"QUEBEC DUMPS DOLLARD IN FETE: MONICKER HONOURS 1837-1838 REBELS," MONTREAL GAZETTE  (NOVEMBER 25, 2002).

Copyright Montreal Gazette 2002

While the rest of Canada celebrates Victoria Day next May, Quebecers will enjoy their first Patriots Day, Premier Bernard Landry said yesterday.

The May holiday has been known in Quebec as la Fete de Dollard, in honour of 17th-century soldier Adam Dollard des Ormeaux.

But while attending a ceremony commemorating the rebellion of 1837-1838, Landry announced the day would be changed to la Journee nationale des Patriotes. The Parti Quebecois cabinet is to expected to approve the move this week.

Les Patriotes was the name given to the popular movement that contributed to the rebellions in Lower Canada. The group's leaders included Louis-Joseph Papineau, Jean-Olivier Chenier and Wolfred Nelson.

"This public holiday underlines the Patriotes' fight of 1837- 1838 for the national recognition of our people, for their political freedom and for a democratic government," Landry said.

Dollard Des Ormeaux led 17 Frenchmen from Montreal in the spring of 1660 on a failed ambush of Iroquois hunters. Historians turned the incident, which lasted several days and left no French survivors, into a nationalistic epic in which the French sacrificed themselves to fend off an attack on New France.