🍁 Union Club lunch: The Failure to Annex Canada

When: Friday, 28 November 2025
Where: The Union Club, 805 Gordon Street
Time: 11:30 am – 1:30 pm (registration desk opens at 11:25 am)
Our Speaker: Madelaine Drohan

This is a CIC member event only.

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US President Donald Trump is not the first American to covet Canada. Throughout his long and illustrious career, Benjamin Franklin also nursed not-so-secret plans to annex what we know today as Canada and make it American. His plans were not solely intellectual efforts. In 1776, he travelled to Montreal to try to turn around a faltering occupation by American forces. Later, as the lead American negotiator at the 1782 Paris peace negotiations with Britain, he once again attempted to control the fate of Canada. However, in the end, his ill health and other American priorities forced him to abandon a decades-long campaign to possess our country.

Franklin has been elevated to the status of an American icon. While time has pushed this particular policy failure of his into the far reaches of collective memory in both Canada and the United States, it has, as our speaker will discuss, shaped relations between the two neighbours ever since.

Our speaker:

Madelaine Drohan spent most of her journalistic career as a foreign correspondent, reporting on Europe for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail and then on Canada for the London-based Economist. She is a senior fellow at the Graduate School for Public and International Affairs, at the University of Ottawa.

Madelaine is also the author of: He Did Not Conquer: Benjamin Franklin’s Failure to Annex Canada.

Munro’s Books will be onsite during the event with copies of Madeleine’s book for sale and signing. The approximate cost, with tax, is $30 a copy.

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The cost to attend this lunch is $45 for CIC members, $35 for CIC young professional members and $25 for CIC student members.

To register, please email Jennifer Button at cic.victoria.sec@gmail.com no later than noon on Friday, 21 November with your name and any specific dietary restrictions. After noon on Friday, 21 November additional dietary restrictions cannot be entertained. Meal substitutions on the day will incur an additional $45 charge.

Once we have received your request to attend the lunch, we will add you to the lunch list and email you with payment instructions. If you do not receive an email from us within 3 or 4 days, please check your own system (spam, etc.) and contact us only after you have ascertained that you have not received a reply from CIC.

Do not send e-transfers to the branch until you hear from us with instructions to do so. Please read the payment instructions carefully and make sure that you use the indicated payment address for eTransfers. Payment by eTransfer is strongly encouraged. (Please, no cash at the door, but cheques can be accepted).

Unfortunately, as meals must be pre-ordered and paid for, no refunds are possible after noon on Friday, 21 November unless we can fill the cancellation from a waiting list.