America's 1775 invasion of Quebec ended in retreat. Trump should ponder that
National Post, 6 July 2025
French-Canadien Catholics backed British forces to defend Quebec City from an invading American army
Our respective national days were a bit more complicated this year, with Canadians who usually extend good wishes to our American friends at their barbecues being a bit more reticent to do so. South of the border they began the countdown to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.
As the various semiquincentennials of the 1770s roll around, it is good to remember the Canadian dimension of the American Revolution — and how our founding differed from theirs. The American founding threatened the very existence of what would become Canada. Perhaps the incumbent American president, should he be aware of it, looks back upon that fondly.
By the early 1770s, relations between London and the colonists in the future United States had deteriorated. The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) was sometimes considered the first “world war” as it involved several major powers. Britain had triumphed over France at the Plains of Abraham (1759), but the war had impoverished the imperial exchequer. Having suffered many deaths, it was time for taxes. London’s tax and tariff policies stirred up resentment in America, leading to the Boston Tea Party in late 1773.
In 1774, London decided to tighten the screws in response, passing the “Coercive Acts.” The punitive measures regulated Boston harbour, limited the authority of Massachusetts, mandated some trials in Britain for alleged offences in America, and provided for the quartering of troops in private buildings. In the same legislative session, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, which enlarged the territory of Quebec into the Ohio territory and permitted linguistic, civil law and religious rights to the French Catholic majority.
The Americans decried all these as the “Intolerable Acts.” Opposition was galvanized and the first Continental Congress met later that year.
American high school history books (TikTok videos?) tell the story in part, namely that the Continental Congress articulated in 1774 the grievances against King George III — no taxation without representation, the right to trial by jury, etc …
What is usually left out in the telling is the objection to the Quebec Act, which The Declaration of Independence tells us was also considered intolerable for “establishing the Roman Catholic religion, in the province of Quebec, abolishing the equitable system of English laws, and erecting a tyranny there, to the great danger (from so total a dissimilarity of religion, law and government) of the neighboring British colonies, by the assistance of whose blood and treasure the said country was conquered from France.”
Having French Catholics with civil rights — more than Catholics had in Britain itself at the time! — was considered a “great danger” to the “neighbouring British colonies” — America. Popish contamination was creeping closer. Tyranny would soon follow.
It was not a matter only of heated rhetoric. The American Revolutionary War began in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord. Soon after George Washington was appointed first commander of the Continental Army, the founding of which in June 1775 was marked by the military parade in Washington last month.
Within months, Gen. Washington moved troops north to attack Quebec, partly motivated by the hope that French Canadiens might join the Americans and turn against the British, reversing the results of the “Battle of Quebec” 1759. Instead, French Catholics rejected an alliance with the anti-Catholic American revolutionaries, and the British prevailed that winter in the “Battle of Quebec” 1775.
The 250th anniversary of that battle this fall is a salutary occasion for Canadians to recall that the future existence of Canada as a continental country was in peril then, and was preserved in part by toleration for the religious liberty of French Catholics.
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