Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The Upper/Lower Canada Rebellions feat. Quinn Madsen

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

All good rebellions start at a bar. Note that we did not say 'successful' there. Quinn Madsen from the Failure to Launch podcast joins us as a guest host to discuss a time when francophone and anglophone Canadians joined forces to fight the British in hopes of declaring independence. Get the whole episode on Patreon here! https://www.patreon.com/posts/125794323 COME SEE US LIVE IN LONDON! We're performing at Rich Mix in Shoreditch on Friday, 11th April. Tickets availbable here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-london-11th-april-2025-tickets-1266997737339?aff=oddtdtcreator

If you ever want to catch us live, well we're hitting the road again. We're returning to London on April 11th at 7pm at Rich Mix. Tickets are available now and you can check the show notes for the link. There'll also be live stream tickets if you can't make it to London so you can still watch us and there'll be a separate link for that. So make sure you're getting the right tickets when you want to see us. Our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch and wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store, LLBDmerch.com. So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So you want something get your order in once again that

Is LLBD merch.com and the link will also be in the show notes. Thanks, and we hope to see you in London So they're doing like the the white land-owning version of the model UN kind of yeah, okay? That's really pitiful, but it's, if you're a multi-millionaire, you've got absolutely no power, and you think you should, and all of the power is in like, five billionaires. Thankfully, it doesn't happen anymore. And for the sake of completeness, I need to be clear that there was a lot more Canada

going on at the time than just Upper and Lower. So there were the maritime provinces like New Brunswick, PEI, and Nova Scotia, and there was also what was called the Northwest Territories and Rupert's Land. Those last two are particularly interesting because they were also corporate enclaves legally ruled over by the Hudson's Bay Company. Basically like an interior Canada version of the British East India Company, which also does still exist and as of time of recording is almost about to liquidate its entire business. Rupert's land sounds like a land that was conquered by some form of incredibly vicious

teddy bear. Prince Rupert, I don't know a whole lot about him, but I know that it was, whenever it was found and named that way, they were doing the whole, like, the right of discovery where it's like, hey, Rupert was the first guy to show up here, brackets don't talk about the First Nations people. Right. So this whole like massive swath of like, it's like fully half of modern Canada is just Rupert's land and one company gets to own it.

The only reason I know about the Hudson River Company is because if I remember correctly, there is a Hudson Company in the United States and they're mostly like shitty stores at airports. So in Canada, the Hudson's Bay Company as it remains is like a, I don't want to say nice but kind of like slightly upscale department store. Like in the 2012 Olympics, or like they're always the provider of like Olympic clothes. So they went from owning like the majority of Canada to selling some like toques and mitts with a little maple leaf on them. That is hilarious.

I mean, it'd be funnier if they didn't exist at all, but like, oh, how the mighty have followed. That'd be like if the Dutch East Indies company existed, but only to sell like souvenir clogs to people in Amsterdam. There's one remaining little shop, the only the last remaining and yeah, they're just selling like kitsch all the time. Even more accurate shows the Dutch East India company just owns a series of phone shops. A series of American candy shops.

Anyway, in both Upper and Lower Canada, you had an appointed Lieutenant Governor, the local representative of the Crown, and ultimately the person with the most individual power. However, governors were not local, and they came and went quickly, so they never really had time to establish a power base. Below them were the influential and wealthy of both provinces. So these are like, these are the oligarchs. These are the people who have been here long enough. And because a lot of the positions in high government are appointed, they are able to engineer things so it's always their families that get in.

In Upper Canada, Ontario, they were known as the Family Compact, while those in Lower Canada or Quebec were named the Chateau clique Chateau meaning castle Okay, so you've just got you've got the the family compact and the castle club Which are both kind of like innocuous names for the brutal oligarchs who are gonna like suppress your colony for all time There's a fucking ps2 ass names for these groups, like... Yeah, yeah, like the Chateau Clique either sounds like a villain in a JRPG or the world's weirdest sex club. Alternatively, maybe it's just because I'm thinking of Clique. Like, the Chateau Clique could have taken China during the Warlord period.

The most fucked up, like, yeah, the People's Republic of China brackets, uh, like, French-Canadian. Like, yeah, the People's Republic of China brackets, uh, like French Canadian. No, I was, I was trying to think of how I would spell Mao and M-E-A-U-Mo? No, that could work. Okay. We need fucking Quebecois, Mao Zedong. I mean, you kind of do, but... Well, yeah. Strong opinion there.

I disagree. Quebec, Taiwan is just that like really tiny island that France still owns St. Pierre and Megalon, I think. Yeah. Or they just take Newfoundland. Quebec, Taiwan is just Mackinac Island in Michigan. Setting up an industrial powerhouse on some tiny little island in the Great Lakes. They don't even allow cars on it. It's only horses like, nah fuck we're turning this into a computer chip megapower.

The world's smallest petrochemical stain. Now, this arrangement wasn't popular in 1791, and it only got less so by the start of the 1830s. While reformers were mostly a fringe party in upper Canada, the elected body of lower Canada was almost immediately dominated by the Parti Canadien, which represented the interests of the French-speaking majority. And their opposition was named the English Party, which was written in English and did all its business in English.

Very creative. Well done, folks. Oh yeah. Vote for us, it's in the name. That's our whole platform. Also most factions around this time had their own pet newspapers. So to fight against the Chateau Clique's entire like news corp worth of propaganda papers, the Parti Canadien created their own. Le Canadien, La Minel, the Canadian Spectator, and the Irish Vindicator. Excuse me?

Yeah, it's just the Irish Vindicator. The Irish Vindicator sounds like a superhero that has a shell company in Dublin. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And this was like a Montreal specific paper that was initially, whenever it was founded, it was about like, it wanted to be the voice of Montreal's Irish, Quebecois people. I think over time it changed its name to just the Vindicator, but it will always be the Irish Vindicator in my heart. We just need to really curry the vote for guys who look like extras from Letter County. Yeah, and somehow managing to thread the needle where the guys who look like Letter Kenny

are going to be voting for like Quebec separatism now. I mean look there's a reason why the people from Newfoundland sound like that and it's all because of us. Vive le Quebec Libre. I hate that. That sounds like something I would say that exact same accent and the people get very mad at me. But he can say it Joe. Yeah. And people get very mad at me. But he can say it, Joe. Yeah. Well, it is candid on this show that I want Canada to annex Michigan, so I feel like I'm

allowed to say it too. Yeah, but what province does it, does it get rolled into a province or does it become its own province? Look, I don't care perfectly, to be perfectly honest, but I feel like Ontario has had to deal with Michigander bullshit for so long that we're kind of joined at the hip. Okay, fair. If Ontario takes Michigan, then like the entire like average levels of meth production and DUIs for the United States will drop so low.

But listen to this way, Canada, your Stanley Cup curse will finally be over because the Red Wings have won one this century. It retroactively becomes Canadian again. Yeah, exactly. That is my platform. The popular vote will win immediately. Invasion and annexation for the purpose of sports wins. If you just make like Steve Iserman, the Canadian CIA figurehead, Michigan will go down without

a fight. North Korea just like kidnapping Olympians from around the world making like giving them citizenship and just claiming their golds. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I'm doing. Personally. Not for a country. Now as tensions rose the party got more and more radical. In 1815 it elected a new leader and speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Louis-Joseph Papineau, a veteran of the War of 1812 and a long-time campaigner for the rights of French colonists. There was one thing he even did where he got like

80,000 people to sign a petition and then he traveled to London and handed it to the king personally. It was just like, this is a petition that just says, fuck you, and it's signed by like 90% of the people in Quebec. Oh, so he's like a weaponized annoying guy. Oh yeah. Oh, and there's going to be another weaponized annoying guy. So Pappé know he guided the party to better oppose the oligarchy in Quebec. In 1826, the party renamed itself the Parti Patriote, or the Patriots.

And in 1834, the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada, dominated by the Patriot Party, adopted the 92 resolutions, a list of grievances and demands for the colonial government that would increase the autonomy of Lower Canada. Crucially, it called for the upper houses of government that were normally appointed and owned by the clique to become democratic. Also, it needs to be said that this was not necessarily a nationalist document. It did not call for an independent Quebec, just like a reformed one that was a bit less of an oligarchy. The document also explicitly laid out lower Canada's continuing devotion to the king. In French. I love whenever you're dealing with these power structures or they're like they want

reforms they always have to slap on an asterisk at the bottom like, don't worry, we still love you buddy. Moi j'adore King Charles. I mean very, very Canadian. I was like, we want change. We want a change of society, but within reason. Yes. Oops, sorry there buddy.

And these are the most radical people. Strapping on a suicide vest for some moderate reform. I love being a martyr for centrism. Pulling up outside parliament in the suicide car and just like very, very politely trying to parallel park. And it's like, Oh, sorry. Do you mind just guiding me back in? Yeah, I am going to blow it up, but I want to be within the regulations. Yeah. But back then to be like a, but I want to know, be within the regulations. Yeah. But back then to be like a horse and buggy. So someone's trying to like pull their horse. Oh, sorry there, buddy. Can my horse fit in there?

It's like there's a fuse dangling out of its ass and it's on fire. Having to behead two dudes in the in the ISIS style video, because you have to say it in English and French.