No. 33
May 17, 2026
National Patriots' Day
May 18
Rename Victoria Day, Patriots' Day!
• Call to Rename Victoria Day, Patriots' Day
• It Is High Time Monarchical-Patriotic Legends Be Laid to Rest
• Nation-Building Project of the Quebec Patriots
• Upper Canada Rebellion and Two-Star Republic
National Patriots' Day
May 18
Call to Rename Victoria Day, Patriots' Day
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
Three years ago, on the occasion of the official holiday called
Victoria Day, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) called
on Canadians to rename Victoria Day as Patriots' Day and celebrate the
people's patriots, not those of the empire-builders. This followed the
death of
Elizabeth II, Queen of England who was called Queen of Canada for some
70 years, and the ascendance to the throne of Charles III and his
recognition by official circles in Canada as their king, along with his
values and system of rule which deprive the people of power.
Official Canada celebrates Victoria Day on the Monday preceding May 24 to honour the birthday of a foreign monarch who died in 1901 and the values of empire she represented. This year it falls on Monday, May 18. Despite not being observed as an official holiday in the United Kingdom, it was nonetheless declared a holiday by the Legislature of the Province of Canada in 1845 "to foster unity between English and French Canadians, promote loyalty to the British Crown to differentiate the colony from the United States, and transition the celebration from a strictly military event to a popular, civilian holiday." According to contributors to Wikipedia, "Following the 1841 union of Upper and Lower Canada, the holiday was intended to create common ground, celebrating a 26-year-old Queen Victoria as a unifying figure for both English and French Canadians." By celebrating "the sovereign," Canadians were said "to express a distinct loyalty to the Crown," which was viewed as a "guarantor of minority rights" and "a key factor distinguishing Canada from the United States."
Then, in 1901, when Victoria died, she was celebrated as the "Mother of Confederation" who endowed Canada with "responsible government." The federal parliament declared the day a federal statutory holiday now also recognized as a holiday in five of Canada's 10 provinces – not in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island or Quebec – and all three of its territories. The aim of marking it in Canada is to keep Canadians in the thrall of empire-building values and institutions called liberal democratic even though their entire purpose is to deprive the working class and people of representation in their own name.
In Quebec, since 2003, the official holiday is called National
Patriots' Day to honour the Quebec patriots who rebelled against the
British Crown and the institutions it imposed in Canada to maintain its
rule over the people. It honours those who, in 1837-1838, organized to
establish a modern
and democratic republic which vested sovereignty in the people, not a
British monarch declared to be the supreme power.
CPC(M-L) points out that it is high time Canada discards the celebration called Victoria Day and adopts a modern and democratic commemoration of its own patriots, as chosen by the people, not the ruling class. The Party calls on members and supporters across the country to devote a period of time to honour the patriots they themselves chose. Choose a patriot you admire and think about why this is the case. Reject the personalities promoted by the official circles linked to King and Empire. In their stead, choose one from the lived experience of this country Canada or the countries of origin of all the peoples who have taken up residence here, as well as the legendary personalities who fought against the genocide of the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. These rebellions were brutally suppressed in Canada by the British empire-builders and their brutal colonial lackeys who are lauded to this day, their system imposed without regard for its rejection by the people.
Let us honour the memory of the Acadians, Québécois, Upper Canadian rebels, those the British and their police in Canada massacred and hanged for fighting for their own right to be, against "Keep Canada White" policies and all those whose resistance struggles against brutal empire builders since colonial times are the reason we are here today, still striving to humanize the natural and social environment and create a world fit for human beings.
Let us celebrate all those who were an integral part of the movements for independence, freedom and the right to be across all of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania and their striving to end the system of slavery and its atrocities, as well as the workers of the world whose striving for emancipation continues unabated.
Let us use this occasion to name those we celebrate as patriots who are an integral part of humanity's unstoppable movement for freedom, liberation, democracy and fraternity between peoples. Their example establishes the standard for what it means to be human in their own time and also today, at a time unspeakable crimes are being committed against humanity in the name of high ideals. Their actions, words and example represent what it means to be personalities we are proud to emulate.
Today let us speak their names. Let us recount their sacrifices and the contributions they made to their own peoples, their own societies and to humankind.
Today,
official circles sully the word patriot deliberately to trample on the
memory of all those the peoples consider patriots in the past and those
who have sacrificed their lives today. Today, the sordid and petty
minds in positions of privilege and power slander those who stand for
their
national independence and sovereignty in the face of imperialist
dictate, blackmail and even genocide. They label them terrorists,
violators of human rights, autocrats and much more. Meanwhile those who
operate as global gangs of marauders and killers and love the kings and
queens who parade their
filthy wealth, power and privilege along with the oligarchs,
billionaires and trillionaires, are called scions of industry and
civilization, protectors of the poor and destitute, and many other
names which turn truth on its head and make fraud the name of their
game.
The resistance movements against these reactionary forces reveal who the genuine patriots are. In Canada, let everyone rename Victoria Day, Patriots' Day as a way to honour the legacy of our patriots from around the world!
Alongside the First Nations, Inuit and Métis of these lands, Canada is made up of the peoples of the world. Honouring, learning about and sharing what the Patriots stand for not only in the past but most importantly as a duty in the present. It expresses pride in our older generations and encourages our younger generations to emulate them in today's conditions, as they are already doing by bravely condemning with their deeds the empire-building values the oligarchs celebrate.
On Patriots' Day this year, let us say their names! Let us honour their deeds and their memory in our deeds today!
Long Live Our Patriots!
One Humanity! One Struggle!
It Is High Time Monarchical-Patriotic
Legends Be Laid to Rest
VIDEO
The aim of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)'s call for Victoria Day to be renamed Patriots' Day is to engage people in discussion on the peoples' patriots. It is to debunk the monarchical-patriotic legends handed down to the younger generations in order to stop them from conceptualizing a constitution and democratic process of their own making. Such a constitution must open a bright future for all. In this vein, the celebration of Victoria Day is, to put it bluntly, a national humiliation. Canadians oppose everything she represents. In fact, the First World War long ago smashed the euphoria of empire to smithereens in the blood-soaked trenches of Europe.
Victoria
is long dead but to this day she is hailed as Empress of India, the
Mother of Confederation, the unifier of two "founding nations" – one
French and one English. The values codified during her reign of loyalty
and duty to King and Country are touted to this day by successive
Canadian governments because they guide official state policy. Through
the personas of subsequent kings and queens and the conquests, treaties
and institutions established in her name and since then in the name of
her successors, and crimes carried out, everything is done to sneak in
what she stood
for as the definition of what it means to be patriotic, to be saluted
rather than condemned.
The Constitution (1867) imposed in her name and its patriation in 1982, imposed by Elizabeth II, both vest the sovereign power in the British sovereign, not the people, and this is called sovereignty. Known as the Constitution (1982) it too was adopted by the British Parliament and declared by Elizabeth II on Parliament Hill on July 1 not only without the consent of the people but without the signature of Quebec despite its being one of the "founding nations." Nonetheless, "Official Canada" holds Quebec subservient to it. Both the original constitution 1867 and its amended version 1982 relegate Canadians to subjects under a rule they did not adopt. All of it is based on monarchical-patriotic legends and the practices they generate to justify and legitimize their rule.
For instance, the claim is made that for Canada to sever its longstanding ties to the monarchy and become a republic, "it would require agreement between the House of Commons, the Senate and all 10 provinces." The statement is repeated to deny the right of the people to elect their own Constituent Assembly, draft their own constitution and adopt it directly themselves. It is the stipulation in the very Constitution which was patriated from England in 1982 by the government of Pierre Elliot Trudeau with the incorporation of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and an amending formula. Besides the ruling class, nobody ever agreed to the imposition of the Constitution adopted by the Imperial Parliament in 1867. So too the addition of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and amending formula were never agreed to by the Canadian and Quebec people either. All of these arrangements characterize the thought material of a ruling class and system of rule and governance imposed by the British during colonial times and this thought material imbues all of life in Canada. Its origins lie in the conquest of territories which were inhabited by Indigenous Peoples and Inuit but were declared the possessions of the British Empire through the use of force, deceit, cultural genocide and the imposition of a sovereign power represented to this day by a foreign monarch and its representatives, not the people themselves.
A legend holds a false idea to be true and
uses it as the basis of other ideas. The Constitution (1867) and its "patriated" version, the Constitution (1982)
are the basis for the rules which govern this country. These rules
deprive the people of power. Their underlying premise
is that nothing can be done outside of them if so decided by the
people. The claims of foreign monarchs and prime ministers of the
countries based on the Covenants which underlie these arrangements
about what can and cannot be done, who can and cannot govern, are
informed by this presumption and are
self-serving. In other words, the rules are specifically designed to
block the empowerment of the people, which is needed in this modern
time to complete the democratic revolution which got underway in the
mid-1600s. But today, the forms created at that time no longer function
to regulate the power
struggles between factions.
All kinds of things are based on presumptions spawned by monarchical-patriotic legends. This includes nonsense of what it means to be a "legitimate" Canadian or Quebecker, or the promotion of racist and misogynist warmongers as heroes, or the giving of medals – modelled on the British Orders of the British Empire and the like – to those seen to represent what the official circles consider worthy. It is done without Canadians or Quebeckers having a say in the matter. This is a fundamental violation of their right to conscience and to identify themselves and affirm their own right to be. It is a means to condemn resistance and the patriots who wage it. Now is the time to settle scores with this old conscience of society and bring forward the thought material and solutions given rise to by all those patriots who fought within Canada and internationally for the right to be of all peoples, peace, freedom and democracy.
It is "the people" who should define "the people," not the state established by the British Empire in days gone by, perpetuated by those who benefit from the structures of power and privilege it establishes. To perpetuate their rule, those who benefit from the structures of power and privilege of the Canadian state, which is a constitutional monarchy with a foreign monarch as head of state, base themselves on the declaration that they are legitimate and anyone or anything they do not approve of is illegitimate. With this they impose a set of values and standards onto the people and declare those who do not accept them as "fringe" or "extremists" for refusing to. Who sets the standards and the values is a "mystery of state' – it is done through the prerogative powers of the sovereign and those said to be entitled to wield the sovereign power which, today, nobody can honestly say are the legislatures and parliaments! The false presumptions spawned by the monarchical-patriotic legends give rise to the celebration of Victoria Day. It is a national humiliation for the country called Canada which does not even formally enjoy the sovereignty understood to lie in the people according to the republican form of government.
This
is also the case for Quebec, a nation within the country called
Canada whose nationhood is not recognized in the form of its right to
self-determination up to and including secession if it so desires.
Reducing matters of principle to the kind of divisive politics which
are are common today, especially those dealing with matters of
conscience, identity and the right to be, causes harm to the people.
Their struggles are bound within the confines permitted by the
definition of rights spawned by the British Empire in the first place.
For the nations of the Indigenous Peoples, Inuit and Métis, nation-to-nation relations are to be respected. Yet so long as this principle is subordinated to the final decision-making of the Crown as a result of the Constitution which makes it so, genocidal and exploitative relations continue in the name of high ideals. The rulers do not and never have in fact recognized the essence of the treaty relations and hereditary rights of Indigenous Peoples, only on the interpretation informed by their own mindset.
Like any union, Canada can only be strong if it is freely constituted and entered into. It can only be considered freely entered into if the constituent parts of Canada, Quebec, the Indigenous Peoples, Inuit and Métis are not subjugated by force or undue economic, political and cultural "persuasion" to remain within the union.
The use of the prerogative powers of the British Empire and its Imperial Parliament to impose the Act of Union 1840 and then Confederation in 1867; its creation of the North West Mounted Police in 1873 to conquer the north west on behalf of the British empire against the expansion northwards of the United American states, the use of the prerogative powers of the office of the Prime Minister of Canada and the British monarch to "patriate" the Constitution in 1982 – all of these are based on and in turn spawn monarchical-patriotic legends. The sole purpose of these legends is to perpetuate the form of rule established in the first place by Imperial Britain. Under that form of rule and its institutions the people have no say in the decision-making process, including the electoral process which is said to be a form of representation. The people do not decide the candidates. They despise the mudslinging campaigns, the agenda set, the lack of an informed vote, the divisions promoted, the money spent, and the result determined by them. Whoever is represented, it is not the people.
The
form of representation in fact represents what the sovereign who wields
the supreme power stands for, not what the people stand for. It is a
form of rule which carried out broad genocide of the Indigenous
Peoples, Inuit and then the Métis in the past in order to steal their
territories and
make them subject peoples. And it continues to do so in the present as
well. Their heroic and ongoing resistance to this attempt to wipe them
out as peoples is the only thing standing between their survival as
peoples and their extinction.
The British monarchy was enriched by the brutal enslavement of people yet Canadians are called on to be loyal to the King and the system of governance which carries his name because we are told we are ridiculous if we don't let by-gones be by-gones. The rendering of history according to which the crimes committed by the British Empire are in the past, not in the present in the form of the perpetuation of the constitutional order which permitted their commission in the first place and today glorifies them, is also a monarchical-patriotic legend which must be put to rest once and for all. The mindset based on these legends perpetuates the constitutional rule which converts everyone into "loyal subjects" of a foreign monarch today and everything that entails as concerns where the supreme decision-making power lies.
The tacit presumption is that the monarchical-patriotic legends correctly render what took place in the past even though they taint events with their own self-serving empire-building interpretation which creates a Canada in their own image. Their interpretation of events makes those who Canadians consider patriots to be traitors. Meanwhile, the kings and queens and their governors general and police and personalities they consider worthy are called heroes. They are given awards and titles and made out to be people Canadians should emulate.
This is true of any ruling class where the people have no say over the modus operandi of those who take decisions. In Canada specifically the rendering of the facts themselves is the fruit of a monarchical-patriotic process of thought which imbues the brains of successive generations with nonsense. The constitutional arrangements condemn us to remain within that realm of thought. The presumptions are to be successfully digested since Confederation imposed a constitution adopted by the Imperial Parliament in 1867 which was patriated holus bolus in 1982, with the addition of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, its notwithstanding clause and an amending formula. None of the foundational constitutional arrangements are ever discussed. History lessons describe them but never discuss them. They were never adopted by the people. Quebec, said to be a founding nation of Canada, is not even a signatory to the Constitution (1982).
On the basis of the Victorian thought material the actual experience of the people and their memory are erased, to be forgotten, relegated to oblivion while the people themselves are disposable. We are supposed to accept the taboo on discussion and the limitations imposed by the conception of rights and freedoms given rise to by a civil society based on the Victorian ideals of duty, order and civilization.
The current status of Canada as a constitutional monarchy, with a foreign monarch as head of state to boot, is a national humiliation, an embarrassment but this is ignored by the acceptance of monarchical-patriotic legends. The fictional persona presented to us as represented by our head of state, Charles III, is said to embody the values which unify the nation. How can values which we do not espouse unify the nation? It is a ridiculous presumption we are supposed to accept because we are supposed to accept that there is nothing we can do about it. We are powerless.
The aim of erecting this fictional person of state is to hide the actual relations between humans and humans and humans and nature and what they reveal, which is the need to empower the people. Today, the call of history is to complete the democratic revolution by making sure constitutional arrangements vest the supreme power in the people, not in the narrow private interests which rule over the society for private gain.
Renaming
Victoria Day, Patriots' Day will not on its own abolish the monarchy.
However it will contribute to debunking these monarchical-patriotic
legends which are meant to keep people constrained to the existing
order and all its trappings. All across the country, the working people
and peoples
from all walks of life are bringing forward their own demands which
require new arrangements suitable to the conditions today. A modern
society emerges from the requirements of the material conditions today,
not by reshuffling the monarchical-patriotic legends of the past and
institutions based on
them.
It is high time Canada settles scores with this old conscience of society by bringing forward the thought material and pro-social, pro-people direction given rise to by all those patriots who fought within Canada and internationally for the right to be of the peoples of the world, peace, freedom and democracy. Let us rename Victoria Day, Patriots' Day by ourselves celebrating our patriots, the patriots which the Indigenous Peoples, Inuit, Métis and the peoples from all over the world who inhabit this land consider their heroes. These are the contributions we consider worthy of celebrating and memorializing, engraving on stamps, coins and bank notes, not the graven images of kings and queens and those who emulate them no matter who they are.
Nation-Building Project of the Quebec Patriots
Assembly
of the Six Counties, on October 23 and October 24, 1837, a gathering of
some 6,000 Patriots held in Saint-Charles, Lower Canada, in defiance of
a British proclamation forbidding public assemblies.
National Patriots' Day marks the 1837-38 uprising to honour the memory of the Patriots who gave their lives or were forced into exile in the struggle to end British colonial rule by establishing a Republic of Quebec.
Patriots' Day celebrates the striving of the people to affirm their right to be. Beginning in the spring of 1837, when the British Crown formally rejected the demands of the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada included in the 92 Resolutions of 1834, numerous mass meetings broke out across Quebec where the people spoke and demanded their democratic rights.
These
rebellions aimed to bring in arrangements that vested sovereignty in
the people, not the British Crown. It is important to examine the cause
of the Patriots of 1837-38 and how this struggle was brutally
suppressed by the British in what was known as Lower Canada. Of
significance is the
conception of rights put forward by the Patriots, as well as the
conception of rights imposed by the British in the Constitutions of
1840 and 1867 and then the Anglo-Canadian state in 1982. The conception
of rights put forward by the Patriots clearly shows that rights are not
an abstraction but
defined within time and space as a result of a striving of a people or
a section thereof for their own empowerment. Looking at this history
starting from the present – what the conditions reveal today
– we go into the past to enrich our ability to solve problems and
open society's path
to progress in the present. In this regard, matters of the approach to
the study of history (historiography), and the relations people enter
into and what kind of society this gives rise to (political theory),
are taken up. This includes addressing the need to oppose attempts to
divide the people
for purposes of maintaining the status quo, a practice introduced by
the British colonialists and upheld by the Anglo-Canadian state on the
basis of the suppression of the nascent Quebec nation, the
expropriation of the Indigenous Peoples and attempts to commit genocide
against them, as well as a
medieval holdover which conceives of rights as privileges to be given
and taken away by a higher power called "the Crown."
During the period of the Rebellions of the Quebec Patriots, their relations with the patriots fighting in Upper Canada against the tyranny of the vice-regal representatives and apparatus there were also significant, as was the support they received from U.S. revolutionaries at the time. The state of rights today cannot be fully grasped without grasping the structures imposed in the Constitution Acts of 1840 and 1867 which were not touched by the patriation of the Constitution in 1982 which merely added a nigh impossible amending formula and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms whose "reasonable limits" are also defined by "the Crown." The working people in Canada are clear about how the state uses its institutions to make sure workers cannot effectively defend their rights, including health and safety in the workplace, that Indigenous people's right to uphold their hereditary rights can be criminalized and immigrants seeking citizenship have to swear allegiance to a foreign monarch, as do members of parliament and legislatures, and even governments appointed by Prime Ministers -- themselves appointed by a Governor General -- because they lead a party to which very few citizens belong.
The
struggle of the Patriots espoused the most advanced ideals of the time.
It was a nation-building project based on the anti-colonial cause, the
abolition of the feudal seigneurial system, the creation of a structure
which conferred equality of membership to all and citizenship rights
without
distinction as to origin or belief, including to the Indigenous Peoples
should they so desire. The Patriots sought a constitution to enshrine
those ideals as the law of the land in the form of a republic. This
cause was akin to the great wars of independence in Latin America and
the Caribbean at
that time, as well as the national movements in Italy and other
countries in Europe fighting against feudal aristocracies and their
conceptions of absolute divine right. Related developments in those
days led to the formation of the International Working Men's
Association by Marx and Engels in 1864
and in 1871 to the Paris Commune.
In the midst of this affirmation of the people's will, the Patriots proclaimed "by order of the provisional government" an important manifesto called "Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Lower Canada." In it they declared the principles and democratic rights of a Republic. Section 3 of the declaration calls for the defence of the rights of all: "Under the free government of Lower Canada, all individuals will enjoy the same rights: the natives will no longer be submitted to any civil disqualification and will enjoy the same rights as all other citizens of Lower Canada." Section 15 proclaims that the people will author their own constitution: "At the earliest occasion the people must choose delegates according to the present division of the country in counties, cities and boroughs who will form a convention or legislative body to draft a constitution according to the needs of the country, in accordance with the provisions of this Declaration, subject to modification according to the will of the people."
The 1837-38 uprising was crushed through brutal force, including the suspension of habeas corpus, mass arrests, burning of homes, the hanging of 12 patriots and forcing of 64 others into exile. More than 1,700 were imprisoned following the suspension of habeas corpus. In Montreal alone in 1838, 816 people were arrested out of a population of 30,000, which translates into 40,000 people out of Montreal's present-day population. Of that number, 108 were court-martialled. Hundreds were forced to flee to the U.S. to escape arrest, including 10 accused of "murder" who faced the death penalty if they ever returned. It marked the suppression of a modern Quebec nation-state whose existence has been denied ever since by depriving the Quebec people, irrespective of their national origin, language or creed, of their right to self-determination as an independent legal entity with the right to form a free and equal union with the rest of Canada if they so decide of their own free will.
Left:
Drawing of the hanging of Quebec patriots following the crushing of the
rebellion. Right: A British officer reads the order of expulsion after
the defeat of the Patriots’ rebellion, to which the Patriots clenched
their fists and cried out, “Treachery!”
The 1837-38 Patriots' Uprising is an important event in the history of Quebec and Canada whose significance must be grasped in order to understand the present-day situation and not be misled by the blackmail of those establishment forces which claim that affirming Quebec's sovereignty will lead to the "destruction of Canada." On the contrary, the establishment of the modern state of Quebec remains necessary to settle the constitutional crisis in a manner which favours the people by ending the stranglehold of the institutions established out of the suppression of the nation-building project the Patriots put forward in 1837-38. These are the present democratic institutions based on "reasonable accommodations," the arrangements the British oligarchs found "reasonable" to strengthen British colonial rule after the English defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham in 1759 and Quebec passed from being a French colony to an English colony. The British divided the people on an ethnocultural basis and enshrined this division in the Act of Union 1840.
Ever since then, the line of divide and rule has served first the British and then the Canadian state to impose the dictate of the ruling elite on both the Quebec and the Canadian peoples as well as the Indigenous Peoples. It is clear that after the rebellion of 1837-38, all those patriots who refused to conciliate with these so-called reasonable accommodations were either hanged or exiled and with this infamous act, the present democratic institutions of so-called responsible government came into being to keep the people out of the power-sharing arrangements.
Patriots
led by Wolfred Nelson defeat British troops at the Battle of
Saint-Denis. A monument to the Patriots is inaugurated in Saint-Denis
on July 1, 1918.
The present situation shows that the cause for which the Patriots fought in 1837-38 today takes the form of the need for the working class to constitute itself the nation and vest sovereignty in the people to make them the decision-makers in all political, economic, social and cultural affairs that concern them and their nation. This need is all the more urgent as the governments of Quebec and Canada intensify the sell-out of the natural and human resources and establish new arrangements to facilitate the political, economic and military annexation of Canada and Quebec to the United States of North American Monopolies and restructure the state in the service of the most powerful monopolies as part of U.S. empire-building. The more they refuse to share power with anyone, the more they talk of "reasonable accommodations."
As a result of this nation-wrecking agenda, the ruling elites have mired Quebec and Canada in an unprecedented constitutional and political crisis. Their refusal to open society's path to progress is seen in increasing attempts to push politics of division based on language, national origin, culture, belief, colour of skin, gender or any other consideration. The people are witnessing the daily spectacle of political factions challenging each other as to who will best represent Quebec values, or reducing the identity of the Quebec people to a linguistic issue, or dividing the people on an ethnocultural basis so as to get away with imposing a new "reasonable accommodation" to suppress their right to be and determine for themselves the kind of arrangements they require to flourish.
Tackling
the manner in which the workers and society in general are under
constant anti-social nation-wrecking attack today, the recognition that
rights belong to people by virtue of being human and that they are not
an abstraction must be affirmed by fighting for them. By laying the
claims to
what belongs to people by right because of their role in the production
and reproduction of life itself, rights are defined by the struggle
itself. It is the people fighting for definite demands who imbue the
conception of rights with concrete meaning. They must be able to enact
the rights a society
espouses for that society to move forward and be put on a par with the
needs of the times. Because the members of society are human, societies
are duty bound to ensure the conditions for their living are met. The
people must create a political movement which takes up the work for a
modern
constitution so as to enshrine the rights which belong to all by virtue
of their being. Establishing cohesion within the body politic around
the independent politics of the working class is thus urgently needed
to open a path to progress and avert the dangers of war which are
looming before us.
On this occasion, the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) salutes all those who espouse the cause of the Quebec Patriots, especially those who are determined to elaborate a nation-building project consistent with the demands of the times.
Let the Working Class Constitute the Nation and Vest Sovereignty in the People!
Sovereignty Yes! Annexation No!
Upper Canada Rebellion and Two-Star Republic
In Canada, outside of Quebec, May 18 this year is called "Victoria Day," while in Quebec, the last Monday preceding May 25 is known as National Patriots' Day. In 2023, The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) raised the issue of renaming Victoria Day, Patriots' Day and to use the occasion to learn about and celebrate those the working class and people consider to be patriots across Canada, Quebec and around the world. We also use the occasion to settle scores with the history of what was called Lower and Upper Canada, established by the British in 1791 when they divided Quebec into two separate colonies – one called Lower Canada and the other Upper Canada.
In 1837-38, rebellions broke out in both Upper and Lower Canada against the power of the British monarchy wielded mercilessly against the people. Often these rebellions are attributed personally to William Lyon Mackenzie (not to be confused with his grandson Prime Minister Mackenzie King) and Louis-Joseph Papineau, considered "rabble-rousers" who liked to start trouble. This is the method of all those who render history as the stories of kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers, and their courts and courtiers. In the case of how the history of Canada is rendered, it is a means of discrediting the rebellions as not serious historical and political events and dismissing the republicans who declared the independence of Quebec and contributed to the establishment of the Two-Star Republic.
After the Rebellions in 1837-38, the British Lord Durham published a report in 1838 which claimed to explain the causes of the rebellion in what was then called Lower Canada. Referring to what the British called the English and French, falsely identified on the basis of language and religion, Durham claimed that in Lower Canada, the problem was that there were two warring factions. The rebellion in Upper Canada is largely ignored.
In his report on the question of "resolving" the conflict between what he called the two "warring races," Lord Durham wrote that the aim of uniting the two Canadas was to subordinate Lower Canada to Upper Canada and the British monarchy. He wrote of the rebellions as "two nations warring in the bosom of a single state" and "a struggle not of principles, but of races," insisting that the "races had become enemies." The patriots of Upper Canada were deemed "renegades from their race" and the patriots of Lower Canada were said to have "no history and no literature." The result was the joining of Upper Canada and Lower Canada in the Act of Union 1840, by taking a portion of the Quebec territory and population and adding it to Upper Canada, hence providing the heritage of those today considered Franco-Ontarians, and giving half the debt of Upper Canada to Quebec. This consummated the subjugation of Lower Canada to Upper Canada with the hope that the people of Lower Canada would give up their republican and national aspirations. This view has remained the position of the Anglo-Canadian ruling class to this day.
In terms of governance, both Upper and Lower Canada had legislative assemblies with only a consultative role. Real power resided in the legislative council, modelled after the British House of Lords, the executive council (the cabinet in modern terms) and the lieutenant-governor. In other words, all those who held power were appointed by the Crown. The local cliques in support of this style of rule were known as the Family Compact and the Château Clique in Upper and Lower Canada respectively. Those in the legislative assemblies who opposed monarchical dictate were called reformers and, later, republicans.
This rendering of history concludes that the 1840 union was made between Upper and Lower Canada through the two coming to an agreement – that is, there were two founding nations of Canada. This thesis typically has gone virtually unchallenged except by CPC(M-L) and the Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec (PMLQ). Even those who believe that the union was "unequal" have refused to go so far as to call a spade a spade and recognize the British sovereign's domination of the two Canadas, and especially Lower Canada.
There is also a concerted effort made by the ruling class in Canada, including academia and ivory-tower professors, to wipe the rebellion of Upper Canada from history. It is often said in these circles that the rights and freedoms we are presently said to enjoy in Canada are the result of a peaceful evolution of enlightened governments from John A. Macdonald to Wilfred Laurier and onwards, that in opposition to the U.S. rebels Canada evolved on the basis of loyalty to the British crown. This telling of history teaches people from the time of their birth not to speak in their own name, not to bring decision-making power into their own hands and to leave the initiative in the hands of the rulers so that we can allegedly enjoy the fruits of their wise rule. In fact, the history of Canada shows that it is not the rulers who are decisive but the people.
What the people in Upper Canada raised is substantially the same as what the people in Lower Canada raised – a basic demand for a form of government which would be genuinely responsible to the people. What we find in later official accounts of this demand, such as in the 1908 book The Life and Times of William Lyon Mackenzie by Charles Lindsey, is merely that the government should be responsible to the party which forms the majority of the legislative assembly. This twists the actual demands expressed by the patriots of Upper Canada who fought against the corruption of the "Tory" party and Family Compact clique in power. Though they did demand that the government be responsible to the legislative assembly, not the rule of the British oligarchs, what is left out is their opposition to all cliques ruling above the people regardless of their status in the legislature. The participants in the Upper Canadian rebellion were primarily workers and professionals, meaning, in those days, self-employed. Their opposition was thus aimed at the British monarchy, the Family Compact and their "Tory" party. The emerging bourgeoisie in Upper Canada sided wholly with the British during the rebellion.
Prior to the rebellion, the reformers in Upper Canada convened frequent mass meetings in the form of "town meetings" and "public meetings" all over Upper Canada where anyone could speak and get together to raise demands for their empowerment, as well as protest against monarchical despotism. These meetings were combined with organized societies for enlightenment and the spreading of political information. And when the Lower Canada rebellion broke out, 19 public meetings in Upper Canada were called in support of their uprising and demands.
Just how advanced the project of a Two-Star Republic was can
be seen in the type of struggles they launched. One cannot
discuss the 1837-38 rebellions without mentioning the hunters'
lodges, the secret societies and the role of the patriots'
operations in the United States. After the Upper Canadian
patriots were defeated at Montgomery's Tavern in Toronto, their
forces moved southward into the Niagara Peninsula and,
eventually, to Navy Island on the Niagara River. The support
given by republicans living in the United States, first in
Buffalo and other cities, despite the reactionary role of the
U.S. government which attempted to halt the Canadian
revolutionaries, was a significant aid. This struggle spread all
along the border, to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, with Windsor and
Kingston also significant sites of battles.
The Two-Star Republic had as its essence many modern features. In December 1837, a Republic of Upper Canada was proclaimed on Navy Island with a provisional government. The first proclamation of this government stated: "For nearly fifty years has our country languished under the blighting influence of military despots, strangers from Europe, ruling us, not according to laws of our choice, but by the capricious dictates of their arbitrary power.
"They have taxed us at their pleasure, robbed our exchequer, and carried off the proceeds to other lands – they have bribed and corrupted ministers of the Gospel, with the wealth raised by our industry – they have, in place of religious liberty, given rectories and clergy reserves to a foreign priesthood, with spiritual power dangerous to our peace as a people – they have bestowed millions of our lands on a company of Europeans for a nominal consideration, and left them to fleece and impoverish our country – they have spurned our petitions, involved us in their wars, excited feelings of national and sectional animosity in counties, townships and neighbourhoods, and ruled us, as Ireland has been ruled, to the advantage of persons in other lands, and to the prostration of our energies as a people.
"We are wearied of these oppressions, and resolved to throw off the yoke. Rise, Canadians, rise as one man, and the glorious object of our wishes is accomplished."
Just as today, in those days the demand of a republic was not simply an abstract slogan or aspiration, but a problem taken up for solution to end monarchical domination and all foreign oppression. This appeal directly targeted the British Empire's conception of sovereignty, according to which the supreme power is vested in the sovereign monarch and all of its territories are the possessions of the monarch. It is not for nothing that the struggle of the Irish patriots is mentioned, nor the reference to the heroic rebellion of Lower Canada later in the proclamation, that "between us and the ocean a population of 600,000 souls are now in arms, resolved to be free."
The patriots of Upper Canada were also, in their day, the first to defend the rights of all. One of the most pressing questions for Upper Canada and Niagara specifically, which was positioned as a key refuge for enslaved people escaping from the south, was how those escaping slavery were to be treated. In this respect, one of the darkest incidents took place in September 1837, when Sir Francis Bond Head, the head of the British forces ruling Upper Canada (who later led the counter-revolutionary forces in suppressing the patriots), ordered an escaped slave by the name of Moseby back to Kentucky. When these decrees were issued, a fury of indignation swept the local population, regardless of national background. When Moseby ran from the authorities, two men by the names of Herbert Holmes and Jacob Green were shot and killed for aiding his escape. The Constitution, the organ of the Upper Canada patriots at that time, wrote: "Moseby sighed after liberty, and they say he mounted his tyrant's horse, and sought a home and freedom in Upper Canada. This is his crime with Sir Francis!... If this be guilt, then would we be guilty of a like offence, if under the circumstances Moseby was placed in."
Patriots in Upper Canada march on Toronto from Montgomery’s Inn, December 5, 1837.
Another key question on which the patriots took a firm position was the colonial dispossession of the land of the Indigenous Peoples. The patriotic Upper Canadian newspaper The Colonial Advocate reprinted in full the 1829 petition of the people of River Credit to the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada requesting that they stop the dispossession of their land and the plundering of their rivers and lakes, degrading the natural environment and depriving them of their fishing-based livelihoods. In the colonial wording used to translate their language, their demand was nonetheless clear: "Now, father, once all the fish in these rivers and these lakes, and all the deer in these woods, were ours; but your red children only ask you to cause laws to be made to keep these bad men away from our fishery at the River Credit, from Mr. Racey's line to the mouth of the river, and along the lake shore one mile on each side of the river as far as our land extends, and to punish those who attempt to fish here." This was the demand of the Indigenous Peoples and the patriots of Upper Canada, whose struggles were the extensions of one another.
At this time, there are many forces that promote theories of settler-colonialism, that the struggle is not one of the New against the Old, the modern against the anachronistic, the oppressed peoples against a racist state, but of one skin colour against another. This follows the rulers' "blame the people" logic. The struggles of the peoples of the Canadas discredit these theories completely.
The flag of the rebellion of Upper Canada, that of the
Two-Star Republic, embodies the united nation-building project of
the peoples of Canada in the mid-19th century. The people of
Upper Canada in rebellion against the British joined with the
heroic rebellion of Lower Canada. The poem The Stars of
Canada expresses this outlook in this short excerpt:
"Two independent States are born,
Let freemen cheer their natal day;
Let music usher in the morn,
The spangled flag aloft display."
On this Patriots' Day, we must also note the perfidy in giving Queen Victoria, the monarch who came to reign precisely at the moment the rebellions of the Canadas broke out, – the monarch responsible for stomping out the strivings of these peoples with impunity, – a national holiday each year to celebrate uniting Upper and Lower Canada and eventually Confederation itself in 1867. In recognizing the struggle of the patriots of Upper Canada and the Two-Star Republic, the workers and oppressed peoples of Canada must use the occasion to raise their name and banner ever higher, because in the patriots they find their heroic national history and bring forward the best from their past.
The Two-Star Republic
This flag represents the struggle of the Republican Patriots who
took up arms, led an insurrection against the British Empire, declared
the independence of Lower Canada, but also of Upper Canada, established
the Two-Star Republic and then worked to establish a union between the
two
Canadas. This union has nothing to do, in any way whatsoever, with the
despicable Act of Union 1840, but rather the project of union between the Republican States of North America.
This flag flew everywhere during the insurrectionary years of 1837, 1838 and 1839. It is found far and wide in the popular imagination as can be seen here, in the political testament of François-Marie-Thomas Chevalier de Lorimier when he wrote his final words on the eve of his hanging in Montreal at the Pied du Courant:
"The wounds of my country will heal after the troubles of anarchy and bloody revolution. The peaceful Canadien will see happiness and liberty on the St. Lawrence. Everything converges towards that end, even the executions. The blood and tears spilled on the altar of liberty today are watering the roots of the tree on which will fly the flag marked with the two stars of the Canadas."
Here too in this excerpt, from a poem titled The Stars of Canada:
Forth from the arch two meteors fly
And shed abroad a brilliant light.
They blaze resplendent far on high,
Bright as the dazzling sun is bright;
The flaming Stars they speed their way,
Thro' the sphere the Stars of Canada! ...Two independent States are born,
Let freemen cheer their natal day;
Let music usher in the morn,
The spangled flag aloft display.
Far o'er the world its rays shall shine,
And millions worship at its shrine. ...Twin Stars of glory and of fame,
Shine brightly on forever now,
'Mong nations fix thy noble name,
With vict'ry crown'd upon thy brow
Thro' time' s wide bound still hold your way,
Live brilliant Stars of Canada
(De Lorimier quote translated from original French by TML.)
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