MONTREAL—Last weekend, I was in Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu, Que., a pastoral village 60 kilometres southeast of Montreal, for my son’s wedding. As I had a few moments to explore the town, I crossed the street from the wedding venue to check out a local park flying the tricolour flag of the “Patriotes” of the 1837 rebellion. 

Beneath the flag was a plaque with a history of the involvement of Saint-Antoine’s citizens during the rebellion. Directly across the river sits Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu, home of the sole Patriote victory in the rebellion. The plaque describes the battle in November of 1837, and how a local lawyer, George-Étienne Cartier, brought reinforcements from Saint-Antoine to defeat the British in Saint-Denis. 

What the plaque fails to mention is that the leader of the victorious Patriotes was an anglophone, Wolfred Nelson, or that Cartier fled Canada, was later granted amnesty by the Crown, and was John A. Macdonald’s partner in establishing Canadian Confederation in 1867. The sponsor of the plaque and its half-truths was the then-member of the National Assembly, former Parti Québécois premier Bernard Landry. 

I was never a great fan of Landry when I covered the national assembly in Quebec as a reporter. He was evasive and sometimes........

© The Hill Times