Fear of French Canada

Following Louis RIEL’s execution, many Protestants in Ontario believed that French Canadian expansion into the west would erode the country’s British and Protestant character. Among them was lawyer and politician D’Alton McCARTHY, an Orangeman who believed that one Quebec was “more than enough.” At a speech to a gathering of Orangemen on 12 July 1889, he made his position very clear:

“‘As long as Frenchmen learned their laws and their history in French, they would remain French in sentiment.’ He contended that in Ontario the schools in French-speaking districts must be made public and English-speaking; in the northwest the duality of language must be abolished. ‘Now is the time,’ he proclaimed in language both inflammatory and flamboyant, ‘when the ballot box will decide this great question before the people, and if that does not supply the remedy in this generation, bayonets will supply it in the next.’”

To learn more about anti-French views in English-speaking Canada, consult the following biographies.