On My Noble Ancestry

 

My father always claimed to be descended from United Empire Loyalists. It was a family tradition, passed through his paternal grandmother, whose name was Van Luven. The Van Luvens were supposed to have been early settlers in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and to have owned land in what is now Brooklyn. 

The United Empire Loyalists were Americans who dissented from the Revolution, and relocated  to Canada to preserve their ties to Britain and the crown. It is a thing in Canada, like those in America who claim to have been descended from passengers on the Mayflower.

A nephew recently got his DNA examined, one of those heredity kits. The test turned up no Dutch or Flemish blood. Mostly Irish, then Welsh, then Scottish, a smattering of Scandinavian.

I was delighted.

I have always had a visceral distaste for the UE Loyalists.

We Canadians think of them as admirably loyal to Britain, the crown, and to settled authority. 

After all, other than independence, the American Revolution accomplished nothing. We in Canada also have freedom, democracy, and human equality. 

If you read through the history, though, it is dead sure that Canada would not have these things, if not for the American Revolution. Very likely the UK would not either. The UK extended responsible government to Canada only when they feared that, if they did not, they would lose these provinces just as they lost the lower 13. There were reasons for the Rebellions of 1837.

In this, I have to stand against the UE Loyalists. They were the baddies.

They fought against equality and representative government in Canada, as they fought against it below the border. They saw themselves as the aristocracy. This classism has been a poisonous presence in Canadian history, through the Family Compact and Chateau Clique of the 19th century, up to the current concerns in the West of a “Laurentian elite.” Canada is inclined to be cliquish, in every sphere; and the Loyalists started this. They birthed and represent classism in Canada.

Do I need to elaborate on why privilege by birth is immoral? In the brotherhood of man, people must be judged on their merits and the content of their character, not who their parents were. That is never just; worse still in a nation of immigrants. Racism springs from the same font.

Here in Saint John, the newly-arrived UE Loyalists let only fellow Loyalists own property or operate a business inside city limits. When the Irish came, they had to settle, with the Indians, blacks, Congregationalists, and Acadians, north of the city line. That old line is still visible— on the north side of Union Street, the buildings are all wooden, but for the Catholic Cathedral. On the south side, they are solid brick. Loyalists and their descendants were buried in the city centre. The “Old Loyalist  Burying Ground” is still well-preserved. Others were interred north of the city line, and their graves are built over and no longer marked.

Towns and cities tend to take their character from their original inhabitants, barring some truly overwhelming wave of new immigration. Saint John has been rescued from this classism by Irish immigration in the 19th century, which swamped the original population. 

It gives the place an odd ambience. Everyone does still think in classist terms, but then everyone thinks of themselves as working class. There is no sense that anyone left today is a Loyalist descendant; the Loyalists seem only a mythical presence. Their modern successors are the Laurentian elite, or away in Europe. And we by and large don’t like ‘em. 

Kingston Ontario, another original Loyalist hotbed, did not get a large enough wave of later immigration to wipe out the local class distinctions. There is still a “north of Princess Street” stigma. In Saint John, “north of Union Street” no longer has such stigma. People are proud of coming from the North End. Wanna make something out of it? The Irish who got wealthy did not move out and try to pass; they built their new houses in the North End. Now it has nice neighbourhoods, like my own.

In Kingston, by contrast, it matters. There is also the vague sense among locals that Kingston is the rightful capital of English Canada. Toronto? Ottawa? Upstarts! Montreal? French!

Local people used to be ashamed of being seen at S & R, the local bargain emporium. In Saint John, everyone is proud of a bargain. 

And that is why locals are so determined, like the Van Luvens, to claim Loyalist ancestry. Or the Greenwoods, a local family that gained social prominence after they changed their name from Boisvert. Or former Mayor George Speale, whose real name, whatever it was, would have been Greek. In most places in Canada, a Greek or a Quebecois would not feel called to change their name. 

Now where did the Van Luvens really come from?

The family tradition was that it meant “from Louvain,” a city in modern-day Belgium. But hunting it down online, the web site Igenea says “It's important to note that the exact place called Luven doesn't seem to exist in contemporary maps of the Netherlands or Belgium.” Seeming to suggest the derivation from Louvain is also dubious. 

Even crazier, they write “Van Luven is thought to be a French-Canadian surname, and is found primarily in Quebec and the Maritime provinces.” 

And there is only one family of that name in the Netherlands; suggesting it is not a Dutch surname at all. Just Dutch-sounding.

Igenea gives several possible explanations for the “Van Luven” name other than as a place reference. “Van” in Dutch can also mean “son of.” Luven might be a personal name, although such a name is not known in Dutch. It could be a corruption of the Dutch for “lion,” the national symbol of Belgium. Or for the Dutch word for “love” or “beloved.” Like the English "loving."

That is, “love child.”

Why would a French family have a Dutch-sounding name?

Perhaps for the same reason indelicate body parts are commonly spoken of in Latin: as a euphemism. In the same way we refer to a toilet as a “washroom” or “rest room.” People rarely go there just to wash, or rest. 

Even better if it sounds like a noble title.