The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of Carleton eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 160 pages of information about The Father of British Canada.

The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of Carleton eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 160 pages of information about The Father of British Canada.
remained where they were.  Most of the new Anglo-Canadians settled in the Maritime Provinces or moved west into what is now Ontario.  A few settled in rural Quebec on lands outside the line of seigneuries.  The Eastern Townships, that part of the province lying east of the Richelieu and nearest the American frontier, absorbed many English, Irish, and Scots, as well as a good many Americans who were attracted by cheap land.  Ontario, or Upper Canada, received still more Americans, who were to be a thorn in the side of the British during the War of 1812.

But Carleton’s work comprised much more than this.  There were the Church of England, the Post Office, a refractory lieutenant-governor down in Prince Edward Island, two royal visitors, and many other distracting matters.  The only Anglican see thus far established was at Halifax; but the bishop there had authority over the whole country and the government intended to establish the Church of England in Canada and endow it.  The Presbyterians also petitioned for the establishment of the Scottish Church.  The fortunes or misfortunes of the Clergy Reserves belong to another chapter of Canadian history.  But the root of their good or evil was planted in the time of Carleton.  The postal service was surrounded by enormous difficulties—­the vast extent of wild country, the few towns, the long winters, the poverty of the people.  The question of the winter port was even then a live one between St John and Halifax.  Each of these towns asserted its advantages and promised twelve trips a year and connection with Quebec overland by means of walking postmen till a bush road should be cut from Quebec to the sea.  In Prince Edward Island the old lieutenant-governor, Walter Patterson, declined to make way for the new one, Edmund Fanning.  In the end Patterson gave up the contest.  But the incident, trivial as it now appears, shows what a governor-general had to face in the early days when each province had queer little ways of its own.  Patterson had no precise official reason.  But he said he could not go home to answer charges he did not understand and leave an island which had been his very successful hobby for so many years!  The people sided with him so vigorously that time had to be given them to cool down before the transfer could be peaceably effected.

A judge whose court is in perpetual session or a commander whose inadequate forces are continually surrounded by prospective enemies has little time for the amenities of purely social life.  So Carleton generally left his young consort to rule the viceregal court at the Chateau St Louis with a perfect blend of London and Versailles.  Two Princes of the Blood, however, demanded more than the usual attention from the governor.  Prince William Henry, afterwards King William IV, was the first member of the Royal Family to set foot in the New World when he arrived in H.M.S. Pegasus in 1787.  He was the proverbial jolly Jack Tar, extremely affable to everybody; and he quickly won

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The Father of British Canada: a Chronicle of Carleton from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.