Today, the Liberal Party of Canada is nothing more than a center-left catch-all party made of up of progressives and their ilk. But this is a significant departure from its beginnings as a party of radicals committed to a classically liberal ideal.
The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada (modern-day Ontario) was comprised of Canadian reformers who were fed up with the aristocratic elite which had come to rule the colony known as the Family Compact. The rebels were led by the radical republican William Lyon Mackenzie, the first mayor of Toronto. After their eventual loss in the final months of 1837, Mackenzie fled to the Niagara River where he established the short-lived Republic of Canada on Navy Island.