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Archiver > UNITED-EMPIRE-LOYALIST > 1999-11 > 0943805571


From: <>
Subject: Re: Loyalist Spirit
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 11:12:51 EST


When organizations are formed, they do so to benefit themselves.
Unfortunately they tend to exclude some who should be included. Those
colonists who returned to England at the end of the Revolution were just as
loyal to the Crown as those who left the United States and moved to Canada.
To have excluded them was a disservice to all who claimed they were loyal to
the Crown.

My ancestors were never formally members of the U.E.L. although they left
Pennsylvania for York (Toronto) at the same time and either paid for or were
granted land in Upper Canada. Perhaps they were those which the U.E.L. later
excluded. It doesn't matter, they remained in Canada until some came to the
US in the early 1900s. Some are still in Canada. I have others of my
lineage's who left the US in the early 1900s for Canada. All of whom got
there by traveling west (sometimes north also).

It is long been a great puzzle to me as to why some Americans feel animosity
towards Canadians and some Canadians have a strong dislike or hatred for
Americans. Our differences are so small while our similarities are so great.
We freely trade and visit with each other. As the economy of our countries
fluctuate it seems that one year a large influx of Americans are visiting
Canada. In other years a large influx of Canadians visit America. Hopefully
free trade will lock our economies so closely that these variations will
cease and tourism will flourish without regard to our borders or our
economies. Together we share a continent, the conditions which resulted in
that revolution and the forming of the U.E.L. are long in the past. After
more than two hundred years I think it is time for all of us to honor the
past without trying to live in it; the entire past, both sides of it. Let's
go forward into the future side by side.

Dennis

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