Annual UCL Quebec Lecture: The Rise and Fall of French Canadian Loyalism

Damien-Claude Bélanger (University of Ottawa) - From the 1760 conquest of New France to the early twentieth century, a loyalist seam can be found in French Canadian thought and writing. Leading clerics and laymen expressed a sincere devotion to the Crown, to British rule, and to British institutions. They believed that the British Conquest had been providential in nature; that it had been ordained by God and that it had proven to be a fortunate event. This lecture considers the nature of French Canadian loyalism, as well as the factors that brought about its emergence and its eventual decline.

D.C. Bélanger is an Associate Professor of Canadian history at the University of Ottawa and the co-founder of Mens : revue d’histoire intellectuelle et culturelle. A graduate of the Université de Montréal and McGill, his research interests include French Canadian intellectual history and Canadian-American relations. He is the author of two monographs, Prejudice and Pride: Canadian Intellectuals Confront the United States, 1891-1945 (University of Toronto Press, 2011) and Thomas Chapais, historien (Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, forthcoming), and is currently working on a history of loyalism in French Canada.