Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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MacKenzie's sentries had warned the insurgents of the loyalists'
coming. MacKenzie was for immediate advance. Van Egmond thought it
stark madness for five hundred poorly armed men to meet twelve hundred
troopers in pitched battle; but it was too late now for stark madness
to retreat. The loyalist {423} bands could be heard from Rosedale; the
loyalists' bayonets could be seen glittering in the sun. MacKenzie
posted his men a short distance south of the tavern in some woods; one
hundred and fifty on one side of the road west of Yonge Street, one
hundred on the other side. The rest of the insurgents, being without
arms, did not leave the rendezvous. In the confusion and haste the
tragic mistake was made of leaving MacKenzie's carpet bag with the list
of patriots at the tavern. This gave the loyalists a complete roster
of the agitators' names.

[Illustration: ALLAN McNAB]

Fifteen minutes later it was all over with MacKenzie. The big guns of
the Toronto troops shelled the woods, killing one patriot rebel and
wounding eleven, four fatally. In answer, only a clattering spatter of
shots came from the rebel side. The patriots were in headlong flight
with the mounted men of Toronto in pursuit.

It was over with MacKenzie, but, as the sequence of events will show,
it was not all over with the cause. A book of soldiers' yarns might be
told of hairbreadth escapes, the aftermath of the rebellion. Knowing
his side was doomed to defeat, Dr. Rolph tried to escape from Toronto.
He was stopped by a loyalist sentry, but explained he was leaving the
city to visit a patient. Farther on he had been arrested by a loyalist
picket, when luckily a young doctor who had attended Rolph's medical
lectures, all unconscious of MacKenzie's plot, vouched for his {424}
loyalty. Riding like a madman all that night, Rolph reached Niagara
and escaped to the American frontier. A reward of 1000 pounds had been
offered for MacKenzie dead or alive. He had waited only till his
followers fled, when he mounted his big bay horse and galloped for the
woods, pursued by Fitzgibbons' men. The big bay carried him safely to
the country, where he wandered openly for four days. It speaks volumes
for the stanch fidelity of the country people to the cause which
MacKenzie represented, that during these wanderings he was unbetrayed,
spite of the 1000 pounds reward. Finally he too succeeded in crossing
Niagara. Van Egmond was captured north of Yonge Street, but died from
disease contracted in his prison cell before he could be tried. Lount,
another of the leaders, had succeeded in reaching Long Point, Lake
Erie. With a fellow patriot, a French voyageur, and a boy, he started
to cross Lake Erie in an open boat. It was wintry, stormy weather.
For two days and two nights the boat tossed, a plaything of the waves,
the drenching spray freezing as it fell, till the craft was almost
ice-logged. For food they had brought only a small piece of meat, and
this had frozen so hard that their numbed hands could not break it.
Weakening at each oar stroke, they at last saw the south shore of Lake
Erie rise on the sky line; but before the close-muffled refugees had
dared to hope for safety on the American side, a strong south wind had
sprung up that drove the boat back across the lake towards Grand River.
To remain exposed longer meant certain death. They landed, were
mistaken for smugglers, and thrown into jail, where Lount was at once
recognized.

In West Ontario one Dr. Duncombe had acted as MacKenzie's lieutenant.
Allan McNab had come west with six hundred men to suppress the
rebellion. Realizing the hopelessness of further resistance, Duncombe
had tried to save his men by ordering them to disperse to their homes.
He himself, with his white horse, took to the woods, where he lay in
hiding all day--and it was a Canadian December--and foraged at night
for berries and roots. Judge Ermatinger gives the graphic story of
{425} Duncombe's escape. Starvation drove him to the house of a
friend. The friend was out, and when the wife asked who he was,
Duncombe laid his revolver on the table and made answer, "I am
Duncombe; and I must have food." Here he lay disguised so completely
with nightcap, nightdress, and all, as the visiting grandmother of the
family, that loyalists who saw his white horse and came in to search
the house, looked squarely at the recumbent figure beneath the
bedclothes and did not recognize him. Duncombe at last reached his
sister's home near London.

"Don't you know me?" he asked, standing in the open door, waiting for
her recognition. In the few weeks of exposure and pursuit his hair had
turned snow-white.

His friends suggested that he cross to the American frontier dressed as
a woman, and the disguise was so perfect, curls of his sister's hair
bobbing from beneath his bonnet, that two loyalist soldiers gallantly
escorted the lady's sleigh across unsafe places in the ice. Duncombe
waited till he was well on the American side, and his escorts on the
way back to Sarnia. Then he emitted a yell over the back of the
cutter, "Go tell your officers you have just helped Dr. Duncombe
across!"

Having lost the fight for a cause which events have since justified, it
is not surprising that the patriots on the American frontier now lost
their heads. They formed organizations from Detroit to Vermont for the
invasion of Canada and the establishment of a republic. These bands
were known as "Hunter's Lodges." Rolph and Duncombe repudiated
connection with them, but MacKenzie was head and heart for armed
invasion from Buffalo. Space forbids the story of these raids. They
would fill a book with such thrilling tales as make up the border wars
of Scotland.

The tumultuous year of 1837 closed with the burning of the _Caroline_.
MacKenzie had taken up quarters on Navy Island in Niagara River. The
_Caroline_, an American ship, was being employed to convey guns and
provisions to the insurgents' camp. On the Canadian side of the river
camped Allan McNab with {426} twenty-five hundred loyalist troops.
Looking across the river with field glasses, McNab sees the boat
landing field guns on Navy Island for MacKenzie.

"I say," exclaims the future Sir Allan, "this won't do! Can't you cut
that vessel out, Drew?" addressing a young officer.

"Nothing easier," answers Drew.

"Do it, then," orders McNab.

In spite of the fact "nothing was easier," Drew's men came near
disaster on their midnight escapade. The river below Navy Island was
three miles wide, and only a mile and a half from the rapids above the
Falls, with a current like a mill race. Secretly seven boats, with
four men in each, set out at half past eleven, a few friends on the
river bank wishing Drew Godspeed. Out from shore Drew draws his boats
together, and tells the men the perilous task they have to do: if any
one wishes to go back let him do so now. Not a man speaks. Halfway
across, firing from the island drives two of the boats back. The rest
get under shadow from the bright moonlight and go on. The roar of the
Falls now became deafening, and some of the rowers called out they were
being drawn down the center of the river astern. Drew fastens his eyes
on a light against the American shore to judge of their progress. For
a moment, though the men were rowing with all their might, the light
ashore and the boats in mid-river seemed to remain absolutely still.
Finally the boats gained an oar's length. Then a mighty pull, and all
forge ahead. A strip of land hides approach to the _Caroline_. The
Canadian boatmen lie in hiding till the moon goes down, then glide in
on the _Caroline_, when Drew mounts the decks. Three unarmed men are
found on the shore side. Drew orders them to land. One fires
point-blank; Drew slashes him down with a single saber cut. The rest
of the crew are roused from sleep and sent ashore. The _Caroline_ is
set on fire in four places. She is moored to the shore ice; axes chop
her free. She is adrift; Drew the last to jump from her flaming decks
to his place in the small boats. The flames are seen from the Canadian
side, and huge bonfires light up the Canadian shore; by their gleam
{427} Drew steers back for McNab's army, and is welcomed with cheers
that split the welkin. Slowly the flaming vessel drifted down the
channel to the Falls. Suddenly the lights went out; the _Caroline_ had
either sunk on a reef or gone over the Falls. One man had been killed
on the decks. As the vessel was American, and had been raided in
American ports, the episode raised an international dispute that might
in another mood have caused war.

Lount and Matthews pay for the rebellion on the gallows, upon which the
imperial government expressed regret that the Toronto Executive "found
such severity necessary." Later, when "the Hunters' Lodges" raid
Prescott, and Van Shoultz, the Polish leader, with nine others, is
executed at Kingston, a great revulsion of feeling takes place against
_the family compact_. The execution of the patriots did more for their
cause than all their efforts of twenty years. The Canadian people had
supported the agitators up to the point of armed rebellion. That gave
British blood pause, for the Britisher reveres the law next to God; but
when the governing ring began to glut its vengeance under cloak of
loyalty that was another matter. After the execution of Lount and
Matthews _the family compact_ could scarcely count a friend outside its
own circle in Upper Canada. It is worth remembering that the young
lawyer who defended Van Shoultz in the trial at Kingston was a John A.
Macdonald, who later took foremost part in framing a new constitution
for Canada.

Affairs had gone faster in Quebec. There the rebellion almost became
war. Papineau was leader of the agitators,--Papineau, fiery,
impetuous, eloquent, followed by the bold boys in the bonnets blue,
marching the streets of Montreal singing revolutionary songs and
planting liberty trees. In Lower Canada, too, things have come to the
pass where the agitators advocate armed resistance. From the first, in
Quebec, the struggle has waged round two questions,--the exclusion of
the French from the council, and the right of the colony to spend its
own revenues; but boil down the ninety-two resolutions of 1834, and the
demands {428} of the agitators in Lower Canada are the same as in Upper
Canada, for complete self-government. A dozen clashes of authority
lead up to the final outbreak. For instance, the House elects
Papineau, the agitator, speaker. The Governor General refuses to
recognize him, and Parliament is dissolved.

Failing to obtain redress by constitutional methods, the agitators now
advocate the right of a colony to abolish government unsuited to it.
The constitutional party takes alarm and organizes volunteers.
Papineau's party, early in 1837, begin violently advocating that all
French magistrates resign their commissions from the English
government. On Richelieu River and up in Two Mountains, north of
Montreal, are the strongholds of the agitators, where men have been
drilling, and the boys in the bonnets blue rioting through the villages
to the great scandal of parish priests.

[Illustration: LOUIS J. PAPINEAU]

There are riots in Montreal early in November of 1837, and "the Sons of
Liberty" are chased through the town. Then in the third week of
November a troop of Montreal cavalry is sent to St. John's to arrest
three agitators, who have been threatening a magistrate for refusing to
resign his commission. The agitators are arrested and handcuffed, and
at three in the morning the troops are moving along across country
towards Longueuil with the prisoners in a wagon, when suddenly three
hundred armed men rise on either side of the road to the fore. Shots
are exchanged. In the confusion the prisoners jump from the wagon.
This is not resistance to authority. It is open rebellion. Papineau
intrusts the management of affairs in St. Eustache, north of Montreal,
to Girod, a Swiss, and to {429} Dr. Chenier, a local patriot. Papineau
himself and Dr. Nelson and O'Callaghan are down on the Richelieu at St.
Denis.

Take the Richelieu region first. Colonel Gore is to strike up the
river southward to St. Denis. Colonel Wetherell is to cross country
from Montreal and strike down the river north to St. Charles, thus
hemming in the insurgents between Gore on the north and himself on the
south. There are eight hundred rebels at St. Denis, one hundred and
fifty armed, and twelve hundred at St. Charles. Papineau and
O'Callaghan for safety's sake slip across the line to Swanton in
Vermont. One could wish that, having led their faithful followers up
to the sticking point of stark madness, the agitators had remained
shoulder to shoulder with the brave fellows on the field.

Colonel Gore came from Montreal by boat to the mouth of the Richelieu.
At seven-thirty on the night of November 22 two hundred and fifty
troopers landed to march up the Richelieu road to St. Denis. Rain
turning to sleet was falling in a deluge. The roads were swimming
knee-deep in slush. Bridges had been cut, and in the darkness the
loyalists had to diverge to fording places, which lengthened out the
march twenty-four miles. At St. Denis was Dr. Nelson with the
agitators in a three-story stone house, windows bristling with muskets.
By dawn Papineau and O'Callaghan had fled, and at nine o'clock came
Colonel Gore's loyalist troopers, exhausted from the march, soaked to
the skin, their water-sagged clothes freezing in the cold wind. The
loyalists went into the fight unfed, and with a whoop; but it is not
surprising that the peppering of bullets from the windows drove the
troopers back, and Gore's bugles sounded retreat. Unaware of Gore's
defeat, one Lieutenant Weir has been sent across country with
dispatches. He is captured and bound, and, in a futile attempt to
escape, shot and stabbed to death.

Wetherell comes down the river from Chambly with three hundred men. He
finds St. Charles village protected by outworks of felled trees, and
the houses are literally loopholed with muskets; but Wetherell has
brought cannon along, and the cannon begin to sing on November 25.
Then Wetherell's {430} men charge through the village with leveled
bayonets. The poor habitants scatter like frightened sheep; they
surrender; one hundred perish. It is estimated that on both sides
three hundred are wounded, though some English writers give the list of
wounded as low as forty. Messengers galloped with news of the
patriots' defeat at St. Charles to Dr. Nelson at St. Denis. The
habitants fled to their homes. Nelson was left without a follower. He
escaped to the woods, and for two weeks wandered in the forests of the
boundary, exposed to cold and hunger, not daring to kindle a fire that
would betray him, afraid to let himself sleep for fear of freezing to
death. He was captured near the Vermont line and carried prisoner to
Montreal.

[Illustration: SIR JOHN COLBORNE, GOVERNOR OF CANADA, 1838-1841]

And still worse fared the fortunes of war with the patriots north of
Montreal. Their defense and defeat were almost pitiable in childish
ignorance of what war might mean. Boys' marbles had been gathered
together for bullets. Scythes were carried as swords, and old
flintlocks that had not seen service for twenty years were taken down
from the chimney places. With their bonnets blue hanging down their
backs, rusty firearms over their shoulders, and the village fiddler
leading the march, one thousand "Sons of Liberty" had paraded the
streets of St. Eustache, singing, rollicking, speechifying, unconscious
as {431} children playing war that they were dancing to ruin above a
volcano. Chenier, the beloved country doctor, is their leader. Girod,
the Swiss, has come up to show them how to drill. They take possession
of a newly built convent. Then on Sunday, the 3d of December, comes
word of the defeat down on the Richelieu. The moderate men plead with
Chenier to stop now before it is too late; but Chenier will not listen.
He knows the cause is right, and with the credulity or faith of a
simple child hopes some mad miracle will win the day. Still he is much
moved; tears stream down his face. Then on December 14 the church
bells ring a crazy alarm. The troops are coming, two thousand of them
from Montreal under Sir John Colborne, the governor. The insurgent
army melts like frost before the sun. Less than one hundred men stand
by poor Chenier. At eleven-thirty the troops sweep in at both ends of
the village at once, Girod, the Swiss commander, suicides in panic
flight. Cooped up in the church steeple with the flames mounting
closer round them and the troopers whooping jubilantly outside, Chenier
and his eighty followers call out: "We are done! We are sold! Let us
jump!" Chenier jumps from the steeple, is hit by the flying bullets,
and perishes as he falls. His men cower back in the flaming steeple
till it falls with a crash into the burning ruins. Amid the ash heap
are afterwards found the corpses of seventy-two patriots. The troopers
take one hundred prisoners in the region, then set fire to all houses
where loyalist flags are not waved from the windows.

Matters have now come to such an outrageous pass that the British
government can no longer ignore the fact that the colony has been
goaded to desperation by the misgovernment of the ruling clique. Lord
Durham is appointed special commissioner with extraordinary powers to
proceed to Canada and investigate the whole subject of colonial
government. One may guess that the ruling clique were prepared to take
possession of the new commissioner and prime him with facts favorable
to their side; but Durham was not a man to be monopolized by any
faction. {432} When he arrived, in May of 1838, he quickly gave proof
that he would follow his own counsels and choose his own councilors.
His first official declaration was practically an act of amnesty to the
rebels, eight only of the leading prisoners, among them Dr. Nelson,
being punished by banishment to Bermuda, the rest being simply expelled
from Canada.

This act was tantamount to a declaration that the rebels possessed some
rights and had suffered real grievances, and the governing rings in
both Toronto and Quebec took furious offense. Complaints against
Durham poured into the English colonial office,--complaints, oddly
enough, that he had violated the spirit of the English Constitution by
sentencing subjects of the Crown without trial. Though every one knew
that in Canada's turbulent condition trial by jury was impossible,
Durham's political foes in England took up the cry. In addition to
political complaints were grudges against Durham for personal slight;
and it must be confessed the haughty earl had ridden roughshod over all
the petty prejudices and little dignities of the colonial magnates.
The upshot was, Durham resigned in high dudgeon and sailed for England
in November of 1838.

[Illustration: LORD DURHAM, SPECIAL COMMISSIONER TO CANADA, 1838]

On his way home he dictated to his secretary, Charles Buller, the
famous report which is to Canada what the Magna Charta is to England or
the Declaration of Independence to the United States. Without going
into detail, it may be said that it {433} recommended complete
self-government for the colonies. As disorders had again broken out in
Canada, the English government hastened to embody the main
recommendations of Durham's report in the Union Act of 1840, which came
into force a year later. By it Upper and Lower Canada were united on a
basis of equal representation each, though Quebec's population was six
hundred thousand to Ontario's five hundred thousand. The colonies were
to have the entire management of their revenues and civil lists. The
government was to consist of an Upper Chamber appointed by the Crown
for life, a representative assembly, and the governor with a cabinet of
advisers responsible to the assembly.

In all, more than seven hundred arrests had been made in Quebec
Province. Of these all were released but some one hundred and thirty,
and the state trials resulted in sentence of banishment against fifty,
death to twelve. In modern days it is almost impossible to realize the
degree of fanatical hatred generated by this half century of
misgovernment. Declared one of the governing clique's official
newspapers in Montreal: "Peace must be maintained, even if we make the
country a solitude. French Canadians must be swept from the face of
the earth. . . . The empire must be respected, even at the cost of the
entire French Canadian people." With such sentiments openly uttered,
one may surely say that the Constitutional Act of 1791 turned back the
pendulum of Canada's progress fifty years, and it certainly took fifty
more years to eradicate the bitterness generated by the era of
misgovernment.

With the Upper and Lower Canadas united in a federation of two
provinces, it was a foregone conclusion that all parts of British North
America must sooner or later come into the fold. It would be hard to
say from whom the idea of confederation of all the provinces first
sprang. Purely as a theory the idea may be traced back as early as
1791. The truth is, Destiny, Providence, or whatever we like to call
that great stream of concurrent events which carries men and nations
out to the ocean {434} highway of a larger life, forced British North
America into the Confederation of 1867.

In the first place, while the Union worked well in theory, it was
exceedingly difficult in practice. Ontario and Quebec had equal
representation. One was Protestant, the other Catholic; one French,
the other English. Deadlocks, or, to use the slang of the street, even
tugs of war, were inevitable and continual. All Ontario had to do to
thwart Quebec, or Quebec had to do to thwart Ontario, was to stand
together and keep the votes solid. Coalition ministries proved a
failure.

In the second place, Ontario was practically dependent on the customs
duties collected at Quebec ports of entry for a provincial revenue.
The goods might be billed for Ontario; Quebec collected the tax.

Ontario was also dependent on Quebec for access to the sea. Which
province was to pay for the system of canals being developed, and the
deepening of the St. Lawrence?

Then the Oregon Treaty of 1846 had actually brought a cloud of war on
the horizon. In case of war, there was the question of defense.

Then railways had become a very live question. Quebec wanted
connection with New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. How was the cost of a
railroad to be apportioned? Red River was agitating for freedom from
fur-trade monopoly. How were railways to be built to Red River?

Ontario's population in twenty years jumped past the million mark. Was
it fair that her million people should have only the same number of
representatives as Quebec with her half million? Reformers of Ontario,
voiced by George Brown of _The Globe_, called for "Rep. by
Pop.,"--representation by population.

Civil war was raging in the United States, threatening to tear the
Union to tatters. Why? Because the balance of power had been left
with the states governments, and not enough authority centralized in
the federal government. The lesson was not lost on struggling Canada.

{435} England's declaration of free trade brought the colonies face to
face with the need of some united action to raise revenue by tariff.

Then the Hudson's Bay Company's license of monopoly over the fur trade
of the west was nearing expiration. Should the license be renewed for
another twenty years, or should Canada take over Red River as a new
province, which was the wish of the people both east and west? And if
Canada did buy out the Hudson's Bay Company's vested rights, who was to
pay down the cost?

[Illustration: JOHN A. MACDONALD]

Lastly, was John A. Macdonald, the young lawyer who had pleaded the
defense of the patriot trials at Kingston in 1838, now a leading
politician of the United Canadas, weary of the hopeless deadlocks
between Ontario and Quebec. With almost a sixth sense of divination in
reading the signs of the times in the trend of events, John A.
Macdonald saw that Canada's one hope of becoming a national power lay
in union,--confederation. The same thing was seen by other leaders of
the day, by all that grand old guard known as the Fathers of
Confederation, sent from the different provinces to the conference at
Quebec in October of 1864. There the outline of what is known as the
British North America Act was drafted,--in the main but an
amplification of Durham's scheme, made broad enough to receive all
{436} the provinces whenever they might decide to come into
Confederation. The delegates then go back to be indorsed by their
provinces. By some provinces the scheme is rejected. Newfoundland is
not yet part of Canada, but by 1867 Confederation is an accomplished
fact. By 1871 the new Dominion has bought out the rights of the
Hudson's Bay Company in the West and Manitoba joins the Eastern
Provinces. By 1885 a railway links British Columbia with Nova Scotia.
By 1905 the great hunting field of the Saskatchewan prairies has been
divided into two new provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, each larger
than France.

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