The self-contained life of each community and each farm pointed to the lack of good means of transport.New Brunswick and the Canadas were fortunate in the possession of great lake and river systems, but these were available only in summer and were often impeded by falls and rapids.On these waters the Indian bark canoe had given way to the French bateau, a square-rigged flat-bottomed boat, and after the war the bateau shared the honors with the larger Durham boat brought in from "the States."Canadians took their full share in developing steamship transportation.In 1809, two years after Fulton's success on the Hudson, John Molson built and ran a steamer between Montreal and Quebec.The first vessel to cross the Atlantic wholly under steam, the Royal William, was built in Quebec and sailed from that port in 1833.Following and rivaling American enterprise, side-wheelers, marvels of speed and luxury for the day, were put on the lakes in the thirties.Canals were built, the Lachine in 1821-25, the Welland around Niagara Falls in 1824-29, and the Rideau, as a military undertaking, in 1826-32, all in response to the stimulus given by De Witt Clinton, who had begun the "Erie Ditch" in 1817.On land, road making made slower progress.The blazed trail gave way to the corduroy road, and the pack horse to the oxcart or the stage.Upper Canada had the honor of inventing, in 1835, the plank road, which for some years thereafter became the fashion through the forested States to the south.But at best neither roads nor vehicles were fitted for carrying large loads from inland farms to waterside markets.
Money and banks were as necessary to develop intercourse as roads and canals.Until after the War of 1812, when army gold and army bills ran freely, money was rare and barter served pioneer needs.
For many years after the war a jumble of English sovereigns and shillings, of Spanish dollars, French crowns, and American silver, made up the currency in use, circulating sometimes by weight and sometimes by tale, at rates that were constantly shifting.The position of the colonies as a link between Great Britain and the United States, was curiously illustrated in the currency system.The motley jumble of coins in use were rated in Halifax currency, a mere money of account or bookkeeping standard, with no actual coins to correspond, adapted to both English and United States currency systems.The unit was the pound, divided into shillings and pence as in England, but the pound was made equal to four dollars in American money; it took 1pound 4s.4d.in Halifax currency to make 1 pound sterling.Still more curious was the influence of American banking.Montreal merchants in 1808 took up the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and after several vain attempts founded the Bank of Montreal in 1817, with those features of government charter, branch banks, and restrictions as to the proportion of debts to capital and the holding of real property which had marked Hamilton's plan.But while Canadian banks, one after another, were founded on the same model and throughout adhered to an asset-secured currency basis, Hamilton's own country abandoned his ideas, usually for the worse.
In the social life of the cities the influence of the official classes and, in Halifax and Quebec, of the British redcoats stationed there was all pervading.In the country the pioneers took what diversions a hard life permitted.There were "bees" and "frolics," ranging from strenuous barn raisings, with heavy drinking and fighting, to mild apple parings or quilt patchings.
There were the visits of the Yankee peddler with his "notions,"his welcome pack, and his gossip.Churches grew, thanks in part to grants of government land or old endowments or gifts from missionary societies overseas, but more to the zeal of lay preachers and circuit riders.Schools fared worse.In Lower Canada there was an excellent system of classical schools for the priests and professional classes, and there were numerous convents which taught the girls, but the habitants were for the most part quite untouched by book learning.In Upper Canada grammar schools and academies were founded with commendable promptness, and a common school system was established in 1816, but grants were niggardly and compulsion was lacking.Even at the close of the thirties only one child in seven was in school, and he was, as often as not, committed to the tender mercies of some broken-down pensioner or some ancient tippler who could barely sign his mark.There was but little administrative control by the provincial authorities.The textbooks in use came largely from the United States and glorified that land and all its ways in the best Fourth-of-July manner, to the scandal of the loyal elect.
The press was represented by a few weekly newspapers; only one daily existed in Upper Canada before 1840.
Against this background there developed during the period 1815-41a tense constitutional struggle which was to exert a profound influence on the making of the nation.The stage on which the drama was enacted was a small one, and the actors were little known to the world of their day, but the drama had an interest of its own and no little significance for the future.
In one aspect the struggle for self-government in British North America was simply a local manifestation of a world-wide movement which found more notable expression in other lands.After a troubled dawn, democracy was coming to its own.In England the black reaction which had identified all proposals for reform with treasonable sympathy for bloodstained France was giving way, and the middle classes were about to triumph in the great franchise reform of 1832.In the United States, after a generation of conservatism, Jacksonian democracy was to sweep all before it.
