Canada: the Empire of the North / Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom

by Agnes C. Laut

THE FOURTH DUKE OF RICHMOND, GOVERNOR GENERAL OF CANADA, 1818-1819

It is sad to write of two such high-minded, well-intentioned rulers, that the worst acts of misgovernment in Canada took place in their régime.

Richmond's death was as unusual as his life. Two accounts are given of the cause. One states that he permitted a pet dog to touch a cut in his face. The other account has it that he was bitten by a tame fox at a fair in Sorel, and the date of Richmond's death, late in August of 1819, exactly two months from the time he was bitten at Sorel,—which is the length of time that hydrophobia takes to develop in a grown person,—would seem to substantiate the latter story. He was traveling on horseback from Perth to Richmond, on the Ottawa, and had complained of feeling poorly. A small stream had to be crossed. The sight of the stream brought the strange water delirium to Richmond, when he begged his attendants to take him quickly to Montreal. It need scarcely be explained here that hydrophobia is not caused by lack of water, but by contagious transmission. The feeling passed, as the first terrors of the disease are usually spasmodic, and the Governor was proceeding through the woods with his attendants, when he suddenly broke away deliriously, leading them a wild race to a farm shed. There he died during the night, crying out as the lucid intervals broke the delirium of his agonies: "For shame! for shame Lenox! Richmond, be a man! Can you not bear it?"

Public affairs are meanwhile passing from bad to worse. William Lyon MacKenzie has become leader of the agitators in his newspaper, The Advocate, of Toronto. A band of young vandals, sons of the ruling clique, wreck his newspaper office and throw the type into Toronto Bay, but MacKenzie recovers $3000 damages and goes on agitating. Four times he is publicly expelled from the House, and four times he is returned by the electors. What are they asking, these agitators, branded as rebels, expelled from the assembly, in some cases cast in prison by the councilors, in others threatened with death?

Control of public revenues.
Reform in the land system.
Municipal rights for towns and cities.
The exclusion of judges from Parliament.
That the council be directly responsible to the people rather than the Crown.

Since 1818 the reformers have been agitating to have wrongs righted, and for nineteen years the clique has prevented official inquiry, gagged the press, bludgeoned conventions out of existence, and thrown leaders of opposition in prison.

MacKenzie now makes the mistake of publishing in his papers a letter from the English radical Hume, advocating the freedom of Canada "from the baneful domination of the mother country." At once, with a jingo whoop, the loyalty cry is emitted by "the family compact." Is not this what they have been telling the Governor from the first,—these reformers are republicans in disguise? By trickery and manipulation they swing the next election so that MacKenzie is defeated. From that moment MacKenzie's tone changed. It may be that, losing all hope of reform, he became a republican. If this were treason, then the English ministers, who were advocating the same remedy, were guilty of the same treason. With MacKenzie, secretly and openly, are a host of sympathizers,—Dr. Rolph, Tom Talbot's old friend, come up from the London district to practice medicine in Toronto, and Van Egmond, who has helped to settle the Huron Tract of the Canada Company, founded by John Galt, the novelist, and some four thousand others whose names MacKenzie has on a list in his carpet bag.