The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - What Can Canada Learn from Previous U.S. Annexation Threats?

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

Canada's recent political tensions with its neighbor south of the border have given some historians a déjà vu moment. A 19th century petition was uncovered from Toronto Public Library's archives, demonstrating Toronto's firm determination to resist annexation to the U.S. This movement was outlined in the Montreal Annexation Manifesto of 1849. The Agenda invites historians Adam Bunch and Dominique Marshall to help us understand what we can learn from the past.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Joining us now to tell us what the annexation talks of yesterday can tell us about the annexation talks of yesterday can tell us about today, we welcome in the nation's capital Dominique Marshall, professor of Quebec and Canadian history at Carleton University and with us here in studio, Adam Bunch, a historian and author whose work you can read on his sub stack,

it's called the Toronto Time Traveler. Adam, nice to have you here. Dominique Marshall, grand plaisir. Well, I was going to try my French, but my French stinks. So why don't I just say it's very lovely to welcome you to our program today. Adam, to you first, you wrote an article for your newsletter

entitled The Annexation Manifesto of 1849. What prompted you to write the piece? Well, you won't be surprised to learn it was recent news and headlines. There are all these moments in Canadian history. So yeah, stretch back to before Confederation, where annexation by the United States is sort of this recurring theme.

And there are a bunch of big sort of flashpoints for it. One of the big ones is this Annexation Manifesto from the 1840s. So it felt like a thing to write about these days. So for those who think this is the first time any of this has ever happened, that's a big N-O on that. Yeah, far from it.

Okay. Now while this annexation manifesto was making its way through the population and popular discourse at the time, there was a counter argument which Toronto Public Library has discovered. They're apparently in the archives of the City of Toronto.

And Sheldon, bring this up please. This is a copy of the document which is a countermeasure to the annexation manifesto and it's, I'll read a little bit of it here, it says, we the undersigned inhabitants of the City of Toronto, having learned from the public press that a document has been circulated for signatures in and about the City of Montreal, advocating the annexation of Her Majesty's Province of Canada to a foreign state, our firm determination to resist all attempts at trifling with our allegiance, transferring us from the mild and just rule of our gracious

sovereign to the United States of American or any other foreign power. This was courtesy of the Toronto Public Library. Have you seen this archive before? Yes, it's a, that is the counter petition against the annexation manifesto and the library has wonderful resources from all sorts of history on it. And it is, I think, one of the more remarkable documents you'll find on there. There's this moment where a bunch of leading business leaders, lawyers, politicians in Montreal in particular,

signed this annexation manifesto asking for the United States to take over the Canadian colonies colonies the province of Canada in particular It's now Ontario and Quebec and then this swift Overwhelming pushback which was kind of centered on Toronto and what's now Ontario of this big counterpetition and a big movement that brought together a lot of sort of bitter political Rivals some of the biggest rivals in Canadian history, who were united in the idea that this could not be allowed to happen,

and that we needed to speak with a united voice against it. We'll get to the pushback in a second. Dominique Marshall, let me get you in here to talk about the events that led to the creation of the Annexation Manifesto to begin with. What can you help us with on that? There's a lot of disappointment with what had happened in 1848 when what is now Ontario and Quebec were united and responsible government was given to the Canadians. So that was after the rebellions of 36, 37 when lots of people wanted to leave England and they

shipped over Lord Durham to reorganize Canada. So first legislature votes to actually exonerate to some extent their rebellious people and give them back some, there was some compensation on rebellion losses and also a global and also generally the Britain did not want any preferential treatment for Canadian goods. So it was all a move to give a bit more autonomy to Canadians but also not to treat them with favor economically at the time when there was a global recession. So a funny thing happened. People who were former enemies, like the English merchants of Montreal, were disappointed at the economy of it all, but also at these bills that were

kind of exonerating the rebellious people. But the people who had rebelled, some of them, the most extreme of them, were disappointed by the conservatism of that government and were quite happy to join the United States as well. So let's join the United States if we're merchants in order to bolster our economy. Let's join the United States if we are radical French-Canadian former rebellious people because we like the idea of a real republic. Well, let me follow up with Adam on that.

Can you say that those that favored annexation with the United States, generally speaking, belonged to one particular political party over another? It was led definitely by the sort of Tory business leaders of Montreal. It was the Tories who'd been sort of historically the most loyal to the British, the most anti-American force in the Canadian colonies. But yeah, they were upset about responsible government. They were upset about the repeal of the Corn Laws. Let me just jump in.

When we say responsible government, you don't mean politicians who are just acting in a responsible way. This is actually a term. Yeah, this is still the political system we have today. And it had been a decades-long battle between Tory. It's on one side, reformers on the other. They'd come to a head. The reformers had won.

They'd managed responsible government. And the Tories felt betrayed by the British for allowing it, and then betrayed again by tariff policy, getting rid of the corn laws that had kind of advantaged Canadians trading with Britain, which hit at the same time as an economic depression. Montreal was especially poorly hit. These Tories who felt betrayed made this unlikely alliance, as Dominique was saying, with radical French-Canadian reformers to explore this idea of being annexed,

including some of the biggest names of Montreal, John Redpath, the sugar tycoon, a couple of Molson brothers, John Abbott, who'd be a future prime minister, all signing on with this annexation manifesto. John Abbott, the future prime minister, signed the annexation manifesto. Yeah, he would later say it was a horrible, youthful mistake, but yeah, something he'd kind of have to live with and spend a lot of his life trying to sort of live down in

a lot of ways, but he had done it. Dominique, was the instigation for this more from Canada or more from the U.S.? From Canada. There were some people in the US who were interested, but compared to former times, like during the American Revolution, where they were actually American people who wanted to take over Canada compared to the war of 1812, when there was American people who wanted to get over Canada, and even compared to the Civil War after that, just before Confederation, this one was really more of a Canadian-move thing. And the people who were, I suppose you'll talk about people who were against that later, but there you go.

And on responsible government, Steve, really what it means is more autonomy locally to spend our own budget. That's what it means. And that's why it angered a lot of the elites who would have liked to have more control over the budget. They have fought against that anyway. Now they have lost some more, as Alan said, reformist people. This is not complete like now. It's not as much autonomy as now, but more autonomy from the British colonial powers. Now because we have sophisticated polling today, we know that the vast, vast, vast majority of Canadians think this is a... should I use a gentle word here?

They are opposed to the notion of joining the United States today. We didn't have sophisticated polling back then, so do we know how the population, Dominique, divided up back then on this annexation question? So in most of these things, you know, American Revolution, World War 1812, and then 1848, in general, that's what my teachers were telling me when I learned history, the population was not really interested. The general population, the farmers, the city dwellers, they become interested if they have to go and fight or people who are on the border, but generally they're not. And in what is now Quebec and Ontario now, in the end, the people who were against and had political voice,

like the people who signed the petition that you saw, won. And these people were partly, partly like I told there was a part of the old radical who rebelled in 36, like Louis-Joseph Papineau, who were for the annexation. Like we want a republic. Let's, you know, we don't want that wishy washy system. We want a real republic. We'll join. But Louis-Paulit Lafontaine, a former rebellious guy, was leading now the equivalent of the liberals in Quebec, and he had left these hyper-Republican ideals and was more like George Brown, the person

Allen will talk about. And it's these, amongst the political elite, these are the ones who won, and the other ones were marginal and remain marginal. Adam, we've got to put this into context here because we have to remember we're 20 years away still from being an independent country. And even when we were Canada, we weren't all that independent from the British crown necessarily. So we can't really compare the anti-annexation fervor of today to back then, because we've got 156 years of history here that we obviously have under our belts. In which case, why did this fail?

Well, I think fear of American invasion, of annexation, was one of kind of the defining features of life, even in the Canadian colonies before Confederation. A lot of the people who are living here in the 1840s, the War of 1812 to them is still a relatively fresh memory. When Americans invaded, thinking they were going to be welcomed as liberators, Thomas Jefferson famously said it would be a mere matter of marching, at least as far as Quebec City.

But, you know, some people now had memories of the Americans invading, of occupying a town like Toronto, looting, burning it. Some would definitely be thinking hard about the days of the American Revolution too. There was this big sort of defining split between those 13 colonies that joined the revolution and the five that are now Canadian provinces that stayed loyal.

And for a lot of people, it was a defining feature of their culture and their life was the fact that they weren't American, even from those early days. And they had memories of all these attempts over the years when Americans thought maybe Canada wanted to be part of the United States and had been answered in the negative every time. So even in the 1840s, even before Confederation,

that was definitely a defining feature for a lot of people, many people who did care and would continue to be. It would be one of the reasons we ended up with Confederation was again a new wave of fears of invasion and annexation around the American Civil War. That was a central part even before we saw Canada as its own country or as quite the national sense of pride that a lot of people have now.

It was still kind of the Americans were right there, and they thought a lot about them and whether they wanted to be them or not. Well, okay, Dominic, let me follow up with you on the issue of if America had wanted to attack Canada, they had gone to war after all three and a half decades earlier in the War of 1812, if they had wanted to, as Thomas Jefferson said, a mere matter of marching,

come up and take us militarily, what was Jefferson said, a mere matter of marching, come up and take us militarily, what was the status of our military at this time and what kind of objection could we put up? Well, when they tried in 1812, despite all our patriotism around the celebration of 1812, the British made sure that they wouldn't do it. Like the loathing of the British troops came here to defend their northern colonies. And when there were thoughts of that during the American Civil War, they were tempered because the Americans were busy fighting south of the north, who was thinking maybe we could annex Canada to compensate for the loss of the south, you know, fought south and these were, this was

an idea that their military couldn't fight on two fronts. But my colleague here at Carleton, Frank Underhill, the public historian said many years ago, somewhere on Parliament Hill, there should be a statue to the Americans because it's thanks to their threat that we are what we are. And really to explain Confederation in 1867, you need the fear of the Civil War. Not only the fear of what was happening there and it maybe could happen to us, but also, you know, if we don't get our act together,

we might be annexed. And very much like now, these fears, there's nothing like these fears to bring Canadians together. Well, essentially, Jean Chrétien said the same thing at the Liberal Leadership Convention, right? He said we should put Donald Trump up for the Order of Canada,

given the way that he has unified the country against him and his country. Okay, Adam, how about this? Were there any policies that were put in place after this annexation, you know, talk of the time in the 1840s after all that happened? Were there policies put in place to make sure that Canada's sovereignty either as colonies or as a future country would be safeguarded. Well, yeah, the whole thing kind of fizzles out, in part because there is such overwhelming opposition to it. It's uniting these political rivals, reformers and Tories alike, people whose supporters have literally been

beating each other bloody in the street, very much opposed. And fizzles out too because there's just there's a good harvest that year things aren't as tough and there ends up being a new treaty with the United States. Reciprocity a bit of a mood toward free trade that helps alleviate some of those fears too. So it's more than sort of decades to come that... That's in the 1900s that the reciprocity business... Well actually there was a treaty in the years after in in the 1850s for a while, before the bigger debate in the early 1900s. And things have sort of shifted back and forth through our history.

And that more free trade with the United States helped in that moment bring some Canadians to think annexation wasn't as important a thing. And then the big ones, really, confederation, just a couple of decades later. The idea that by uniting these, what back then were just a series of British-Canadian colonies into the dominion of Canada, that we'd be better able to resist American expansionism and manifest destiny

was one of the sort of factors leading into it and then that 156 years as you say since of generations of Canadians making that choice kind of over and over again and strengthening Canadian culture as we go. Dominic can I get you to comment on that because that is clearly a through line throughout the last 200 years of whatever you have called north of the 49th parallel, whether it was Canada West, Canada East, Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Ontario, Quebec, Canada as a new nation in 1867. We have always wanted to resist becoming Americans.

Where does that come from? Well, there's a, you know, kind of general desire of people to own their own destiny. And for my patch of the place, French Canada is very interesting. Like in just before the American Revolution, there was the Quebec Act. Like the British knew that they had to give more to French Canadians to avoid them being tempted to join the South. And the Quebec Act guaranteed some rights for religion and language to French Canadians, so they never became the 14th colony. But there was a clear fear that they would. And a responsible government in 1848, again, giving stuff to them as a nation to have

some measure of control on their own destiny, went a long way. And again, confederation with their own province went a long way. So there's always this idea that they've got to give some autonomy to French Canadians to resist any temptation to weaken the unity of Canada. And during the free trade debate of Moroni, which ended up with the free trade agreement of 94, Rebecca is backed up in the majority, the free trade agreement because they didn't see that their culture would be threatened. So there's always also that the problem of

keeping French Canadians with English Canadians. And I also wanted to say that with Nixon raised tariffs in the early 70s, that led to Trudeau's new economic policies. So there's a lot of coming and going to keep unity going and to keep some measure of sovereignty for Quebecers and for Canada as a whole. Yes. Now, while we have maintained our view on that, and Adam will go to you on this, I mean, for 250 years or so, at various times, and we're going through one of them now, American leaders, some American leaders, have wanted to make us part of them. They have wanted to annex us. And for 250 years, we've been saying to them, go to hell.

Why don't they get the message? Well, for some it goes back deep into American history and that idea of manifest destiny and the idea that the United States is bound someday to control the continent. That was the big driving force in the 1800s. And the idea of American exceptionalism too. Certainly some have been quoted saying they wouldn't understand why you wouldn't want to be American. So I think some throughout American history have found Canadians a little baffling that

we do want to forge our own path. And it seemed like a settled issue for a very long time. It was a very frequent topic of conversation through from the American Revolution. One of the first things they did was head up and occupy Montreal, attack Quebec City through the War of 1812, the annexation manifesto, all the stuff we've been talking about today

up into the early 1900s, but then it seemed settled. So this is a new generation going back to some of these very old ideas. They talk about Trump being inspired by the McKinley Tariff from 1890, which some Americans were also seizing on as a chance to annex us. He says that was their best decade. Yeah, I think a lot of people would disagree, Canadians included. But it's an old idea that very unexpectedly has reared its head again. So there are new reasons, I think, for it happening now,

but one that echoes through history for sure. Well, let's compare those echoes. Dominique, how would you compare and contrast the way we responded, we, soon to be Canadians, officially as a country, back in the 1840s to this annexation manifesto, compare that to the way we are reacting today with this never 51 view that I think the vast, vast, vast majority of Canadians hold. Well, then we were very much stuck in European

politics, right? Canada was still a British colony. The wars in Europe were, you know, in many ways influencing our destiny. Alliances with indigenous people were very important. They still have, to some extent, loyalties to who from indigenous people counts a great deal. We also have a lot of populations that move about, the loyalists that left the United States to remain loyal to the crown and the culture, English-Canadian culture, from then on their churches and all that was different from the US. Now we have very different makeup. Our population is not as made up of European people.

And in many ways, it's new. It's got to be seen. And at the moment, we really don't have the similar outlook politically with the hyper-conservatism down the border and much more liberal views on refugees and all that here and on health care. And that also binds people in a way that was, did not exist now.

But these are new circumstances. There's a place where the past cannot tell us everything and we have to be very vigilant. And may I say last Friday, Trump had an edict on to change American history. And here in Canada, our views of how we do history are much more liberal. And I think these cultural values have a lot to do as well with probably what will be the next generation of defense of Canadian nationalism. Well, Adam, let me give you the last 20 seconds on this. What's the lesson today we can take from the annexation manifesto of all those years ago? I think it might be that there's always a surprising,

tiny number of Canadians who maybe do look to the South with envy, and some unlikely candidates have been open to the idea, but over and over again, throughout our history, you know, this is a province, a city, that we're founded to be homes for American refugees. Through our history, we have said no repeatedly and tried to set ourselves up as something

of a relatively safe haven for Americans who don't want to be Americans anymore as well. And that's a repeating theme throughout our past. Well, they say history doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme. And I guess this was one of the original rhymes. And I thank both of you for coming onto our program tonight and helping us out with this. Dominique Marshall, professor of Quebec and Canadian history at Carleton.

Adam Bunch, you can read his stuff on the Toronto Time Traveler Newsletter. Thank you for having me. Merci beaucoup, tout le monde. Thank you very much. Thank you.