Protestant Legacies – Christians Who Built Canada

In this series, we do a quick survey of the different contributions that Protestants have made in Canada’s earliest days.

We review our Protestant beginnings in France at the beginning of the French Reformation:

• The roles which Nicolas Cop and John Calvin played in triggering the French Reformation and the subsequent persecution of the French Protestants (Huguenots) first by Francis I followed by his son, Henry II (and his heirs)
• The role of the French Wars of Religion as fought by Jeanne D’Albret and her son Henry of Navarre (Henry IV of France )
• The brief respite from persecution which the Protestants enjoyed under Henry IV, his commissioning  of Huguenot merchants and his cartographer, Samuel Champlain to settle Acadia and New France, and the persecution which followed Huguenots to New France after Henry’s death.

We then trace the influence of Protestants from Europe who settled in the British colonies of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Then we examine the influence of ‘Loyalists’, fleeing from the American War of Independence, who migrated North to the British colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Province of Quebec. They brought the greatest Protestant influence and represented the following denominations: Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists and Baptists.

These laid the foundations of society and culture by the legacies they left behind.

We identify the men who left large footprints in Canadian History and examine these legacies in Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Their legacies continue to live on in various well-known businesses and educational institutions.