And it isn’t all that simple.
Here are a few issues (that are not comprehensive):
The people in Canada in 1776 were the French-speaking settlers who had “lost” the French and Indian war that ended in 1763. There were fewer than 1,000 British immigrants among the 70,000+ Canadians. The French settlers were used to “government from afar” because France had established Canada as a Royal Colony (not sure if that was the term they used) and had continued to govern as a monarchy through the royal governors. In contast, the British settlements to the south, while also administered by a royally imposed governor, had generally been founded by grants from the British king and each had developed a legislative body to conduct government at the local level. The Canadians did not see the various taxes and restrictions as much different than the sorts of things that the French king had been imposing all along.
At the start of the American War for Independence, several people wanted to encourage Canada to join with the thirteen colonies. Benjamin Franklin was part of a delegation sent to try to arrange it.
Unfortunately, there were a couple of problems. The winter before Franklin’s journey, Benedict Arnold had led an attacking force into Canada. While his intent was to neutralize the British command of the St. Lawrence River, he effectively “invaded” the land of the French settlers. Since the Americans had no money, they had to rely on requisitioning supplies from the local people. This did not endear him or his cause to the people. Since the majority of the battles in the French and Indian War had been fought between the militias of French settlers and British settlers, the Canadians tended to think of the British/American colonists as “the enemy” while they thought of the British king as simply the latest ruler from the east side of the Atlantic.
In addition, Britain had shrewdly enacted the Quebec Act in 1774. This act vested power in the (Catholic) Church and the local large land-owners, while recognizing the validity of Catholicism and the French language. (The RCC was still undergoing an off-and-on struggle to be legal in Britain and its other colonies and many restrictions were imposed on its adherents.) (That the Quebec Act ultimately blew up in the face of the British and, later, Canadian governments is a different story.)
When Franklin showed up to encourage the Canadians to throw in with the revolting colonists, he could not promise that Catholicism would be accepted in the new country (even in Maryland, the RCC had been restricted after Lord Baltimore converted to the Anglican Communion).
The people had no background of self-determination, few owned land, and the seigneurs who actually owned the land could not be persuaded that it was in their interests to defy the British Government who had only three years earlier granted them more power.
Add in that there was no common language or culture, and the mission of Franklin and his colleagues was doomed from the beginning. The English-speaking provinces of today, were not settled until after the War for Independence–and the first settlers were Loyalists fleeing the new, victorious United States. They certainly had no desire in later years to make common cause with or to join the U.S.
