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The U. S. Constitution and Canadian History and Culture

© J. M. Bridgeman

Canada exists because of the United States and in reaction to the U.S. Constitution. After 1763, both nations (their earlier eastern seaboard versions) were under British rule. In 1776, when the thirteen colonies could take the imperial abuse no longer, they declared their independence. However, in the Quebec Act of 1774, Great Britain had guaranteed French language and culture would be maintained. Thus, Quebec declined to join the revolution and British North America remained loyal during the American War of Independence. If this had not happened, Canada as a bilingual nation would not exist today.

The U.S. Constitution of 1787 clearly placed the power with "we, the people." By giving the elected legislators primary power, the U.S. Constitution set up a system which risked becoming a tyranny of the people, a system which could permit the domination or abuse of minorities by the majority. In the decade after the war ended, citizens who held alternative views no longer felt welcome in their homeland. One hundred thousand left the newly independent states--half of this number immigrating north to the remaining British-controlled territories of Nova Scotia and Quebec. For the first time, with these "United Empire Loyalists," BNA became a refuge for ex-Americans. The Loyalist exodus suggests a gap between rhetoric and reality in the new American nation. Citizens were free to believe what they chose to believe. However, if they did not believe in a republic, they were better off leaving. This "my way or the highway" attitude lives in phrases such as "un-American activity" and in U.S. foreign policy which punishes non-democracies such as Cuba.

Within one man's lifetime (four score and seven years minus eleven), the new American democracy was wracked by civil war. BNA watched a young nation destroy itself. From an outsider's perspective, the American Civil War was a result of the U.S. Constitution. In one sense, it was another dispute about majority rule versus minority rights. The compromises before the Civil War attempted to balance "slave states" with "free," to avoid the inevitable tipping of the balance when the mostly Northern "free states" would outvote the mostly Southern "slave states" and attempt to impose laws and beliefs. Or the Civil War was a battle between "states' rights" and "federal power" (another constitutional issue), with the federal winning. As the U.S. Constitution decrees that states must honour the laws of other states even if they disagree, the second influx of American refugees arrived in Canada via the underground railway.

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