This edited collection offers a broad reinterpretation of the origins of Canada. Drawing on cutting-edge research in a number of fields, Violence, Order, and Unrest explores the development of British North America from the mid-eighteenth century through the aftermath of Confederation. The chapters cover an ambitious range of topics, from Indigenous culture to municipal politics, public executions to runaway slave advertisements. Cumulatively, this book examines the diversity of Indigenous and colonial experiences across northern North America and provides fresh perspectives on the crucial roles of violence and unrest in attempts to establish British authority in Indigenous territories. In the aftermath of Canada 150, Violence, Order, and Unrest offers a timely contribution to current debates over the nature of Canadian culture and history, demonstrating that we cannot understand Canada today without considering its origins as a colonial project.

This edited collection offers a broad reinterpretation of the origins of Canada. Drawing on cutting-edge research in a number of fields, it explores the vigorously contested development of British North America from the mid-eighteenth century through the aftermath of Confederation

Preface

Notes on Contributors

Maps

Introduction

Elizabeth Mancke, Jerry Bannister, Denis McKim, and Scott W. See

Section I: Loyalty, Liberty, and Visions of Order

1. Aspirations and Limitations: "Peace, Order, and Good Government" and the Language of Violence and Disorder in British North America

Scott W. See

2. Loyalty, Order, and Quebec’s Catholic Hierarchy, 1763–1867

D.C. Bélanger

3. Anxious Anglicans, Complicated Catholics, and Disruptive Dissenters: Christianity and the Search for Social Order in the Age of Revolution

Denis McKim

4. Liberty, Loyalty, and Sentiment in Canada’s Founding Debates, 1864–1873

Jerry Bannister

Section II: From Tory Imperialism to Liberal Settler Colonialism

5. Revolution Expected: The Invasion of Quebec and American Independence

Jeffers Lennox

6. Empire, Settler Colonialism, and the Role of Violence in Indigenous Dispossession in British North America, 1749–1830

John G. Reid

7. Space, Race, and Violence: The Beginnings of Civilization in Canada

E.A. Heaman

8. Worthy and Industrious or a Burden? Managing Migration in Upper Canada, 1815–1845

Section III: Resisting Dispossession

9. Searching for Order in a Settlers’ World: Wendat and Mississauga Schooling, Politics and Networks at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Thomas Peace

10. Runaway Advertisements and Social Disorder in the Maritimes: A Preliminary Study

Harvey Amani Whitfield

11. The Mobile Village: Metis Women, Bison Brigades, and Social Order on the Nineteenth-Century Plains

Émilie Pigeon and Carolyn Podruchny

12. "We are men not Buffalos": Louis Riel and the Gendering of the Red River Public Sphere

M. Max Hamon

Section IV: Legitimating and Contesting the Public Sphere

13. Discontents and Dissidents: Unrest amongst Loyalist Freemasons in the 1780s and 90s

Bonnie Huskins

14. Of Bludgeons and Ballots: Political Violence, Municipal Enfranchisement, and Local Governance in Mid-Nineteenth- Century Montreal

Colin Grittner

15. Boys, Young Men, and Disorder in a Mid-Victorian City

Ian Radforth

16. "To muse within these peaceful portals": Urban Space, Public Order, and the Makings of Montreal’s Viger Square, 1818–1870

Dan Horner

Section V: Tools of Social Order: The Law and the Press

17. The Spectacle of State Violence: Executions in Quebec, 1759–1872

Donald Fyson

18. Making a Patriot Order: Violence, Respectability, and the Patriot Press in Exile, 1838–1847

Stephen R.I. Smith

19. The Ambivalence of Order: Jurisdiction in the Disputed Northeast

Bradley Miller

20. For the Better Administration of the Town’s Affairs: Civic Engagement, Local Governance, and Grassroots Activism in Canada West/Ontario, 1849–1870

Darren Ferry

21. The Role of Newspapers in Halifax during the Confederate and the Repeal Movements, 1865–69

Mathias Rodorff

Epilogue

Elizabeth Mancke, Jerry Bannister, Denis McKim, and Scott W. See

"This book will be a strong addition to the collection of any historian of Canada, and its efforts to be inclusive of English, French, Black, and Indigenous histories in the same volume to tell a fully Canadian story should be commended."

"There is much of value in some of these essays for the social and constitutional historian."

"An outstanding volume, Violence, Order, and Unrest will be immensely useful to historians of early Canada, and the writing quality and variety of essay topics are such that the book is likely to attract many non-specialist readers."