The Union bill, though aborted, deeply affected French Canada's political leaders, none more so than Papineau. After that episode, even though he had been well received in the imperial capital, Papineau moved steadily away from working for reform within the existing constitutional system and towards a complete break with Britain. The party he led in the Assembly became known as the
Patriotes. Driving their politics was an increasingly strident French-Canadian nationalism.
Like virtually all nationalist movements, French Canada's surge of nationalism was led by middle-class politicians. Papineau himself was a lawyer, and most of the
Patriote leaders in the Assembly were lawyers, notaries, doctors, or surveyors. It is men of this kind who acquire the literary and oratorical skills needed to mobilize the masses.
--Peter H. Russell,
Canada's Odyssey: A Country Based on Incomplete Conquests (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 94.
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