A high-brow nod to the hit film Julie & Julia, The Loyalist Papers is a writing project to make sense of the current political moment in North America. But instead of tackling French recipes over the course of a single year, it dives into the 85 essays known collectively as The Federalist Papers. Unfolding at the comparatively pensive pace of 198 weeks – roughly the same as a single four-year term of the American presidency – the project explores the modern relevance of the foundational arguments that shaped the U.S. Constitution. The project draws its name and inspiration from the United Empire Loyalists, who resisted the American Revolution and played a pivotal role in founding Canada. Offering a distinctly Canadian perspective, The Loyalist Papers examines how the ideals laid out by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay measure up in today’s world of industrialized megacities, artificial intelligence, mass communications, universal suffrage, and political polarization.
The project asks big questions. Is the Constitution of the United States as durable as its Framers imagined? Are Americans today in the midst of a constitutional crisis that the Framers simply could not have foreseen? What might have happened had there been a “Sixteen Colonies” in British North America – including Québec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland – that had formed a grander union? By contrasting the revolutionary fervor that gave birth to the United States with Canada’s more gradual, Loyalist-influenced journey to independence, this project highlights the different ways the two countries evolved politically and culturally. Along the way, The Loyalist Papers offers a fresh perspective on the shifting relevance of the American experiment in an increasingly authoritarian world.
Image credit: British militiamen repel Benedict Arnold’s attack in the 1775 Battle of Québec, painted by Charles William Jefferys (1916).