A History of Canada 1763-1812

On the 10th of February, 1763, the Peace of Paris was signed between Great Britain, France, and Spain. Under its provisions all North America, east of the Mississippi, which had been owned or claimed by France, was, with the exception of the city of New Orleans, transferred to Great Britain, the navigation of the Mississippi being thrown open to the subjects of both Powers. The English also received Florida from Spain, in return for Havana given back to its old owners. Under a treaty secretly concluded in November, 1762, when the preliminaries of the general treaty were signed, Spain took over from France New Orleans and Louisiana west of the Mississippi, the actual transfer being completed in 1769. Thus France lost all hold on the North American continent, while retaining various West Indian islands, and fishing rights on part of the Newfoundland coast, which were supplemented by possession of the two adjacent islets of St. Pierre and Miquelon.

In the autumn of the year 1763, on the 7th of October, King George III issued a proclamation constituting ‘within the countries and islands, ceded and confirmed to us by the said treaty, four distinct and separate governments, styled and called by the names of Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada’. Of these four governments, the first alone requires special notice. The government of Grenada was in the West Indies, and the governments of East and West Florida, excluding a debatable strip of territory which was annexed to the State of Georgia, were co-extensive with the new province which had been acquired from Spain.

The limits assigned by the proclamation to the government of Quebec were as follows: north of the St. Lawrence, the new province was ‘bounded on the Labrador coast by the river St. John, and from thence by a line drawn from the head of that river, through the Lake St. John, to the south end of the Lake Nipissim’. The river St. John flows into the St. Lawrence over against the western end of the island of Anticosti; Lake St. John is the lake out of which the Saguenay takes its course; Lake Nipissim or Nipissing is connected by French river with Georgian Bay and Lake Huron. The line in question, therefore, was drawn due south-west from Lake St. John parallel to the St. Lawrence. From the southern end of Lake Nipissim the line, according to the terms of the proclamation, crossed the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain in 45 degrees of north latitude. In other words, it was drawn due south-east, to the west of and parallel to the Ottawa river, until it struck the St. Lawrence, where the 45th parallel of north latitude meets that river at the foot of the Long Sault Rapids. It then followed the 45th parallel eastward across the outlet of Lake Champlain, and subsequently, diverging to the north-east, was carried ‘along the highlands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the said river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the sea’. Further east it skirted ‘the north coast of the Baye des Chaleurs and the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Cape Rosieres’, which last named cape is at the extreme end of the Gaspé peninsula. The line then again crossed the St. Lawrence by the western end of the island of Anticosti, and joined the river St. John.