32.8 America: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 2/20)

Nova Scotia and the Hudson Bay area to England and Canada as a whole was impoverished.

While thousands of sturdy Germans, French, Protestant Scots, etc., were pouring into the English colonies, the government of Louis XV allowed only a mere trickle to go to Canada. The population of Canada in 1713 was only 18,119, although this had doubled by 1734. In the 30 years after 1713 the French spent $6,000,000 in gold building a fortress on Cape Breton Island, which menaced English fisheries, but was useless in war time. They also built forts on Lake Champlain, at Niagara Falls and two on the Wabash. In 1744 the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain merged into the War of the Austrian Succession (King George's War in America) in which England and Austria were allies against France and Prussia. The French and their Indian allies raided New England and the Iroquois raided Canada. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended that war, with France retaining the Louisburg fort on Cape Breton Island. In mid-century the English settlers in Nova Scotia fought with the local French Acadians and the latter were deported in mass some 6,000 to 7 ,000 strong. Some ended up in Louisiana to became the "Cajuns". (Ref. 68 )

The Seven Years War in Europe spilled over into the f inal French and Indian War in America (1755-1763) and the Peace of Paris signed the death knoll for France in America. (Ref. 119 ) Quebec had fallen in 1759 and Montreal in 1760. (Ref. 8 ) The French people in southern Canada, however, continued a self-consciousness and intolerance, with their grievances carrying on to the present time. This was in spite of the fact that the British government, by the Quebec Act of 1774 guaranteed the French settlers free exercise of their religion, language and law (Old French civil law), as well as expanding the boundaries of the new Canadian colony to the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. This, incidentally, was interpreted as harmful to Virginia and Pennsylvania and was one factor, along with the Coercive Acts, in lighting the fuse for revolution in the lower thirteen colonies. (Ref. 8 ) Actually the British were not overjoyed with their conquest and tried to trade Canada back to the French, soon, in exchange for the island of Guadeloupe. *** (Page 1201)

Map taken from Reference 97.

The Canadian northwest was opened by Scottish merchants in slender canoes and by the French voyageurs. The fur trade reached its zenith in the 1790s. Montreal was the chief supply center with great loads of supplies leaving in flotillas of 30 some canoes, each 40 feet long and carrying 8 to 10 voyageurs. They would travel 1,600 miles, up the Ottowa River, then down the French River into Georgian Bay and the North Channel of Lake Huron, across Sault Ste. Marie into Lake Superior, then across the Grand Portage to the Pigeon River. In the western part of the route the canoes were a little shorter, at 25 feet, but they still carried 6 to 8 men and 1 ~ tons of cargo, while drawing only 18 inches of water. These northmen were French or mixed French-Indian and were small, not over 5'5" in height. They traveled on smooth water at 4 miles per hour, sometimes for 16 hours a day. Sled dogs and Indian wives completed their necessities. (Ref. 212 )