The Settlement Of The United Empire Loyalists On The Upper St Lawrence And Bay Of Quinte In 1784

A distillation of sixty-seven of the best and most important plates from the original three volumes of the bestselling of the Historical Atlas of Canada.

Volume VII of the Canadian Centenary Series Now available as e-books for the first time, the Canadian Centenary Series is a comprehensive nineteen-volume history of the peoples and lands which form Canada. Although the series is designed as a unified whole so that no part of the story is left untold, each volume is complete in itself. With firm authority based on expert knowledge and in a lively and straightforward manner, Gerald M. Craig recounts the events in Upper Canada from the flood of immigration in the aftermath of the American Revolution and the Act of Union in 1841 which reunited the two Canadas. During this period the great and abiding issues of Canadian history--the adjusting of French and English institutions, the relationship between church and state, and the claims of responsible government against those of imperial unity and American expansionism--were raised and hotly debated. Those crucial years were to shape the character of much of English-speaking Canada and to lay the foundation for Confederation. Never before had this turbulent era in a colony divided by political, religious, and economic rivalries been so vividly and excitingly set before the reader. Professor Craig brilliantly tells not just the story of the the Simcoes and Mackenzies, the Strachans and the Durhams but also the story of the ordinary people who cleared the land and built the farms and towns, who evolved from war and invasion, rebellion and confusion, to be neither British nor American, but distinctive in their own new Canadian personality. First published in 1963, Gerald M. Craig’s important contribution to the Canadian Centenary Series is available here as an e-book for the first time.

This highly readable guide is more than a bibliography. Written in a narrative style, it is as well a short history of the Loyalists: who they were, why they left, where they settled, and what their legacy is.

Showing that the past is often written into present concerns, and that many groups in Ontario, both powerful and disempowered, have invoked the experience of the Loyalists, Knowles significantly revises earlier interpretations of the Loyalist tradition.

Hailed as one of the most important books on social sciences of the last fifty years by the Social Sciences Federation of Canada. Akenson argues that, despite the popular conception of the Irish as a city people, those who settled in Ontario were primarily rural and small-town dwellers. Though it is often claimed that the experience of the Irish in their homeland precluded their successful settlement on the frontier in North America, Akenson's research proves that the Irish migrants to Ontario not only chose to live chiefly in the hinterlands, but that they did so with marked success. Akenson also suggests that by using Ontario as an "historical laboratory" it is possible to make valid assessments of the real differences between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, characteristics which he contends are much more precisely measurable in the neutral environment of central Canada than in the turbulent Irish homeland. While Akenson is careful not to over-generalize his findings, he contends that the case of Ontario seriously calls into question conventional beliefs about the cultural limitations of the Irish Catholics not only in Canada but throughout North America.

Akenson argues that, despite the popular conception of the Irish as a city people, those who settled in Ontario were primarily rural and small-town dwellers. Though it is often claimed that the experience of the Irish in their homeland precluded their successful settlement on the frontier in North America, Akenson's research proves that the Irish migrants to Ontario not only chose to live chiefly in the hinterlands, but that they did so with marked success. Akenson also suggests that by using Ontario as an "historical laboratory" it is possible to make valid assessments of the real differences between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, characteristics which he contends are much more precisely measurable in the neutral environment of central Canada than in the turbulent Irish homeland. While Akenson is careful not to over-generalize his findings, he contends that the case of Ontario seriously calls into question conventional beliefs about the cultural limitations of the Irish Catholics not only in Canada but throughout North America.