Pumpkin inferno

Not exactly the pumpkin inferno that we saw just about a year ago in Upper Canada (see reference 1), but at least they are royal pumpkins, grown in the walled cabbage patch of the royal palace at Hampton Court, under the general supervision of a couple of pleasant young ladies. And furthermore, they are real pumpkins, not made of styrofoam - or, at least, I don't think so.

Which moved me to check what the upper bit of Upper Canada was about. Further up the river than Lower Canada? Wikipedia was able to confirm that this was indeed the case. I quote: 'the Province of Upper Canada (aka Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 ... to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees of the United States of America after the American Revolution ... generally comprised present-day Southern Ontario. The upper prefix in the name reflects its geographic position being closer to the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River than that of Lower Canada (or present-day Quebec) to the northeast. Upper Canada included all of modern-day Southern Ontario and all those areas of Northern Ontario in the Pays d'en Haut which had formed part of New France, essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River or Lakes Huron and Superior (excluding any lands within the watershed of Hudson Bay)'.

I must have known some of this before, but I don't think I ever knew about the connection with the secession of South Canada. That said, I am reminded that Upper Canada was the destination of choice for escaping slaves from the Deep South during the lifetime of the infamous Fugitive Slave Act, sometimes known as the Fugitive Property Act.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/so-off-we-went-to-upper-canada-village.html.