Canadian Civil War

Beginnings


The first spark of the Canadian Civil War was a series of riots and violent clashes between radical Francophone groups and members of the Anglophone minority in Québec in the spring of 2014 following the assassination of Queen Elizabeth after her visit to that province, after the monarchy had taken shelter in Canada from The Troubles in the British Isles.



The domino effect from this triggered many disagreements between Québécois and the Canadian government. This bloomed into open warfare between separatist groups, police, and innocent bystanders who happened to unintentionally walk into the riots that they will refer to as "battles." Then, out of nowhere, Québéc's lieutenant governor, Pierre Duchesne and Premier Jean Charest were murdered. The leader of one particularly strong pro-independence group, the French-Canadian Liberation Front, took control and declared the province an independent nation in early 2014. Shortly afterward, a large number of Francophone Canadian Forces soldiers defected. The speaking of English in public was declared a capital crime. Prime Minister Stephen Harper declared war on Québéc. He called on other nations to help him.



Several major powers sent troops, including Britain and the Commonwealth of Nations. At the start, American officials declared a strict neutrality in the conflict, a move most Americans were flabbergasted by, despite the reasoning being exhaustion from a decade of warfare abroad. The National Guard and other forces were sent to a 50-mile Exclusion Zone spanning the US-Canadian border, with the sole purpose of isolating the vast conflict. Quebec made a similar appeal to the Francophone countries of the world, which met with surprising success, as the Franco-German Commonwealth and several dozen other countries sent troops to support their cause. Even Haiti sent a dozen underfunded and underequipped battalions (left over from the Haiti earthquake in 2009) to defend Quebec from "the invasion of les autres (the others)."

Open war


Nobody from the US except government workers or military personnel could leave or enter the exclusion zone by either land or sea until 2020 when stable peace was re-established. Air travel was the only option for stranded tourists to get home. Airfare would go up 800% months after the Civil War began in the affected zones. Suddenly, those cheap tickets from Ohio to Canada were very expensive and hard to come by.



However, the war was a major factor as Americans and Canadians were interdependent on each other for their respective economies. The war turned in a new direction around the middle of 2015. With the war straining the patience of the combatants, a peace conference between the warring parties was arranged in 2020 in Detroit, Michigan.

Aftermath


The Commonwealth of Nations left a small contingent of troops in Quebec to keep the peace, joined by a deployment of US troops, (and hopefully rebuild the province in a peaceful manner) for some time and it was replaced by a U.N. force composed mostly of troops from the European Union and India. The war strained the U.S. alliance with Canada, along with the division between Anglophone and Francophone states.



The secessionist territories were granted independence as the Republic of Quebec in order to satisfy the pro-independence Francophone Quebecois. Many of them eventually settled there.



The war had international repercussions too. When Britain and the FGC became involved in the war, they were both temporarily suspended from the E.U. After the war, the FGC rejoined the E.U., but Britain withdrew, instead forming closer ties with the Commonwealth as it focused on its own civil strife. It also divided the African Union, as several west African nations had pledged their support to the FGC, resulting in their suspension from the A.U. After the war, they formed their own organization, the United States of Latin Africa.