· Edward G. Scott UE

    Chair

· Beverly Craig UE

     Secretary - Treasurer

· Noreen Stapley UE

     Director

· William Smy UE

     Director

· Gail Woodruff UE

     Colonel John Butler (Niagara)

       Branch President

· Lynne Prunskus

     Brock University Special Collection

       Librarian

· Lou Cahill

     Public Relations

· Jon Jouppien

     Heritage Resource Consultant

· Alexander Roman

     Executive Assistant to the Speaker

      of the Ontario Legislature

· Janice Wing

     Councillor, City of Niagara Falls

Brock University

The Friends of the Loyalist Collection at Brock University was founded in 2001 in the Region of Niagara, Province of Ontario as a non-profit charitable organization.  The organization was approved for charitable status by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency on May 28, 2002.

The purpose of the organization is to establish and maintain at Brock University a collection of source material, mainly on microfilm, dealing with the United Empire Loyalists with a view to facilitate and encourage academic research and study.

Over two hundred years ago the American Revolution shattered the British Empire in North America.  The conflict was rooted in British attempts to assert economic control in her American colonies after her costly victory over the French during the Seven Years War. When protests and riots met the British attempts to impose taxes on the colonists, the British responded with political and military force.  Out of the struggle between the Thirteen Colonies and their mother country emerged two nations; the United States and what would later become Canada.

Not all of the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies opposed Britain.  The United Empire Loyalists were those colonists who remained faithful to the Crown and wished to continue living in the New World.  Therefore, they left their homes to settle eventually in what remained of British North America.

Historians estimate that ten to fifteen percent of the population of the Thirteen Colonies - some 250,000 people - opposed the revolution, some passively, others by speaking out, spying, or fighting against the rebels.  Because of their political convictions, Loyalists who remained in the Thirteen Colonies during the revolution were branded as traitors and hounded by their Patriot (rebel) neighbours.

Approximately 70,000 Loyalists fled the Thirteen Colonies.  Of those, roughly 50,000 went to the British North American Colonies of Québec and Nova Scotia.  Some returned to Britain and some fled to the British owned islands in the Caribbean.

The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which recognized the independence of the United States, was the final blow for the Loyalists.  Faced with further mistreatment and hostility of their countrymen, and wishing to live as British subjects, Loyalists who had remained in the Thirteen Colonies during the war now were faced with exile.  They fled to the Maritimes or Québec (Ontario-Québec).