Early in the century a handsome stranger was an honoured guest at Quebec mess dinners, so fraternally fond of the military and military life that the inference is if fighting were on the cards he too would be ready. But at one of the dinners the gentleman was convicted of being a lady in disguise. The heroines of Upper Canada in ’37 satisfied their warlike propensities by running their tea-chest lead into bullets, making a Canadian question de joupons, or firing a feu de joie at home. When one pretty girl did the last, on the return of father and brothers, Brown Bess unhandsomely kicked her flat and she found herself prone on that Sol Canadien, terre chérie, which she so dearly loved. Mothers in Israel! Could they have foreseen a certain date in ’97, the year next prominent to ’37 in the Canadian horoscope, they and Brown Besses in conjunction might have furnished material for a legend of the female Brutus. For a certain Tory child of those days who has since developed into a renowned statesman has said, “My earliest memory in life is of the women of my family casting bullets in the Upper Canadian Rebellion of 1837, I am afraid on the wrong side.”
Mixed politics in one family often led to strained relations: “When I went to my brother John’s to ask him to turn out he was not at home, and his wife said she did not intend him to be at home, and that he would not and should not go. I then asked her for his arms, for we were in great need of them, but Mrs. John said she knew nothing about arms. I went into another room for his rifle, which I could not find, but I saw his sword hanging by the head of his bed. I took it down, but as I did so my sister-in-law caught hold of the hilt and jerked it partly away. To save myself from being stabbed I was obliged to pull her close to me, moving towards the door; I wished myself clear of her and the sword, but dared not let go until we got out the door, when I gave her a push and seized the hilt. I walked off with the sword, but instead of following me she ran into the house, calling for the rifle, the children after her. It was a truly ridiculous sight, to see one of Her Britannic Majesty’s officers, armed, running away from his sister-in-law. But run I did, and she told me afterwards that the only reason she did not fire was that I was in motion and she was so greatly excited she was afraid she might not kill me!”
The Canada Museum was a journal much quoted in its day by domestic and American newspapers; its editorials were considered, by editors of both sides of politics, to be temperate, patriotic and logical. Published in Berlin, chiefly in German, partly in English, it naturally was an important influence in Canada West, and its editor, Mr. H. W. Peterson, had an acknowledged and deservedly high standing. He was heartily in love with the Union Jack, as heartily opposed to the Stars and Stripes in Canadian connection, was a Conservative in the true sense of the word, and abominated Toronto rule as utterly as any so-called rebel. But it appears that the guiding hand of this influential paper belonged to a wife and mother, one who had made herself mistress of colonial politics and was eminently qualified to express herself. One to whom Mrs. Peterson was best known says: “She possessed literary abilities of a fine order, with the soundest judgment in every matter. Mr. Peterson, a discreet editor, temperately supported the Government of the day, conceiving that wrongs should be constitutionally redressed by the people through their representatives, without force of arms. Mrs. Peterson concurred in all his views; but while she deprecated bloodshed and the resort to force, she had a woman’s heart added to the courage of her convictions. Her natural benevolence induced her to state, when discussing the question of Mackenzie’s flight and the reward offered for him, that if his journey took him through Waterloo and he called on her for aid and comfort she would undoubtedly give it, and not disclose the fact of his presence until he had had time to move on farther. Woman first, politician afterward, such action would have done no violence to her Conservative principles; but it would have been entirely on her own responsibility, as her husband was a magistrate and could countenance no charity of that kind.”
A much used saying is not necessarily trite. The gentle hand which rocked the cradle could guide the pen when danger threatened the state.
The Canadian Deborah of ’12 or ’37 was not learned in history, nor was she conscious of her part as tenon in that arc de triomphe in the history of nations, that mortised arch of Frank and Saxon whereof the pillars are Hastings and Quebec. She knew but little, perhaps never heard, of those countless hordes who swarmed over Apennines and Pyrenees, nor yet of Clovis, nor of Cedric. She was no seer and could not foretell the many who were destined, after conquest of forest, to crowd the valley of the Peace, make homes on the slopes of our statesman’s “sea of mountains,” and be lost, an equally countless host, who can tell, in the as yet hidden recesses of the untamed remnant of a continent. “Mine all the past, and all the future mine.”
Canadian women, like their famous sisters of Liége, held, and hold, their distaff and their God; but, with few exceptions, unlike the wise ones there, they made no grand bakings of bread in order to be ready for the earliest comer, friend or foe, in the times when shadows spoiled the beauty of the Canadian day. No women of Saragossa they; but each has for record, “She hath done what she could.”