The '37: Rebels and Lovers in Old Canada

Why does young, reform-minded lawyer George-Étienne Cartier join an armed uprising only to later reject violence as a means to achieve responsible government for Canada?

In 1837, Lower Canada seethes with discontent. After savage rioting in Montreal between hardline loyalists and dissident radicals, there is no turning back. Cartier, a future Father of Confederation, commits himself to rebellion against the British Crown.

Inspired by three of Cartier's recently discovered letters, The '37 deftly weaves fact with fiction. It imagines how an affair with a beautiful and witty schoolteacher, Dorothy Russell, changes his life-and helps ensure the birth of an independent Canada.

From the battlefields of Lower Canada to languid trysts on an isolated farmstead, from the ambiguities of exile in the United States to the wretched clarity of executions in Montreal, from withered farm fields to hints of a new industrial age, the novel paints a picture of a country in the grip of rapid, unrelenting change.

Author: John Kalbfleisch
Publisher: FriesenPress
Published: 01/12/2024
Pages: 204
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.67lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.47d
ISBN: 9781039190139

About the Author
Kalbfleisch, John: - John Kalbfleisch is the author of A Stain Upon the Land: Love and Death in Old Montreal (2017), No Place More Suitable: Four Centuries of Montreal Stories (2018), Le Cadeau Royal: Histoire de la Ville de Mont-Royal / The Royal Gift: a History of Town of Mount Royal (2013), and This Island in Time: Remarkable Tales from Montreal's Past (2008). He is also a co-author of Montreal's Century: a Record of the News and People Who Shaped the City in the 20th Century (1999).

After flirting with a career in teaching, he became a journalist. He spent four decades at the Montreal Gazette as a reporter, editorial writer, and Op-Ed editor. He also wrote a regular column on the city's history. After retirement, it was the shortest of steps to writing full-length books, both fiction and nonfiction. He now lives with his wife in Perth, Ontario.