This raises the ancient and vexatious issue of Canadian identity. It was the principal contention of the history of Canada that I wrote some years ago that from Samuel de Champlain's founding of Quebec in 1608 to the present, there has been a belief that it was both an opportunity and a deity to build a uniquely distinguished society in the northern half of this continent. Canada had to begin as a French enterprise or it would've been assimilated into the American colonies. It had to cease to be French at almost the same time the Americans ceased to be British, because only Britain could deter the Americans from taking over Canada. We had to conciliate the French prior to the American Revolution or they would have delivered Canada to the Americans. We could not have preserved Canada in the War of 1812 without the full cooperation of the French-Canadians and the large number of Americans that the governor of Upper Canada (Ontario), John Graves Simcoe, had enticed to this country wit