [as Surrogate] is evidently of no consequence I have very little money; my expenses must increase there and I give up a certain and considerable income here." During his absence in New Brunswick on leave, his enemies had been busy in prejudicing General Campbell, the commander-in-chief of the forces in Nova Scotia against him.102 On his return he was soon restored to favour. He pinned his hopes on Sarah Winslow in England being able to obtain his father's pension for the lifetime of his mother and sisters, and this was in fact achieved with the influential aid of Brooke Watson and Thomas Coffin. Their support, Winslow wrote, in addition to that of his own family, "fairly sinks me." Freed ofthat burden, he was confident in his ability to make his way in New Brunswick. By early April 1785 he was planning "to take my final departure from Halifax," and shipping his three Negro servants, Caesar, Frank, and Juba, to clear his land at St. Ann's Point (Fredericton).103 Late that same April, after General Campbell had been informed by the Secretary of State that "The Act of Parliament will not allow Winslow, in his affidavit for half-pay, making exception for his employment as secretary to the Commander-in-Chief,"104 Winslow wrote his wife that she could now understand the anxiety with which he had awaited the arrival of English mail, and "what a narrow chance I have run of being irretrievably ruined." But the same mail brought word from Benjamin Thompson that his half pay was settled, and he was now furnished "with a fair pretense for quiting this unpleasant situation." He reported that General Campbell had borne his announcement of his intentions "like a philosopher." He urged his wife to pack up everything at Annapolis and sent it over to Saint John, and suggested the following advertisement to rent their house: That elegant House now occupied by the Honourable E.W., one of his Majesty's Council for the Province of New Brunswick, consisting of four beautiful rooms on the first Floor, highly finished. Also two spacious lodging chambers on the second floor—a capacious dry cellar with arches &c.&c.&c. The House is delightfully situated at Granville on the Banks of the Annapolis River. In the summer you have every advantage from the Fogs and in the winter an enchanting view of the ice. The Garden produces the most desirable vegetables and Fruit and there's a prodigious fine Green-House, Goose-House, Pig-House and t'other House. The Stables are in a stile peculiarly elegant, and there's a large store newly erected. N.B. The chimnies never smoke and all the Cats will be sold with the lease. For further particulars enquire of Macfarling Esq., Agent and Attorney to Madam Winslow. And having composed this alluring ad-

The Coming of the Loyalists / 173 vertisement, Winslow happily reflected: "You must get a devilish deal of money surely for a lease of such a House."105

It was at this point, the spring of 1785, when the Winslow family were about to establish themselves permanently in New Brunswick that Edward wrote one of his most optimistic accounts of New Brunswick and its future. It was entitled "description of settlements in the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick," and was designed to demonstrate the capacity of these colonies to replace the Old American ones in supplying the needs of the British West Indies, to the value of £720,000 sterling annually. Winslow had enlisted many of his Loyalists friends to assist him in painting a glowing picture of the economic potential of the Maritimes. It was a highly optimistic analysis and as much Winslow personal hopefulness against the slings and arrows of life as a prediction based upon a close reasoning from the present circumstances of New Brunswick. William Garden, the commissary at St. Ann's (Fredericton), in welcoming Winslow to Saint John, reported: "the Country never wanted your help more than it does at present... the settlement must fail if flour and bread is not immediately sent up, let it come from where it may."106 That summer it was necessary to victual the people of Maugerville and Burton, as well as those of Fredericton, and in October Garden was pleading for 2,800 rations: "With that assistance the deserving part of the settlers may get Thro* the winter, but without it the consequences will be dreadful."107 It would appear that the new Province of New Brunswick was still part of "Nova Scarcity." Nevertheless hopes for the moment ran high as the Loyalists contemplated their new lives with a golden dream of West Indies trade which would persist for many a year. Winslow managed to wangle a free passage for his wife and children to Saint John, and asked Chipman to find "a good comfortable Box for 'em."108 Chipman gave up his own comfortable house at Portland Point to Winslow's family. By June 2, Winslow himself had reached Saint John, after a brief stay to clear up matters at Annapolis. On June 10 he issued a circular letter to department heads to submit their accounts to a Board of Accounts, and on June 17 General Campbell issued instructions to him "to muster all the Loyalists and Disbanded TVoops settling in the Province of New Brunswick" and to authorize the issuing of the "Royal Bounty of Provisions" to "those present and entitled to receive it."109 There had been widespread abuses in this matter, since many of the Loyalists had already abandoned their lands, while their comrades continued to draw their rations. A new life was beginning, with friends, work, and the possibility of building something that would endure in a new land. For Winslow,

174 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec accustomed to leadership, accustomed to action, as yet only in his thirtyfifth year the prospects were by no means bleak.

Notes 1 E.G. Wright, The Loyalists of New Brunswick, (Fredericton, 1955), pp. 126. 2 An early edition of the Winslow papers is that of W.O. Raymond: Winslow Papers a.d. 1776-1826 which were printed under the auspices of the New Brunswick Historical Society, (St. John, 1901). 3 Wright, Loyalist of New Brunswick, pp. 3-4. 4 Cited by Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, p. 8. 5 Memorial published in Wright, Loyalist of New Brunswick, pp. 9-13 6 Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, p. 13. 7 Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, p. 13. 8 Wright, Loyalists in New BRunswick, p. 14. 9 Wright, Loyalists in New Brunswick, pp. 14-15. 10 Christopher Ward, The War of Revolution (New York, 1952) Vol. II, p. 620. 11 "Col. Winslow's Strictures on Sir H. Clinton," published in W.O. Raymond, Winslow Papers a.d. 1776-1820 (St. John, 1901), p. 64-65. 12 Paul H. Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats a Study in British Revolutionary Policy, published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Chapel Hill, 1964, p. ix. 13 Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats, p. xi. 14 Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, p. 15. 15 Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, p. 16. 16 Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, p. 20. 17 Winslow, Dec. 8, 1780: published in W.O. Raymond, Winslow Papers a.d. 1776-1820 (St. John, 1901), p. 68. 18 Edward Winslow's Memorial, published in Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 65. 19 Edward Winslow to Governor John Wentworth, 1781, published in Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 70. 20 Ward, The War of the Revolution, Vol. II, p. 741. 21 Ward, The War of the Revolution, Vol. II, p. 745. 22 Cited from G.O. Trevalyan, The American Revolution, (London, 1914) Vol. VI, p. 154-5 in Ward, The War of the Revolution, II, p. 762. 23 Cited, Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, p. 21. 24 Smith, Loyalist and Redcoats, p. 173. 25 Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, p. 25. 26 Carleton Papers 5267, cited in Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, p. 25. 27 Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, p. 25. 28 Carleton Papers, 10307/5267; cited in Wright, Loyalists in New Brunswick, p. 26.

The Coming of the Loyalists / 175 29 30 31 32 33 34

Carleton Papers 5238/Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, p. 27. Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, pp. 27-28. Ibid., p. 29. Wright, New Brunswick Loyalists, pp. 29-40. Cited in Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, p. 31 Carleton Papers, 5828, Parr to Carleton, 9 October 1782, cited in Wright, Loyalists of Brunswick, p. 33. 35 Public Archives of Nova Scotia (hereafter PANS), Nova Scotia, Series A, Vol. 102, p. 87, Parr to the Secretary of State, 26 October 1782. 36 PANS, Nova Scotia, Series A, Vol. 102, p. 93, Parr to Nepean, 29 October 1782; Shelburner MSS. LXIX, 149-50; Parr to Grey, 23 October 1782, cited in Brebner, Neutral Yankees, p. 352. 37 PANS, Nova Scotia, Series A, Vol. 102, p. 87, Parr to the Secretary of State, 26 October; 1782; Parr to the Secretary of State, 7 December 1782; Parr to Nepean, 22 January 1783. 38 Beamish Murdoch, A History of Nova Scotia or Acadie, vol. 3 (Halifax, 1865-67), p. 13. 39 W.P.M. Kennedy, ed. Statutes, Treaties and Documents of the Canadian Constitution, 1713-1929 (Toronto, 1930), pp. 170-71. 40 The memorial and its attendants evidence is well presented by Wright in Loyalists of New Brunswick, pp. 41-45. 41 Cited in Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, p. 44. 42 Carleton to Parr, 26 April 1783, Wright, Loyalist of New Brunswick, pp. 5253. Wright suggest that Benjamin Thompson may have drafted this letter. 43 Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, pp. 56-57. 44 Sarah Winslow to Benjamin Marston: New York, April 10, 1783: Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 79. 45 Ward Chipman to Edward Winslow, on board the "Tryal", off Staten Island, Nov. 29, 1783; Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 152. 46 Edward Winslow to Beverley Marston, Halifax, 30th May, 1783: Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 85 47 Winslow to Chipman, River St. John's, 7th of July, 1783: Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 97. 48 Winslow to Chipman, 7 July 1783, Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 100. 49 Edward Winslow to Joshua Upham, St. John's River, July?, 1783: Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 102. 50 Allen to Winslow, 7th August 1783: Winslow to Murray, 8th August 1783; Raymond, Winslow Papers, pp. 116-18; 118-119. 51 Winslow to Chipman, Halifax 27th August 1783; Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 27. 52 Winslow to Chipman, 10 October, 1783: Memorial of Edward Winslow Sr., 22 October 1783 in Raymond, Winslow Papers, pp. 128-39, and 144-46. Copies of the memorial were sent to Brooke Watson, Sir William Pepperel, Judge Ludlow and Robert Rashleigh, the English agent for many of the Loyalists. 53 Winslow Sr. to Chipman, 26 September 1783, in ibid., p. 135.

176 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec 54 Winslow to Chipman, 26 April 1784, in ibid., p. 133. 55 Ibid., p. 191. 56 PANS, Nova Scotia, Series A, vol. 102, p. 87, Parr to Secretary of State Townsend, 26 October 1782. 57 Ibid., vol. 103, p. 297. 58 PANS, Nova Scotia, Series E, vol. 4, pp. 5-8. 59 Secretary of State to the Governor, 7 August 1783; Parr to North, 23 August 1783; Parr to North, 30 September 1783; Parr to Nepean, 4 October 1783; see Canadian Archives Report, 1894, pp. 406-7. 60 Parr to Shelburne, 16 December 1783, in ibid., p. 409. 61 Parr to Carleton, 31 December 1783, in ibid., p. 410. 62 See the list of Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick. 63 Chipman to Winslow, 29 July 1783, in Raymond, ed., Winslow Papers, p. Ill; Chipman to Winslow, 3 August 1783, in ibid., p. 115. 64 Wright, Loyalists of New Brunswick, p. 60. 65 Parr to Nepean, 10 April 1784, Canadian Archives Report, 1894, p. 417. 66 Winslow to Chipman, 19 December 1783, in Raymond, ed., Winslow Papers, p. 158. 67 Winslow to Chipman, 7 January 1784 and 20 January 1784, in ibid., pp. 161, 16. 68 Canadian Archives Report, 1894, pp. 414-15. 69 PAC, 1894, 414-15. 70 Charges printed in Raymond, Winslow Papers: p. 180. 71 PAC, Raymond Collection, Vol. 10, Winslow to Chipman: cited in W. Stewart MacNutt, New Brunswick a History: 1784-1867 (Toronto, 1968), pp. 378. 72 George Leonard's remarks upon . . . Memorial: Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 185. 73 George Leonard to Winslow, 30 April 1784 in Raymond, Winslow Papers, pp. 186-7. 74 Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 199. 75 John Coffin to Edward Winslow, Carleton 5th May, 1784: Raymond, Winslow Papers, p. 203. 76 Carleton to Hobbart, May 6th, 1803; P.R.O.C.O.188/12 cited MacNutt: New Brunswick, p. 42. 77 B.M. Additional Mss. 38, 3888 minutes of the Board of Trade, March 16, 1784: cited MacNutt, New Brunswick, p. 44. 78 Winslow to Chipman, 19 December 1783, in Raymond, ed., Winslow Papers, p. 157; Chipman to Winslow, 7 March 1784, in ibid., pp. 167-68. 79 Chipman to Winslow, 13 March 1784, in ibid., p. 170. 80 Mongan to Winslow, 23 March 1784, in ibid., pp. 171-72. 81 Chipman to Winslow, 13 April 1784, in ibid., pp. 174-76. 82 Ibid., p. 176 83 Fox to Winslow, 14 april 1784, in ibid., pp. 176-77. 84 Chipman to Winslow, 17 April 1784, in ibid., p. 178. 85 Hazen to Winslow, 3 May 1784, in i6tcf., 202; Winslow to Chipman, 26

The Coming of the Loyalists / 177 April 1784, in ibid., p. 189; Fanning to Chipman, 27 April 1784, in ibid., p. 197. 86 "This huge unwieldly Town swarms with Americans grumbling and discontented; in two or three years, it is said, we may know what Government will, or will not, allow us for the loss of property, for services, &c., &c., fcc." See Colonel J.H. Cruger to Winslow, 28 March 1784, in ibid., p. 174. 87 Cited in MacNutt, New Brunswick, p. 45, CO 217, Vol. 56, p. 388. 88 Secretary of State to Parr, 29 May 1784, Canadian Archives Report, 1894, p. 419. 89 Parr to the Secretary of State, 26 July 1784, in ibid., p. 422; Parr to Nepean, 13 August 1784, in ibid., p. 423. 90 Parr to Nepean, 3 September 1784, in ibid., p. 424; Secretary of State to Parr, 8 October 1784, in ibid., p. 426. 91 "Leaves of Absence & Instructions." 13 November 1784, in Raymond, ed., Winslow Papers, pp. 249-50. 92 Winslow to Odell (draft), [August 1784], in ibid., pp. 219-20. 93 Winslow to Charles McEvers, 4 October 1784, in ibid. 94 Winslow to his Wife, 25 September 1784, in ibid., 234. 95 Ibid., p. 234. 96 Ladies at Sheet Harbour to Winslow, 28 April 1785, in ibid., p. 299. 97 Winslow to Chipman, 2 March 1785, in ibid. 98 Chipman to Winslow, 20 March 1785, in ibid., pp. 267-77. 99 Winslow to Chipman, 27 March 1785, in ibid., pp. 279-80. 100 Ibid., p. 281. 101 Winslow to Chipman, 25 March 1785, in ibid., p. 279. 102 Winslow to Chipman, 31 March 1785, in ibid., p. 285. 103 Ibid., p. 286; Winslow to David Easton, 7 April 1785, in ibid., p. 292; Winslow to Mars t on, 10 April 1785, in ibid., p. 293. 104 Sydney to Campbell, 8 March 1785, Canadian Archives Report, 1894, p. 431. 105 Winslow to his Wife, 29 April 1785, in Raymond, ed., Winslow Papers, pp. 300-301. 106 Garden to Winslow, 28 June 1785, in ibid., p. 308. 107 Garden to Winslow, 28 September 1785, in ibid., p. 315; Garden to Winslow, 27 October 1785, in ibid., p. 318. 108 Winslow to Chipman, 15 May 1785, in ibid., p. 302. 109 "Circular Letter," in ibid., p. 305; "Instructions," in ibid., pp. 306-7.

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8

"Histoire sans coeur"?: Historiographical Reflection on the Work of Mason Wade Stephen Kenny In the most emotional and condemnatory review of The French-Canadians, 1760-1945, Richard Ares, S.J., gave a bit of advice to Mason Wade. He suggested reflection on the wisdom of Plato, that one must seek the truth with one's whole soul. The most thorough research and the most brilliant intellect were not sufficient to truly understand a community. To do so one had to get into the very skin of a people. Moreover, in the words of Ares: "11 faut y mettre un peu, peut-être aussi beaucoup de son coeur. À Poeuvre de Mason Wade, il aura précisément manqué un peu de sympathie comprehensive pour les aspirations fondamentales et vitales du peuple canadien-français."1 On the contrary, compassion, understanding, and sympathy are notable aspects in the works of Wade, yet such elements cannot be proven or isolated any more than Ares could verify that the book lacked heart. Now, more than five years since Wade's death, an examination of his work is appropriate. Reflection on its historical value and insight, as well as consideration of some contemporary and later reactions to his writing, places Wade's contribution as an historian in a more balanced and realistic context than it appears to be today. Merely because he focused on French Canada is no reason to be uncritically thankful for his work. True, that an American historian wrote on the subject in the 1940s and 1950s was surprising. That he discovered in the survival of the French fact in North America much that was admirable is an indication of the depth of his sympathy for his subject. Since his work has been familiar to Canadian readers for so long and has been displaced by sounder and more modern historical studies in the last ten years or so, we tend to forget the extraordinary nature of his accomplishment. Approaching the subject of Wade's historical writing presents real difficulties for the historiographer. Wade's research as a foreigner crossed This article was first published in American Review of Canadian Sttidies, 17, No. 3 (Autumn 1987), 273-285.

180 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec frontiers and cultures. While his earlier work was biographical, when he wrote of French Canada Wade took a ponderous narrative and chronological approach. The deeper his interest in Quebec, the more profound became his commitment to construct a more complete understanding of French Canada's place in the larger North American context. His historical writing evolved naturally, his enthusiasm obvious; most importantly, his abiding interest in Quebec resulted from conscious decision. Unlike Wade, for some Canadian historians, even the most prestigious, the study of Canada came almost as an afterthought fraught with doubt and regret. One example is l'abbé Lionel Groulx, the great FrenchCanadian nationalist historian with enormous influence in the first half of the twentieth century. A young man in his early thirties, he came back to Canada in 1909 after a few years of travel and study in Europe, returning with conflicting sentiments of regret and anticipation. The writing of Quebec history, which eventually became for Groulx a personal vocation and crusade, was initially undertaken with a sigh of resignation.2 Groulx constantly referred to his "little" country and its "little" history and in comparison to Europe considered it young and culturally deprived. Donald Creighton, whose writing of Canadian history is most passionate and compelling, provides another example of destiny determining scholarship. As a young man Creighton wished to study France and the Revolution. In 1928 he went to the Sorbonne to begin his life's work but, unable to finance his studies, he was obliged to return to Canada. In his book The Writing of Canadian History, Professor Carl Berger concludes that "Creighton came to the history of his own country by accident, almost by default."3 A happy accident for Canadian historiography, but accident all the same! Groulx and Creighton were contemporaries of Wade, and although most readers would not suggest he was in their rank, none should fail to recognize the initiative and energy of Wade's major Canadian work, The French Canadians. In it he set out clearly and forthrightly "to explain why the French Canadians live, think, act and react differently than English-speaking North Americans."4 Unlike Groulx and Creighton, Wade came to the study of Canada purposefully and with no regrets that he might have done other work had circumstances provided otherwise. Part of the charm of reading his work is the obvious sense of enthusiastic commitment which permeates it. Since a consideration of the entirety of his writing is beyond the scope of this study, the major focus will be on the Canadian aspects of it. However, some of his most important work must be noted for background information and to illustrate the natural path of his research towards Canada. Wade's evolution toward the study of Canada is understand-

"Histoire sans coeur"? / 181 able. He wrote several books, contributed articles and reviews to journals on both sides of the border, and presented papers and conferences at innumerable meetings. His first book, Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius, published in 1940 when he was only twenty-seven, is the biography of the woman believed by some to be America's first feminist. An intellectual and teacher, Fuller edited The Dial, the journal of the New England Transcendentalists, and later became the literary critic at Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Subsequently, Wade selected and edited The Writings of Margaret Fuller. Next focusing on another New England intellectual, Wade produced Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian in 1942. Similarly, he edited The Journals of Francis Parkman, published in 1947; a brick of more than seven hundred pages, the journals remain a useful starting point to Parkman. Reflection on the life and writings of Parkman inevitably led Wade to the study of Canada. In 1946, he published The French Canadian Outlook: A Brief Account of the Unknown North Americans. Short and the most purely interpretative of his works, it is an expression of his first meeting with modern French Canada. He published his major Canadian work and most important book in 1955, The French Canadians, 17601945, comprised of two volumes and more than eleven hundred pages. His two-volume revision in 1968 did not significantly alter the first edition except for the addition of a final chapter and epilogue covering the years between 1945 and 1967. The French Canadians is the work for which Wade is best known and, incidentally, most excoriated. While Canadian historians may have serious doubts about its scholarship and analysis, generally they recognize its use as a solid source of information. Since 1955, what undergraduate reading Canadian history has not had it recommended? What historian has not referred to it for factual information? After this book Wade wrote no more monographs, but in the 1960s he edited two important collections: namely Canadian Dualism: Studies of French-English Relations and Regionalism in the Canadian Community, 1867-1967. Curiously, by the time of his death in January 1986, Wade's work was largely disregarded, nearly fallen into disrepute, by professional historians in Canada. In his obituary of Wade, Professor Yves Roby, historian at Laval University, referred to him as "a renowned historian" and to The French Canadians as "a great book." Yet Roby declared that Wade's most significant accomplishment was the establishment of a Canadian Studies program at the University of Rochester, New York.5 Several notices of his death concluded that his work, once useful, was now dated and dépassé. The commentators, in attempting to take a measure of the man, also remarked on certain traits of sadness and solitude in Wade's

182 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec personality.6 In the last few years prior to his death, one of his real pleasures involved attending historical conferences in Canada and the United States. During breaks in the proceedings he would call out greetings to various colleagues, some of whom avoided his call. His eyes revealed an obvious sense of disappointment, the expression of which remained unspoken. At the end of his life, Wade personally experienced disdain. That is not to say he did not receive recognition or acclaim during his career. He taught at several schools, notably the University of Rochester where he directed the Canadian Studies program and the University of Western Ontario where he chaired the history department and taught until 1972. From time to time he lectured at Laval, British Columbia, Toronto, and Carleton. Recipient of many distinctions and awards, he received honorary degrees from several universities, including McGill, New Brunswick, Ottawa, Laval, and Vermont. In 1964-65, he became the first and only American president of the Canadian Historical Association. Yet, despite this early recognition, when he died Professor H. Nicholas Muller wrote: "The scholarly community in the United States would not recognize that the historian who chose a Canadian topic could produce first rate work. Too often ignored at home and unjustly rejected in Canada, Wade experienced a defended border."7 Why the disdain? Why the disregard? Can it be explained merely by the fact that his work had become dated? Undeniably, thirty years of current scholarship bypassed Wade's own research. The people he referred to as "the unknown North Americans" have been thoroughly examined and analysed and contemporary historical understanding is fuller and more realistic. Yet Wade's fall from favour is not entirely due to the passage of time. Professor Wade was brash, abrasive, and he alienated many of his colleagues. Particularly from a Canadian perspective there were a number of strikes against him. He was an American, his understanding of French imperfect. He was not a professional historian, never acquiring an advanced degree in history. His historical writing was descriptive and his style ponderous, plodding, and dense. He had an unhappy penchant for punctuating his writing with very long quotations, but yet scrimping on analysis. His writing was derivative and overly dependent on secondary sources. And worst of all, he was presumptuous! His presumption upset the Harvard reviewer of the Fuller biography, with the resulting criticism definitely derisive. Offended that a young man still in his twenties would attempt such a task, the reviewer was startled that Wade would "undertake for his first book the biography of a personage in a time or setting with which he is not particularly or

"Histoire sans coeur"? / 183 technically equipped to deal, rather than write as most young men do, a novel of young love."8 The cheek of the Harvard undergraduate! The Parkman biography was criticized for stressing the youthful years of the historian. Professor Flenley, at the University of Toronto, chastised Wade for taking more than two hundred pages, nearly half the book, to get Parkman to twenty-three years of age.9 Such an approach by Wade, himself not yet thirty, was understandable. Nowadays, it might even be judged admirable for it indicated a natural and independent decision of an able historian. The energy of Parkman's journals, upon which he based much of the biography obviously inspired Wade. Indeed, the journals deal predominantly with Parkman's travels as a young man before he returned to the dimly-lit attic in Boston and the psychosomatic maladies which dominated the rest of his life. Wade's presumptuousness, some might suggest arrogance, did not disappear in later years. A good example is his presidential address to the Canadian Historical Association in which he referred to his own "brash ambition" to tell the story of the French Canadians. In the tradition of these speeches, the address which he entitled "A View from the South," was not particularly academic. However, contrary to custom, his remarks seem calculated to provoke.10 Canadians, he claimed, were good at dishing out criticism; he hoped they could take it. Noting their penchant to complain about the neighbour to the south, Wade claimed that if the United States had not existed, Canadians would have had to invent them. More importantly, he believed such misplaced criticism resulted from a blind spot which inhibited Canadians from considering the fundamental formative influence of America on their own nation's development. Declared Wade: "But I remain thin-skinned after all these years about what seems to me a wrongheaded Canadian tendency to ignore or minimize the American element in Canadian history, in order to argue the thesis that Canadians are North Americans with a difference and with a separate identity."11 Was his suggestion too much for them to forgive? How dare he, in his own words, "a damned Yankee," presume to "sound my barbaric Yankee yawp in an American view of some problems of Canadian history today?"12 Wade was provocative; he seemed almost to invite controversy. His work on Canada was certainly controversial and never entirely accepted as serious scholarship. For example, Richard Ares believed The French Canadians to be fundamentally faulty. Moreover, he claimed the book only served the interest of the majority of English-Canadian readers, who merely wished to confirm their own prejudices and nourish their superiority complex toward French Canadians.13 Such claims disregard and contradict Wade's own consciously expressed purpose, to try to tran-

184 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec scend these very prejudices. Declaring himself a New Englander and a Catholic, Wade believed such a mix enabled him to write disinterestedly.14 Ares's comments say more of the reviewer than the reviewed. They illustrate the great divide, not only between scholars, but between Frenchand English-speaking Canadians when Wade first published the book in 1955. The other side of the coin was shown by the London reviewer who claimed the book was unbalanced. In sincerely attempting to understand the French Canadians, Wade had become too lenient even to the point of political bias, rendering the British government and the imperialists as the villains.15 Professor A.R.M. Lower, author of From Colony io Nation, took Wade's scholarship and style to task, but had no doubts about his objectivity, claiming The French Canadians was detached and impartial. "Fairness," Lower wrote, "is written on every page."16 To say the least, the reviews were mixed. Oddly, none dwelled on the fact that an American had seriously set sights on French Canada, yet this is a most intriguing consideration. It was surprising that Wade undertook the task then and would be equally so if an American did so today. The briefest of reflections on current American attitudes toward Canada will underline the point. Difficult to understand, the country is sometimes seen as another version of the United States, sharing similar sentiments, attitudes, and goals. For example, in January 1979, to William Safire, Canada appeared to be coming apart at the seams. Americans, he warned, should beware of Lévesque, "the nation breaker" who was soft-selling secession, and of Trudeau, "who had neither the stature nor the gumption" to impose a strong central government. Quebec had to learn the lesson that the Confederate States had learned more than a hundred years earlier. Mr. Safire knew the answer: "that a nation to be a nation must remain indivisible — and that cultural diversity can best be defended by holding fast to political unity."17 Indeed, the implications of American unity are clear to Canadians. Even the most rudimentary understanding of the United States makes it clearer, for has American political unity preserved cultural diversity in Louisiana, California, Texas, New England? In fact, cultural diversity is sacrificed for the preservation of political unity. It requires no long residence in New England to realize that the French of the Franco-Americans is but a "langue du foyer," and even at that quickly disappearing. Given prevailing attitudes, it appears the fate of Spanish will be the same. Safire's greener colleague at the New York Times bureau in Ottawa acknowledged his own consternation with the country and seconded the views of his confrere in Washington. Writing on the differences between Canada and the United States, Michael Kaufmann found the northern

"Histoire sans coeur"? / 185 model wanting. He rejected the Canadian myths of accommodation and compromise, declaring: "Even if our melting pot is not wholly attainable — and some ethnic groups in the United States have been questioning its utility — the only sensible national goal should be, in my opinion, one of integration, assimilation and miscegenation, and governments should limit themselves to providing everyone with the rights of citizenship."18 These days Canadians read in the popular press of growing American fears of the expansion of Spanish in the United States. In the spring of 1983, in a provocative essay entitled "Against a Confusion of Tongues," William A. Henry wrote that "America's image of itself as a melting pot, enriched by every culture, yet subsuming all of them" stretched back to the Revolution. Bilingualism and biculturalism would fragment the nation, as they had the contrary and faulty North American example situated north of the 49th parallel. In the words of the essayist, the persistence of Spanish in California "could result in a polarization into two distinct cultures of the kind that brought about the Quebec situation in Canada."19 Clearly, the "Quebec situation" was not one to be admired, much less emulated. Californians are afraid that their state is becoming a cultural salad bowl, quite un-American! Organizations to protect the integrity of English have advised governments to call a spade a spade; if American society is to be modelled after Canada, then federal and state authorities should say so.20 The logic of this demand is that such a forthright acknowledgment of the "Canadian model" would obviously be rejected by right-thinking Americans. In recent months in both the French- and English-speaking press in Canada, Canadians have been reminded of the American struggle against the incursions of Spanish. Ironically, it is the Canadian-born scholar, linguist, administrator, and former senator from California who inspires the crusade. Says Senator Hayakawa in a thoughtless misreading of Canada: "Right next door to us in Canada, you have a terribly bitter controversy, a terribly bitter breakup of business and friendships, as a result of the attempt by some fanatical francophiles to push the French language upon non-French speaking provinces."21 Had the senator read Mason Wade, he would have discovered that the Canadian past was not the story of a few fanatical francophiles forcing French down the throats of the English-speaking majority. Rather, he would have discovered resistance, survival, moderation and compromise: in a word "Canway." One interpretation of Canada's past, perhaps its most glorious, is that the historical experience of the community north of the American border has involved a long and hard struggle to reconcile the reality of linguistic and cultural heterogeneity, and that such diversity can be respected only

186 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec at the expense of political unity. Wade, an American, in attempting to understand Canada, specifically the part that spoke French, touched on the essence of the country's past. He transcended mighty American currents and in the process had to unlearn something about America. In becoming truly conscious of Canada's past, he discovered the existence of an intriguing, distinct, and legitimate North American alternative. Therein lies the greatness of his work, regardless of its real faults and foibles. Would that more Americans read him, for the lesson he learned was pertinent and startling forty years ago and remains so today. Perhaps this is why Americans do not often seriously study Canada, not because it is small in population, insignificant in terms of power, cold and allegedly boring, but because its past is so radically different that it cannot easily be integrated into general American orthodoxies. The depth of Wade's sensitivity is exactly the element which distinguished his work, progressing as an historian of Canada toward enlightenment and enrichment. He took a step beyond his nineteenth-century predecessor, Francis Parkman, for he did not disdain his subject. While American lack of familiarity with Wade's work is understandable, more intriguing is the nearly total dismissal of it by French- and English-speaking historians in Canada. Most consider The French Canadians outdated, doubt its analysis, and object to the heavily political orientation. However, beyond these legitimate concerns, the work still evokes energetic scepticism and condemnation. For example, in a recent textbook in French, Wade's French Canadians is mentioned once and disposed of summarily as a "synthèse centrée sur le nationalisme canadien-français et dont la faiblesse est d'être désincarnée."22 Professor Fernand Quellet in reproaching Wade suggests that history is motivated by more fundamental realities than politics alone.23 Quellet denies the great importance Wade attached to Lord Durham's Report and the recommendation for assimilation. Faint in his praise, Quellet concludes that the argument, while not totally baseless, was rather simplistic.24 Michael Brunet, neo-nationalist historian and great adversary of Quellet, is equally vexed by Wade. While their reasons are very different, their conclusion about the unacceptability of Wade's work is one of their very few shared opinions. In a recent study, Quebec and Its Historians, Serge Gagnon notes that Wade was considered a "bête noire" by the "école de Montréal" popularized in large part by Brunet. According to them, foreigners should not study French Canada; for that matter neither should English-speaking Canadian historians.25 Even before the appearance of The French Canadians, Brunet decided quite emphatically on the quality, of Wade's work. Reviewing a collection of essays, Brunet reserved his harshest words

"Histoire sans coeur"? / 187 for Wade's contribution. He believed Wade's goal was to discredit and ridicule the theorists and practitioners of French-Canadian nationalism. Why he had so much prestige among certain Quebec scholars was beyond Brunet, and he wrote: "Néanmoins quelques personnes reconnaissent à M. Wade une autorité dont il doit être le premier à s'étonner. Seul, l'infantilisme intellectuel explique ce phénomène. Plusieurs des nôtres seront d'éternels provincialistes. Le colonialisme politique et intellectuel n'est pas encore mort au Canada français."26 Reference to Wade in his later work is absent since Brunet refused to consider him seriously.27 Similarly, English-speaking historians of Quebec disregard Wade. For example, in her classic study Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, Professor Hilda Neatby included only one of his early articles in her bibliography and did not mention The French Canadians.28 In the most recent English-speaking synthesis of modern Quebec, The Dreams of Nations: The Social and Intellectual History of Quebec, Professor Susan Mann Trofimenkoff includes Wade's major work in her general bibliography but does not suggest it in any of the select bibliographical lists at the end of each chapter. This is startling since her purpose, so similar to Wade's, was to write a history of the Québécois, "the source of the greatest puzzlement to English Canada."29 In studies of recent writings in Canadian history, Wade is hardly considered. Professor Carl Berger, for example, mentions The French Canadians in the most cursory fashion. Admitting it to be the first analysis in English of French Canadá, he explains that "Wade came to the subject by way of an appraisal of Francis Parkman."30 In general bibliographical studies, the work is judged as no longer useful. For example, as late as 1977, Professor Ramsay Cook still characterized The French Canadians as the only comprehensive study in English, but also indicated its rapid displacement by recent specialized books. More importantly, Cook noted that Wade's study was highly derivative of Robert Rumilly's many-volumed Histoire de la Province de Québec?* In a similar bibliographical instrument dealing with pre-Confederation historical writing, Fernand Quellet noted Wade's interest in the theme of French-Canadian survival. Yet, curiously, he concluded that while "written from a liberal perspective, Wade's work is related in many ways to that of Groulx."32 Absence of current reference to Wade's work is now so nearly complete that the question begs to be asked — why? Perhaps the answer is contained in those comments of professors Cook and Quellet. Implicit in their remarks, admittedly delicately put, lies the suggestion that Wade's writing was too derivative and dependent on secondary sources such as Rumilly and Groulx. For many years, I have wondered why Wade was always taken with a grain of salt. In the intimacy of private conversations

188 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec with numerous historians, I have put the question. The answers, often the same, suggested that Wade copied Chapáis or Rumilly or Groulx. Sometimes the respondents had not read Wade thoroughly, much less those he purportedly copied. Only scientific textual analysis will provide a definitive answer to these doubts. It is sufficient to know that many historians sense that Wade's writing, while not plagiarized, remains fatally flawed by its derivative nature. True or not, such an understanding helps to explain the current neglect of his work. A recent article in the New Yorker noted a new republication of Francis Parkman's France and England in North America. The author bemoaned the fact that Parkman "who may be America's greatest narrative historian, has, outside of scholarship, been nearly forgotten."33 Some acknowledgment of Wade's biography of Parkman would have been appropriate. Indeed, Professor Dale Miquelon reviewed Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian when it was reissued in 1972. While not faultless, Miquelon considered the book to be of continuing interest and noted the scholarship it inspired on Parkman during the 1950s and 1960s. Most interesting and more than thirty years after its first appearance, Miquelon wrote: "The Francis Parkman of the biography is still a compelling personality."34 Yet today, so totally has Wade's work fallen into question that his early pioneering biography merits not a mention. Like the subject, so the author has been forgotten. Questions about the quality of Wade's work are not new; as for his Canadian titles, they were posted from the beginning. Characterized as a brief, brilliant and discerning synthesis, The French-Canadian Outlook received favourable reviews.35 Many reviewers looked to the forthcoming larger volume which they expected would complete the skeletal features of this small essay. However, when The French Canadians appeared in print critics expressed a noticeable sense of disappointment. The early reviews written in French began the tradition that Wade's work was copied or much too derivative. Sympathetic or not, reviewers from both sides of the fence acknowledged scepticism. For example, Maurice Heroux found the use of notes and references weak. He claimed Wade missed the importance of the conquest and underestimated the implications of decapitation. But Heroux wrote patronizingly that the author should not be blamed too much since "nos propres historiens n'ont guère été plus clairvoyants et ils ne peuvent se permettre de jeter la pierre à celui qui n'a fait que ressasser leurs théories."36 Similarly, Ares found comparisons with Rumilly's work too obvious not to mention, for Wade's chapter organization and treatment of important events were too similar. Wade claimed that he used primary sources as much as possible, but Ares wrote: "En dépit de cette précaution, je ne serais pas du

"Histoire sans coeur"? / 189 tout surpris que des historiens de profession contestent l'interprétation qu'il donne de certain faits."37 Even Gustave Lanctot, who considered the book good and useful, warned of some rather simplistic conclusions based upon insufficient evidence and research. Lanctot also wrote "que les trop abondantes références à Robert Rumilly auraient besoin de confirmation par d'autres sources."38 Early reviews in English made no such suggestions. English-speaking Canadian historians would learn the lesson later. One wonders whether these suggestions, designed to diminish Wade's credibility, were not motivated by a far deeper concern regarding the implications of his analysis. The work was too audacious and in the minds of many, outrageous. True to form, Wade did not mince words. He noticed a powerful strain of racism operative in the psyche of some French Canadians. Specifically, he suggested that the great nationalist historian of the day, Lionel Groulx, was a racist inspired by the works of Gobineau.39 Did the hero of contemporary French Canadian historiography have clay feet? Maurice Heroux, deeply offended by the proposition, wrote animatedly: "Ceux qui connaissent l'oeuvre de Groulx, même s'ils en sont les adversaires irréductibles, se gausseront de ces remarques impertinentes."40 Likewise, Ares complained bitterly of Wade's suggestion of prejudice.41 Bloodied but not beaten, in 1971, in a review of the first volume of Groulx's memoirs, Wade persisted with his interpretation.42 To attack the pre-eminent French Canadian nationalist historian was simply intolerable to his colleagues. Guy Fregault, historian of New France, disciple of Groulx, and eminent expression of the "école de Montréal," mentioned neither scholarship nor Wade's unseemly attacks. He focused instead on Wade's essential understanding of Canada and historical writing on the country. In his preface, Wade regretted that Canadian historical writing differed so much in the English and French versions "as to suggest they are the histories of two different countries."43 For Fregault that is exactly where Wade went astray, at the very point of departure, for in fact there were two histories and Canada was two different places. To bridge such an interpretive gap was an impossible and futile task. Mason Wade had simply failed to understand the reality of the Canadian past.44 It appears that the Canadian duality which Wade attempted to transcend, a process to which Guy Fregault so energetically objected, remains a basic truth in Canadian historical writing. Consider the preface of The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing, 1900-1970, in which Professor Berger explains why he omits French-Canadian writing in the period. His comment underlines the continued importance of the gap which still exists between French-

190 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec and English-speaking Canadian historians. Berger notes: "The two language traditions have, in historical thought as well as in other nonpolitical spheres occasionally touched and intersected, but in general they have been preoccupied with the backgrounds of two rather different 'nations'."45 Whatever the real faults of Wade's work, given Professor Berger's perspective, it is not surprising that he does not consider Wade's writing. If Berger's suggestion, one shared by so many Canadian historians, is correct, then Wade's effort to step across the fundamental Canadian division was indeed far-fetched. But Wade knew the dangers of such an attempt and acknowledged his own brashness. In the preface to The French Canadians he stated: It doubtless seems presumptuous of the writer to take it upon himself to write the history of a country of which he is not a native and whose mother tongue is not his own. There are advantages however in such a course; and perhaps particularly in this instance, where there has existed at times an almost unbridgeable abyss between two peoples with a common history, and where ancient quarrels have a fatal way of entering into the thinking of each group about the other.46

Wade knew that he was attempting something never tried before by either French- or English-speaking historians of Canada. In fact, such an effort on the part of either was akin to a betrayal of their respective interests. Such attitudes persist today; to attempt such a step in 1955 represented an enormous risk. It is not surprising that Wade did not reach his goal, for even now Canadian historians struggle valiantly to explain the continuity and persistence of the abyss which separates them. Current orthodoxy dictates duality; analysis of the community of the Canadian past is not generally accepted as respectable or legitimate. In addition to the weakness of Wade's work, which historians justifiably noted, the task he set for himself was doomed to failure. Canadians, French or English, would not be told by an American that they misunderstood their own past. Such a suggestion was simply too bold, too startling, and too presumptuous for acceptance. That Wade failed is true, but that his effort was undertaken heartlessly is too much to conclude. In the footsteps of Francis Parkman, Wade came naturally to the study of Canada. In his biography of the historian, Wade reflected on the character of Parkman as a man and scholar. His comments are pertinent and touching: Even as a youth Parkman saw that the most important part of his preparation for his lifework lay not in books but in personal experience, and he

"Histoire sans coeur"? / 1 9 l set about acquiring this experience with characteristic vigour and impetuosity. In his eagerness to examine the scenes of the conflict that obsessed him before they were ruined by cultivation and exploitation, and to come to know the Indian and the pioneer before they perished at the hands of a rapidly developing industrial civilization, he nearly ruined his health beyond remedy and thus almost frustrated his purpose at the outset. But there is no record, not so much as a hint, that he ever regretted the price he paid for his intimate personal knowledge of the scenes and the men he was to perpetuate on the printed page.47

Like his nineteenth-century inspiration, Wade, an impetuous young man, set out on his own journey of discovery. Throughout his lifetime he investigated the history of French Canada and the rest of the Canadian community to whose fate it was attached. Until his death he adored travelling in Canada and talking with the practitioners of its past. His zeal and love for Canada were those of the convert who came to conviction consciously and from the outside. Like Parkman, he was perfectly attuned neither to the orthodoxies upon which he so brashly trampled nor to the sensitivities which he so obviously offended. From the start, his work was seriously criticized and he was energetically personally vilified. Yet, like Parkman, Wade gave no indication that he ever regretted his attempt to understand Canada. In The French Canadians one of Wade's heroes was Henri Bourassa, a politician, intellectual, pamphleteer and editor. Bourassa discovered a Canada beyond Quebec which was not irreconcilably committed to the destruction of French Canada. He found and articulated a twentiethcentury version of a Canadian community which transcended traditional political and historical divisions. One of Bourassa's most enduring achievements was the establishment of Le Devoir, still the most prestigious French-speaking newspaper in Canada. It is appropriate to close with the comments of the former editor upon the death of Mason Wade. Former Radio Canada correspondent in Europe and an historian, the author of a recent study of the "Bloc Populaire,"48 Paul-André Comeau made particularly perceptive comments on the contribution of Wade. He wrote: "II laisse le souvenir d'un historien d'une grande probité chez qui la passion de savoir et de comprendre ne l'a pas empêché de manifester une grande sympathie pour ces 'Canadiens français' qui, depuis deux décennies s'identifient désormais comme Québécois."49 To be passionate and to have heart are synonymous. Whatever its faults or foilbles, and there are many, Wade's history is not "sans coeur."

192 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Notes 1 Richard Ares, S.J., review of The French Canadians, in Relations, tome 15, no. 172 (avril 1955), 105-6. 2 Lionel Groulx, Mes Mémoires, tome I 1878-1920 (Montréal: Fides, 1970), 163-71. 3 Carl Berger, The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English· Canadian Historical Writing, 1900 to 1970 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1976), 210. 4 Mason Wade, Preface, The French Canadians, 1760-1967, vol. 1 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968), xiii. 5 Yves Roby, "Mason Wade, 1913-1986," obituary notice in Canadian Historical Association Newsletter, vol. 12, no. 3 (Summer 1986). 6 In addition to Roby's comments, see also Paul-André Comeau, "Un historien lucide et sincère," Le Devoir, mardi, 28 janvier 1986; Graham Fraser, "Solitary U.S. Scholar," Globe and Mail (Toronto), Saturday, January 18, 1986; Nicholas Müller," Hugh Mason Wade," obituary notice in American Review of Canadian Studies, XVI, no. 1 (Spring 1986), ii-iii. 7 Muller, "Hugh Mason Wade," iii. 8 Perry Miller, review of Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius, in New England Quarterly, 13 (September 1940), 560. 9 Ralph Flenley, review of Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian, in Canadian Historical Review, 24, no. 2 (June 1943). 10 Mason Wade, Presidential Address: "A View from the South," in Canadian Historical Association Annual Report (June 1965). 11 Ibid., 5. 12 Ibid., 2. 13 Ares, S.J., review of The French Canadians, 106. 14 Mason Wade, preface, The French Canadians 1760-1967, vol. 1: xiv-xv. 15 Review of The French Canadians, 1760-1945," in London Times Literary Supplement, Friday, May 13, 1955. 16 A.R.M. Lower, review of The French Canadians, 1760-1945, in New York Times, Sunday, May 15, 1955. 17 William Safire, "Manifest Destiny," New York Times, Tuesday, January 18, 1979. 18 Michael Kaufmann, "Canada: An American Discovers Its Difference," New York Times Magazine, May 13, 1983. 19 William A. Henry, III, "Against a Confusion of Tongues," Times Magazine, June 13, 1983. 20 Gill Gardner, "English Only: U.S. Salad Bowl or Melting Pot," Globe and Mail, September 18, 1986. 21 William Johnson, "California Tries to Avoid the 'Canadian Problem1," Globe and Mail, Saturday, October 11, 1986. See also Denis Moniere, "Un débat linguistique 'Made in U.S.A.'," Le Devoir, mardi, 4 novembre 1986; Christian Rioux, "La Californie ne sera pas bilingue," L'Actualité, février 1987.

"Histoire sans coeur"? / 193 22 Histoire du Québec, sous la direction de Jean Hamelin (Montréal: FranceAmérique 1976), 8. 23 Fernand Quellet, Histoire Économique et Social du Québec 1760-1850 (Montréal: Fides, 1986), 323. 24 Ibid., 443. 25 Serge Gagnon, Québec and Its Historians: The Twentieth Century, Jane Brierely, trans. (Montreal: Harvest House, 1985), 171, n. 32. 26 Michel Brunet, review of "Essais sur le Québec Contemporain (1953)," in Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française, VII, no. 3 (décembre 1953). 27 While I have not undertaken a complete review of Brunet, I have examined three important titles by him published since the appearance of The French Canadians in 1955. See La Présence anglaise et les Canadiens (Montréal: Beauchemin, 1958); Québec/Canada Anglais: Deux itinéraires: un affrontement (Montréal: Éditions HMH Ltée., 1968); Les Canadiens après la Conquête, 1759-1775 (Montréal: Fides, 1969). None of these books contains any reference to Wade. 28 Hilda Nearby, Quebec: The Revolutionary Age, 1760-1791, Canadian Centenary Series (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966). 29 Susan Mann TroñmenkofF, The Dreams of Nation: A Social and Intellectual History of Quebec (Toronto: Gage, 1983), preface. 30 Carl Berger, Writing of Canadian History, 184. 31 Canada since 1867: A Bibliographical Guide, J.L. Granatstein and Paul Stevens, 2nd. ed., rev. (Toronto/Sarasota: Samuel Stevens/Hakkert and Company, 1977), 163. 32 A Reader's Guide to Canadian History: Beginnings to Confederation, ed. D. A. Muise (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982), 62. 33 Richard Preston, "Tales from the Gridiron," New Yorker, March 31, 1986. 34 Dale Miquelon, review of Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian, in Canadian Historical Review, 55, no. 1 (March 1974). 35 See various reviews of The French Canadian Outlook in Canadian Historical Review, 27, no. 3 (September 1946); Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 13, no. 1 (February 1947); American Political Science Review, 40 (December 1946), 1216; University of Toronto Quarterly, 16, no. 3 (April 1947). 36 Maurice Heroux, review of The French Canadians 1760-1945, in Culture, XVI (septembre 1955). 37 Ares, S.J., review of The French Canadians, 105. 38 Gustave Lanctot, review of The French Canadians, 1760-1945, in Revue de l'université Laval, X, no. 10. 39 Mason Wade, The French Canadians, 1760-1967, Vol. 2: 867. 40 Maurice Héroux, review of The French Canadians, 354. 41 Richard Ares, S.J., review of The French Canadians, 105 42 Mason Wade, review of Mes Mémoires, tome 1, 1878-1920, in Canadian Historical Review, 52, no. 3 (September 1971). 43 Mason Wade, The French Canadians, 1760-1967, vol. 1: 867.

194 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec 44 Guy Frégault, review of The French Canadians, 1760-194$ ,in Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française) tome VII, no. 4 (mars 1955). 45 Carl Berger, review of Writing of Canadian History, x. 46 Mason Wade, The French Canadians, 1760-1967, vol. 1: xv. 47 Mason Wade, Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian (New York: Viking Press, 1942), 23. 48 Paul-André Comeau, Le Bloc Populaire, 1942-1948 (Montréal: QuébecAmérique, 1982). 49 Comeau, "Un historien lucide et sincère."

Bibliographical Notes

What follows is an attempt to provide the reader with an introduction to the body of Mason Wade's works, both published and unpublished. Mason Wade's papers were deposited in the Baker Library of Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. A preliminary attempt was made by Joan Glassco Wade to develop a full bibliography from the material available there. Circumstances made it impossible to carry the work to completion, but the bibliographical working papers are on nie at the Baker Library.

Monographs Margaret Fuller: Whetstone of Genius (New York: The Viking Press, 1940; Clifton, N.J.: A.M. Kelley, 1973). Francis Parkman: Heroic Historian (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1942). The French-Canadian Outlook: A Brief Account of the Unknown North Americans (New York: Viking Press; Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1946; reissued with a new introduction by the author, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964; Westport Conn: Greenwood Press, 1982). The French Canadians, 1760-1945 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1955). Les Canadiens français de 1760 à nos jours, 2 tomes, 2e édition, traduit de l'anglais par Adrien Venne, avec le concours de Francis Dufau-Labeyre (Ottawa: Cercle du livre France, 1963). Les Canadiens français de 1760 à nos jours, 2 tomes, 2e édition, traduit de l'anglais par Adrien Venne, avec le concours de Francis Dufau-Labeyrie (Ottawa: Cercle du livre France, 1966). The French Canadians, 1760-1967 rev. ed., 2 vols. (Toronto and London: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968). Beverly Bouthilier and Enid King greatly contributed towards the compilation of these notes.

196 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Canadian Dualism: Studies in French·English Relations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1960). A Brief History of Cornish, 1763-1974 (Hanover, N.H.: published for the Town of Cornish by University Press of New England, 1976). André Duval and Mason Wade, Quebec-Boston: Celebrating New England· Nouvelle France: 350 Years of Partnership in Shaping North America (Boston: Delegation du Québec en Nouvelle-Angleterre, 1980).

Edited Collections Francis Parkman, The Oregon Tras/, edited from his notebooks by Mason Wade (New York: Heritage Press, 1943; Norwalk, Conn: Easton Press, 1987). Francis Parkman, The Journals of Francis Parkman, 2 vols., éd. Mason Wade (London: Spottiswoode, 1947; New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1969). Jean Charles Falardeau, Mason Wade, and Nathan Keyfitz, eds., Essais sur le Québec contemporain/Essay s on Contemporary Quebec, Symposium tenu à l'Université Laval sur les répercussions sociales de l'industrialisation dans la Province de Québec (Québec: Presses Universitaires Laval, 1953). Margaret Fuller, The Writings of Margaret Fuller, ed. Mason Wade (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1965). Janet Kerr Morchain, Search for a Nation: French·English Relations in Canada since 1759, Mason Wade, general ed. (Toronto: J.M. Dent, 1967). Janet Kerr Morchain and Mason Wade, general eds., Search for a Nation: French·English Relations in Canada since 1759, rev. éd. (Markham, Ont.: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1984). Mason Wade, ed., Regionalism in the Canadian Community, 1867-1967, Canadian Historical Association Centennial Seminars, University of Victoria, B.C., 1967 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969). Mason Wade, ed., The International Megalopolis: Report of the University of Windsor Seminar on Canadian-American Relations, 1966 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969).

Journal Articles "Some Aspects of the Relations of French Canada with the United States," Canadian Historical Association, Report (1944), 16-39. "Quebec and the French Revolution of 1789: The Missions of Henri Maziere," Canadian Historical Review 31 (December 1950), 345-68. "Contribution of Abbé John Holmes to Education in the Province of Quebec," Culture (Quebec) 15 (mars 1954), 3-16. "Canada From the South: The American View," Queen's Quarterly 62 (Autumn 1955), 339-48.

Bibliographical Notes / 197 "Use of Newspapers in Historical Research," Canadian Library Association Bulletin 13 (June 1957), 297-99. "The Place of Canadian Studies in American Universities," Queen's Quarterly 66, no. 3 (1959), 377-83. "Partition in North America," Journal of International Affairs 18, no. 2 (1964), 234-40. "Presidential Address: Ά View from the South'," Canadian Historical Association, Report (1965), 1-12. "Commentary: Québécois and Acadian," Journal of Canadian Studies 9 (May 1974), 47-53. "After the Grand Dérangement: The Acadians* Return to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Nova Scotia," American Review of Canadian Studies 4, no. 1 (1975), 42-65. "Odyssey of a Loyalist Rector," Vermont History 48, no. 2 (1980), 96-113.

Book Chapters "Two French Canadas: Quebec and Acadia," in C.E. McRae, ed., French Canada Today, Report of the Mount Allison Summer Institute (Sackville, N.B.: Mount Allison University Publication No. 6, 1961), pp. 34-42.

Journalism Mason Wade wrote extensively for the press. He contributed to Commonweal, The American Review, The North American Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Coliseum. What follows is a list of some of his most significant articles. "New Northwest Passage," Asia and the Americas 44 (January 1944), 32-34. "Canada and the Pacific War," Asia and the Americas 45 (May 1945), 242-43. "Quebec Problem," Commonweal 44 (9 August 1946), 398-401. "Angelic Porcupine," Commonweal 45 (21 February 1947), 470-72. "Catholicism and Puritanism," Commonweal 48 (23 April 1948), 650-52. "Restless Yankee," Commonweal 52 (28 July 1950), 392-94. "U.S. Worries Canadian Nationalists," Foreign Policy Bulletin 35 (15 June 1956), 145-46. "Canada Marking Time," Foreign Policy Bulletin 37 (15 January 1958), 65-66. "What Canada's Election Means for U.S.," Foreign Policy Bulletin 37 (1 May 1958), 121-22. "Cultural Cold War," Saturday Review 42 (24 October 1959), 16-18.

198 / Mason Wade, Acadia, and Quebec Mason Wade Remembered Stephen Kenny, "'Histoire sans coeur'?: Historiographical Reflection on the Work of Mason Wade," American Review of Canadian Studies 17, no. 3 (Autumn 1987), 273-85. Yves Roby, "Mason Wade, 1913-1986: Obituary," Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers (1986), 288-90. "Mason Wade, 1913-1986: nécrologie," Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers (1986), 290-91. Paul-André Comeau, "Un historien lucide et sincère," Le Devoir, 28 janvier 1986. Graham Fraser, "Solitary U.S. Scholar," Globe and Mail, 18 January 1986. Nicholas Muller, "Hugh Mason Wade," American Review of Canadian Studies 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986), ii-iii. "U.S. Expert on Quebec: 'check the tide of unreason'," Financial Post 58 (13 June 1964), 25. "This American Knows Canada," Financial Post 58 (12 June 1964), 39. "Portrait," Saturday Night 76 (18 March 1961), 39. Hugh MacLennan, "How to Understand French Canada; review article of The French Canadians by Mason Wade," Saturday Night 70 (12 March 1955), 9-10. B. Alsterlund, "Biographical Sketch," Wilson Library Bulletin 18 (October 1943), 108. "Portrait," Saturday Review of Literature 25 (19 December 1942), 9.