Chapter 2: The English Colonial Period and Bytown (1759-1855)
Introduction to Season 2
The second chapter of the history of Ottawa begins with the Fall of New France to the English in 1759 and continues until City of Ottawa is proclaimed on 1 January 1855. During that time, the United States became an independent nation and tried twice to invade what’s now Canada. English settlers moved into the Ottawa Valley, constructed the Rideau Canal, created a series of settlements, particularly Bytown and Hull, experienced intercommunal discord between English, French, Indigenous, Catholic, and Protestant, built city infrastructure, including a railroad and incorporated as a city three times in five years.
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Episode 1: Indigenous Relations
As the French withdraw from North America and Nouvelle France fades into memory, the English assert their new role as the preeminent European power and face resistance from various Iroquois and Anishinaabe peoples. This culminates in Pontiac’s War and the separate peace signed by the different nations of the Indigenous alliance. For references, look here.
Episode 2: The Quebec Act
Cited as one of the so-called “Intolerable Acts” that justified the American Declaration of Independence, this act was intended to create a balanced compromised between the French population and the English ascendancy in the former French colony. While it empowered certain aspects of Quebec society, it also limited participation in the government by propertied citizens, creating a centralized and enlarged province, without the democratic guarantees that normally existed in British colonies. For a reading list, check here.
Episode 3: The Revolution Next Door
Several colonies of the future United States of America rebel against the Crown, attempting to create an independent nation. While some colonies rebel, others do not, and the Continental Congress attempts to spread revolution into all British colonies in North America, by invading Quebec. For references, see here.
Episode 4: The Loyalists Come North
Loyalist settlements and land grants extend from their base on the Saint Laurence and Lake Ontario, up the Cataraqui and Rideau Rivers, in the direction of Ottawa. This movement created a long series communities along the Rideau Waterway, many of which still stand today. The first settlers enter the Ottawa area. For more reading, click here.
Episode 5: The Loyalists Approach Ottawa
Loyalist settlements and land grants extend from their base on the Saint Laurence and Lake Ontario, up the Cataraqui and Rideau Rivers, in the direction of Ottawa. This movement created a long series communities along the Rideau Waterway, many of which still stand today. The first settlers enter the Ottawa area. For more reading, click here.
Episode 6: Upper Canada
The Constitutional Act of 1791 divided Canada into Upper and Lower Canada. This was to be especially important for the Ottawa Valley, as the north shore would be administered by one political system, and the south by another. This meant that the two provinces would also have different populations with different forms of local governance, with Lower Canada continuing the old seigneurial system, and Upper Canada adopting a township-based system of development. For references, click here.
Episode 7: From the Outside In
European settlements continue to approach what would become Ottawa, not only by Ango-Americans from the south, but also a very different system of land-tenure and settlement coming up the Ottawa River from Lower Canada. This would create a hybrid series of settlements along the Ottawa Valley, the legacy of which can still be seen in in the eastern stretches of the Valley, approaching Montreal. For more information, click here.
Episode 8: The Squire of Hull
Philemon Wright of Woburn, Massachusetts, moved his family and his household up north to Lower Canada and settled a new canton in what would become Hull Township, then the City of Gatineau. He was more than just another farmer, and set about planning a city and a family empire in the settlement that he named Columbia Falls, but people called Wrightstown. This was the first significant European settlement on the Ottawa River, pre-dating Ottawa by decades. For references, click here.
Episodes 9 & 10: The War of 1812
In 1812, the United States and England leapt enthusiastically and unpreparedly into war. The result was a conflict that solidified the relationship between the two powers, with the future Canada also becoming a normalized polity in the Americans. For further reading, click here.
Episode 11: John By
John By was born in London and spent his life building and repairing canals and fortresses. The feather in his cap of his career was to be the strategic Rideau Canal, one of the empire’s largest civil engineering projects at the time. He had a life with its fair share of tragedies and glories, but he was to end his career in disgrace and isolation, despite the redemption of his name in the city that he helped to found. See further reading here.
Episode 12: The Rideau Canal
The Rideau Waterway runs more than 200 kms from Lake Ontario to the Ottawa River, bypassing the Saint Laurence River, and allowing the British to access the Great Lakes without the dangers posed by the River’s chokepoint. This UNESCO site contains 47 locks at 24 stations, and was a marvel of the age. Learn more about it here.
Episode 13: The Rideau Purchase
The land of the Rideau River and the Ottawa once belonged exclusively to the Algonquin, though several other Anishinaabe traders would travel through the area as well. The two treaties that made up the Rideau Purchase created the current land tenureship of the Ottawa area. For more details about the two treaties that governed the Rideau Purchase, click here.
Episode 14: The Rocky Road to Kingston
In this episode, we read through the diary of a traveller as he wends his way through the Rideau Valley towards Kingston and back in February of 1830. We look at what he experienced along the way. The authors commentary about Loyalists and Yankees, wilderness and agriculture is a valuable resource in looking at how the normal person would experience life in the 1830s. References are here, map is courtesy of “Old Ontario Series”.
Episode 15: The Earl of Dalhousie
George Ramsay, the ninth Earl of Dalhousie was a Scottish aristocrat, general, and governor general of Canada. Bytown was founded on his watch, and the first shovels went into the ground on the Rideau Canal and Parliament Hill. His feud with John LeBreton is what sent LeBreton flats onto its trajectory, and that’s why there are so many namesakes of him across Ottawa, as well as the Maritimes and elsewhere in Ontario. For references, click here.
Episode 16: The Timber Town
Lumber was the third cash producer of the area that would become Ottawa after the fur trade and agriculture. Fortunes were made and lost with trees, and bringing them to market, especially when the Napoleonic Wars cut off England’s supply from Russia. It seemed like a never-ending source of wealth, as lumber literally grew in trees, but the mechanics of bringing sawn lumber to London was a complicated journey that was to begin in the unregulated wilderness of the Ottawa Valley. For references, see here.
Episode 17: Thomas MacKay
Thomas MacKay was a Scottish mason, industrialist, politician, and founder of New Edinburgh, among other things. He helped to build the Rideau Canal and invested his earnings in transforming Bytown from a work camp into a town. The significance of his legacy rivals that of his old boss, John By. For references, check here.
Chapter 18: Bytown 1826-1836
This episode walks through Bytown in its first decade. Starting in Wrightstown, we cross the Union Bridge to Richmond Landing, then into Upper Bytown, the military precinct, Lowertown, New Edinburgh, and Janeville, looking at the early town as it first developed. References here.
