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Population trends
The influx of loyalists changed the composition of the population of the British North American colonies by adding elements at once American yet profoundly attached to British institutions; it also increased the population by some 6,000 in the old province of Quebec. To these were to be added the unknown numbers of “late loyalists”—settlers, primarily land seekers, who arrived from the northern states as late as 1812. Some 80,000 came to Nova Scotia, although not all remained; of these, about 20,000 settled in what became New Brunswick, and a few hundred on Prince Edward Island.
The newcomers also added to the growing diversity of the population of the colonies. In Newfoundland there were already the West Country English and a growing number of Irish—a total of more than 26,000 by 1806. Nova Scotia had, in addition to New Englanders, loyalists, and Yorkshiremen, the Germans of Lunenburg and the Highland Scots of Pictou county and of Cape Breton Island—in all, an estimated 65,000 in 1806, with 2,513 on Cape Breton Island. New Brunswick had a population of about 35,000 in 1806, mostly loyalists or of loyalist descent, but already the southern Irish, drawn by the timber trade, were beginning to appear on the rivers of the north shore. Prince Edward Island, with a population of 9,676 in 1806, had some Acadians, some loyalists, some English, Scots, and Irish. In Upper Canada in 1806 the population numbered 70,718; in Lower Canada it was estimated at 250,000.
The first Canadian population mosaic had taken shape as it was to remain for a century, a mixture of British, French, and German. The British element was to be steadily reinforced by northern English (coming by way of Liverpool), Highland and Lowland Scots, and southern and northern Irish. The result was the creation of a society in which religious liberty and a great measure of social equality were necessary for social cohesion and common effort.
Until 1815, however, the number of immigrants was small: Highlanders for Glengarry county in Upper Canada, disbanded soldiers in Lanark county south of the Ottawa River, and a straggle of Irish after the rebellion of 1798 was crushed. Nor did the numbers increase appreciably after 1815; not until 1830 did the English, Scottish, and Irish begin coming to the British North American colonies in great volume. Thereafter, thousands arrived each year. The British North American colonies became predominantly British in population, except in Lower Canada, a fact that was to determine the course of Canadian history for the next 100 years.
The Montreal fur traders
The redivision of the continent begun by the American Revolution had been intensified by rivalry in the fur trade. The French fur trade of Montreal had been taken over by British American traders who conducted the trade with the aid of French experience and skill. The British supplied the capital, and the French voyageurs supplied the skill of canoeists and the knowledge of the country and the First Nations. These “Montrealers” pushed the trade with great boldness southwest from Montreal, where they had persuaded the British government not to surrender the fur posts after 1783 on the ground that debts to loyalists had not been paid by the new United States. Thus, the trade of the lands lost by France in 1763 and by Britain in 1783 was kept tributary to Montreal rather than to New York and Philadelphia.
In 1783 the Montreal fur traders established the North West Company to challenge the Hudson’s Bay Company for dominance in the northwest. They organized a regular system of canoe convoys from Montreal to the western plains and what is now Canada’s Northwest Territories, building a chain of fur-trading posts across the west and sending explorers as far as the Pacific coast. The rivalry with the Hudson’s Bay Company sometimes degenerated into violence and even murder. The fur trade was lucrative for both companies and had a profound impact on the First Nations of the area. As the Hudson’s Bay Company pushed inland to meet the challenge of its new rival, contacts between whites and First Nations expanded, and the Métis population grew and began to develop a distinct culture and its own national ambition.
In 1812 Thomas Douglas, 5th earl of Selkirk, who then was a coproprietor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, established the Red River Settlement in southern Manitoba along the main canoe routes of the North West Company. Acting primarily out of charitable motives, Selkirk recruited poor and indigent settlers from Scotland to farm the land. The Métis, many of whom were North West Company employees, saw the Red River settlers as rivals and the settlement as a threat to their livelihood. Tensions between the two groups reached a climax when the Métis attacked the settlers in 1816 in what came to be known as the Seven Oaks Massacre. That clash and a number of other incidents led to a truce between the two companies and subsequently to a merger in 1821. As a result of the merger (or, more accurately, North West’s acquisition by Hudson’s Bay), the canoe expeditions from Montreal to the west were terminated, and Montreal’s nearly two centuries as an entrepôt of the fur trade ended.
