Lower Canada Rebellion
When news of the arrest of the Patriote leaders reached Upper Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie launched an armed rebellion in December 1837. In the meantime, filibusters from the United States, the Hunter Patriots, formed a small militia and attacked Windsor, Upper Canada, to support the Canadian Patriots. This resulted in the declaration of martial law by the Lower Canadian government.
History of the Canadian Army
The North-West Field Force was a body of militia and regular troops created for quelling the North-West Rebellion of 1885, which constituted Canada's first military action without British troop support, although British officers such as Frederick Middleton were in command of the Canadian forces. Middeleton's successor as the commander of the militia, Colonel Ivor Herbert, proved to be a reformer who first revealed to the Canadian press that the ratio of officers in the militia to the privates was 1:2.24 in 1894. Herbert also created the post of quartermaster general to tend to the supply notes and appointed another British officer, Percy Lake as the quartermaster general. Herbert increased spending on the Permanent Force, and founded two new regiments, the Royal Canadian Regiment of Infantry, the Royal Canadian Dragoons and several artillery battalions. Herbert's reforms threatened the entrenched vested interests of the militia and after much lobbying by militia colonels cum MPs, Herbert was dismissed in 1894. In 1896, the new Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier appointed Sir Frederick Borden as Defence minister, who stayed on until the Liberals lost the 1911 election. Borden was a reformer, who appointed Colonel Edward Hutton of the British Army as the militia commander. During this period, the Permanent Force acquired a medical corps, transport corps, signalling corps, intelligence corps and an ordnance corps.