Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla would have been spared any Separatist unpleasantness during their visit to Montreal on Tuesday, however minuscule and manipulated, if in the years prior to the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 the will of the people had prevailed. Quebec would have had joined the thirteen American colonies in their forthcoming revolt against Charles’ ancestor, King George the Third, Queen Victoria’s grandfather. Quebec would have become an American state like the thirteen others, and the French along the St. Lawrence River would have been assimilated as they were in Louisiana and elsewhere. Separatists would have been unheard of.
In the 1770s the ordinary population of Quebec – not the bishops, not the seigneurs [landowners] – was highly receptive to the psychological warfare conducted by George Washington, John Adams and many others urging them to shake off the yoke of the hated conqueror and to make common cause with them in the name of “Liberty.” The few dozen enterprising American merchants who had gone north from Boston, Albany and New York after the English “conquest” in 1763 – only twelve years before – had the same grievances against British “tyranny” as their compatriots in the south and did not have to be wooed.
In the Quebec Act of 1774 the British granted Quebeckers the right to speak French, have their own religion, education and laws, because they needed their support in a possible showdown with the thirteen colonies. They gave the bishops and the seigneurs remunerative privileges so that they would identify their interests with those of the British crown – all this at a time when Catholics at home in England were excluded from positions of power and not allowed in the House of Commons. Making arrangements of this sort with the top people in the countries they acquired was the way they built their empire, even if there was no danger of imminent revolt.
The British Governor Guy Carleton was very much aware of the seditious activities going on under his nose and did his best to prevent the spreading of propaganda from the south. Habeas Corpus and the rights of free speech and free assembly were suspended, causing bitter complaints by the merchants. In Quebec City, in Montreal and in the villages along the St. Lawrence, even the parish priests went over to the cause of “Liberty,” however vigorously the bishops denounced the American message as dangerously anti-Catholic.
From a strategic point of view the Rock of Quebec was of immense importance as the northern point from which a military offensive against the rebels could be launched and, indeed, in a preventive action to prevent that, the revolutionary army laid siege to Quebec, under Major General Richard Montgomery, in the winter of 1775-1776. They failed to take it. Montreal, however was occupied. Among those chosen to win over the population was Benjamin Franklin who came, accompanied by a Jesuit priest. A consequence of his visit was the introduction of printing and the launching of the Montreal Gazette.
In the end the Americans failed and the British won. For their victory there cannot be any reason other than their skill in using power. Any democratic election would have given the victory to the Americans.
If they had won, Charles and Camilla would have been received in the American city of Montreal on Tuesday with the same courtesy and respect as they would have been in Washington.
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
and if the people of Canada were given a choice today, not whether to join the US but to give up the monarchy, how would they vote?
the problem (if one wants to get rid of the monarchy in Canada, not so much if one does not) is that one would have to present alternatives – and the several alternatives could cancel themselves out. For a fair vote one would need a run-off to ensure that the final choice had more than 50% support (and a constitutional amendment needs a good deal more than that.)
OTOH if the people of England had had a vote in 1660, they might have wanted another Protector instead of the return of the monarchy there – and Charles Hannover/Windsor’s family would still be speaking German.
Easy. The prime minister would appoint the head of state, as he does now the head of state’s representative.
And if you don’t like that – let the members of the Order of Canana vote. on a list presented by the comopanions of the Order.
Or the Couch Board. The list prepared by the recipients of ther Couch Award.
The other day the historian Desmond Morton opined that if the French navy had sailed up the St. Lawrnce it could have re-taken Quebec and today Quebec would be part of France, like St. Pierre and Miquelon.
Rubbish.
Admiral Hawke had defeated the French Navy in the bay of Biscay, in a wiolent storm, and it was in no shaope to challenge the Royal Navy.
The French wanted Matinique and might have traded for it at the end of the Seven Years War.
And Napoleon would have sold QUebec to the US, as he did Louisiana, to finance his wars in Europe.
You’re right, of course. Even if the French Navy had been intact, they wouldn’t have been given the orders to retake Quebec. After 1763 they were sulking and whatever there was of a French colonial middle-class went home. They were good at exploring North America but not at colonizing it.
The British also allowed an influx of Jansenist priests to Quebec after the Revolution, thus deepening the gap between Quebec society and the European enlightenment. Trudeau understood this well. Abbe Groulx said it was God’s will that New France should fall to the English because it saved the colony from a worse fate – Robespierre and the Jacobins.
My one friend close to the inner circle of the Church in Quebec – Father Gregory Baum – would replt to you that Abbé Groulx would turn in his grtave if he knew what happened to his church in the last ten years. Father Robespierre has taken over.
There’s an interesting parlour game, or speculation for self-satisfied intellectuals: what significant leadership figures are now spinning in their graves because of subsequent events, and which do we contemplate doing so with the greatest pleasure?
I suspect that l’abbé Groulx would have run out of torque by now, with the secularization of Quebec in the past 40+ years. (The cover story of l’Actualité this week is “vive le Québec laïque!”)