June 24, Quebec’s National Day
Salute to the Patriots Who Fought for the Two-Star Republic
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On the occasion of Quebec National Day and one week from what is called Canada Day, we are raising, as we have before, the matter of nation-building. In this context, we are raising the history of the struggle of the 1837-38 patriots who strove to create a Two-Star Republic, not based on the Anglo-Canadian domination of the later 1867 Confederation but as an equal and sovereign republican union between the peoples of Upper and Lower Canada. It is those patriots who undertook serious efforts in their time to solve the problems faced by the peoples, and attempted to put the peoples themselves at the head of the nations. This is significant because here we are not talking about individuals with power and privilege doing everything in their means to retain it, but about peoples oppressed by the British colonial yoke working out among themselves what should be their constitution and state, how their governments should be elected and what they should stand for, what should be the economic relations in the society, what should be the national boundaries and borders, etc. This is historic, history-making, and we salute all the 1837-38 patriots in Upper and Lower Canada for their deeds in this nation-building work which adds to the treasury of progressive humanity.
It is not just what they took up that is significant. What is also significant is how the British imperialists and their Anglo-Canadian offspring dealt with such a serious attempt at building an independent Two-Star Republic. They were and are past-masters in intimidation, deceit, fakes, forgeries, fraud and eradicating memory by making sure silence reigns.
The patriots who rose in struggle and were subsequently captured by the British imperialists were subject to the most brutal and inhuman treatment to deny them dignity. Some were executed, as in the case of 12 patriots of Lower Canada and, in Upper Canada, Samuel Lount, a proletarian blacksmith, and Peter Matthews, a farmer. Despite a petition demanding clemency, personally signed by 35,000 citizens of Upper Canada, over 10 per cent of the population, both were hanged on April 12, 1838 in the courtyard of the King Street Gaol in Toronto for steadfastly partaking in the struggle of the Upper Canada patriots. With his final words, Lount proudly stated that he was not ashamed of anything he had done. He remains a hero of the Canadian people and was immortalized in a monument at William Lyon Mackenzie’s Toronto home, which is today a museum.
Other patriots of Upper and Lower Canada who escaped death did not fare much better — 64 Lower Canadian patriots and 92 Upper Canadian patriots were sent to the other end of the world, Van Diemen’s Land, the British colonial name for Tasmania. Here they were exiled beside murderers and criminals of varied nature, waiting to be sentenced. One of these men, Benjamin Wait, wrote numerous letters from Van Diemen’s Land, which were later compiled into a book. In March 1840, Wait wrote to a friend residing in the United States about the British colonial treatment in exile, stating its method was that “every vestige of hope must be crushed, the mind enthralled, and every misery aggravated, by consigning our persons to abject servitude; and debased by a similitude to, and connection with the most degraded beings of which the human mind can conceive,… [ordered] by a despot, whose barbarous purposes, could not be adequately exhibited in the mental agony caused by a coerced residence on these antipodes, 16,000 miles from home and all that is dear.” These letters show the debasement of the dignity of the patriots who dared to struggle for the freedom of the people.
To this point, Wait further wrote in the same letter, “I do not comply with your request so much for the purpose of giving publicity to my individual sufferings, as I do with a desire of exposing the system of treachery and consummate barbarity, as practiced towards acknowledged ‘political offenders,’ when in their power without the means of redress, by the ‘self-styled’ generous, liberal, and humane British government.” In other words, here Wait is pleading with his friend not to publicize his own case, but to shed light on the barbaric treatment of the patriots of Upper and Lower Canada, and expose the British monarchy for its false veil of generosity while persecuting, for political motives, the best persons the Canadas gave rise to.
Following the launching of these struggles, criminalization of conscience reigned, and in Upper Canada over 800 people were arrested for sympathizing with the cause of the patriots or for merely supporting reform of the British colonialist system imposed on the Canadas, while in Lower Canada more than 1,700 people were imprisoned for the same alleged crime.
These facts raise the question of why this brutal suppression of the people is omitted in official history, bringing out the essence of how the patriots are treated in bourgeois historiography, especially by the Anglo-Canadian rulers with their methods of fraud and disinformation. The patriots of Upper Canada are portrayed as brutes whose drunk grievances at Montgomery’s Tavern in Toronto were turned into an ill-advised rebellion. The patriots of Lower Canada are portrayed as being in favour of a “war of the races,” wanting to split what they call “English Canada” and “French Canada” on the basis of linguistic background. In both cases, bourgeois historiography presents British despotism as standing for reason, for law and order and for modern values. As it is presented, they put down the patriots of Upper Canada for their lawlessness and anarchy, while the patriots of Lower Canada were put down to stabilize the cohesion of the Canadas and end Lower Canada’s “war of the races.” This view presents the patriots as backward, its own forces as modern.
Our treatment of history rejects with contempt these assertions that attempt to demean the patriots and their nation-building struggle. It was they who, within their conditions, took up a definite struggle for what was necessary to solve the problems in a manner which favoured the peoples of Upper and Lower Canada. We say categorically that that struggle and those forces who took it up were modern, not only in the conditions of their time, but beyond their time, while those who killed, jailed and deported the patriots to Van Diemen’s Land can be considered the historical antithesis of modern progress.
What official Anglo-Canadian historiography tries desperately to obscure with its eradication of the struggle of the patriots is that history unfolds according to definite social laws of development – whoever grasps these laws can fulfill man’s wishes in accordance with nature. At any given time those forces which demand the progress of society can and must grasp these laws, and fetters on this progress only serve to further destroy society and the planet for the self-interest of the rulers. This is what is happening at the present time when whatever the imperialists cannot control they destroy, and what the British imperialists did with the hangings, jailings and exile of the best of the two Canadas. When one learns about the struggle of the patriots, one is imbued with their heroic spirit and filled with inspiration, because one learns that in this country persons of conscience have taken the opportunity to rise up, have taken up what is required to fulfill the demands of the people, have taken the initiative into their own hands. There are flows and ebbs along this road, but neither force, nor weapons, nor deception, nor intimidation can eradicate the ability of the people to think about what is in their interests, raise demands and actually realize them, in accordance with historical and social laws. This is what is important from the struggle of the patriots, why they are relevant to us today and why we continue to raise this history.
It is within this context that we conclude, affirming our salute to the 1837-38 patriots of Upper and Lower Canada who strove to build a society fit for the peoples who inhabit it. We have not allowed and will not allow the rulers to get away with imposing their historical fraud on this heroic struggle.
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