Ryerson Memorial Volume / Prepared on the occasion of the unveiling of the Ryerson statute in the grounds of the Education department on the Queen's birthday, 1889

by J. George Hodgins

The Rev. Dr. Ryerson and His Native County of Norfolk.

Mr. P. K. Olyne, in the New Dominion Monthly for July, 1869, in an article on "Norfolk, or the Long-Point County," thus referrs to its settlement and to the boyhood there of Dr. Ryerson:—

"After undergoing many hardships which were only a foretaste of what they had to endure in the future, a company arrived in the Long Point region about the year 1780. This was then a solitary wilderness. These pioneer Loyalists went to work with zeal unsurpassed in clearing away the forest, in building roads and erecting houses as commodious as it was possible to erect out of rude materials. Among those who first came to the Long Point country, worthy of particular notice, were Colonel Ryerson, Colonel Backhouse, Walsh and Tisdale. In the pioneer home of Joseph Ryerson might have been seen a remarkably bright lad. Being extremely fond of books, he spent his spare moments in studying. So regular was his habits in this respect, that when a neighbour would drop in and ask for Egerton, the answer was sure to be: "You will find him in such a place, with a book." Notwithstanding he was placed in a position where opportunities for gaining an education were very meagre indeed, yet he overcame all obstacles—obstacles that he could not forget in after life, and which, like a true patriot, he set himself to remove. How much Dr. Egerton Ryerson, Chief Superintendent of Education, has done for the educational interests of Canada the reader is left to judge for himself. Of late the Doctor has made a practice of visiting the home of his childhood annually. Not always by rail and stage has he accomplished the journey from Toronto, but still clinging to the sport of his youthful days he would set forward in an open boat, and paddling it himself along the shores of the lakes would finally reach the place so dear to him, and which, no doubt, brought afresh to his memory many recollections both joyous and sad.

"A rude log schoolhouse was constructed by the early settlers as soon as they could do so conveniently. A fire-place extended along nearly a whole side of the building. Logs of considerable length were rolled into this in cold weather for fuel, before which rude benches or hewed logs were placed as seats for the instructor and pupils. The close of the teacher's term was denominated "the last day." It was customary on this occasion for the children to turn the pedagogue out of doors by force, and for this purpose some whiskey was generally provided as a stimulant. Such was the state of educational institutions in the days of young Ryerson. What advancement has education made since? We trace it step by step as onward it has advanced, until to-day Norfolk can proudly boast of institutions and teachers second to none of the kind in the world."

In 1851, Dr. Ryerson sent to each County Council specimens of maps, charts, natural history, prints, etc., to the value of $30, the Council of the County of Norfolk, acknowledged the gift in a very hearty manner. In reply to the County Council, Dr. Ryerson said:—

From the Municipal Council of my native county, I have never experienced unkind opposition, but have been encouraged by its patriotic co-operation: and it affords me no small satisfaction, that that same Council is the first in Upper Canada to acknowledge the receipt of the documents and maps referred to—that the resolution of the Council was seconded by an old school-fellow,[59] and couched in terms to me the most gratifying and encouraging; and that my first official letter of a new year, relates to topics which call up the earliest associations of my youth, and are calculated to prompt and impel me to renewed exertions for the intellectual and social advancement of my native land.

To the County Board of Public Instruction he said:

"I hope the poorest boy in my native County may have access to a better common school than existed there when I was a lad. What I witnessed and felt in my boyhood, gave birth to the strongest impulses of my own mind, to do what I could to place the means and facilities of mental development and culture within the reach of every youth in the land."

"I am more than gratified, I am profoundly impressed, that such efforts are made for the interests of the young, and of future generations in the County of Norfolk. That county is dear to me by a thousand tender recollections; and I still seem to hear in the midst of it, a voice issuing from a mother's grave, as was wont formerly from the living tongue, telling me that the only life worthy the name, is that which makes man one with his fellow-men, and with his country."

In September, 1864, Dr. Ryerson thus referred to the trip in his frail skiff to his native county of Norfolk in the preceding month:

"In my lonely voyage from Toronto to Port Ryerse the scene was often enchanting and the solitude sweet beyond expression. I have witnessed the setting sun amidst the Swiss and Tyrolese Alps from lofty elevations, on the plains of Lombardy, from the highest eminence of the Appenines, between Bologna and Florence, and from the crater summit of Vesuvius, but I was never more delighted and impressed (owing, perhaps, in part to the susceptible state of my feelings) with the beauty, effulgence, and even sublimity of atmospheric phenomena, and the softened magnificence of surrounding objects, than in witnessing the setting sun on the 23rd of June, from the unruffled bosom of Lake Erie, a few miles east of Port Dover, and about a mile from the thickly wooded shore, with its deepening and variously reflected shadows. And when the silent darkness enveloped all this beauty, and grandeur, and magnificence in undistinguishable gloom, my mind experienced that wonderful sense of freedom and relief which come from all that suggests the idea of boundlessness—the deep sky, the dark night, the endless circle, the illimitable waters. The world with its tumult of cares seemed to have retired, and God and His works appeared all in all, suggesting the enquiry which faith and experience promptly answered in the affirmative—

With glorious clouds encompassed round
Whom angels dimly see;
Will the unsearchable be found;
Will God appear to me?

"My last remark is the vivifying influence and unspeakable pleasure of visiting scenes endeared to me by many tender, and comparatively few painful recollections. Amid the fields, woods, out-door exercises, and associations of the first twenty years of my life, I have seemed to forget the sorrows, labors and burdens of more than two score years, and be transported back to what was youthful, simple, healthy, active, and happy. I can heartily sympathise with the feelings of Sir Walter Scott when, in reply to Washington Irving, who had expressed disapprobation in the scenery of the Tweed, immortalized by the genius of the border minstrel, he said:

"'It may be partiality, but to my eyes these gray hills and all this wild border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land. It has something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery of Edinburgh, which is ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my honest gray hills, and if I did not see the heather at least once a year I think I should die.'

"Last autumn I lodged two weeks on the farm on which I was born, with the family of Mr. Joseph Duncan, where the meals were taken daily in a room the wood-work of which I, as an amateur carpenter, had finished more than forty years ago, while recovering from a long and serious illness."[60]