The Canadian Patriots, also called Whigs, were the liberal and pro-American faction of Canadian politics at the time of the American Revolutionary War.
In Quebec, American agitators went from town to town calling on Canadiens to thrust off British rule and accept a North American destiny, but the Canadiens failed to rise up against the British. However, the Anglo-Canadian merchants of Montreal were strongly supportive of democratic institutions and the Patriot cause. Canadiens pursued a course of self-interested neutrality, supplying both sides at inflated profits; New Englander Protestant opposition to the pro-Catholic Quebec Act kept many Canadian Catholics from siding with the rebels.
In Nova Scotia, the sizeable community of New Englander planters, who lived around the Bay of Fundy, sympathized with the Patriots in Massachusetts and contemplated insurrection. Freebooters launched raids out of the Machias Basin, while John Allan and Jonathan Eddy launched an insurrection in the Chignecto Isthmus. George Washington refused to intervene due to the Royal Navy presence at Halifax. The few Acadians and Mikmaq drawn into the conflict favored the Patriots, but most New Englanders in Nova Scotia remained neutral. Eddy's failed November 1776 attack on Fort Cumberland brought an end to Nova Scotia's flirtation with revolution, and American privateering raids further alienated the region.
In Newfoundland, large numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants were disaffected from Britain, but the localized economy meant that Newfoundland rarely interacted with the rebellious colonies, and the expansion of fishing opportunities due to the Americans' exclusion from British trade led to reinforced Crown allegiance on the island.