Maritime Provinces Travel Guide

The 40,000 United Empire Loyalists who streamed north to British Canada in the aftermath of the American War of Independence accounted for a sizeable chunk of the New England population. Many had been subjected to reprisals by their revolutionary neighbours and most arrived virtually penniless. All but 8000 settled in the Maritime provinces, where they and their descendants formed the kernel of powerful commercial and political cliques. As a result, the Loyalists have frequently - and not altogether unfairly - been pilloried as arch-conservatives, but in fact they were far from docile subjects: indeed shortly after their arrival in Canada they were pressing the British for their own elective assemblies. Crucially, they were also to instil in their new country an abiding dislike for the American version of republican democracy - and this has remained a key sentiment threading through Canadian history.

Before their enforced exile, the Loyalists conducted a fierce debate with their more radical compatriots, but whereas almost everyone today knows the names of the revolutionary leaders, the Loyalists are forgotten. The Loyalist argument had several strands - loyalty to Britain, fear of war, the righteousness of civil obedience and, rather more subliminally, the traditional English Tory belief that men are most free living in a hierarchical society where roles are clearly understood. One of their most articulate spokesmen was Daniel Leonard, who during his epistolatory debate with John Adams wrote: "A very considerable part of the men of property in this province, are at this day firmly attached to the cause of government … [and will] … if they fight at all, fight under the banners of loyalty … And now, in God's name, what is it that has brought us to this brink of destruction? Has not the government of Great Britain … been a nursing mother to us? Has she not been indulgent almost to a fault?… Will not posterity be amazed, when they are told that the present destruction took its rise from a three penny duty on tea, and call it a more unaccountable frenzy … than that of the witchcraft?"