Toronto of Old / Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario

by Henry Scadding

The local government took its cue in this matter from its superiors of the day in the old country. What Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer says in his sketch of the life of Cobbett helps to explain the action of the early Upper Canada authorities in respect to the press. "Let us not forget," says the writer just named, "the blind and uncalculating intolerance with which the law struggled against opinion from 1809 to 1822. Writers during this period were transported, imprisoned, and fined, without limit or conscience; and just when government became more gentle to legitimate newspapers, it engaged in a new conflict with unstamped ones. No less than 500 venders of these were imprisoned within six years. The contest was one of life and death."

So early as 1807 there was an "opposition" paper—the Upper Canada Guardian. Willcocks, the editor, had been Sheriff of the Home District, and had lost his office for giving a vote contrary to the policy of the lieutenant-governor for the time being. He was returned as a member of parliament; and after having been imprisoned for breach of privilege, he was returned again, and continued to lead the reforming party. The name of Mr. Cameron, the publisher of the Gazette at York was, by some means, mixed up with that of Mr. Willcocks, in connection with the Upper Canada Guardian in 1807, and he found it expedient to publish in the Gazette of June 20, the following notice: "To the Public—Having seen the Prospectus of a paper generally circulated at Niagara, intended to be printed in Upper Canada, entitled the Upper Canada Guardian or Freeman's Journal, executed in the United States of America, without my knowledge or consent, wherein my name appears as being a party concerned; I therefore think it necessary to undeceive my friends and the inhabitants of Upper Canada, and to assure them that I have no connection with, nor is it my most distant wish or intention in any wise to be connected with the printing or publication of said paper. John Bennett."—When the war of 1812 broke out the Guardian came to an end; its editor at first loyally bore arms on the Canadian side, but at length deserted to the enemy, taking with him some of the Canadian Militia. He was afterwards killed at the siege of Fort Erie.

The newspaper which occupies the largest space in the early annals of the press at York is the Colonial Advocate. Issuing first at Queenston in May, 1824, it was removed in the following November to York. Its shape varied from time to time: now it was a folio: now a quarto. On all its pages the matter was densely packed; but printed in a very mixed manner: it abounded with sentences in italics, in small capitals, in large capitals; with names distinguished in like decided manner: with paragraphs made conspicuous by rows of index hands, and other typographical symbols at top, bottom and sides. It was editorial, not in any one particular column, but throughout; and the opinions delivered were expressed for the most part in the first person.

The Weekly Register fell foul of the Advocate at once. It appears that the new audacious nondescript periodical, though at the time it bore on its face the name of Queenston, was nevertheless for convenience sake printed at Lewiston on the New York side of the river. Hence it was denounced by the Weekly Register in language that now astonishes us, as a United States production; and as in the United States interest. "This paper of motley, unconnected, shake-bag periods" cried the Editor of the Weekly Register, "this unblushing, brazen-faced Advocate, affects to be a Queenston and Upper Canadian paper; whereas it is to all intents and purposes, and radically, a Lewiston and genu-wine Yankee paper. How can this man of truth, this pure and holy reformer and regenerator of the unhappy and prostrate Canada reconcile such barefaced and impudent deception?"

Nothing could more promote the success of the Colonial Advocate than a welcome like this. To account for the Register's extraordinary warmth, it is to be said that the Advocate in its first number had happened to quote a passage from an address of its Editor to the electors of the County of Durham, which seemed in some degree to compromise him as a servant of the Government. Mr. Fothergill had ventured to say "I know some of the deep and latent causes why this fine country has so long languished in a state of comparative stupor and inactivity, while our more enterprising neighbours are laughing us to scorn. All I desire is an opportunity of attempting the cure of some of the evils we labour under." This was interpreted in the Advocate to mean a censure upon the Executive. But the Register replied that these words simply expressed the belief that the evils complained of were remediable only by the action of the House of Assembly, on the well-known axiom "that all law is for the people, and from the people; and when efficient, must be remedied or rectified by the people; and that therefore Mr. Fothergill was desirous of assisting in the great work."

The end in fact was that the Editor of the Register, after his return to parliament for the County of Durham, did not long retain the post of King's Printer. After several independent votes in the House he was dismissed by Sir Peregrine Maitland in 1826, after which date the awkwardness of uniting with a Government Gazette a general newspaper whose editor, as a member of the House of Assembly, might claim the privilege of acting with His Majesty's opposition, came to an end. In 1826 we have Mr. Fothergill in his place in the House supporting a motion for remuneration to the publisher of the Advocate, on the ground that the wide and even gratuitous circulation of that paper throughout Canada and among members of the British House of Commons, "would help to draw attention in the proper quarter to the country."

Here is an account of McKenzie's method in the collection of matter for his various publications, the curious multifariousness of which matter used to astonish while it amused. The description is by Mr. Kent, editor of a religious journal, entitled The Church, published at Cobourg in 1838. Lord Clarendon's style has been exactly caught, it will be observed: "Possessed of a taste for general and discursive reading," says Mr. Kent, "he (McK.) made even his very pleasures contribute to the serious business of his life, and, year after year, accumulated a mass of materials, which he pressed into his service at some fitting opportunity. Whenever anything transpired that at all reflected on a political opponent, or whenever, in his reading, he met with a passage that favoured his views, he not only turned it to a present purpose, but laid it by, to bring it forward at some future period, long after it might have been supposed to be buried in oblivion."

The Editor of the Advocate, after his flight from Canada in 1837, published for a short time at New York a paper named McKenzie's Gazette, which afterwards was removed to Rochester: its term of existence there was also brief. In the number for June, 1839, we have the following intelligence contributed by a correspondent at Toronto: a certain animus in relation to the military in Canada, and in relation to the existing Banks of the country, is apparent. "Toronto, May 24th: The 93rd Regiment is still in quarters here. The men 660 strong, all Scotchmen, enlisted in the range of country from Aberdeen to Ayrshire: a highland regiment without highlanders: few or none of Englishmen or Irishmen among them. They are a fine-looking body of men: I never saw a finer. I wished to go into the garrison, but was not permitted to do so. Few of the townspeople have that privilege. —— has made the fullest enquiries, and tells me that a majority of the men would be glad to get away if they could: they would willingly leave the service and the country. He says they are well-informed, civil and well-behaved, and that for such time as England may be compelled to retain possession of the Canadas by military force, against the wishes of the settled population he would like to have this regiment remain in Toronto. —— tells me that a few soups have been kept at Queenston during the winter, because if they desert it is no matter: the regulars are all at Drummondville, near the Falls, and a couple of hundred blacks at Chippewa watching them. The Ferry below the Falls is guarded by old men whose term of service is nearly out, and who look for a pension. It is the same at Malden, and in Lower Canada. The regiments Lord Durham brought were fine fellows, the flower of the English army.

"The Banks here tax the people heavily, but they are so stupid they don't see it. All the specie goes into the Banks. I am told that the Upper Canada Bank had at one time £300,000 in England in Commissariat bills of Exchange: their notes in circulation are a million and a quarter of paper dollars, for all of which they draw interest from the people, although not obliged to keep six cents in their money-till to redeem them. All the troops were paid in the depreciated paper of these fraudulent bankrupt concerns, the directors of which deserve the Penitentiary: the contracts of the Commissariat are paid in the same paper as a 10 per cent. shave: and the troops up at Brantford were also paid in Bank notes which the Bank did not pretend to redeem; and it would have offended Sir George [Arthur], who has a share in such speculations (as he had when in VanDieman's Land), had any one asked the dollars. Sir Allan McNab, who has risen from poverty to be president de facto, solicitor, directors and company of the Gore Bank, ever since its creation, is said to be terribly embarrassed for want of money. He is not the alpha and omega of the Bank now. He has quarrelled with his brother villains. The money paid to Canada from England to uphold troops to coerce the people helps the Banks."

In the same number of the Gazette published at Rochester we have an extract from a production by Robert Gourlay himself, who in his old age paid a final visit of inspection to Canada. In allusion to a portion of Gourlay's famous work published in 1822, the extract is headed in McKenzie's Gazette "Robert Gourlay's 'Last Sketch' of Upper Canada." It is dated at Toronto, May 25th. Having just presented one gloomy view, we will venture to lower the reader's spirits a particle more, by giving another. Let allowance be made for the morbid mental condition of the writer: the contrast offered by the Canada of to-day will afterwards proportionably exhilarate.