The Loyalist Legacy

After the crushing end of the War of 1812, William and Catherine Garner find their allotted two hundred acres in Nissouri Township by following the Thames River into the wild heart of Upper Canada. On their valuable land straddling the river, dense forest, wild beasts, displaced Natives, and pesky neighbors daily challenge them. The political atmosphere laced with greed and corruption threatens to undermine all of the new settlers' hopes and plans. William knows he cannot take his family back to Niagara but he longs to check on his parents from whom he has heard nothing for two years. Leaving Catherine and their children, he hurries back along the Governor's Road toward the turn-off to Fort Erie, hoping to return home in time for spring planting. With spectacular scenes of settlers recovering from the wartime catastophes in early Ontario, Elaine Cougler shows a different kind of battle, one of ordinary people somehow finding the inner resources to shape new lives and a new country. The Loyalist Legacy delves further into the history of the Loyalists as they begin to disagree on how to deal with the injustices of the powerful "Family Compact" and on just how loyal to Britain they want to remain.

The highly readable is more than a bibliography. Written in a narrative style, it is as well a short history of the Loyalists: who they were, why they left, where they settled, and what their legacy is.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER This groundbreaking book offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus to Canada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Liberty’s Exiles tells their story. This surprising new account of the founding of the United States and the shaping of the post-revolutionary world traces extraordinary journeys like the one of Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who led her growing family to Britain, Jamaica, and Canada, questing for a home; black loyalists such as David George, who escaped from slavery in Virginia and went on to found Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; and Mohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant, who tried to find autonomy for his people in Ontario. Ambitious, original, and personality-filled, this book is at once an intimate narrative history and a provocative analysis that changes how we see the revolution’s “losers” and their legacies.

The author's interest in research of his family roots led him to the conclusion that genealogical charts are the driest of presentations of the family tree. In Legacy of a Patriot his ancestors interact with each other and with fictional characters. The scope of the book covers his family from their time in Germany to the first half of the Twentieth Century and puts flesh on the bones of ancestors and the people they could have encountered along the way. In the first five chapters his father and uncle come alive during WWI in the army and in France.

Roasting Chestnuts: The Mythology of Maritime Political Culture is a book about outdated political stereotypes. The Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia are often regarded as pre-modern hinterland in which corrupt practices and traditional loyalties continue to predominate. While this depiction of Maritime political life may, at one time, have been largely accurate, this is no longer the case. Employing a variety of indicators, this book argues that a new set of political images is needed to capture Maritime political reality today. What emerges from the analysis is a picture of Maritime politics which no longer differs markedly from that which exists in the rest of Canada. Maritimers no longer exhibit remarkably low levels of political trust and efficacy, nor is there a regional political culture which transcends provincial boundaries. In fact, Maritime political elites have been innovators, providing radical departures from Canadian political norms. A unique and innovative study, Roasting Chestnuts seeks to demystify Maritime politics and expose the flimsy basis for many of the region's lasting political stereotypes.

This book contains an historical essay and short biographies on those who stayed loyal to Britain during the American Revolution in the American colonies. The essay focuses on the coming of the Revolution and the reasons for American rebellion or loyalism, and the sparse biographies, organized in alphabetical order, offer what is known about the loyalist and their journey.

In the violent maelstrom of early 1970s Belfast many young members of the loyalist youth gangs known as 'Tartans' joined the fledgling paramilitary groups - this is an in-depth account of that dramatic convergence.