Dominion

Genre: Historical

© 2025 Glen Munro. All rights reserved.
Dominion is an original work of authorship. No part of this story may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical reviews or scholarly work as permitted by copyright law.

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Chapter 1

Nations Before Borders

Long before the distant sails of European ships cut the horizon, long before foreign tongues attempted to name rivers and valleys already known by those who lived upon them, the Indigenous nations of North America had built societies of extraordinary complexity. Their governance was not the loose, informal leadership that European chroniclers often assumed, nor were their economies based on mere subsistence. These were nations in the fullest sense of the word—structured, strategic, and deeply interconnected.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which came to be known among outsiders as the Iroquois Confederacy, stood as one of the most sophisticated political entities in pre-contact North America. Its origins stretch back to somewhere between the mid-15th and early 17th centuries, a time when war among neighbouring nations was all too common. From this conflict emerged a remarkable experiment in governance—the Great Law of Peace—a constitution that bound together the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca nations (the Tuscarora joined later). Under this system, a council of leaders made decisions through consensus, a practice that required patience, persuasion, and an ability to see beyond immediate self-interest. This structure was not simply a way to maintain order among the member nations; it became a model of democratic governance that would later influence the political ideals of both the United States and Canada.

Beyond the Great Lakes and into the sweeping grasslands of the interior, the Plains Cree and the Blackfoot Confederacy upheld their own intricate systems of rule. Leadership among these nations was neither hereditary nor autocratic. Instead, authority shifted based on skill, wisdom, and the needs of the community. Warrior societies played a central role in governance, ensuring not just military readiness but also social cohesion. These societies, bound by rigorous codes of conduct, operated as law enforcement, decision-makers, and keepers of tradition. Political councils convened in large seasonal gatherings, where diplomacy, trade, and alliance-building took precedence over individual ambition.

To the west, where the dense rainforests of the Pacific coast met the crashing tide, the Haida, Tlingit, and Coast Salish peoples had long refined a system of hereditary leadership. Power was passed through noble bloodlines, but leadership was neither arbitrary nor unquestioned. Potlatch ceremonies, grand displays of wealth redistribution, reinforced social hierarchies while serving as economic engines, redistributing resources among clans and ensuring communal stability. The scope of their trade networks was astonishing, spanning from the California coast to the Alaskan Panhandle, carrying goods such as eulachon oil, carved cedar, and elaborately woven textiles.

In the heart of the continent, the Ojibwe and Anishinaabe nations controlled vast trade networks centuries before European traders arrived with their ledgers and fur contracts. Their extensive knowledge of river systems allowed them to transport goods across thousands of kilometres, long before the first European maps crudely sketched out the land’s contours. Fur, copper, and medicinal plants moved through these routes, carried in birchbark canoes that sliced through the water with remarkable efficiency. The economic networks that Indigenous nations had built would later become the framework upon which the European fur trade rested—a trade in which Indigenous trappers, guides, and traders would become indispensable intermediaries between two worlds.

But the movement of goods was only part of the story. These routes were also arteries of culture, diplomacy, and knowledge. Copper from the Great Lakes, prized for its durability and malleability, found its way into the hands of artisans along the Mississippi River. Obsidian, sharp as any steel blade, was transported from the volcanic heart of the Rockies to the eastern woodlands. Shells from the Atlantic, transformed into intricate wampum belts, carried messages of alliance and tribute across great distances. These networks, built over generations, connected not just economies but entire civilizations.

Europeans would later impose their own names upon these lands and their inhabitants, drawing borders where none had existed before. But the structures, the alliances, the roads of commerce and diplomacy—they had already been there. They had shaped the continent long before the first European footfall, and in many ways, they still do.

Chapter 2

The Naming of a Nation

The origins of the name Canada are embedded in the earliest encounters between Indigenous peoples and European explorers, a linguistic thread stretching across centuries of trade, conflict, and colonization. It is a name born not of conquest or decree, but of a simple misunderstanding—one that would come to define an entire nation. Long before European ships cut through the waters of the St. Lawrence River, the land was home to a diverse mosaic of Indigenous nations, each with its own languages, traditions, and territorial claims. Among them were the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, a people whose villages dotted the riverbanks, fortified by wooden palisades and surrounded by cultivated fields of corn and squash. Their largest settlements—Stadacona and Hochelaga—were thriving centres of trade and community, yet within a century of their first recorded encounter with Europeans, they would vanish from history, leaving only fragments of their existence behind.

In the summer of 1535, French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail on his second voyage to the New World under the commission of King Francis I of France. He had been tasked with finding a passage to Asia and securing new territories for the French crown. Instead, he found himself navigating the vast estuary of the St. Lawrence River, guided by two young Indigenous men, Taignoagny and Domagaya, whom he had taken to France during his first voyage the previous year. These two were the sons of Donnacona, the chief of Stadacona, and through them, Cartier gained his first real glimpse into the political and cultural landscape of the region.

As Cartier’s expedition neared Stadacona, the guides repeatedly used the word "kanata," which in their Laurentian Iroquoian language meant "village" or "settlement." To them, it was a simple, everyday word—nothing more than a way to refer to their home. But Cartier, misunderstanding its meaning, assumed that "Canada" was the name of the entire region surrounding the St. Lawrence River. In his writings, he referred to both Stadacona and Hochelaga as Canada, and from that moment, the name began to take root in European minds.

Cartier’s exploration of the St. Lawrence Valley reinforced this misconception, and by the time he returned to France, the term Canada had already begun appearing in his maps and records. His voyage did not yield the riches or trade routes he had hoped for, but it left behind something just as enduring: a name that would persist through the centuries, its meaning evolving alongside the land it described.

By 1545, European cartographers had fully embraced the name Canada to describe the lands Cartier had explored. It began appearing in French maps and documents, gradually replacing earlier designations for the region. Though it was originally used to refer only to the St. Lawrence Valley, the name’s reach expanded as French fur traders, missionaries, and settlers pushed deeper into the interior of North America. Over time, Canada became synonymous with New France, a vast but sparsely populated colony that stretched from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes and beyond.

Despite their prominence in Cartier’s accounts, the St. Lawrence Iroquoians vanished by the early 1600s, their villages abandoned, their people seemingly erased from the land they had occupied for centuries. By the time Samuel de Champlain arrived in 1608 to establish Quebec City, neither Stadacona nor Hochelaga remained.

Historians have long debated the reasons for their disappearance. Some theories suggest that they were decimated by European diseases, introduced through early contact with Cartier’s expeditions. Others argue that they fell victim to warfare, displaced or absorbed by the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, particularly the Mohawk, who were expanding their influence in the region. Another possibility is that climatic shifts and resource depletion made their way of life unsustainable, forcing them to migrate and integrate with other Indigenous groups.

Whatever the cause, their disappearance left a power vacuum in the St. Lawrence Valley. By the early 17th century, Algonquin-speaking nations and the Huron-Wendat had taken their place, becoming the key Indigenous trading partners of the French. Yet the name Canada, first spoken in the dialect of the lost Laurentian Iroquoians, remained—a linguistic ghost from a vanished people, now embedded in the identity of a new European colony.

As French colonization expanded, the term Canada shifted from being a vague geographic label to a political entity. By the mid-1600s, "le Canada" referred specifically to the French settlements along the St. Lawrence River—centred in Quebec, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal—while the broader French colonial holdings in North America were collectively called New France. The colony’s economy revolved around the fur trade, with Indigenous alliances and trade networks stretching deep into the interior.

French governors and intendant administrators ruled over Canada under the authority of the King of France, and by the early 18th century, it had grown into a crucial part of the French Empire. Yet, despite its expansion, it remained vulnerable to British ambitions.

The struggle for dominance in North America between Britain and France stretched across generations, its fault lines carved into the landscapes of what would become Canada. By the early eighteenth century, this contest had already transformed the lives of those living along the eastern seaboard, none more so than the Acadians, a people caught in the tides of empire. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, meant to bring an uneasy peace, forced France to cede Acadia—a vast territory that included much of modern Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island—to Britain. It was a transaction conducted in the chambers of European diplomacy, yet its consequences played out in the muddy marshlands and dense forests of the New World.

Though France retained Île Royale (Cape Breton Island) and Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island), the shift in sovereignty placed the predominantly French-speaking, Catholic Acadians under British rule, a change that would prove fateful. Unlike the Protestant settlers gradually arriving from New England and Britain, the Acadians had built their society over generations, shaping the land as much as it shaped them. They had mastered the art of marshland reclamation, erecting an elaborate system of dykes that transformed the coastal lowlands into fertile farmland. Their villages were close-knit, their traditions deeply rooted in the rhythms of land and sea. To them, allegiance to a distant monarch—whether French or British—was an abstract notion compared to their attachment to the land they had painstakingly cultivated.

Initially, the Acadians attempted to chart a course of neutrality. They agreed to conditional oaths of allegiance to the British Crown but refused to swear an unconditional oath that would require them to bear arms against France. British authorities viewed this reluctance with increasing suspicion, and as tensions escalated, neutrality became an impossible stance. The founding of Halifax in 1749 signalled Britain's intent to strengthen its hold on the region, and with it came a wave of military fortifications, including Fort Lawrence and Fort Beauséjour. These garrisons, bristling with cannons and manned by British regulars and colonial militia, underscored the growing pressure on the Acadians, who found themselves caught between imperial forces vying for control. At the same time, France bolstered its own defences at Louisbourg on Île Royale, a formidable stronghold designed to counter British ambitions. The Acadians, many of whom had familial and trade ties to the French bastion, were increasingly viewed by British officials as a liability—if not outright enemy sympathizers.

The outbreak of the Seven Years' War in 1756—known in North America as the French and Indian War—brought these tensions to a breaking point. Britain and its colonies clashed with France and its Indigenous allies in a struggle that would determine the fate of the continent. For the Acadians, the war spelled catastrophe. Even before formal hostilities began, British authorities, led by Governor Charles Lawrence, had grown convinced that the Acadians represented a threat to the security of the colony. Lawrence, a man of unyielding conviction, saw their refusal to take an unconditional oath as proof of their disloyalty and, in 1755, set in motion a policy that would reshape the Maritimes forever.

The Great Expulsion, or Le Grand Dérangement, began with ruthless efficiency. British troops, aided by New England militias, descended upon Acadian villages with orders to deport entire communities. Families were rounded up and herded onto ships, their homes and churches set ablaze to ensure they could never return. The process was brutal, chaotic, and indifferent to the suffering it caused. Parents were separated from children, husbands from wives. Cattle wandered aimlessly through the ruins of deserted farms, while fields—once so meticulously cultivated—were left to be reclaimed by the salt tides. Over 10,000 Acadians were forcibly removed from their homeland, their destinations uncertain and often grim.

Many were sent to British American colonies such as Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas, where they were met with suspicion and hostility. Some perished in overcrowded ships or from disease in the squalid conditions of their new surroundings. Others, finding themselves unwelcome in British-held territories, were eventually shipped to Louisiana, then under Spanish rule. There, their descendants became the Cajuns, a people who carried the cultural fragments of their Acadian past into a new world of swamps and bayous. Meanwhile, those who escaped deportation fled deep into the woods, seeking refuge among the Mi’kmaq and Maliseet or making perilous journeys to Quebec and Île Royale, hoping to remain within the orbit of French rule.

The aftermath of the expulsion reshaped the region. British authorities repopulated the Acadian farmlands with English-speaking settlers, primarily from New England, forever altering the demographics of the Maritimes. The rich dykelands, once the lifeblood of Acadian agriculture, now supported new communities that bore little resemblance to those that had come before. The scars of the deportation ran deep, not only for those who had been exiled but for the land itself, where the remnants of abandoned villages stood as silent witnesses to the upheaval.

Over time, some Acadians were permitted to return, though under strict conditions. They were often forced to settle in isolated areas, on less fertile land, and lived under the watchful eye of British authorities. Their communities endured, but they did so in a world irrevocably changed. The Great Expulsion had torn apart families, severed ancestral ties, and left an enduring wound in the history of French-English relations in North America. The echoes of that tragedy still resonate in the cultural and linguistic landscape of the Maritimes, where the Acadian identity, though battered, ultimately survived.

In 1763, following the Seven Years’ War, France was forced to cede nearly all of its North American territories to Britain under the Treaty of Paris. Canada—once the heart of New France—was now under British control, reorganized as the Province of Quebec. However, the name persisted. Even as British authorities reshaped the colony’s governance and legal system, the word Canada remained deeply embedded in the consciousness of its French-speaking inhabitants.

The war that had begun with musket fire on the village greens of Lexington and Concord soon spread across the continent, drawing in men and empires alike. For the revolutionaries, it was a war of independence, a struggle against what they saw as tyranny. For those who remained loyal to the Crown, it was a war of survival—one that would ultimately reshape the lands to the north in ways no one had foreseen.

As the Thirteen Colonies severed their ties with Britain, the victors wrote their own story, one of triumph and self-determination. But for tens of thousands, the end of the war meant exile. These were the Loyalists—merchants who had done well under British rule, farmers who feared losing their land, former soldiers who had fought in red coats, and Indigenous allies who had placed their trust in the Crown. When the last British strongholds fell, their loyalty became a liability. Mobs looted their homes, stripped them of property, and in some cases, drove them out at gunpoint. With no place left in the new republic, they turned north.

The numbers swelled quickly. An estimated 50,000 Loyalists fled to British North America, their arrival altering the trajectory of its history. Nova Scotia bore the initial brunt of the influx, its towns and farmlands struggling to accommodate the sudden swell of newcomers. The colony’s older settlers, many of whom had been there for generations, resented the newcomers who arrived with British promises of land and compensation. Tensions ran high, and some Loyalists moved on, pushing deeper into the interior or along the St. Lawrence River.

To ease the strain, the British government carved out a new colony—New Brunswick—in 1784, severing it from Nova Scotia to give the Loyalists their own political and economic base. This was not merely an administrative reshuffling; it was a statement that those who had remained faithful to the Crown would not be abandoned. The land was divided into grants, with officers and prominent Loyalists receiving the largest tracts. Ordinary settlers, including former soldiers, received smaller plots—many of which proved difficult to farm, choked with dense forest and poor soil.

Farther west, the waves of Loyalist migration reached the shores of the Great Lakes, where they transformed what was then a sparsely populated outpost of Quebec into a growing settlement that would later become Upper Canada. Here, they introduced familiar institutions—elected assemblies, township divisions, and British-style courts—laying the foundation for what would eventually become Ontario. Some of these settlers had fought in Loyalist regiments during the war and were granted land as a reward for their service. Others, disillusioned with revolutionary ideals, sought to recreate the ordered society they had lost.

But it was not only British Loyalists who reshaped the land. Among them were Black Loyalists—enslaved and free men who had sided with the British after the Crown promised freedom to those who took up arms against the revolutionaries. They, too, arrived in Nova Scotia, hoping for the liberty they had been promised. What they found was a land that was often unwelcoming, where prejudice and economic hardship left many struggling to survive. Some eventually resettled in Sierra Leone, forming the colony of Freetown, but others remained, carving out communities that would endure for generations.

The Loyalist migration was more than a movement of people; it was a transfer of ideas, institutions, and ambitions. These exiles, bitter from their losses yet determined to rebuild, shaped the future of British North America. They entrenched British governance, reinforced colonial ties to the empire, and laid the groundwork for an identity distinct from both Britain and the new United States. In the wake of revolution, they had been cast out, but in their exile, they built something new.

By the late 18th century, British Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution had begun settling in large numbers in the former French colony. In response to growing tensions between English and French settlers, the British government passed the Constitutional Act of 1791, dividing Quebec into Upper Canada (modern Ontario) and Lower Canada (modern Quebec). This move was meant to accommodate the cultural and linguistic differences between the two populations, but it also reinforced the use of Canada as a political identifier within British North America.