On Trial for Treason in Lower Canada

These trial records, though limited, offer a valuable perspective on the Rebellion of 1838. It is through these sources and the extant legal and law enforcement records that we discover the middle leadership, whose members, lacking political or family clout, were punished through death or transportation.

The men are unique – both in Canadian and Australian history. For Canadian readers, their value lies in the richness of the documentation left behind. Although most were illiterate farmers, we know a surprising amount about them.... Far more importantly, we know why they rebelled and in what way they had been involved in politics. We know the costs, both monetary and emotional, they and their families paid for participating in the 1838 insurrection.

--Beverley Boissery, preface to A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason, Trials, and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion, The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1995), xii-xiii.