Ekwentondie

Ekwentondie belongs to the lower Saint Lawrence country that became the Province of Lower Canada. Before British conquest, this region formed part of New France; Britain took part of the former colony of Canada in the Seven Years' War ending in 1763. The Constitutional Act of 1791 then divided the old Province of Quebec into Lower Canada and Upper Canada. The act placed English law in Upper Canada and retained French law and institutions in Lower Canada, and Catholics were granted freedom of practice.

Travel and settlement in this colony were oriented toward the St. Lawrence. On land, the principal long-distance route was the Chemin du Roy, or King's Highway, built by New France in the 1730s; it remained a main artery for passengers and mail into the nineteenth century. Political tensions between the British colonial elite and the Canadien majority grew in the early nineteenth century, and by 1837 they erupted in the Patriote Rebellion.