Ed White

One of the strange misconceptions of Quebec nationalism is the myth of domination by "les anglais." The truth is that the dominant strains of British Canadian culture were Celtic, i.e. Scots and Irish, the bulk of whom were hardscrabble people who had survived the Highland Clearances or the Irish Famine, both of them underdogs with no great love for the English. The most poignant example: Wolfe's shock troops at the Plains of Abraham were the Fraser Highlanders, almost all of them descendants of families who fought on the Stuart side during the last Jacobite uprising. After the British victory in 1759, many of them settled on farms throughout Lower Canada, and were integrated into French Canadian culture (easily, as they were generally Catholic.) Highland Scots worked closely with French Canadian voyageurs in the vast fur trade operations of the HBC and NWC, together building the first European communities across much of North America, often with nary an Englishman in sight! Famine Irish were a huge part of the Quebec population after the great emigration, again integrating well into Quebec society given their common religious sentiments. Thomas D'Arcy McGee was the personification of their experience, moving from Fenian rage towards the English to seeing Canada as a new beginning, rooted in a more benign and pluralistic British Imperialism. There are countless similarities between the traditional culture of the Highland Scots, Irish, and French Canadians. Tough people who lived closed to the land, were deeply motivated by their faith, and were determined not to let the English suppress their folkways.