Life in Canada

by Thomas Conant

Wolves in Upper Canada—Adventure of Thomas Conant—A grabbing land-surveyor—Canadian graveyards beside the lake—Millerism in Upper Canada—Mormonism.

Turning to ordinary affairs, we find that at this date our Government helped the settler to exterminate wolves by paying a bounty of about $6 for each wolf head produced before a magistrate. In reference to these ferocious animals, once so plentiful in Canada, an anecdote of the author’s grandfather will be found both interesting and instructive, giving us a true glimpse of the county in 1806. Thomas Conant, whose portrait is found on opposite page, and who was assassinated during the Canadian Revolution on February 15th, 1838 (vide “Upper Canada Sketches,” by the author), lived in Darlington, Durham County, Upper Canada. In the fall of 1806 he was “keeping company” with a young woman, who lived some three miles back from Lake Ontario, his home being on the shore of that great lake. Clearings or openings in the forest were at this time mostly along the lake shore. Consequently, to pay his respects to the young woman, he had to pass through some forest and clearings in succession. It was in November of that year. Snow had not yet fallen, but the ground

THOMAS CONANT.

Was born at Bridgewater, Mass., in 1782; came to Darlington, Canada, with his father, Roger Conant, in 1792. On February 15th, 1838, during the Canadian Revolution, he was foully massacred by one Cummings (in Darlington), a despatch bearer, of Port Hope, Ont. The assassin was applauded for the act by the Family Compact.

was frozen. Tarrying until midnight at the home of the object of his affections, he left, alone and unarmed, to walk the three intervening miles to his home. Getting over about one-half the distance, he heard the distant baying of wolves. Fear would, it may be supposed, lend speed to his feet, but thinking rightly that he could not outstrip the wolf on foot, he walked quietly along, watching for a convenient tree for climbing. In a very few minutes the wolves were upon him, in full cry, eyes protruding, tongues lolling, and ready to devour him. A near-by beech tree, which his arms could encircle, furnished him with the means of escape. He climbed, and climbed, while the wolves surrounded him and watched his every motion, never ceasing their dismal howls the live-long night. Thus he kept his lonely vigil. To lose his hold for a single second meant instant death. Great, however, as was the tension upon his strained muscles, they held on. Morn tardily came at last, and with its first peep the wolves left him and were seen no more. When they were really gone, he said he for the first time began looking about him, and found, with all his climbing, he had ascended a very few feet from the ground, and but just out of reach of the wolves’ jaws as they made frantic jumps to reach him. We may, however, be safe in assuming that the scare and involuntary vigil did not do him much harm, for in the March following (1807) he married the girl he went to visit that night, and made no complaints of having been maltreated by wolves.

In dismissing Thomas Conant at this time, the author digresses to say that he was born in the United States, and was only a small lad when Roger Conant, his father, brought him here. He was a generous, industrious citizen, and was always noted for being one of the best natured men in Canada, and possessed ability of a very high order. He was liked universally by all who knew him, and he pursued the ordinary avocations of life, such as Canadians then pursued, up to the time of his assassination (as before mentioned) during the Canadian Revolution, on February 15th, 1838. He went down to the grave from the stroke of a sword, wielded by a dragoon, and without any provocation other than accusing the dragoon of being drunk, as he was and had been many times previously when on duty as despatch bearer. But such was the state of affairs in Canada in 1837-8 that no investigation was held, nor was the murderer ever punished even in the mildest degree. The author asks the reader’s indulgence when he says he is very certain that only his grandfather’s (Thomas Conant) untimely death prevented him from leaving a name after him high up in Canadian annals, for he was a man of grand physique (6 feet 2 inches in height) and of commanding talents. He had a well-balanced mind and had wealth at his command.

Surveyors were now at work plotting out the townships, and settlers were coming very rapidly to occupy the lands which were surveyed. Readers will bear in mind that the Family Compact was still in full power. All grants for lands had to come through them. A story of a famous old land surveyor is in order in this place. He had been surveying for many seasons, and, about quarterly, came to York to make his reports and show the plots of the new townships laid out. It so happened that an uncle of the author’s was chain-bearer (whose office Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, has immortalized) to this long-winded surveyor. At the time of his service as chain-bearer this uncle was only a lusty young man, and was not supposed to know the very first elements of surveying. Among other things it was his duty to erect the tent for the nightly bivouac, and make a fire at the tent mouth. Before the dancing, fitful flames, lights and shadows in the forest primeval, he nightly sat with the lordly surveyor, and saw him prepare rude maps of the past day’s work. And, without any sort of knowledge of surveying, he saw him just touch a parallelogram here and there (which would represent 100 acres) with the point of his red pencil; but ever so light was the touch. Night after night he saw dots go down on the parallelograms, and when the quiver was full of sheets of survey, to York he went with the surveyor, to report at the Crown Lands office. He said that in the office he noticed the officials in charge scanning very intently for the red but faint dots. We all now know the result: friends of the government officials had secured hundreds and hundreds of acres of the best lands in the region surveyed, while the surveyor became a mighty land-owner of most choice lands, and died a very, very wealthy man. As may be surmised, he had marked the choicest 100-acre lots with faint red dots, and he and the officials grabbed the very choicest lands in that surveyor’s district. Should a would-be purchaser ask for any certain lot, he was put off for a day in order that they might see in the surveyor’s map if it really was a choice one, as they surmised, since he asked to buy it, in which case some friend immediately entered for it, and consequently that choice lot the settler could not purchase. Using a fictitious name to illustrate, it is said, and truly, too, that Peter Russell, Governor, deeded to Peter Russell, Esquire, many choice lots of 100 acres each of the public domain in Canada, in the days of the Family Compact. But here one can justly remark that the eternal fitness of things comes pretty nearly correct after all, for, although that surveyor was fabulously wealthy, none of the property to-day is in any of his descendants’ possession, nor are there offspring of any of the Family Compact with enough pelf to-day, severally or collectively, to cause any comment. “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,” in Canada just as they did in Greece and Rome in days of yore.

This travesty of the conveying of public lands was one very just cause of complaint on behalf of the people, and the refusal of the authorities to correct it helped materially to cause the Canadian Revolution of 1837-38.