In 1776, the 13 British colonies to the south of Quebec declared independence and formed what country?

Discover Canada records the founding of the United States with one direct sentence: In 1776, the 13 British colonies to the south of Quebec declared independence and formed the United States. North America was again divided by war. The answer is therefore the United States, formed in 1776 from the 13 British colonies to the south of Quebec — a historical event that Discover Canada treats as a turning point for what is now Canada.

The reason this question appears in a Canadian study guide is the migration that followed. Discover Canada reports that More than 40,000 people loyal to the Crown, called "Loyalists," fled the oppression of the American Revolution to settle in Nova Scotia and Quebec. The American break with Britain in 1776 directly populated parts of what would become Canada with British-loyal refugees. Joseph Brant, the guide notes, led "thousands of Loyalist Mohawk Indians into Canada," showing that the migration was not all European.

The Loyalists were also remarkably diverse. Discover Canada writes that they came from "Dutch, German, British, Scandinavian, Aboriginal and other origins" and from "Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Jewish, Quaker and Catholic religious backgrounds." About 3,000 black Loyalists, including freed people and slaves, also came north seeking a better life — and in 1792 some moved on to help establish Freetown in Sierra Leone (West Africa), a new British colony for freed slaves.

The 1776 question is a direct factual check, but its real purpose in Discover Canada is to set up the Loyalist story. The guide treats Loyalist migration as one of the founding events of modern Canada — bringing tens of thousands of new settlers, of remarkably mixed origins, into Nova Scotia and Quebec, and laying the foundation for the next phase of British colonial expansion in North America.

The wrong answer choices each represent a different historical layer. "Canada" as a country did not exist in 1776 — Canadian Confederation came nearly a century later, in 1867. "The British Empire" was the empire the 13 colonies were leaving, not what they formed. And "New France" had already ended in 1759 with the British defeat of the French at the Plains of Abraham.