AC Buchanan and the Megantic Experiment
A. C. Buchanan and the Megantic Experiment: Promoting British Colonization in Lower Canada J. I. LITTLE* Between 1829 and 1832 a British settler colony was established on the northern fringe of Lower Canada’s Eastern Townships, in what became known as Megantic county. The main aim of the chief instigator and manager of the project, “emigrant” agent A. C. Buchanan, was to demonstrate the viability of state-assisted “pauper” colonization, as long advocated by Colonial Under- Secretary Robert Wilmot-Horton. Buchanan’s project was successful insofar as he convinced over 5,300 immigrants, the majority of whom were Irish Protestants, to follow the Craig and Gosford roads to the uninhabited northern foothills of the Appalachians. But the British government failed to apply this “experiment” elsewhere in Lower or Upper Canada, and the British settler community did not expand far beyond the townships of Leeds, Inverness, and Ireland because of their isolation from external markets. Instead, French-Canadian settlers moved into the surrounding townships, with the result that the British-origin population became a culturally isolated island of interrelated families that slowly disappeared due to out-migration. De 1829 à 1832, une colonie de peuplement britannique a vu le jour au Bas- Canada, en périphérie nord des cantons de l’Est, dans ce qui deviendra le comté de Mégantic. L’instigateur et chef du projet, l’agent d’émigration A. C. Buchanan, avait pour objectif premier de prouver la viabilité, avec le soutien de l’État, de la colonisation par les « pauvres » que préconisait depuis longtemps le sous- secrétaire aux Colonies Robert Wilmot-Horton.
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