From survivors, and from a few printed memorials, one finds that what was known as Training Day seems to have been a great farce in Upper Canada. The 4th of June, King George’s birthday, was its date. Descriptions of it take one back to the Duke of Brunswick’s lament over his army—that if it had been generaled by shoemakers and tailors it could not have been worse, for the Duke’s general marched with his division like cabbages and turnips in defile. Here there was no likeness to anything so formal; the army manœuvres partook of the wild luxuriance of native growths. If twelve were the hour for muster on the common at Fort George, it was sure to be after one before the arduous work of falling in began. “The men answered to their names, as the rolls of the various companies were called, with a readiness and distinctness of tone which showed that, in spite of the weather, they were wide-awake,” says the chronicle. Once they became more active a scene ensued which could not fail to gladden the eyes of the onlookers. In time, either slow or quick, the men did not seem to be guided by any rule of book, but exemplified home-made tactics, presenting lines for which mathematicians have yet furnished no name, putting out flanking parties at either end, and as nearly squaring a circle and circling a square as possible. “Though many jokes were passed, fewer sods were thrown than usual.” Even later than ’37, once men had been out and had come home veterans their services were in demand by officers newly appointed. As in the days of the good Duke of York, ignorance was an officer’s perquisite; then some intelligent sergeant whispered the word of command which his officer was ashamed to know; here, the poor officer was willing, but perhaps had a sergeant as ignorant as himself. However, he was not too haughty to search for some private to help him. “Say, they tell me you were out,” said one of these officers to a private; “I suppose you know something of military training. Now, I am a captain and don’t know anything, and I believe I’ll appoint you my sergeant.” The scene of initiation was by the Little Thames, on what was later to be a Court House site, thenceforward to be known as Stratford. The captain wore the battered remains of a tall silk hat, a black tailed coat, white linen trousers about six inches too short, and hose a world too wide for his shrunk shanks. The hastily-made sergeant, Tom Stoney, a blue-eyed young Irishman with a spice of fun but kind at heart, armed his superior officer with his own cavalry sword, and taking him into his small saddler-shop made himself military tailor as well. The captain never would have rested without spurs had he known that the late King on his first appearance in military uniform, although unmounted, wore a pair of gold ones that reached halfway up his legs like a gamecock. Stoney drew down the white pantaloons as far and as tight as possible, sewed on buttons, and cut and sewed two leather straps to aid in keeping the captain together. The men were got into line; the captain meekly took his place among them. “Right face!” cried the sergeant, and off flew a button, up went the trouser-leg to the knee—“pursued my humour, not pursuing his”—rejoicing in regained freedom, relented and came down again. Clump-clamp went the leather strap with every step. The sergeant’s commands came quicker than ever, the captain perspired, and toiling behind his men removed his silk hat to wipe his streaming face. Then he ventured his first “command”: “I think we have had enough drill; we’ll march down to the distillery, boys, if you like.” And they did.
In the Talbot District, Training Day since 1812 had been kept up with constancy. In spite of that, the inhabitants were somewhat unprepared when ’37 came. But the gathering of the Loyalists, however isolated they were from one another, was willing and surprisingly quick. Old officers of the army sought for and gathered up volunteers; they had neither drum nor fife, but there was a ready response from willing hearts, and from hands equally willing, however uncouth and unused to arms. The most embarrassing hindrances, sometimes, to everything like organization and drill and obedience to orders were those same old soldiers when, as was generally the case, they knew more than their officers. They stood in the ranks, and at the same time found fault with every word of command, so that they demoralized that which they had brought together. No set of volunteers was more difficult to handle than the old soldiers who had settled in Adelaide. Captain Pegley, although himself a retired regular officer, found them almost unmanageable when mixed with the more docile farmers and farmers’ sons. After much adjuration he at length broke out into exclamations which, on the whole, suited his mixed audience better than set military phrase. “Haw, man! gee, man!” cried he, a startling contrast to the studied politeness of some of the subs, who, with nothing whatever of the drill-sergeant tone, whenever the openings in the ranks were too wide, would say, “Won’t you be kind enough to step nearer this way; now, you men, be good enough to keep your places.” The sharpest order delivered by these subs was, “Halt! and let the others come up, can’t you!” Wheeling into line disclosed a line looking like the snake fence surrounding the stubble field which contained the wheel.
Marching in quick time with one bagpipe and a fiddle, or with a single drum and fife, was not antidote enough to the stubble as they passed the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel in blue frock coat, white trousers shoved up from his boots, a round hat above his fat face, seated in unostentatious dignity on his venerable white mare, whose sides were blown out with grass and her neck adorned with a rope halter. “Now, men, won’t you fall in,” he would pathetically inquire, while they showed every disposition to fall out. For, instead of the drum boy, in the centre of the parade-ground was a keg containing that liquid which in Lower Canada, when carried in a seal-skin covered bottle, was known as Lac dulce, or sometimes as old man’s milk. Then would Captain Rappelje command to drink the Sovereign’s health, which was done con amore; trials of strength, boxing and wrestling, would follow, when “Abe would knock Jehial as straight as a loon’s foot.”
What would men not do to keep these kegs full. Once Colonel Bostwick and Captain Neville were temporarily absent at the same time, while certain points on the river were guarded against surprise; the rebels were hourly expected, but failed to appear. Advantage was taken of the officers’ absence to cross at one of these points, to replenish the canteen. The boat, showing lights, returned before the expected time. Those on the pier bethought them of a Yankee boast to come across and eat the small village before breakfast. They prepared to fire into the boat, but changed their minds, and rushed to where their Captain and a companion were soundly sleeping. The pile of discarded clothing by the couch had been rather mixed, and the Captain measured six foot odd; his companion’s valour was contained in few inches.
“Come, come quick, quick, the rebels are upon us!” brought them to their feet, the big Captain thrusting himself as far as he could, and farther than the garments bargained for, into the unmentionables of the smaller man. They refused to cover below the calf; he tried to withdraw, they were obdurate, and in an agony of thought the enemy’s knock was heard. The small man had meanwhile decamped with a train at either heel. The Captain seized a jacket which matched the rest of his suit; in desperation he took the quilt, and in toga arrayed, like “that hook-nosed fellow of Rome,” reached the wharf in time to receive the whiskey kegs, where he delivered a lecture on breach of discipline and ordered the men to the guard-house. This Captain was a formidable figure out of his quilt, in his own red uniform with white facings and girt with a sword whose hilt of ivory and brass was further decorated with two beavers conventionalized beyond even the requirements of modern art. The sash, of double twisted silk, strange to say had been the property of John Rolph, who, during his life in Middlesex, had made his home in Captain Neville’s house—a queer foregathering, for we all know the one, and the latter was after the pattern of the U. E. Loyalist definition in 1777:
“By Tory now is understood
A man who seeks his country’s good.”
Captain Neville and Colonel Mahlon Burwell had a friendly rivalry as to who would furnish the country to which they were both so devoted with the most warlike sons. Leonidas, Blucher, Hannibal, Napoleon and Brock, did they call their unprotesting infants, until a mother rose to the assertion of her prerogative when Wolfe was suggested for one of her babies. The most warlike of this cream of heroism weighed but two pounds when he came into the world, and was put in his father’s carpet slipper to be weighed. Great, then, was the consternation when at the outbreak the following regimental order was issued, embracing fathers and sons:
“You are hereby ordered and required to warn all the men from sixteen to sixty, within limits of the late Captain David Rappelje’s company, to meet at St. Thomas, 13th inst., on Wednesday, with arms and ammunition, of whom I will take command.” The same village walls held another order from Sir Francis Bond Head. The result was more men brought together than ever before in the history of the settlement. The Mansion House was the great rallying point, and here, after the Scotch fashion, business was discussed, the suspected ones talked over by the extra loyal, and toasts and maledictions drunk according to the politics of the thirsty. That part of the country was one of the most disaffected sections, and neighbour looked upon neighbour with suspicion.
Some time before this, roused out of his retirement by the tales of agitation which he heard, Colonel Talbot attended the only political meeting of his Canadian life. On St. George’s Day of the year when Sir John Colborne, one of his nearest friends, took such a conspicuous part in the provincial elections, a large party of his people went out to meet the Colonel on the way from his Canadian Malahide castle. They found him on the top of Drake’s Hill, from which a beautiful view was afforded of the pleasant valley they were ready to defend. He entered the town, surrounded by waving flags bearing “The Hon. Thomas Talbot, Founder of the Talbot Settlement,” and other descriptive legends. The venerable figure of the eccentric lord of the manor, Executive Councillor, friend and fellow-officer of Wellington, stood there surveying his flock, the majority cheering him to the echo; but knots here and there bestowed unfavourable glances on them and him. His address was full of wit and sage advice. Some of the veterans, clad like himself in home-spun, who had toiled under his eye and by his aid had emerged from poverty to wealth, stood, with hands in their capacious pockets, looking up at him as if they “could fairly swallow his words.” When he referred to the pains he had taken to preserve loyalty among them, “That’s true, Colonel,” came as involuntary response. “But,” said he, “in spite of all my efforts, some black sheep have got into the flock—aye, and they have got the r-r-rot-t-t, too!”
His well-known aversion to altercation or controversy resulted in his being the only speaker. A loyal address was dictated by him extolling the blessings of government as then enjoyed and resting the blame of disaffection on the religious teaching of a certain lot of immigrants who had come to the Talbot Settlement in time to enjoy its prosperity, and then, not having the devotion bred by being first-comers, found it easy to pick flaws. The year ’37 brought to them a mysterious individual mounted on a cream-coloured horse which ambled him along the lanes and roads of Yarmouth. Like the clock peddler, the stranger wore deep green glasses in his spectacles. After his labours of disseminating dissension were over he managed to make his escape, but the cream-coloured nag figured as an officer’s charger on the Loyalist side—according to his late owner’s opinion, much after the manner of the unmounted Glengarries whose humour it was to steal at a moment’s rest—“convey, the wise it call”—but from the opposite point of view was pressed into government service. It was an animal of no prejudices, for with its rider it was always in the van.