لم ينتصر | فشل بنجامين فرانكلين في ضم كندا

Throughout his long and accomplished career, Benjamin [Franklin](https://www.dundurn.com/books_/t22117/a9781459754188-he-did-not-conquer) harbored a not-quite-secret desire to annex Canada and make it part of the United States. While he was busy conducting scientific experiments or representing American interests at home and abroad, Franklin was devising plan after plan to annex Canada To the American colonies, and later to the United States. These efforts were not merely intellectual: he went to Montreal in 1776 in an attempt to save Canada from the faltering American occupation. As chief American negotiator in the peace negotiations with Britain in Paris in 1782, Canada's fate was in his hands. However, ill health and other American necessities forced him to abandon his decades-long campaign to annex Canada. Franklin's elevation to the status of an American icon has erased this fiasco from collective memory in both Canada and the United States. However, this failure shaped the future of North America and relations between the two neighboring countries for the next two and a half centuries.