The Story Of Canada And Modern Democracy.

I live just a few miles South of Canada (they say Detroit is the only city in the US that is south of the Canadian border-look at the map). And there is the story about Canada. They never joined the revolution. They believed in working with the British, and just demanding their rights as British citizens.

It's an interesting question who the first modern democracy was. We say it was us. The UK says it was them. They were constitutional-monarchy style democracy. True, only property owners could vote then in the UK. But the same was true in the US right after the revolution.

In fact in Britain, if you supported things like democracy and human rights, it would have just made more sense to support the monarchy. Our HS history teacher was telling about this. In fact although Oliver Cromwell began the commonwealth in 1649 (commonwealth meaning republic), he was very repressive. He was a religious extremist, he was much worse on human rights in some ways, and Catholics were treated as bad or even worse. He did things like imprison people without trial for criticizing him and outlawing Christmas.

Another interesting thing about Britain is slavery. They were already doing things like outlawing the slave trade in 1776. And they outlawed slavery altogether in 1834, 30 years before us.

 

Actually, there are quite a few cities south of the Canadian border in the US.

 

I noticed that too, eventually LOL. But some people still say that for some reason. They say in Detroit we are "south of the border".

EDIT: Oh, wait a minute. I think they say Canada is south of the border in Detroit. Which is unique. (I should look this up, but it's not important.) Actually, even this isn't true. Look at Alaska. Part of it dips below Canada a little. Now, it seems to me that would make it south of the border, if you go at an angle. But as I said, it's just a saying.