1838: The first hangings of the Lower Canada Rebellion
December 21st, 2011 Headsman
On this date in 1838, Joseph-Narcisse Cardinal and Joseph Duquet were hanged for a rebellion.
As the names suggest, these weren’t rosbifs themselves: they were French, born under crown jurisdiction by grace of their forbears’ thrashing at British hands in the Seven Years’ War.
In 1837, French Lower Canada rose in rebellion — la Guerre des patriotes, to the Quebecois. The British dispatched it.
Cardinal and Duquet were young notaries of radical sympathies who organized a sort of aftershock insurrection (French link) in 1838 at their native Chateauguay. It was instantly suppressed, its authors court-martialed for treason.
Those patriotes spared the pains of the gallows were condemned instead to a different kind of suffering — exile. The folk song “Un Canadien Errant” (“The Wandering Canadian”) eulogizes the land lost to these unfortunates.
“If you see my country,
my unhappy country,
Go, say to my friends
That I remember them.”
A monument pays tribute to all those executed or exiled for the rebellion.
On this day..
- 1739: Elizabeth Harrard - 2019
- 1929: Peter Kudzinowski - 2018
- 1782: Patrick Dougherty, robber - 2017
- 2014: A day in aborted death penalty moratoriums around the world - 2016
- 1689: William Davis - 2015
- 1875: Henry Wainwright, Whitechapel murderer - 2014
- 1893: Frederick Wyndham, unrepentant patricide - 2013
- 1692: A batch at Tyburn, escorted by the Ordinary of Newgate - 2012
- 1936: Aberra Kassa and Asfawossen Kassa, Ethiopian royalty - 2010
- 1624: Marco Antonio de Dominis, posthumously - 2009
- 1855: The slave Celia, who had no right to resist - 2008
- 1995: Kimura Shujish - 2007
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Canada,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Disfavored Minorities,England,Execution,Hanged,History,Milestones,Occupation and Colonialism,Power,Public Executions,Quebec,Racial and Ethnic Minorities,Separatists,Treason
Tags: 1830s, 1838, december 21, joseph duquet, joseph-narcisse cardinal, lower canada rebellion
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