Collection

After a number of exploratory voyages during the 15th and 16th centuries, France and England embarked in the early 17th century on the colonization of North American territories that had been occupied for several millennia by numerous Indigenous nations. Many French people – among them administrators, members of religious communities, traders, artisans, soldiers and peasants – left their homeland to settle in New France. The development of the new colony, supported by the French government and stimulated by the fur trade, was based on a system of alliances with Indigenous nations. In 1663 Louis XIV created the Conseil Souverain in New France, modelled on the administrative system operating in the French provinces. The governor, already in place, was now joined by an intendant, whose mission was to manage the colony’s internal affairs: social order, justice, civil matters, colonization and economic development.

Meanwhile, the kingdom of England and Great Britain was extending its colonial reach to include the widely diverse territories that formed the “Thirteen Colonies,” the original kernel of the United States of America. Influenced by the wars that divided their mother countries and spurred by the desire to expand, the French and English colonies of North America were frequently in conflict. In 1763, at the close of the Seven years’ War, the administration of New France passed into British hands under the terms of the Treaty of Paris. In the new British colony, renamed the Province of Quebec, there was nevertheless frequent friction between francophones and anglophones, Catholics and Protestants.

The independence of the United States, achieved in 1783, resulted in an influx into the colony of a large number of American loyalists, and the Province of Quebec was subdivided in 1791 into two colonies, each with its own house of assembly: Lower Canada, which consisted of the southern and eastern sectors of present-day Quebec, plus Labrador, and Upper Canada, formed by what is now southern Ontario. Following the Rebellions of 1837-1838, the two Canadas were merged to form the United Province of Canada (1841-1867).

During the 1860s, the idea of creating a federation between the Province of Canada and Britain’s Maritime colonies was raised with increasing frequency. Confederation, approved by the London Parliament in 1867, resulted in a federal state called the Dominion of Canada that consisted of the four original provinces: Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. They would gradually be joined by the six other provinces that exist today (Manitoba, British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador), together with three territories (the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut). The development of this nation “from sea to sea” would take place largely to the detriment of Indigenous populations and cultures.

CURATORIAL HISTORY
The Stewart Collection of Canadian and Atlantic History belongs to the Lake St. Louis Historical Society. It is currently kept at the McCord Stewart Museum.