It is time for Canada to have a day to recognize our Patriots

KAMOURASKA, QUE.—The long May “2-4” weekend has now passed, with the hurly-burly of the Harry and Meghan reality show, conveniently programmed for Victoria Day, which doubles as the Queen's birthday. It even had Canadian content, with the Mulroney clan taking centre stage along with the Windsors. Here in Quebec, there were no such royal celebrations on TV or otherwise, and I saw no one wearing a fascinator in my village, although I am sure many pure laine Québécois tuned in to watch the celebrities at La Mariage Royale. Indeed, in Quebec it was not the Queen’s birthday or Victoria’s, but rather La Fête des Patriotes, commemorating the men and women who took up arms against the colonial government (and the newly ascended Queen Victoria) in 1837. The recognition of the Patriotes is relatively recent: having eschewed a commemoration of the monarchy, in the 1920s, the nationalist (and anti-Semitic) historian Lionel Groulx pressed for the day to be recognized for Adam Dollard des Ormeaux, who allegedly saved Montreal by ambushing Iroquois in a massacre at Long Sault. By 2002, the Quebec National Assembly determined that the 17th century warrior was not a great role model for modern Québécois and decided to honour the Patriotes instead by moving a commemorative day from November to May, and the first Fête Nationale des Patriotes was in 2003. For many Anglo-Quebecers, the story of the Patriotes is quite galvanizing: the Patriotes, while led initially by Louis-Joseph Papineau, the speaker of the Assembly, his successor, Wolfred Nelson, and about one-third of the rebels were English-speaking. The fight, after all, was in favour of responsible government, where the cabinet would be subject to the direction of the legislature and not the Crown. The Chateau Clique, composed of both English- and French-speaking elites and the Catholic Church, dominated the legislative council and aligned with the governors of the day to reject the will of the legislature. For the Patriotes, this was enough to take up arms, and unlike the quickly-snuffed Upper Canada rebellion of William Lyon Mackenzie, lasted almost two years, with the loss of hundreds of rebels and British soldiers. In the aftermath, many Patriotes were hanged and others were exiled abroad. One of my ancestors, Charles Richard Ogden, was responsible for their prosecution; as one of the great villains of Canadian history, I am not proud of my connection to him. In the 1960s, the Patriotes were adopted by the FLQ in naming their “cells” and subsequently they became a metaphor for the struggle against Anglo Quebec and Canada. From the 19th century on, the Catholic Church had originally declared them “persona non grata” and for many years they were refused a Catholic burial. Eventually, it relented. That said, the sacrifice they made for the responsible government in Canada, and the movement towards Confederation, led by a former Patriote, Georges-Étienne Cartier, has been washed away with the sands of time. Our violent and principled past has been replaced by a narrative of a Canada progressing seamlessly and peacefully from colony to country without the nastiness of our republican cousins to the south. As former Prime Minister Mackenzie King (the descendant of the Upper Canada rebel) once said, “Canada has too much geography and not enough history.” If we recognized the sacrifices of the men and women who fought for true democracy in Canada and pressed for our own independence, we would honour that history. Declaring a national day for those brave francophone and anglophone “Patriots” of our past would reduce the nationalist Quebec component of the story. It would also show our maturity as a country far more than celebrating a foreign-born head of state, or even her telegenic grandchildren. Andrew Caddell retired last year from Global Affairs Canada, where he was a senior policy adviser. He previously worked as an adviser to Liberal governments. He is a principal of QIT Canada, which deals with municipal emergency management systems. He can be reached at pipson52@hotmail.com. The Hill Times