Reform movement (pre-Confederation Canada)
In Upper Canada (Ontario), the Reform movement was formed in opposition to the Family Compact. It was led initially by William Lyon Mackenzie, who became the principal figure in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. Mackenzie went into exile as a result of the failed rebellion. The uprising led to the 1839 Durham Report, which recommended responsible government and the union of Upper and Lower Canada as a means of assimilating Francophones. Only the union of the Canadas was to be immediately implemented.
The Reform Movement (Upper Canada)
The membership of the NUWC was later integrated into the London Working Men's Association, an organization established in London in 1836, that led the Chartist movement. The founders were William Lovett, Francis Place and Henry Hetherington. They were associated with Owenite socialism and the movement for general education. They published a People’s Charter on 8 May 1838 calling for universal suffrage. The London Working Men's Association was aware of the unrest in the Canadas in early 1837, and themselves petitioned the British Parliament after a public meeting to protest the "base proposals of the Whigs to destroy the principle of Universal Suffrage in the Canadas". To implement the Chartist plan, they called a series of mass meetings across the country in the summer of 1838 to select delegates to a "General Convention of the Industrious Classes". After the General Convention of the Industrious Classes met in May 1839, their Charter petition was rejected by Parliament. This rejection led to the Newport Uprising of 1839 in Wales, suppressed by Sir Francis Bond Head's cousin, Sir Edmund Walker Head. Rather than view each rebellion in isolation, the Newport Rising (1839), the two Canadian Rebellions (1837–38) and the subsequent American Patriot War (1838–39) can be seen to share a similar republican impetus. They should all be viewed in the context of the late-18th- and early-19th-century Atlantic revolutions that took their inspiration from the republicanism of the American Revolution.