Re - The King and I

Brent Cameron | Jun 05, 2025

Jeff Green’s recent piece on the Crown reflects the feelings of a number of people, but I would like to offer another perspective.

In 1774, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia. Among the delegates were well-known names, like George Washington and John Adams. This first meeting proposed a boycott of British goods in response the so-called “Intolerable Acts.” It would be the Second Congress where the full break with Britain would be proposed.

Among those names listed for the First Congress, one name is absent. It was a delegate from what is now Vermont. On the way to the Congress he was attacked by members of the “Sons of Liberty” for sympathies to the Crown. On arrival, he was expected to take an oath of secrecy. He refused and was sent back home, when he was yet again mobbed by the “Sons of Liberty”.

He would later write that the “teachers, bankrupts, dissenting teachers and smugglers meant to have a serious rebellion and a civil and religious separation from the mother country.”

To be clear, the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies were almost unanimous in their opposition to the measures taken by the British government. What differentiated the Loyalists was that they did not believe vigilantism and mob rule was the way to effect change. They sought a peaceable solution that did not sever the connection.

Loyalty to the Crown was not loyalty to the human being wearing it, but loyalty to the institution – in something bigger than ourselves that represented legitimacy of the law that didn’t depend on how many people you could organize with pitchforks and torches. They sought change from within – an approach that defines much of Canadian politics to this day, just as “might makes right” seems to appeal to the people in the US who talk about us becoming their 51^st state.

The man in this story is Col. John Peters, who would go on to lead a Loyalist regiment, then settle in the Maritimes while other members of his Connecticut family would come to what is now Ontario – first in and around Wilton, and later to Portland, Loughborough, Hinchinbrooke and Oso Townships as they opened up. Chances are a good number of descendants of Col. Peters’ brothers – including myself – will be reading this letter. And while some may not feel a connection to the Crown, loyalty to it defines how Canadians govern themselves to this day – through our Parliamentary institutions, through standing up to invasion in 1812 and conflicts beyond.

And it’s also why hundreds of people are reading this letter from Sharbot Lake to Sydenham, and not from Vermont or Connecticut.