Upper Canada 1784-1841

Volume VII of the Canadian Centenary Series

Now available as e-books for the first time, the Canadian Centenary Series is a comprehensive nineteen-volume history of the peoples and lands which form Canada. Although the series is designed as a unified whole so that no part of the story is left untold, each volume is complete in itself.

With firm authority based on expert knowledge and in a lively and straightforward manner, Gerald M. Craig recounts the events in Upper Canada from the flood of immigration in the aftermath of the American Revolution and the Act of Union in 1841 which reunited the two Canadas. During this period the great and abiding issues of Canadian history--the adjusting of French and English institutions, the relationship between church and state, and the claims of responsible government against those of imperial unity and American expansionism--were raised and hotly debated. Those crucial years were to shape the character of much of English-speaking Canada and to lay the foundation for Confederation.

Never before had this turbulent era in a colony divided by political, religious, and economic rivalries been so vividly and excitingly set before the reader. Professor Craig brilliantly tells not just the story of the the Simcoes and Mackenzies, the Strachans and the Durhams but also the story of the ordinary people who cleared the land and built the farms and towns, who evolved from war and invasion, rebellion and confusion, to be neither British nor American, but distinctive in their own new Canadian personality.

First published in 1963, Gerald M. Craig’s important contribution to the Canadian Centenary Series is available here as an e-book for the first time.