An Errant Canadian?

In Chapter 2 Part 1 we have a rather curious meeting taking place in Toronto at University College in the office of Professor John McCaul. This is a curious meeting for two reasons. The first is for the venue of the meeting. From the text it is implied John McCaul has invited his two guests to discuss issues pertaining to Canada's future in his office, This is something out of character for McCaul who was an academic first and foremost, and in his long career offers no notable political commentary, so his desire to see two men who by all rights should have no reason to see him, is rather confusing off the cuff.

However, let us address the guest list:

“Lord, where is he? I can’t be waiting on him all day, Dr. McCaul,” said the younger of the two men seated in the university’s president’s office. A bullet-headed 41-year-old, the speaker threw himself up from a plush chair and began pacing, from one side of the office to the other. “I know he is coming a long way, but so did I – and Ottawa is as close to Toronto for him as it is for me.” 

“Patience, John, patience … we have much to discuss with our friend,” said John McCaul, 51, right reverend of the Church of Ireland, MA, LLb and LLd, Trinity College, Dublin, with the calm that was as much of his nature as an academic as the clergyman. “There are great events in motion, and every man of affairs we know has to be thinking ahead. I know where you stood in ’49 on the secularization bill-" 

“Despite being a McGill man?” the younger man broke in, abruptly.  

John Joseph Caldwell Abbott, member of the province’s Legislative Assembly for Argenteuil, graduate of and professor of law at McGill University in Montreal, and arguably the wealthiest lawyer in the Province of Canada, east or west, was not known for his patience. 

The first visitor invited to this little three man conference is John Abbot, the Member for Argenteuil, which as should be noted is in Canada East, who claims to have traveled from Ottawa. Not an absurd claim, but historically most of Abbott's dealings were with the business and legal community in Montreal, Ottawa at this time being an unpopular lumber town known more for rowdy brawls between Irish and French lumbermen rather than as a political or business hub.

Now the author here is attempting to set up Abbott as a potentially pro-American man, which runs at odds with his historic temperament in the period. During the historic Trent crisis he recruited 300 men who would form the basis of the 11th Battalion Volunteer Infantry the "Argenteuil Rangers", which he would be appointed command of. Then in 1864, he conducted most of the advantageous defence and legal wrangling which would see the historic St. Albans raiders released without charges. One would say this paints a decidedly pro-British/pro-South picture of Mr. Abbot, rather than one which suggests he is kindly to the Union government.

The author though has an apparent saving throw. Abbot was a signatory, alongside 300 Montreal businessmen and French radicals of the 1849 Annexation Manifesto. In brief summation the manifesto was a very flowery document signed primarily by men who objected to the controversial Rebellion Losses Bill (which compensated even those who had been involved in the rebellion short of high treason) which caused riots among Tories in 1849. However, there was also an economic factor, the British had abandoned the preferential Corn Laws, which saw prices go down on their own products. The movement never spread beyond Montreal however, and when the 1854 Reciprocity Treaty was signed the movement disappeared. Notably amongst the Anglophone business signatories.

One might question the accuracy of selecting men based in their signing of that document as potential traitors in that context. Indeed Abbott regarded his own signing as a "youthful mistake".

However, this saving throw aside it is very odd to have Abbott acting so critical of the Volunteers when he was so eager to be jumping in with them. It's doubly strange then that he would say things like this:

“And yes, even more so, given the border that he and Ashburton negotiated – especially after the Aroostook Valley crisis. The Americans got Rouse’s Point, and we got a winter sledge road from Halifax to Quebec that barely exists even today, two decades later. I think they got the better part of the deal, don’t you?” 

Or this:

“He’s not alone; they have all the volunteers from the 7th District in Montreal marching around the parade ground at l'Île Sainte-Hélène,” the lawyer said. “And Eardley Wilmot is talking about blowing the Great Victoria Bridge, which is all of two years old…they’re all mad. 
The Americans are better equipped than we, and they outnumber us seven to one in population and fifty to one in soldiers at the moment, with more where they came from. All we've got is `the Empah’ and `the Queen’ and ten thousand regulars and volunteers, to hold everything from Saint John to London. Oh, and arrogance, we have plenty of that...and at the Turf Club, of course, there’s plenty of port, and cigars, and dreams of victory…and slavery; we’re ready to climb into bed with the slavers, of course. Gawd’s own grace

He himself is rather novice, and so his sudden wealth of information is interesting. His disdain for slavers is rather curious considering the public mood which took hold in Canada during the Trent Crisis historically, which became very warm for the South. This is especially curious in light of his defence of the St. Albans raiders historically. One suspects the author was unable to find a politician or individual of note in Canada West who might sympathize with the Union, so he plucked up one without any understanding of his loyalties or sympathies in an attempt to justify a nascent Canadian resistance to British rule.

Indeed he just turns him into a "Cassandra" to parrot his own views on how doomed the Canadians are.

Which makes this statement amusingly more accurate:

Good God, McCaul, why did you send for me?

The third member of this trio, is a particular puzzle:

The door opened, and an ancient man in a dark suit, with a shock of wild white hair, stepped in. The maid closed the door as the latest visitor shrugged out of his overcoat, and began to speak in an unmistakable accent:
“Messers, I am here – Quebec is here! Let us say – the dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, and heavily in clouds brings on the day, the great, the important day, big with the fate of Cato and of Rome, as Addison would put it…let us talk, my friends…we have much to discuss…”
Louis-Joseph Papineau, at 75 still seigneur de la Petite-Nation, legislator from 1808 to 1837 and again from 1848 to 1854, veteran of both the 1812-1815 war against the Americans and la guerre des patriotesagainst the Crown in 1837-38, radical, patriot, exile, returnee, signer of the Annexation Manifesto of 1849, author of the provincial law that granted full political rights to Jews 27 years before anywhere else in the British Empire, and the living, breathing representative of three centuries of le historie du la Belle Nouvelle-France in the flesh, had arrived.

A curious praising of a man 8 years retired from politics with a mixed reputation amongst his own potential supporters. 

Amusingly Papineau makes a bombastic statement declaring that he speaks for all of Quebec (or Canada East), when all he managed to rally in 1837 were some 2,000 willing to take up arms primarily in the Six Counties region surrounding Montreal,

Another interesting thing is that despite his advanced age at 75, the author thinks he will be an effective leader. This despite balking at Palmerstone's leadership abilities not once, but twice, for being a mere two years older than the French leader.

Then we have the statement that Papineau was a veteran. While he did indeed serve in 1812 and was present at the fall of Detroit, I can find no evidence he served beyond 1812, and unlike his contemporary and Loyalist counterpart, Etienne Tache, he did not serve later in the war or gain any significant military experience. Calling him a veteran of the 1837-38 rebellions is something of a fabrication. Papineau was present at none of the early battles, and fled before the end of the fighting in December 1837, and played no part in the raids of 1838. He himself denied that he played any part in armed insurrection, and earned the enmity of the more radical and militant leader Wolfred Nelson for leaving his followers "in the lurch" during the struggle. So while its disingenuous to call him a veteran of that conflict, it would make sense to label him an organizer.

Now Papineau coming all the way out from his self enforced retirement at his manor of Montebello is odd. By 1854 he had rather bitterly retired from politics, not a celebrity by any means. He had signed and supported the Annexation Manifesto of 1849 this is true, but he found little support amongst his former allies and was soon forced out of power by the new Reform government under La Fontaine. I shall let the Dictionary of Canadian Biography spell it out:

Back from exile and a member in the assembly, Papineau had begun manoeuvring to regain his leadership from La Fontaine by appealing to national prejudices. Nelson resented Papineau’s thinly veiled efforts to split the Reform alliance that had finally gained power. When Papineau insinuated that the violence of 1837 was attributable to Nelson, the latter turned on the great man himself and finally revealed that Papineau had been quite prepared to use force and had indeed signed a declaration of independence in his house. He also exposed Papineau’s hurried flight from Saint-Denis, only half an hour after the battle had started, and stated his belief that Papineau’s escape had resulted in the ultimate defeat of the Patriote movement and all the misery that had followed. “It is perhaps a favour for which we should thank GOD, that your projects failed,” he sneered, “persuaded as I am at present that you would have governed with a rod of iron.” Possibly only a man of Nelson’s reputation could have attacked so exalted a figure with such telling effect. Papineau’s power and popularity were mutilated.

The fact that one of his own former supporters would shoot him down so willingly is telling, and he served as a small voice in the Assembly, and retired completely from politics once his contemporaries abandoned the Annexation movement with the Reciprocity treaty in 1854. From then on he retired to his extensive estates at Montebello, and came out of retirement exactly once in 1867, to speak against Confederation.

Judging by the events of that year, he didn't leave much of an impression.

So we have here, two men, who despite involvement in an unpopular movement in 1849 have almost nothing in common, meeting with a professor in Canada West (where neither man has any real connections), on presumably issues of opposing Britain. This doesn't make much sense. Papineau didn't really care about the English, and Abbott was always more concerned with securing the rights of the Anglophone settlers in Quebec, and from what we can see he was sympathetic to the South after the Trent Affair. Yet here they sit with apparent plans to organize an opposition to the British colonial government.

Honestly this really can't be believed. Mind you, the "Provisional Government" they somehow create (and whose members are left vague and undefined) is rightfully given more lip service than actual development as the story goes on, which suggests the author didn't really either believe in it either, or that he just couldn't be bothered to flesh it out beyond vague platitudes.

Mind you it should be telling that instead of seeking out any men who might be more inclined to change sides or support rebellion, he picks a simple list of men and blatantly misappropriates their history to suit his purposes. One is curious then why the Loyalists don't get more screen time or development beyond being snidely snipped at by the author's mouthpieces.

Probably because he thinks they're on the wrong side of history.