HUMOURS OF ’37
GRAVE, GAY AND GRIM
REBELLION TIMES IN THE CANADAS.
BY
ROBINA AND KATHLEEN MACFARLANE LIZARS,
Authors of “In the Days of the Canada Company: the Story of the
Settlement of the Huron Tract.”
“The humours are commonly the most important and most
variable parts of the animal body.”
TORONTO:
WILLIAM BRIGGS,
Wesley Buildings.

C. W. COATES, Montreal.	S. F. HUESTIS, Halifax.
1897.

Entered, according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, by Kathleen MacFarlane Lizars, at the Department of Agriculture.

PREFACE.

The title of this book is built upon the assumption that humour is a sense of incongruity, not that there was anything specially humorous in the affairs of ’37 beyond that which arose from the crudeness of the times.

A medium between the sacrifice of detail attendant on compilation, and the loss of effect in a whole picture through too close application of the historic microscope, has been attempted. True proportion is difficult to compass at short range, yet the motives, ideas and occurrences which produced the animosities leading to the Rebellion were the inheritance, the special property, of the men who lived then; and of them few remain. To those who do and who have so kindly given their reminiscences special thanks are due. The works of the documentary and the philosophic historian lie on the shelves ready to one’s hand; but those who were “Loyalist” and “Rebel” are quickly dropping into that silence where suffering and injustice, defeat and victory, meet in common oblivion.