Regarde, me disait mon père
Ce drapeau vaillamment porté;
Il a fait ton pays prospère
Et respecte ta liberté.
Un jour, notre bannière auguste
Devant lui dut se replier;
Mais alors, s'il nous fut injuste,
Il a su le faire oublier.
Et si maintenant son pli vibre
A nos remparts jadis gaulois,
C'est an moins sur un peuple libre
Qui n'a rien perdu de sea droits.
Oublions les jours de tempêtes.
Et, mon enfaut, puisqu' aujourd'hui
Ce drapeau flotte sur nos têtes,
Il faut s'incliner devant lui.
"Le Drapeau Anglais."—Fréchette.
It was early in the spring of 1802 that Isaac Brock with the 49th Regiment sailed up the St. Lawrence after a long and stormy journey across the Atlantic. One can well imagine the feelings of the young colonel as he gazed for the first time at the rocky height of Quebec crowned by that fortress, once the stronghold of French rule in America. In the forty years that had passed since the conquest, Quebec had changed but little. There before him rose the craggy steep where Wolfe had climbed to victory. The grey wall, pierced with arched gateways and bristling with guns, still enclosed the town. On one side stood out the great cathedral whose bell had rung its summons for more than a century, regardless of the change of earthly monarchs. Here, too, was the Ursuline Convent to which Montcalm had been carried in his death agony. Above on the cliff rose the old, half-ruined Chateau St. Louis, bearing the traces of destruction by shot and shell. All spoke to Brock of stirring deeds which even then could be recounted by those who had taken part in them. He was fresh from fighting the French in the Old World, and the scene of England's triumph might well rekindle the ardour that a year's peace had not extinguished. Did a premonition come to him that on another height in this new land, he too would find fame and death? Perhaps not, for Brock was not given to much dreaming. He only knew that there was work to be done and as an apt pupil from the school of Nelson and Abercromby he was ready to do it in the best way possible.
When Brock arrived in Canada the administration of affairs there was in the hands of Sir Robert Shore Milnes, the lieutenant-governor. Sir Robert Prescott, who had been governor and commander-in-chief from 1797, in succession to Lord Dorchester, had left Canada in 1799, and although he held his rank as governor until 1807, he never returned to service in the country.
Canada's governors
Canada had been fortunate in the men entrusted with her government, and owing to their wise administration there had been very little discontent among the new subjects of His Majesty. The French Canadians had increased and prospered under British rule. First in the roll of governors stands James Murray, that good and true soldier who saved Quebec for England in the stormy year that followed Wolfe's death, when the Marquis de Lévis brought all his consummate genius to the task of winning it back for France. While the army of Vaudreuil held the river at Montreal, and when it looked for many a weary month as if Amherst would never come to its relief, the half-starved, sickly but gallant garrison at Quebec struggled through the terrible winter of 1759 and 1760. The story cannot be told too often of how Murray kept up the courage of his men, and cared also for the feeble folk who were left with him in the town; how, when spring came, both French and English watched the river for the coming sails, well knowing that the side to which food and arms came first would win the day; how, when it was the English ships that came, de Lévis' army melted away and Murray marched to join with Amherst at Montreal; and how Vaudreuil and his abler lieutenant laid down their arms, and the reign of France in the New World was over.
Haldimand and Dorchester