Raymond J. de Souza: 250 years ago, the Americans attacked Canada — and lost

Montreal — On New Year’s Eve 250 years ago, Brig.-Gen. Richard Montgomery of the Continental Army, headquartered here in Montreal at the Château Ramezay, ordered a multi-pronged attack on Quebec City. The future existence of Canada hung in the balance; Quebec may have become the 14th state at the conclusion of the American Revolution.

The events of 1775 were decisive for the future of Canada, an important factor in the Revolutionary War and a significant step in the history of religious liberty. While the 250th anniversary of the Continental Army was observed with a Soviet-style military parade in Washington, D.C., last summer, Canadians have neglected to recall our own role in the “semiquincentennial” — the official term, unlikely to catch on — events.

By the early 1770s, the British colonies in North America were growing restless. The American colonies were agitating for more local control and, perhaps, independence.

The territories of New France, conquered by the British in 1759 at the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City, had been incorporated into the British Crown by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which sought the assimilation of the French-Canadian majority into British ways — British laws, the English language and the denial of civil rights to Catholics.

The assimilation project was not going well, and the resources required to suppress the French language, customs and Catholic faith were too great, especially when the threat from the Americans was growing. The British gave up trying; on June 22, 1774, King George III gave royal assent to the Quebec Act, with it coming into effect on May 1, 1775.

“Based on recommendations from governors James Murray and Guy Carleton, the act guaranteed the freedom of worship and restored French property rights,” records the Canadian Encyclopedia.

It was truly remarkable. In an age when the religion of the Crown was forcefully imposed on the people, in Quebec, religious liberty was permitted by law. In 1775, a Catholic in Quebec enjoyed freedom of worship and civil rights that were denied to Catholics in Britain and Ireland.

The anti-Catholic “penal laws” of the British Crown were characterized by Edmund Burke as “a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”

In 1775, Catholics in Quebec were exempted from such perverted ingenuity. And the Americans did not like that one bit.

“The act had dire consequences for Britain’s North American empire. Considered one of the five ‘intolerable acts’ by the 13 American colonies, the Quebec Act was one of the direct causes of the American Revolutionary War (1775–83),” the Canadian Encyclopedia continues.

While American high school students are taught that the “intolerable acts” of the British Parliament included “taxation without representation,” the control of harbours and restrictions on trade, the anti-Catholic part is usually left out.

The First Continental Congress in 1774 wrote to French-Canadians, asking them to join the coming revolution on the American side — an invitation that at least some French-Canadians welcomed as an opportunity to reverse the loss of 1759.

Yet the duplicity of the Continental Congress was quickly discovered, for it had issued an “Address to the People of Great Britain” in October 1774. It characterized Catholicism as “fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets,” denouncing that the British Parliament would permit in Quebec “a religion that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.”

Learning that their religious liberty was an “intolerable” outrage, French-Canadians opted out of joining the Americans.

As subsequent history would show, what the Americans could not get by agreement — the Louisiana Purchase, Alaska — they would take by force — Mexico, Indigenous territories. Regarding Canada, George Washington, commander of the new Continental Army, approved a military invasion of Quebec, seeking to neutralize British forces there.

If successful, it would add to American territory and would weaken British forces and supplies in the coming war.

The Continental Army began to move northward, scoring victories at Fort Ticonderoga (near Lake Champlain) in the spring of 1775, and Fort St-Jean (St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, south of Montreal) in the fall. In November 1775, Sir Guy Carleton withdrew from Montreal and his British forces retreated to Quebec City.

Montgomery led the Continental Army into Montreal and set up shop at the Château Ramezay. He did not dally there. By early December, he was at the outskirts of Quebec City, joining forces led by Benedict Arnold. On Dec. 31, the order was given to attack.

In 1759, the year of Gen. James Wolfe’s triumph over Gen. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm at the Plains of Abraham, Voltaire wrote derisively of Canada being nothing more than “quelques arpents de neige” (a few acres of snow). The snow proved its worth as 1775 gave way to 1776. A snowstorm blinded the Continental Army soldiers and clogged up their guns.

The attack on Quebec failed and Montgomery, like Wolfe and Montcalm before him, was killed in the battle. Some 400 Americans were captured and while Arnold, wounded in battle, continued the siege of Quebec for several more months, the Americans had definitely lost in Canada.

Reinforced in the spring by British troops, Carleton was able to almost entirely expel American forces from Quebec by June 1776. Thus, when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, the question of Quebec joining the revolution had already being settled in favour of remaining loyal to Britain.

There were fireworks, after a fashion, on New Year’s Eve 1775. They marked the end of the revolutionary option for Canada, even as the new year would officially declare it for the United States.

National Post