Joan of Arc - Napoleon and Canada

Joan of Arc was consigned to flames by the British after one year of incarceration. And the French, whose freedom and sovereignty she fiercely fought for, sold her to this destiny. Such are the odds of life, which sometimes are recorded by history for posterity but on most others forgotten.

But her death did fuel a revolution strong enough to throw the British out from the French soil. While French had some respite from repeated fracas with their neighbors across the channel, Napoleon rose. During that period, farm-land productivity was at its ultra low, and migration from farm to fleet and back from fleet to farm after the war was over was a phenomenon common enough to make the farmers restive.

This migration ensured two things, that women contributed to the farms, while the men were in the fleet, which made them tough and independent, and second, the men sought stability of profession in lands till then unexplored. This, in the post Napoleonic era, set a trend to migration to various lands like Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The Britain royalty preferred this migration to have a restive population on its soil. A loose allegiance of a far away peoples was any day a preferred option to a restive population back at home, particularly when the purse strings were stretched and the industrial revolution had not yet fired the economy.

The migration to Canada of the British was relatively simple. A land predominantly forest, used to export timber by sea to the British Isles, and the empty ships in return would carry immigrants to the Canadian shores for a paltry fare. So, while the southern territory of the Canada were getting colonized by the French, the north and particularly the north west was predominantly English speaking, with a mix of Throne Loyal Americans who deigned not to be a part of Republican America and the British sea farers who reached the Canadian shores as barter trade of some type on the ships that carried timber to England.