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United Empire Loyalists

Americans settled in Canada because

they opposed the creation of the republic

Many of Canada’s early non-native settlers came here because they rejected the American way. In 1775, the colonists in America took up arms against Britain. They wanted to be independent from what they saw as the misrule of Britain’s King George III and his government.

Others, however, remained loyal to the monarch. Between 1780 and 1800, 46,000 of these British Empire Loyalists came north to settle in Canada. At the time, Canada (British North America as it was then known) was a colony under British rule. The Loyalists wanted to live under a constitutional monarchy not the republican system of the United States.

About a quarter of them settled in what was to become Ontario and their memory remains today in the province’s motto: “Ut incepit fidelis sic permanet” - “Loyal she began, loyal she remains.”

The Loyalists and their descendants had a strong influence on the way in which Canada was created. They rejected what they called the “mob rule” of republicanism in favour of parliamentary government under a monarch.

ADMS

On a wall on the second floor of Queen’s Park (above), the Ontario Legislative Building, a plaque reads:

“When United Empire Loyalists who had  ‘adhered to the Crown’ during the American Revolution and, in most cases, served in volunteer regiments, came to settle in this province in the 1780's, the region was largely uninhabited. These Loyalists, all of whom had suffered persecution and confiscation of property, were granted land in the vicinity of the Bay of Quinte and the Upper St. Lawrence, Niagara, and Detroit Rivers. They laid the foundations of a new province. It was largely because of their presence that a form of self-government, based upon British law and institutions, was established in Upper Canada when the province was created in 1791. By then the Loyalists numbered about 10,000.”

© Canada and the World, December 2008

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United Empire Loyalists Association of Canada