Jean-Philip D. Warren is a master’s student in 19th century Canadian history at Université du Québec à Montréal. This guest column is a rebuttal to Blood & soil vs post-nationalism misses Canada’s real identity by Dimpee Brar.The columns of the Western Standard have recently been the theatre of a debate on Canada’s foundation and identity — a debate opposing, one might say, two branches of the Canadian right: the liberal and the nationalist. This article offers a Quebecois response to a liberal interpretation of that founding, one which, I would argue, obscures its essential character: a pragmatic — and fragile — political compromise between two founding peoples.Among the arguments advanced, the claim is made that Canada’s true founding lies not in Confederation, but earlier, in the Report on the Affairs of British North America, which led to the Act of Union of 1840, merging Upper and Lower Canada (nowadays Ontario and Quebec) into a single political entity. This moment is indeed a crucial component in the constitutional development of what would become modern Canada. It may even be regarded as a significant precondition of Confederation, but not in the sense intended.The Durham Report did not found Canada; it proposed to resolve what it described as “two nations warring in the bosom of a single state” by eliminating one of them as a political and cultural reality. Its objective was not compromise, but assimilation. If it influenced subsequent political developments, it is largely in the resistance it provoked and in the limits it revealed. Canada was not built upon Durham’s principles, but rather in opposition to them, through pragmatic political alliances between French Canadian and Anglo-Canadian leaders.But first, who was Durham? John Lambton was a British Whig who became Governor of British North America during the final stages of the Rebellions of 1837–1838. He was sent to investigate the political situation surrounding these largely liberal rebellions and to recommend the necessary reforms. While his arrival was, at first, encouraging for the French Canadian Patriotes — who, as reformists, saw him as a potential ally — he quickly showed that he was there not to bring justice, but to serve imperial interests. His reading of the rebellions closely resembled that of the Chateau Clique elite; he made little effort to engage with French Canadian leaders in order to understand their grievances and demands. What he saw, above all, was a conflict between two peoples, largely setting aside its political and democratic dimensions..In response to this conflict, he recommended two major measures: the union of Upper and Lower Canada, and the introduction of responsible government — a system of government central to the Westminster model, in which the executive is accountable to an elected legislature and must retain its confidence to remain in office. By gradually placing French Canadians — “a people with no history, and no literature,” as he wrote — in a position of political and demographic minority, he hoped they would assimilate into Anglo-Canadian society. Lord Durham did not seek to abolish “race” as a political principle; rather, he aimed to erase one of the founding peoples of Canada as a distinct political force. The British government adopted the union but refused at first to implement responsible government.This situation was not well received by the French Canadian elites — who had already opposed the idea of union in the past — since it marginalized the French language and aimed at their assimilation. A former radical Patriote turned moderate, Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine emerged as French Canada’s leader and pragmatically accepted the political reality: the union was there to stay. He sought instead to make use of British institutions in the interest of his national community and formed an alliance with the Upper Canada politician Robert Baldwin. This partnership can be seen as the first pragmatic compromise between the two founding peoples. It restored French as an official language and ultimately led, in 1848, to the establishment of responsible government. In this compromise, La Fontaine and the other French Canadian leaders had one primary goal: to ensure the survival of their nation.Under the Union, the Province of Canada was merged under a single parliament, but while it was, on paper, a legislative union, it functioned de facto as a federation. Power was exercised through an informal dual leadership, with one leader from Canada West (Upper Canada) and one from Canada East (Lower Canada), as a means of appeasing both former provinces and maintaining this pragmatic compromise. Over time, however, the colony became increasingly difficult to govern and administer. This situation, alongside the fear of American expansionism, led to debates over the establishment of Confederation, which produced another alliance — this time between the Canada West conservative leader John A. Macdonald and the Canada East Bleu (conservative) leader and former Patriote George-Étienne Cartier. Both were opposed to radical liberalism and skeptical of American republicanism. They sought to build a nation both rooted in French Canadian religious, cultural, and institutional traditions and loyal to the British Crown and its institutions..The foundation of Canada was not laid in the Durham Report, nor in abstract liberal theories as Brar suggests. It was built through pragmatic, conservative compromises, rooted in the reality of its two founding peoples — French and British — and the pre-Confederation provinces. La Fontaine and Baldwin demonstrated that French Canadians could survive by working within British institutions. Later, Macdonald and Cartier showed that lasting stability required alliances that recognized both nations and provinces, ensuring that political power and responsibility were shared between them.From the co-leadership of the Province of Canada to the federal structures of Confederation, the Canadian project has always been conservative at its core: cautious of radical change, and firmly opposed to the liberal, majoritarian, expansionist model of the United States. Its goal was not to erase one people for the sake of another, but to protect and preserve the founding nations, while maintaining a practical balance between the provinces.In short, Canada’s true foundation lies in the negotiation, compromise, and survival of its founding peoples and provinces alike. It is a country built not on ideology alone, but on pragmatic statecraft that safeguarded nationhood, particularly in the eyes of the French Canadian nation, and aimed to ensure a stable federation. This pact — between nations and provinces — has faded over the decades, but it should remain at the heart of Canadian identity, a compromise that valued order, continuity, and the preservation of its founding peoples above all. It was the erosion of this pact that gave rise to French Canadian resentment and to Quebec’s desire for independence. But that is another discussion.Jean-Philip D. Warren is a master’s student in 19th century Canadian history at Université du Québec à Montréal.
