Family Compact

This name was given to the high Tory political and social elite of Upper Canada. The land grants that were given in the early 19 century served the well established and respectable classes well. In addition to their land claims, this group controlled the seats in the two councils and most of those in the elective assembly. This political control ensured that the Anglican Church was the only benefactor of the Clergy Reserves and denied financial support for the public education system

Fenian Raids (1866-1870)

This series of attacks on Canada was led by the Fenian Brotherhood made up mostly of New York (Irish immigrants). Their plan was to invade Canada and other British possessions forcing Britain to negotiate the independence of Ireland. They were able to capture Fort Erie before withdrawing. The failure of these raids was due to the Canadian militia’s resistance and lack of unification with the Fenian organization. The threat of the Fenians encouraged support for the Confederation Movement.

William Stevens Fielding (1848-1929)

He was a Liberal Premier of Nova Scotia. In 1896 he became the finance minister in Laurier’s administration introducing a two-tier tariff system answering the needs of farmers for a low tariff while still maintaining some high rates to protect manufacturers.

This is the title of the poem written by John McCrae. McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario, on November 30, 1872. As a boy he soon showed an interest in poetry and was an able scholar. Unusual for most children, he attended high school, the Guelph Collegiate Institute, and won a scholarship to the University of Toronto. He also followed his father, Lieutenant-Colonel David McCrae, into the military, and at 17 enlisted in the militia field battery that was commanded by his father. His educational career was interrupted by bouts of asthma, an illness that would recur throughout his life. In 1893, he attained his BA degree and then entered medical school. While at university, about two dozen of his poems and short stories were published by a number of magazines, including Saturday Night Magazine. In 1898, he attained his medical degree and interned at the Toronto General Hospital and at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He served in command of an artillery battery during the Boer War in South Africa for a year. It was his first experience with real war, and he was shocked at the poor medical treatment available for soldiers in the field. Returning home to Canada, he established his own practice in Montréal. Then in 1914, the First World War broke out in Europe. McCrae was among the first group of 45,000 Canadians to volunteer. Instead of a combat role, this time he would serve as military doctor, given the rank of major and serving as brigade-surgeon to the Canadian Forces First Artillery Brigade. Here he experienced the horrific effects of modern weapons, dealing with wounds caused by machine gun rounds and high explosives. Particularly disturbing was the effect of poison chlorine gas used against the Allied troops in the battle of Ypres in 1915, in the Belgian province of Flanders. In fighting that year, one of his closest friends was killed. The sight of the simple wooden cross marking the grave, with wild poppies already beginning to bloom, led him to write the poem In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
in Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The poem was published in the British magazine Punch in December 1915, and was an immediate hit. But it was to be McCrae=s second last poem (his last poem, The Anxious Dead, dealt with the same theme as In Flanders Fields, but never had the same popularity). Suffering from increasing depression, asthma struck McCrae hard during the summer of 1917. By January 22, 1918, the asthma had led to a serious lung infection. His condition rapidly worsened, and on January 28, McCrae died of pneumonia and meningitis. Shortly before his illness, McCrae had been promoted to consulting physician to the First British Army, the first Canadian to attain that honour.

In Flanders Fields came to be most popular and symbolic poem of the war. It came to represent the soldiers who fell not just in the First World War but in all wars. To this day in France, the United States, Britain, and many other Commonwealth countries, as well as Canada, the poppy has been adopted as the flower of remembrance for war dead. In Canada, Remembrance Day is held on November 11, the day fighting stopped in the First World War in 1918. The McCrae family home has been preserved in Guelph as a museum.

Simon Fraser (1776-1862)

In 1792, Fraser joined the North West Company as a clerk becoming a partner in 1801. In 1805 he was told to expand the company’s operations beyond the Rockies establishing the first settlements in New Caledonia, now central British Columbia. This fur-trader and explorer hoped to discover a water route that would cut the company’s transport costs. In 1808 he braved the dangerous reach which is now the Fraser River Canyon.

Front de Liberacion de Quebec (FLQ)

This terrorist organization targeted the prosperous English-speaking sector of Quebec society. It gave the impression of being a much larger organization than it really was. The arrest of Pierre Vallière and Charles Gagnon, two of the movement’s theorists, set off its most active period which ended in the October Crisis of 1970.

Fur Trade

The fur trade was first centred along the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic coast around Newfoundland and Acadia taking place during the late 16 century and early 17 century. In 1608, Samuel Champlain established a base at Quebec and contacts with the Algonquin and Huron who brought the furs to him. Champlain, in return, assisted them in their fight against the Iroquois. The fur trade quickly spread into the interior. The Hudson’s Bay Company was formed in 1670.