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Upper Canada and the Road to Nationhood Upper Canada and the Road to Nationhood

Upper Canada and the Road to Nationhood - PowerPoint Presentation

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Upper Canada and the Road to Nationhood - PPT Presentation

Canadian Government Today Today who chooses the people that form our government If the people dont like what our government is doing what can we do about it Ultimately who is higher the government or the people ID: 597941

canada government upper land government canada land upper family compact legislative governor assembly people farmers council today province veto

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Slide1

Upper Canada and the Road to NationhoodSlide2

Canadian Government Today

Today, who chooses the people that form our government?

If the people don’t like what our government is doing, what can we do about it?

Ultimately, who is higher, the government or the people?

Today, we are free to vote for whoever we want to, speak freely about issues that matter to us, and the government is

responsible

to us, the peopleSlide3

Quebec gets Divided

In 1791,

Britain

passed the

Constitution Act,

which divided the province of

Quebec

into two parts,

French-

speaking

Lower

Canada, and

English-

speaking

Upper

Canada

This was to provide the

French

Canadians with a province where they could maintain the

seigneurial

system while allowing the

loyalists

to settle in Upper Canada

This also gave each province its own separate

governmentSlide4

The government of Upper Canada

Ultimately, the most powerful people in government were still the British

king

and

parliament;

all laws passed by them would have to be obeyed by the government in Canada.

In British North America overall, the king was represented by the

governor general.

In Upper Canada specifically, the government consisted of a

lieutenant governor,

the

executive

council, the

legislative

council, and the

legislative

assembly. The first three were all

appointed

by the

British.

On the other hand, the legislative

assembly

was voted on by all

male

citizens of Upper Canada who also owned

property.

This made it seem like a

democracy

on the surface.Slide5

The Power of Veto

However, the

governor

and his

councils held all the power in

Upper Canada because they could veto any law or

regulation

that the

legislative assembly

proposed

To have the power of veto means that you can simply

stop

or

reject

a law or regulation passed

This meant that no matter what the

legislative assembly

wanted to do, it could simply be stopped by the

governor,

meaning that

Upper Canada

was not a true

democracy

Many democracies today, like the United States, and its individual states allow their leaders to veto laws but are still considered democracies; why do you think this is so and not with Upper Canada?Slide6

Rule by the Few

In addition, the province’s

executive council

came almost entirely from a group called the

Family Compact

They were mostly

loyalist

settlers and their descendants who had moved to Upper Canada after the

American Revolution,

and they made up the social and cultural

elite

of the province

Because the executive council directly

advised

the governor, they would make sure only laws that

benefitted

them directly would pass

They wanted the government to build

canals,

improve

business,

and allow

land speculation

to continue; things that benefitted them directlySlide7

Land Use

This political system made the

general

population of Upper Canada

frustrated

Most of them were involved in some way with farming

, and land speculation caused the

price

of land to become expensive

Land speculators would

buy

as much land as they could, thus reducing the amount of land freely available to farmers and

driving up

the price. This meant that they would make large

profits when they did choose to sell their land while making it expensive for farmersSlide8

A typical township in Upper Canada

The blank spaces represent publicly available land

The dark spaces represent land set aside for the Anglican church and the government, which could not be developed or used in any way without permission from the government

If you were a farmer in Upper Canada, what reasons can you think of that this would frustrate you or make your life more difficult?Slide9

Crown and Clergy Reserves

Furthermore, nothing was being done about

crown

and

clergy reserves, land that was set aside for the

government and church. They were often unused, which further reduced the amount of available land….

Why would the Family Compact not be interested in changing this system?

…and made the land the Family Compact already owned even more

expensive

They also blocked the development of

roads,

because the land set aside could not be

developed

This frustrated farmers and other

settlers too, because they had to make long winding routes to get anywhereSlide10

The beginnings of Change

Robert Gourlay,

a Scottish land agent, conducted a

survey

of farmers in Upper Canada, and why they were

frustrated

Working with the

settlers,

he created a list of

grievances

and a

petition

to change Upper Canada’s land

policies

How do you think the government reacted?

In response, Gourlay was

arrested

and

expelled

from Canada; the government was not interested in

reforming

its ways

However, this had the effect of strengthening

opposition

against the

Family Compact,

and a new leader would come to take Gourlay’s placeSlide11

William Lyon Mackenzie

became the new leader of the

reform

movement after Gourlay was expelled

He was much more

radical

than Gourlay and other members of the reform movement

They believed

change

could happen by simply

debating

and

negotiating

with the government

Mackenzie bought a

newspaper

called the

Colonial Advocate

and published articles that directly

criticized

the government and the Family Compact

He also wanted a new form of

government,

one that would still be

loyal

to Britain but was based on the

United States

His

outspoken

nature led to young members of the Family compact

ransacking

his office, but this only drew more

supporters,

leading to his

election

to the

legislative assembly

in 1828