Which brings me to my final observation, this time on the rebellions in Lower Canada, which Lord Durham completely misunderstood, and in particular after the failed Rebellions of 1837-8, combined with the disastrous implications in the Durham Report that wanted to force all French-Canadians to assimilate into "civilized" (read: British/Anglo-Canadian) society. Much like the Québec Act, there are a lot of misconceptions that float around 1837 which have been used to support one side or another. Reality, as it always has a habit to do, is much more complex. The reality is that there too was a non-linguistic/non-ethnic basis to the rebellions in Québec - heck, a good portion of the leadership was actually Irish (with their own issues pertaining to British rule). Furthermore, 1837 was not an attempt to secede from the British Empire (those moves actually happened
after 1837 failed and most of the leadership fled into exile in the United States to avoid capture), but as a rebellion designed to pressure the colonial government to attempt reforms to better reflect reality and grant democratic rights to the majority population - much like similar rebellions back in Europe in the same decade and concurrent with similar rebellions and sentiments in the UK itself. Unfortunately, the reality was totally ignored by Lord Durham and his
Report on the Affairs of British North America, aka the Durham Report - the Report insinuated that French-Canadians had "no history and no culture" (which the intelligentsia denounced and thus tried to present their case, which probably partially explains Québec's obsession over history, though one could also assume that Lord Durham read it through a class-riddled analysis with French-Canadians collectively representing the lower classes of which he would no doubt be familiar with in England), and it was he who would over-simplify and heavily distort 1837 as being a clash of cultures between the English and the French, which he believed could only happen if the Canadiens simply did not exist and were forcibly assimilated into the English population. When the Act of Union of 1840 tried to put into practice, French-Canadians went on the defensive and became more insular, and from there changed considerably in reaction by accepting some (but not all) of the realities of being a colonized people as would be found in the Global South. Before 1837, French-Canadians had a confident nationalism which was open and welcoming, similar to liberal views elsewhere in the Anglosphere but rooted deep into French-Canadian culture as a reaction against the French colonial period. They welcomed British colonialism despite the implications (although it could be argued that "welcomed" would be too strong of a word, as I've noted already) and later on the restrictions placed on French-Canadian representation in the colonial Legislative Assembly. After 1837, things changed considerably, as if
la nation was chastened by what had happened. While there were still those who preached the old liberal nationalism and the constructiveness of working with
l'autre côté, the nationalist movement became more conservative, more isolationist,
ultramontane, and shaped the opinions of Québec to the outside world and to a considerable segment of its own people for generations - complete with the pillars for survival. Indeed, survival - la survivance - was the watchword during this period (and arguably a continuation of the resistance to the British by acting as French-Canadians always did), which led to an informal division of power between the 'English' and the 'French' (themselves much more diverse than the nationalists were willing to let on by misusing terminology to present a simplistic worldview for a very complex reality). If you were to place French-Canadian nationalists in general into a pigeon hole of politics in the mère-patrie, then I would collectively place Québec politics as a whole on the Right, even if the Liberals had tendencies which would also place them in the Centre to moderate Left. As an over-simplification, I'd collectively place a considerable portion of French-Canadian nationalists in with the Legitimists (considering their nostalgia of the French colonial period), while both the moderates among the Right and conservatives among the Liberals would find common ground with the Orleanists. Unlike in France, though, our *Legitimists were fully in control of the historical narrative of Québec history. As one can imagine, this stasis would clearly lead it to disaster were it to remain unchecked. Canada really didn't "keep on developing" - a very Whiggish POV if there ever was one - when the same government and its lackeys still held back the development and modernization of French-Canadian society by constantly reminding them of their second-class citizenship status.