Brexit, Eton College & The History of Toronto

The most famous boarding school in the world has just gotten a little bit more famous. Thanks to the shocking result of the Brexit referendum, Eton College has been popping up in the news. The posh boarding school is where two of the architects of the mess spent their teenage years. Prime Minster David Cameron and Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London, both graduated from Eton in the early 1980s.

So if you want to understand the breathtaking, aristocratic entitlement that led the United Kingdom into self-inflicted disaster, it helps to understand Eton. And in understanding Eton, you can also better understand the history of our own city — because it's not just where Boris and Dave went, it's where the man who founded Toronto went, too.

Eton sits on the banks of the Thames, not far outside London, just across the river from Windsor Castle. It was founded all the way back in the 1400s; King Henry VI started the school as a charity meant to provide free education to the poor.

But oh how things have changed since then. In recent centuries, Eton has made its reputation by catering to the children of the rich and powerful, helping to perpetuate the strict British class system. Yearly tuition can cost as much as the equivalent of $60,000 in Canadian currency. For a long time, the school's official uniform was literally a top hat and tails. (They finally ditched the top hat in the 1960s, but they've kept the tails.) The school is synonymous with the idea of British entitlement: that the children of the country's ruling class should naturally become its next generation of rulers.

Nineteen British Prime Ministers have been students at Eton. Both Prince Harry and Prince William went there, too. So did George Orwell and Aldous Huxley and Percy Shelley and John Maynard Keynes. And if you're counting fictional characters, then so did James Bond and Captain Hook and Lord Grantham from Downton Abbey. 

Eton College

And so, it's not surprising to find that two of today's most powerful Conservative politicians both went to Eton, too. The outgoing Prime Minster, David Cameron (inept champion of Remain), and the former Mayor of London, Boris Johnson (Leave-supporting buffoon), both graduated from Eton in the early 1980s. They say you can trace the roots of their rivalry all the way back there — and with it, some of the very beginnings of the Brexit disaster.

As a student, Boris was older, more popular and more successful than Cameron — things that mattered even more than usual at such an aristocratic school. And since Johnson did better at Eton — and then again when both young men attended Oxford University — they say it drives him nuts that Cameron has risen to greater heights since then. Boris might be the former Mayor of London, a current Member of Parliament, and a newspaper columnist who got paid more than £250,000 last year (or "chicken feed" as he calls it) for writing one article every week — but that, apparently, isn't enough.

"Yes," Sonia Purnell writes in The Independent, "the fact that Cameron was two years below him at Eton – a terrifically hierarchical school – rankles deeply. As does the fact that it was Boris who shone there, not Cameron. Masters recall Johnson as a remarkable teenager. They do not recall Cameron at all."

According to countless media reports, Boris made it his mission to topple his old friend Dave and take his place as Prime Minster. If that meant joining the Leave campaign... well, that's what he was willing to do — whether or not he actually believed that leaving the European Union was a good idea for Britain.

Meanwhile, some suggest that Cameron's lifelong sense of entitlement — reinforced by his time at Eton — gave him a false sense of his own superiority. Slate describes him as "an establishment man through and through... the sort of person who gets away with too many things and comes to mistake his privilege for innate luck." When given the chance to gamble the future of his country in return for his own personal political gain, he did so. After all, he's been getting his way his entire life. Why would this time be any different? In order to appease the lunatic far-right fringe of his party, Cameron agreed to hold the Brexit referendum, confident that a Leave vote would never actually happen.

Boris and Dave

But when Boris — who is thought to have personally reassured Cameron that he would never support the Leave campaign — betrayed his old friend the Prime Minister, things suddenly became much more complicated. Johnson's support gave legitimacy to the Leave faction, even while it descended into absurd lies and bigoted violence. The racists behind Brexit never would have won, according to The Daily Beast, "without the fig leaf of Boris's charm."

The result: a stunning victory for the Leave campaign, an economy in disarray, bigotry and xenophobia on the rise, the murder of an MP, the end of Cameron's career, and scenes of Boris Johnson being booed the moment he pokes his head outside his front door. The Old Etonians have suddenly become two of the most hated men in the country they were raised to rule.

And in the end, Johnson's plan didn't even work: betrayed, in turn, by one of his own supporters (die-hard-Brexiter Michael Gove), Johnson has been forced out of the race for PM.

But the power of Eton College hasn't just been limited to British politics. Thanks to the Empire, the school's reach has historically extended far beyond England's own borders. In Toronto, you can trace Eton's influence all the way back to the founding of our modern city. More than two hundred years before Boris and Dave, there was John Graves Simcoe.

Simcoe went to Eton in the 1760s. And he too bought into its aristocratic vision for Britain. Years later, when he became the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, he was determined to make that aristocratic heritage an important part of his new province.

Before he sailed for Canada, Simcoe got in touch with another Eton graduate: the famous scientist Sir Joseph Banks. In his letter, Simcoe asked for any advice Banks might be able to offer, and laid out his vision for his new Upper Canadian capital: the city that would eventually become Toronto.

A strict class system, he insisted, would play a vital role. Simcoe didn't trust the general public; they couldn't be allowed to have real power. As a solider, he'd seen the bloody results of the American Revolution with his own eyes — and more recently, he'd heard the terrifying reports coming out of Paris during the French Revolution. In fact, the Reign of Terror began the very same summer Simcoe founded Toronto. In his experience, when the people gained power, they had a nasty habit of beheading the elites. And so Simcoe was determined that his new city would be free from what he called "tyrannical democracy."

"There are inherent defects in the congressional form of Government," he wrote in his letter to Banks, "the absolute prohibition of any order of nobility is a glaring one. I hope to have a hereditary council with some mark of nobility."

John Graves Simcoe

He would never quite get his wish: Toronto never developed an officially aristocratic system like the one they had back home in England. But Simcoe did make sure that power rested in the hands of a few loyal Tory families. For the first few decades of our city's history, families like the slave-owning Jarvis clan kept all of the best government jobs and appointments for themselves and their friends. The habit would eventually earn Toronto's ruling class a derisive nickname: The Family Compact.

With the backing of their British overlords, the Family Compact dominated the Legislative Assembly, blocked all democratic reform, and cracked down on dissent. Anyone who disagreed with the Tory elite or demanded change quickly found themselves subject to threats and intimidation — sometimes even violence or imprisonment.

The Family Compact had no doubt they were meant to be the natural rulers of the province — a sense of entitlement that would look familiar to anyone who has been following Boris and Dave during the Brexit fiasco.

To help ensure that the power of the Family Compact would continue long into the future, they even founded a Torontonian version of Eton. It's still around today: Upper Canada College. The school's own website describes it as being "modeled after the great public schools of Britain [what we call private schools in Canada], most notably Eton College." UCC's job would much be the same as Eton's job on the other side of the Atlantic: training the sons of the rich and powerful to become the new generation of elites.

And it worked. As Wikipedia points out, "The school has produced six lieutenant governors, four premiers, seven chief justices, and four Mayors of Toronto." There have been plenty of other rich and powerful graduates, too, like Michael Ignatieff and Norm Kelly. In Toronto, the Old Boys of Upper Canada College have played something of a similar role to that of the Old Etonians in England.

But not everyone in Toronto was happy with the Family Compact. There was plenty of resentment against the ruling class in those early years. The opposition gained momentum over the city's first few decades, building into a reform movement led by the radical newspaper publisher and first Mayor of Toronto, William Lyon Mackenzie. He was becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of democracy in Upper Canada. He made appeal after appeal to the British government, but his complaints fell on deaf ears — which was maybe not entirely surprising: nearly all of the British Prime Ministers during that period were Old Etonians themselves.

William Lyon Mackenzie

In the end, Mackenzie finally gave up on trying to find a peaceful solution; after a disappointing trip to London, he became convinced that revolution was the only way to break the Family Compact's grip on power. In 1837, he gathered an army north of Toronto and marched down toward the city with the aim of overthrowing the government.

Even the street the rebels marched down was a reminder of Eton's influence. Simcoe named the biggest road in Toronto after another one of his Old Etonian friends: Sir George Yonge.

In the end, of course, Mackenzie's rebellion failed. Democratic reform came peacefully a decade later under the name of Responsible Government. The leading champion of the cause was the moderate Robert Baldwin, who had been educated by the leader of the Family Compact. And Baldwin was able to convince the British of its value thanks in part to the support of Lord Durham, yet another Eton graduate. Change didn't come to Canada until the people advocating for it were members of the old boys club themselves.

More than a hundred and fifty years later, you can still see some echoes of that seminal divide in the Toronto politics of today. We saw it on stunning display recently, when Rob Ford was able to frame his mayoral campaign as a campaign against the "elites" by positioning himself as an outsider and purposefully distancing himself from the traditional, Upper Canada College-style Tories. Those who felt ignored by the establishment voted for Ford in droves. Casting a ballot for an apparent outsider seemed like a rare opportunity to give voice to their anger.

Last week, we saw similar emotions lead to similar results in the United Kingdom. The Leave side denounced the experts and vilified the establishment even though the leaders of the Leave campaign were establishment figures themselves. Boris Johnson has made a career out of playing the blond buffoon, trying to seem like a man of the people instead of a millionaire raised in privilege. The Brexiters, much like Ford, managed to convince vast numbers of people that the real cause of their problems was a dastardly combination of expert opinion and immigration. Not, say, the damaging policies those very same Conservative politicians have been hawking for decades: like tax cuts for the rich paid for by service cuts for everyone else. 

Both campaigns were illusions. Rob Ford was a millionaire born into a political family. His policies were the same old Conservative policies that have been hurting the working class for years. His successor, the aptly-named John Tory, is the most establishment-friendly politician you could possibly imagine — and in general his policies are pretty much in line with those Ford was pushing. Even a vote against the establishment led to establishment-friendly policies; they were just served with a side of crack cocaine.
 

And now, six thousand kilometers and an entire ocean away, angry Britons have voted in protest against their own elites, unleashing a wave of bigotry and decimating their nation's economy in the process. They have managed to drive their establishment-friendly leader out of power; Cameron, forced to resign in disgrace, will be remembered as one of the worst Prime Ministers in modern British history. But if all goes to plan, even with Johnson out of the race, there will be yet another establishment-friendly Tory leader moving into 10 Downing Street in just a few months time, ready to pick up right where the last one left off.  

The Old Etonian is dead. Long live the Old Etonian.

-----

Via Viv Lynch on Flickr

You can learn more about the connection between the histories of Toronto and England with A Torontonian Historical Map of London here. Read more about Simcoe's vision for Toronto here. And more about Mackenzie's failed mission to London here.

There's a whole dramatized documentary about Johnson and Cameron's early years, "When Boris Met Dave," which you can watch on Vimeo here.

The main image of "Toffs and Toughs" via Rare Historical Photos here.  Photo of Boris and Dave via The Sun. Photo of Eton College by me as part of The Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour, which explored the connections between the history of Toronto and the United Kingdom.

Toronto's Rebel Mayor & His Pirate Admiral

William Lyon Mackenzie ran for his life. His rebellion had failed. It was a disaster. His rebel army was crushed on Yonge Street. His headquarters at Montgomery's Tavern were burned to the ground north of Eglinton. Some of his men were already dead. Others would soon be hanged for treason. Just a few years earlier, Mackenzie had been the first Mayor of Toronto. Now, he was the city's most wanted fugitive. The Lieutenant Governor was offering a £1000 reward for his capture. So Mackenzie was forced to flee the city he loved, smuggled through the countryside by his supporters as gangs of angry Loyalists searched for him. He ran all the way south to Niagara, getting rowed across the river just a few minutes ahead of the men who had come to arrest him. He was lucky to escape Canada with his life. He would spend the next decade living in exile.

But Mackenzie wasn't ready to give up. Not yet. His failed rebellion in Toronto was just the beginning. Now, he and his supporters would launch a war against the British government in Canada, hoping a series of bloody border raids would spark a full-scale democratic revolution. It would last a year — for pretty much all of 1838. We call it the Patriot War.

And the rebel's admiral in that war was a man by the name of Pirate Bill Johnston. He was a smuggler, a spy, a veteran of the War of 1812 on both sides and, weirdly, an IRS agent. The rebel mayor was the most wanted man on the western shore of Lake Ontario. But the pirate admiral Bill Johnston would soon be the most wanted man in the east. 

He'd been born in Trois Rivières, but he grew up just outside Kingston. And it was there that he would make his name as a young smuggler. By the time he was in his early 20s, Johnston was the captain of his own ship. He sailed his schooner through the labyrinth of islands at the spot where the St. Lawrence River meets Lake Ontario. We call them the Thousand Islands — but there are actually almost two thousand of them. It was the perfect spot to be a smuggler. Johnston would make runs through the confusing warren of islands, bringing contraband goods across the river from the United States. And he wasn't alone. Some estimates say that as much as 90% of all the tea in Upper Canada had been smuggled into the province to avoid paying taxes — and plenty of the rum, too.

The Thousand Islands by Elizabeth Simcoe

Still, while Johnston might have been a smuggler, he was also a loyal British subject and Canadian. That is, at least, until the War of 1812.

When the Americans first invaded, Johnston fought on the Canadian side. But he'd never been very good at following rules: he clashed with his superiors so much that he eventually beat one of them up and got tossed in jail for a time. Meanwhile, he'd also developed a soft spot for the ordinary American citizens who were being held in Canadian prisons during the war. He kept bailing them out and smuggling them back across the border so they could go home to their families. That landed him in jail again. The Canadians accused him of being a spy.

This time, he'd had it. Pirate Bill defected. Once upon a time, his own parents had fled from the United States — they were Loyalist Americans driven from their homes for taking the British side in the American Revolution. Now, their son headed in the other direction. He climbed into a canoe with a few American refugees and rowed himself all the way across the lake to the American naval base at Sackets Harbor. There, he found the man in charge of the United States' fleet on Lake Ontario — Commodore Isaac Chauncey — and pledged himself to the American cause. Now, Pirate Bill would fight for the stars and stripes.

Johnston spent most of the next two years fighting against the British and the Canadians in the Thousand Islands. He waged war in a big rowboat armed with a cannon, a vessel light enough that he and his men could slip through the islands more easily than the big warships, striking quick like lighting and then evading capture. Pirate Bill would witness some of the most famous moments in the entire war, including the Battle of Sackets Harbor and the failed American invasion of Montreal that ended in disaster at Crysler's Farm. By the end of the war, it seems that he had earned a reputation as a notorious pirate — at least as far as the British were concerned.

After the war, Johnston went back to his old job: smuggling tea and rum into Canada. But now, he did it from the American side. And he also worked for an early precursor of the Internal Revenue Service, spying on Canadian smugglers for the United States government. For the most part, the next twenty years were quiet ones for Pirate Bill. He grew into middle age, raising his family on the American banks of the St. Lawrence, just across the river from his old stomping grounds in Canada.

The burning of the SS Caroline

And then came Mackenzie's rebellion.

Johnston was in his late 50s by the time Toronto's rebel mayor marched his army down Yonge Street. But Pirate Bill followed news of the events from far on the other side of Lake Ontario. He heard of the rebellion and of Mackenzie's escape to the United States. There, the rebel mayor immediately set to work rallying supporters, giving speeches, raising money, collecting guns and ammunition, getting ready to launch his new war in the name of democracy.

Just a few days after his harrowing escape across the border, William Lyon Mackenzie and his supporters seized an island on the Canadian side of the Niagara River — Navy Island, just above Niagara Falls — and declared themselves to be the provisional government of the new Republic of Canada. They even had their own flag and currency. The Patriot War had begun.

The first major incident happened just a couple of weeks after that. The rebels on Navy Island were being supplied by an American steamship called the SS Caroline. One winter night, a band of Loyalists snuck across the river, attacked the ship, forced her crew off the boat, set her on fire, and watched as she floated down the river, sinking as she burned. Charred chunks of the vessel plunged over Niagara Falls.

The burning of the Caroline sparked a diplomatic crisis. It was, for many Americans, an absolute outrage — reason enough to declare war on Canada. The Caroline was an American ship in American territory. One of the crew members — a Black man by the name of Amos Durfee — had been shot dead, his body left on the dock. His corpse would be carried to Buffalo and displayed outside the Eagle Tavern as a recruiting tool for Mackenzie's new war. Durfee's body, one reporter wrote, "was held up — with its pale forehead, mangled by the pistol ball, and his locks matted with his blood! His friends and fellow citizens looked on the ghastly spectacle, and thirsted for an opportunity to revenge him." Newspaper accounts of the battle, grossly inflating the death toll, made things even worse.

"The loyalist troops," the New York Herald cried, "have made an assault upon our territory. They have murdered in cold blood our citizens. They cannot escape our vengeance... Niagara's eternal thunders are sounding their requiem! and from the depths of that mighty flood come the wails of their spirits, calling for the blood of their murderers!"

The body of Amos Durfee

Few were as angry as Pirate Bill Johnston. Soon, he was in Buffalo himself, meeting with Mackenzie and other rebel leaders at the Eagle Tavern. He was joining their war. Mackenzie named him the Admiral of the Patriot Navy in the east. Of course, they didn't actually have a navy, but they weren't about to let that stop them.

They would start with an attack on Fort Henry in Kingston. It seems to have been Pirate Bill's idea. It would be a huge victory if they could pull it off, seizing the biggest military base in the province. But it would be difficult. One force would attack Windsor as a distraction in the west. Another, led by Pirate Bill, would head to the Thousand Islands and attack Gananoque as a distraction in the east. The main force would gather on Hickory Island, not far from Kingston, ready to march across the ice of the frozen St. Lawrence and launch the final attack.

The day they picked to begin their operation was February 22 — George Washington's birthday. They spent the next few weeks getting ready. In towns across upstate New York, American volunteers and exiled Canadians trained to fight. Pirate Bill and the Patriots broke into military depots and stole thousands of guns — sympathetic American guards simply melted away. Some of the weapons were smuggled into Canada, into the countryside around Kingston, where hundreds of rebel supporters secretly waited to join the attack once the invasion had begun. At least one spy inside Kingston fed the Patriots information and was ready to act on the fateful day.

But things didn't get off to a very good start. The attack on Windsor quickly failed. And in the Thousand Islands, the Patriot rebels were having trouble keeping their plans a secret. A young teacher from Gananoque — Elizabeth Barnett, hailed as the Laura Secord of the Patriot War — caught wind of the invasion while she was visiting family on the American side of the St. Lawrence. She rushed back home to Canada to warn the authorities. And by then, the authorities already had their own suspicions. They were building defences. Holes were being cut in the ice. Mohawk reinforcements were called in. The spy was unmasked and sent into exile. Suspected rebel sympathizers were warned: they would be killed if they so much as left their houses.

Still, it was the name "Pirate Bill" that sparked the most fear. "When [Elizabeth Barnett] mentioned Bill Johnston's involvement," the historian Shaun J. McLaughlin writes on his great Pirate Bill Johnston blog, "the townsfolk had fits. Women and children fled to the country for safety. Men gathered their weapons. Couriers rode at a gallop to‎‎ Kingston, Brockville, and other towns to spread the warning."

Fort Henry, 1839

Meanwhile, on Hickory Island, the rebels were gathering. But it wasn't going well there, either. It was the dead of the Canadian winter. The temperature had plummeted to -33ºC. And the Patriot General in charge of the attack — the awesomely named Rensselaer Van Rensselaer — was a drunk who doesn't seem to have inspired much confidence in his men. More than a thousand began the trip, but only a few hundred ever made it to Hickory Island. In the end, Van Rensselaer turned around and went home. He never even started his attack.

It was a devastating blow to the rebels. And things only got worse from there. By now, the Patriot leaders were beginning to turn on each other.

Mackenzie blamed the failure at Hickory Island on Van Rensselaer's alcoholism and incompetence. Pirate Bill agreed. "If Mackenzie or any other decent man had been at the head," he said, "they would have taken... Kingston." And Van Rensselaer was no fan of Mackenzie's either. He called the rebel mayor a "meddling craven" and "a cruel, reckless, selfish madman... the greatest curse of the cause he pretends to espouse..."

But their disagreement was about more than just personal hatred. It was a symptom of a growing split in the movement — between the Canadian Patriots and their American allies. Van Rensselaer was an American. (He was from one of the most powerful families in New York State: his grandfather had signed the Declaration of Independence; his uncle was one of the richest Americans ever.) And the Americans were having more and more influence over the Patriot War. They even created a secret society — the Hunters' Lodge — to support it. Tens of thousands of Americans joined; some estimates put the number as high as two hundred thousand. They were all promised free farmland in Canada once the war was won. Many of the soldiers who volunteered to fight with the rebel mayor and his pirate admiral were members of the Hunters' Lodge. It made Mackenzie uneasy. What had begun as a Canadian rebellion against their British overlords was beginning to look more and more like an American invasion of Canada.

It was also beginning to look more and more like a failed invasion. A couple of weeks after Hickory Island, Van Rensselaer launched another attack: this time his men seized Pelee Island in Lake Erie. But the Loyalists fought back. By the time the dust had settled, the rebels were defeated and Van Rensselaer was dead.

The Battle of St. Eustache in Québec

Meanwhile, things weren't going any better on the war's other front. Mackenzie's rebellion wasn't the only democratic uprising in the Canadian colonies that winter. At the same time he'd been marching his army down Yonge Street, his allies in Québec had been fighting their own battles against the British government there. They too had been driven into exile in the United States; Mackenzie had been coordinating with them as they launched their own border raids into Canada. But they didn't seem to be having any more success than the rebel mayor was.

Mackenzie was finally losing faith. War didn't seem to be getting him anywhere. Over the spring and summer of 1838, the rebel mayor's thoughts began to turn to peace. He moved to New York City where he launched a newspaper called Mackenzie's Gazette. At first, he used it to support the Patriot violence. "One short war well managed might give this continent perpetual peace," he argued. "Until Canada is freed the revolution in America will not be complete." But by the end of the summer his tone had changed. Now, Mackenzie was arguing in favour of a bloodless, political solution to the problems in Canada.

Johnston felt betrayed. But even with Mackenzie gone and Van Ransselaer dead, Pirate Bill fought on.

His next move: he would finally find himself a navy.

Late one stormy May night, a Canadian steamship carried her passengers through the Thousand Islands on her way west to Toronto. But the Sir Robert Peel wasn't alone in those choppy waters. She was quietly being followed by a pair of rowboats. It was Pirate Bill. He was in command of at least twenty Patriots, some of them — just like the American rebels at the Boston Tea Party — were disguised in a crude parody of First Nations clothing. They had come to steal the Peel and then use her to steal a second ship. Between them, the two vessels would be the beginning of Pirate Bill's rebel fleet.

It wasn't a random attack: the ship was owned by members of the Family Compact. They were the powerful, pro-British, Tory elites whose anti-democratic policies had sparked Mackenzie's rebellion in the first place. They were the enemy. 

When the Peel finally pulled into port to pick up more wood for her boilers, Pirate Bill and his men were ready. They landed a few hundred meters away and crept through the dark forest, getting ever closer to the Canadian ship. Finally, letting their war cries fly, they rushed from the darkness, raced across a clearing, and charged up the gangplank onto the decks. They quickly seized the vessel, forcing the crew and the groggy passengers back onto land at gunpoint. It was easy. Almost no one put up any resistance — there was one fistfight and that was it. The ship was theirs.

The burning of the Sir Robert Peel

Johnston was now expecting more rebels to arrive. In fact, he was counting on them — none of his men knew how to run the boilers on a steamship. So he waited. And waited. But they never came. In the end, he had to abandon his original plan. Instead, he ordered his men to set the Peel ablaze.

As the rebels lit the flames, they cried out: "Remember the Caroline!"

Pirate Bill finally had his revenge. But now, he had really pissed people off. And not just his enemies. As Johnston hid in a cave in the maze of the Thousand Islands, both the Canadian and American authorities launched massive manhunts.

Still, even in hiding, Pirate Bill was a thorn in the side of the Family Compact. He published a proclamation of war from his island hideout. "The object of my movement is the independence of the Canadas," he declared. And all the while, he kept trying to raise money and find guns for his men. "I will warrant," he promised one potential supporter, "that they shall kill four times their number of Tories and give you their scalps if you shoud whant them."

Once, when Johnston was spotted by a passing ship, he couldn't resist chatting with some of the starstruck passengers. "One thing you may rest assured of," he told them, "I will never be taken alive... Whoever comes after me must bring his own coffin..." As the ship sailed off into the distance, one of the passengers saluted the rebel by flying a handkerchief in the breeze. Pirate Bill responded by unfurling the flag of the Sir Robert Peel.

"Bill Johnson [sic]," said one of his greatest enemies, "laughed at the efforts of the Governor and all the authorities." The pirate admiral made narrow escapes: racing through island forests under a hail of musket balls, slipping out of Loyalist traps, flaunting his nerve by throwing a huge party just before abandoning one hideout for another. His daughter Kate, who smuggled him supplies, became a celebrity in her own right. She was famous for her uncanny ability to evade the authorities. People started calling her the Queen of the Thousand Islands.

But the Patriot War wasn't over. And Johnston was still the rebel admiral. He had one more big battle to fight.

It would happen in November, a few dozen kilometers east down the St. Lawrence. The Patriots were planning an attack on Prescott. They hoped to capture Fort Wellington. Pirate Bill would play an important role.

The Battle of the Windmill

Things, yet again, got off to a rocky start. This time, quite literally. As the battle got underway early that morning and church bells rang the alarm on the Canadian shore, two of the ships that the rebels had stolen ran aground near the battlefield. Johnston was forced to come rescue them — and even he could only get one of them free. As a third Patriot ship tried to rescue the other stranded vessel, an American boat turned her cannons loose. The pilot of the Patriot ship had his head blown off by a cannonball; the new Patriot general, terrified, suddenly claimed he was sick, ordered the ship back to shore, and spent the rest of the battle hiding in his cabin.

Meanwhile, Pirate Bill had begun to ferry hundreds of soldiers across the river, taking them from the American side over to fight on the Canadian shore. Their first assault on Prescott fell short: the Canadian authorities, once again, knew the attack was coming. But by the end of that morning, the rebels had seized control of a big windmill outside town. (It's still there nearly two hundred years later; it's a lighthouse today and a National Historic Site.) The battle would become known as the Battle of the Windmill.

It lasted for days. The Loyalists attacked the windmill the very next morning, but it made for a pretty good fort. It had thick, stone walls and a commanding view of the St. Lawrence. Rebel snipers peered from the windows. It wouldn't be easy to drive them out. More than a dozen Loyalists died in that first attack; dozens more were wounded. It seemed as if things had reached a stalemate.

But then, the Americans arrived.

Many ordinary American citizens supported the rebel cause. But the American government was a different story. The Patriots had long hoped that President Van Buren would come to their rescue — or that the bloody battles on the border would eventually spark another full-scale war between Britain and the United States, which might end in a new, democratic Canada. At the very least, the rebels hoped the American government would look the other way — allowing them to use the United States as a safe haven from which they could launch their attacks. The United States, after all, was still no fan of the British. It had only been a couple of decades since the War of 1812. And indeed, it didn't seem as if the American authorities were in a rush to prosecute the rebels or their supporters.

But there was a limit. And the rebels had finally reached it. Van Buren wasn't going to allow them to drag his entire nation into war. He was going to put a stop to it. He was going to close the border. And he was going to do it right in the middle of the battle.

As the fight between the Patriots and the Loyalists raged, suddenly there was a new arrival: the United States Navy. The Americans seized the big Patriot ships. And an American vessel took their place, patrolling the water in the middle of the St. Lawrence, cutting off the rebel supply line and making it nearly impossible for Pirate Bill to ferry any more soldiers across the watery border.

The windmill, now a lighthouse

That night, the pirate admiral roamed the port on the American side, desperately trying to convince his troops to hazard the short journey across the river. Some agreed and he rowed them over himself, sneaking by the American patrol. He spent the next two days trying to convince more men to join the fight — and watching the battle at the windmill from across the river. He barely ate and he barely slept. He watched his dream crumble from the roofs of the American town. Now, the Royal Navy was moving in. Big guns were beginning to arrive. The rebels had run out of ammunition, reduced to firing door hinges and whatever other scraps of metal they could find. The end was drawing near.

On the final day of the battle, the Loyalists bombarded the windmill with artillery. The rebels were doomed. And with all their escape routes cut off, there was nowhere for them to go. Dozens would be killed or wounded. The rest, finally, surrendered.

The Patriot War was now pretty much over. The Pariotes rebels in Québec had finally been crushed just a few days earlier. There would be one more attack on Windsor, but that was crushed too. A year after William Lyon Mackenzie led his army down Yonge Street, the Canadian revolution was finally over. It had failed.

Many of the Patriots would be hanged. Some didn't even get a trial. Nearly a dozen men from the Battle of the Windmill were executed. Dozens more would be sent into exile in Australia — some of those would die there from the poor treatment and harsh conditions of the prison camps.

But times were changing in Canada. The days of the Family Compact were numbered. With the most radical Canadian democrats dead or exiled, the moderates took over. Just ten years after the end of the Patriot War, they were able to win at the ballot box what Mackenzie and his rebels had been unable to win at the end of a rifle. The supporters of Toronto's Robert Baldwin and Montreal's Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine joined forces to bring Responsible Government to Canada. Democracy had finally arrived.

And with it came pardons for those who had fought in its name. The exiled Patriots were finally allowed to come home. Even the rebel mayor was officially forgiven. William Lyon Mackenzie returned to Toronto, where he would live out the rest of his days. He was even re-elected to parliament.

As for Pirate Bill Johnston, well, at the Battle of the Windmill he'd narrowly evaded capture yet again. But with the war over, he soon turned himself in to the American authorities so his son could collect the reward. He had always said there was no prison in the world that could hold him. And over the following months, he proved that to be true: over and over again, he would get caught or turn himself in, only to escape when the mood struck him. Eventually, they just stopped trying to find him at all.

Pirate Bill returned to his quiet life in the Thousand Islands. And once President Van Buren had been tossed out of office — thanks in no small part to his wildly unpopular intervention in the Battle of the Windmill — the American government even gave Johnston a plum post as the lightkeeper of the Rock Island Lighthouse. The man who would be remembered by history as a pirate, spent his later years watching over the treacherous waters he knew so well — making sure others could travel them safely.

-----

Shaun J. McLaughlin's great Pirate Bill Johnston blog is here. His "Raiders and Rebels" blog, about the history of raiders, rebels, and pirates in the Thousand Islands is here. He also has an entire book about the Patriot War which you can buy here.

Lilian F. Gates wrote a whole book about William Lyon Mackenzie after the Rebellion of 1837. You can buy it here, borrow it from the Toronto Public Library here, or read it online with a Toronto Public Library card here.

The village of Alexandria Bay, on the American side of the Thousand Islands, still hosts a Bill Johnston's Pirate Days festival every year. It's apparently ridiculously inaccurate, historically-speaking.

Shaun J. McLaughlin discusses that festival and the many myths that have grown up around the story of Pirate Bill on the Thousand Islands Life website here. They've also got more about the burning of the Sir Robert Peel here (which is also where I found the image of it). And a whole page of reference material for the Patriot War here (which is where I found the image of Fort Henry). 

Mark Totten writes about the Caroline affair in his book, "First Strike: America, Terrorism, and Moral Tradition" on Google Books here. Meanwhile, Lieutenant-commander Paul Rutkus discusses the Battle of the Windmill and its influence on the Canadian laws around the issue of "unlawful combatants" in a PDF here.

The photo of the windmill turned lighthouse is from Flickr user Dennis Jarvis. You'll find it here. The portrait of Pirate Bill Johnston comes from Wikipedia here. And the image of Amos Durfee's corpse does too, from here. And the image of the Battle of the Windmill here.

I also made this rough timeline to help wrap my head around the order of events. So I supposed I might as well share it just in case anyone ever finds it useful:

 
PATRIOT WAR TIMELINE

Dec 11, 1837: Mackenzie reaches US
Dec 12: Mackenzie gives speech in Buffalo.
Dec. 13: London Rebellion fails
Dec. 14: Republic of Canada proclamation goes to the printers
Dec. 14 or 15: They take Navy Island
Dec. 19: the Governor of NY speaks out against sympathy leading to the breaking of the law
Dec. 19: second proclamation adds $100 silver.
Dec. 21: third proclamation
Dec. 26: Rolph visits Navy Island; won't have further involvement
Dec. 29: Caroline burns
Jan. 5, 1838: Van Buren doubles down rhetoric — plus a marshal gets sent to block supplies to Navy Island
Jan. 10: Navy Island has gone days without supplies, running out of money
Jan. 14: Abandon island
Jan 16ish: Mackenzie meets Pirate Bill and the other guys for the plan
Feb. 22: date they want to attack; Washington's birthday
Feb. 24: Fighting Island/Detroit failed attack
Feb. 28: Hickory Island/non-attack
Feb. 28: Lower Canadian Patriotes cross the border
Late Feb/Early March: Mackenzie & Van R have split. Mackenzie will head toward peace.
Mar. 3: Pelee Island: rebels capture and are quickly driven from Lake Erie island
Mar. 29-30: Sir Robert Peel burns — in the wee hours of the 30th.
June 10: Pirate Bill's Proclamation of War
June 11: Pirate Bill spotted, waves flag
June 21-23: Short Hills Raid; McLeod & other cross at Niagara, failed to rile up trouble
July 4: Fort Wallace party
July 21: Mackenzie preaching peace now (in NYC I think)
Nov. 3-10: Second Lower Canadian Rebellion
Nov. 12-16: Battle of the Windmill ***CLIMAX!***
Nov. 28: Pirate Bill is custody by now; escapes on this day
Dec. 4: Battle of Windsor
Jan. 29, 1839: Pirate Bill, in custody, still gets to attend a benefit for himself (and will attend other stuff too)
Apr. 12: Toronto rebels Lount & Matthews hang
June: Mackenzie's trial begins
August 19: Pirate Bill arrested yet another time
1841: Pirate Bill asks Van Buren for a pardon. Doesn't get it.

This post is related to dream 10 The Battle of Montgomery's Tavern William Lyon Mackenzie, 1837

A Torontonian Historical Map of London, England

Toronto has a deeper connection to London, England than it does to almost any other city in the world. After all, our entire country was essentially ruled from this place for more than a hundred years. Some of the most important moments in the history of our city happened in this city, nearly six thousand kilometers away. As you walk through the streets of Westminster, or Piccadilly, or Mayfair, you're likely to pass dozens of hidden connections to the history of Toronto without ever realizing they're there.

Lots of that history is found in the centre of the city — in the bits you can see in this photo. So I thought I'd explore some of the Toronto stories hidden in the streets of Central London: from the solider who founded our city, to the mayor who rebelled against it, to the moment when Canadian women were finally seen as people. Each number on the map comes with its own story, plus links to full posts about most of them, some other spots in Central London connected to those stories, and a link to find the exact locations on Google Maps. 

You might want to start by opening a bigger version of the photo here.  

 

01 SIMCOE'S HOUSE. We'll start up here in Marylebone — at 53 Welbeck Street — because this is where the guy who founded Toronto used to live. John Graves Simcoe rented this place in the very late 1700s, just after he got back from being the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. For the most part, he lived at his country estate in Devon, but he needed a place in London too. He spent a lot of time here, trying to convince the government to invest more money in the Canadian colony. He was sure the Americans were going to invade — which, of course, they soon did — and Toronto was still just a muddy little frontier town. Upper Canada was vulnerable. The new province, Simcoe argued, needed more soldiers, defenses and infrastructure.

The government ignored his pleas. But they did eventually give him a big promotion: Commander-in-chief of the British army in India. Sadly, Simcoe didn't live to see his first day on the job. War with Napoleon got in the way. On his trip to the front, Simcoe fell ill. He died soon after.

Find on Google Maps

+ The British Museum (big green roof about halfway between 08 and 09): Simcoe's wife Elizabeth kept a vital, detailed record of their trip to Canada: a diary, sketches and watercolours. Some of that work eventually ended up here, in the collection of the British Museum.

+ Cork Street (near 04): Elizabeth Simcoe's diary ends with a final line when they get back home to England: "Arrived at the hotel in Cork Street, London, at ten o'clock."

02 LADY ST. HELIER'S SALON. In the early 1900s, 52 Portland Place was the place to be. And that's because it was home to one of London's most influential aristocrats: Lady St. Helier. She was a Baroness, a writer, a philanthropist, even an alderman on the City Council. The guestlists at her parties featured some of the greatest writers and most important politicians in all of England: everyone from Oscar Wilde to Winston Churchill. She also changed Billy Bishop's life.

It was a strange coincidence that brought them together during the First World War. This was back before Bishop was a famous pilot; he was just another Canadian solider who had drunkenly fallen down the stairs of the Savoy Hotel on leave. He ended up in the same hospital where Lady St. Helier volunteered. And when she saw his name, she remembered meeting his father at a reception in Ottawa years earlier. She insisted that Bishop spend the rest of his time recovering at her own home, where they quickly became as close as family. When she learned that he wanted to become a pilot, it was Lady St. Helier who pulled the strings to make it happen. And by the end of Bishop’s first week in the cockpit, he'd already shot down five German planes and earned the title of "ace".

READ MORE: "Billy Bishop & The Rich & Famous"

Find on Google Maps

+ Lady Carnarvon's Hospital for Officers (on Bryanston Square, just to the left of the photo): The hospital where Bishop met the Baroness is still there today. It's a prep school now. It was run by the woman who owned the mansion we call "Downton Abbey". In fact, her hospital inspired the hospital storyline on the show.  

03 THE CHURCH OF THE ASSUMPTION. William Kurelek was one of the most popular artists in Canadian history. His paintings of snowball fights, lumberjacks and Prairie fields hang in the National Gallery, the Parliament Buildings, the AGO, and on kitchen walls all across our country. But he was also deeply depressed, haunted by nightmares and visions. So, after he graduated from art school in Toronto, he headed across the ocean to check himself into a cutting-edge psychiatric hospital in London. During his years in England, Kurelek painted some of his most striking and disturbing images, suffered through a series of electroshock treatments, attempted suicide, and eventually found God, becoming a devout Catholic.

This spot, just around the corner from Carnaby Street, is where he started to hang out. He joined a Catholic social club here at the Church of the Assumption. He said it helped him to become "a happier, more glad-to-be-living sort of person." When he returned home to Toronto, religious themes became one of the most important parts of his work; while he was living in the Annex, he even created a series of 160 paintings depicting the Passion of Christ. But his nightmare visions never left him. Kurelek spent the rest of his life expecting a nuclear holocaust to begin at any moment, heralding the arrival of a Biblical apocalypse.

READ MORE: "An Apocalypse in the Beaches — The Nightmare Visions of William Kurelek"

Find on Google Maps.

+ Blue Ball Yard (a few doors below 05): Kurelek got a job here, making picture frames. The experience would help him back in Toronto: getting another framing gig to support himself and making the frames for his own paintings himself. You can check out a bunch of them at the AGO.  


 

04 THE CANADIAN WAR RECORDS OFFICE. 14 Clifford Street is an important address in the history of Canadian art. During the terrible days of the First World War, this is where you would have found the headquarters of the Canadian War Records Office. The organization had been founded and financed by Lord Beaverbrook — a Canadian newspaper baron turned British politician — to record the Canadian experience of the war. Artists and writers were pulled out of the trenches and given paintbrushes and pens instead of guns and ammunition. Some of our country's most famous artists were hired as part of the project: authors like Wyndham Lewis and Charles G.D. Roberts, sculptors like Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, painters like the Group of Seven's A.Y. Jackson, Fred Varley and Arthur Lismer.

In fact, this was back before the Group of Seven were even calling themselves the Group of Seven. And their work for the War Records Office helped turn them into stars. In Canada, they were being dismissed as "The Hot Mush School." Critics called their work "a horrible bunch of junk" and "daubing by immature children." But when the war ended, their work was exhibited at Burlington House — on Piccadilly Road just a couple of blocks south of the War Records Office. The English critics loved them, helping to lend them more than a little bit of credibility when they headed back home to Toronto. Soon, they were being hailed as the greatest artists our country has ever produced.

READ MORE: "How England Helped Save The Group of Seven"

Find on Google Maps


 

05 THE RITZ. Just a few doors down Piccadilly Road from the spot where the Group of Seven's war paintings once hung on the walls, stands one of the most famous five-star hotels in the entire world. This is the Ritz. And in 1920, just a few months after the War Records exhibition, one of the most famous Torontonians of all-time was staying here. Mary Pickford was on her honeymoon. And it was causing riots.

Pickford had been born on University Avenue (where Sick Kids is now) and started her career as a young girl on stage at a theatre on King Street. But by the time 1920 rolled around, she'd become one of the most famous icons in Hollywood history. And she'd just married another one: Douglas Fairbanks. London was the first stop on their honeymoon. The English public, starved for good news after the horrors of the war, went crazy for them. Crowds packed the streets for miles in every direction around the hotel. Even the King himself couldn't get through. Every time Pickford and Fairbanks stepped outside or tried to go anywhere else, the newly-wed couple risked getting crushed to death. No one had ever seen anything like it. Some say that trip to London marked the very beginning of modern celebrity culture.

READ MORE: "Mary Pickford's Nightmare Honeymoon"

Find on Google Maps

+ Waterloo Station (the big silver thing in the bottom-right corner): The first sign of trouble came when their train arrived in London. Huge crowds gathered to greet the couple and their carriage could barely push through the excited fans. 

+ The Alhambra Theatre (on Leicester Square, a block to the left of 12): When Pickford and Fairbanks came to see a play here, the crowds made them late. When they finally did arrive, the performance was interrupted by a ten-minute standing ovation for the couple. Fairbanks was forced to give a speech from their seats in the Royal Box before the play was allowed to continue.

06 THE BRITISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION HEADQUARTERS. In 1909, one of the most famous explorers in all of British history opened an office here on Victoria Street. Sir Robert Falcon Scott was planning an expedition to Antarctica; if all went to plan, he would become the very first person to ever reach the South Pole. And he was looking for a few good men willing to join him on his adventure. One of the hopeful candidates was Charles Seymour Wright. He'd grown up in Toronto and was now studying physics at Cambridge. When Scott rejected his initial application, Wright refused to take no for an answer. So he walked all the way here to Scott's office. From Cambridge. A hundred kilometers away. Scott was so impressed that he changed his mind and hired the young Canadian. When Scott's ship sailed south, Wright was on board. And he wasn't the only Torontonian, either: Thomas Griffith Taylor was an Australian who would eventually go on to found the Geography Department at U of T.

But the expedition proved to be a disaster. Scott and a few men made it all the way to the Pole only to discover they'd been beaten there by a team of Norwegians. On their long march back to camp, all the men in the polar party died. It was Wright who found the bodies —  along with the dead men's diaries, full of the chilling details that helped to cement the expedition as the most iconic tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

READ MORE: "Toronto's First Great Antarctic Explorer"

Find on Google Maps

+ Waterloo Place (right near 08): There's a statue of Scott here, in the shadow of the Duke of York Column.

+ The Natural History Museum (a couple of km to the left of the photo): On the way back from the South Pole, the doomed men stopped to collect rock samples. They still had them with them when Wright found the bodies. Today, you can see some of those rocks on display at the Natural History Museum. 


 

07 THE WESTMINSTER PALACE HOTEL. It was on this spot, right across the street from Westminster Abbey, that the Westminster Palace Hotel once stood. It was one of the grandest hotels in all of London — the very first, in fact, to have an elevator. And it was here, in a big room on the main floor, that one of the most important events in Canadian history happened. In 1866, delegates from all over the Canadian colonies met here to hash out the final details of Confederation. It was in this hotel that they drafted a bill the British parliament would eventually approve, turning Canada into a country.

At night, the Fathers of Confederation would retire to sleep in their rooms upstairs. So that's where Sir John A. Macdonald was when he drunkenly fell asleep one night while reading the newspaper. He woke up in flames. His bed, his sheets, his curtains, his nightshirt were all on fire. He leaped to his feet and smothered the flames as Sir George Étienne-Cartier rushed to his rescue from the room next door. It was a close call; Macdonald was lucky to survive. And just eight months later, he officially became the first Prime Minister of Canada.

READ MORE: "Sir John A. Macdonald, Drunk and In Flames"

Find on Google Maps

+ The Athenaeum Club (just above 08): Sir John A. was an honourary member of the Athenaeum, one of the most exclusive gentlemen's clubs in the world. Other members have included everyone from Darwin to Dickens to Churchill. 

+ Bond Street (runs along the left of 04): The fire and Confederation weren't the only life-changing events on Macdonald's trip. One day while walking down the street, he ran into an old friend from Canada. Within weeks, Macdonald and Susan Agnes Bernard were engaged to be married.

+ St. George's, Hanover Square (just above 04): The wedding happened here, at one of the most prestigious churches in London. Twenty years later, Teddy Roosevelt would also tie the knot at St. George's. And the church even pops up in My Fair Lady.


 

08 THE DUKE OF YORK COLUMN. In the aerial photograph above, it looks like nothing more than a thin brown line, just to the right of the number 08. But from the ground, it's massive. The column soars 12 storeys into the air. The statue on top weighs more than 16,000 pounds. It was built in the early 1800s to honour a prince born just down the street at St. James' Palace — the son of "Mad" King George III. In the days of the wars against Napoleon, the prince was in charge of the entire British military. Mostly, he's remembered for being inept and for the time he got mixed up in one of the most notorious sex scandals in British history. But in the end, his name was cleared and every single soldier in the British army gave up one day's pay to build him this column right in the middle of London.

His name was Prince Frederick. But he was better-known as the Duke of York. And when he won a big victory against the French in the late 1700s, the news spread all the way across the ocean and up the St. Lawrence to the brand new province of Upper Canada. Eventually, it reached the northern shore of Lake Ontario, where the Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, had just founded a muddy little frontier town to serve as his capital. To honour the Duke's big victory, Simcoe gave his town a new name: York. Two hundred years later, the name of that prince is still plastered all over Toronto: from York to North York to East York to Fort York to York Street to York University to York Mills to the York Club to Royal York Road.

READ MORE: "The Guy Toronto Was Originally Named After — And His Super-Big Sex Scandal"

Find on Google Maps 


 

09 A.Y. JACKSON'S STUDIO. The Group of Seven's most famous studio is in Toronto: in the Rosedale Valley, just a few blocks from Yonge & Bloor. That's where A.Y. Jackson shared a space on the top floor of the Studio Building with Tom Thomson, becoming fast friends in the days before the Group of Seven became famous. But when the First World War broke out, Jackson volunteered, heading to the blood-soaked trenches outside Ypres. The war took a terrible toll on the painter. When he ran into a fellow member of the Group, Fred Varley, his friend was deeply worried about him. "I’m sure if he had to go through the fight any more," Varley wrote in a letter back home, "he would be broken." And things were only getting worse: Jackson was wounded during a German bombardment, received word from back home that Thomson had died mysteriously in Algonquin Park, and his unit was headed toward mutiny and the slaughterhouse of the Battle of the Somme.

Jackson was saved at the best possible moment: while digging a latrine as he recovered from his wounds. An officer came to tell him that the Canadian War Records Office was looking for artists. They wanted Jackson to come work for them. He spent the rest of his war traveling across the Western Front sketching the devastation and then returning here, to his studio on Charlotte Street, to turn them into full paintings. No artist produced more work for the Canadian War Records Office than Jackson did. And his paintings for them helped to establish his reputation as one of the most promising artists in Toronto.

READ MORE: "A.Y. Jackson Goes to War — The Group of Seven on the Western Front"

Find on Google Maps


 

10 THE REBEL MAYOR. Just a couple of years before he became the first Mayor of Toronto, William Lyon Mackenzie was living right near here — on Wakefield Street. He was in London to find a peaceful solution to the political crisis sweeping Upper Canada. Back home in Toronto, he was desperately fighting to pass democratic reforms. But the Tories of the Family Compact were opposing him at every turn: they threw him out of his seat in the legislature, burned him in effigy, attacked his home and business, beat him half to death in the street. Still, he was hopeful; he was sure the British government would to listen to reason. So in 1832, Mackenzie came to London to formally present a long list of grievances on behalf of Upper Canadians. He spent a year living here with his family, presenting petitions to the Colonial Office and staying up all night writing lists of his complaints. He even taught himself to write with both hands so he could switch from one to the other when he started getting tired.

But none of it worked. In the end, the British did ignore his complaints. And when Mackenzie returned home to Toronto, he was more radical than ever.

READ MORE: "William Lyon Mackenzie's Mission to London"

Find on Google Maps


 

11. THE CROWN & ANCHOR TAVERN. While Mackenzie was in London, England was seized by its own battle over democratic rights. And over here on the Strand, you could find one of the hotbeds for radical politics: the Crown & Anchor Tavern. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, some of the biggest names in Britain came here to drink and to argue, to hold meetings and to give lectures: people like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Johnson, and William Hazlitt. Hundreds — sometimes even thousands — of Radicals and Reformers would gather here, listening to speakers, holding meetings, or throwing a party when someone was finally released from jail. They even printed some of the very same radical texts Mackenzie was printing in his newspaper back home in Toronto. The Crown & Anchor became synonymous with the campaign for democratic reform.

But there was lots of space at the tavern. Not everyone who held a meeting here was a radical. Far from it. And in the very late 1700s, the tavern was home to a series of meetings by the most famous secret organization in the world: The Freemasons.

In 1792, they met here to make an important decision. The British had just created a new province in Canada, which meant a new branch of the Masonic Lodge and a new Provincial Grand Master to run it. To fill the post, they picked an American who'd been driven out of the United States for fighting on the British side of the American Revolution. He was one of Simcoe's men. Soon, he would be joining his old commander on the trip to Upper Canada. His family would become one of the founding families of Toronto. And in time, as leading members of the conservative Family Compact, they became Mackenzie's arch-rivals. Two hundred years later, people in Toronto still recognize the family name: the man's name was William Jarvis.

READ MORE: "The Jarvis Family: 60 Years Fighting Revolutionaries and Radicals — And How It All Backfired"

Find on Google Maps

+ St. George's, Hanover Square (just above 04): William and Mary Jarvis got married here while they were in London: at the very same church where Sir John A. Macdonald would get married decades later.


 

12. THE RADICAL TAILOR OF CHARING CROSS. One of the most influential Radicals in England was a man by the name of Francis Place. He was a tailor by trade, with a shop here at 16 Charing Cross, just around the bend from Trafalgar Square. His backroom had been turned into a library filled with revolutionary ideas. The shop was ground zero for radical politics in England, where politicians and protesters alike came to discuss the ideas they were fighting for. And while Mackenzie was living in London, he too was invited into the backroom here, exposed to some of the most revolutionary ideas in England.

This was a very dangerous time. During Mackenzie's year in London, he watched the battle over a bill called the Great Reform Act plunge England into crisis. At the height of the fight, shops and factories shut down. Political unions mobilized. Huge crowds gathered in protest. There were riots. Mackenzie himself saw the Tory Prime Minster — the Duke of Wellington, the hero of the Battle of Waterloo — pelted with fish heads and mud in the street. Francis Place was one of the leaders of the unrest: his angry posters were plastered all over London; he organized a run on the banks that threatened to bankrupt the nation. And he was willing to go even further than that: if the Tories didn't back down and allow democratic reform, Place would have no problem helping to lead an armed revolution.

In the end, the bill did pass. Mackenzie was there that day in the House of Lords to watch it happen. But the British government refused to bring similar reforms to Upper Canada. And when Mackenzie returned home to Toronto, not only had he lost his faith in the British system, he'd also been exposed to some pretty radical and violent ideas. Within a few short years, he'd be leading his own army down Yonge Street, trying to overthrow British rule in Canada.

Find on Google Maps


 

13 WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. The Victorian age officially began a little after noon on a Thursday: June the 28th, 1838. That's when the Imperial Crown was placed upon the young queen's head. And at that exact moment, one of the most fascinating scientists in the history of Toronto was standing right here: in the middle of the old Westminster Bridge.

Sir John Henry Lefroy was just a young solider back then — tasked with passing the signal along from Westminster Abbey to the crowds at the Tower of London when the big moment arrived — but he had a long and interesting life ahead of him. His scientific curiosity would eventually bring him to Canada, where he was in charge of Her Majesty's Magnetical and Meteorological Observatory at Toronto. It was part of an Empire-wide project to figure out why the magnetic field kept changing. And while he was here, Lefroy left a lasting legacy in Toronto. He co-founded the Royal Canadian Institute. And thanks to a famous trip to the Northwest Territories, he became the subject of what is now the most expensive painting in Canadian history: Paul Kane's Scene in the Northwest: Portrait of John Henry Lefroy. More than 175 years after he stood on the Westminster Bridge at the dawn of a new age, you can now find Lefroy on the walls of the AGO.

READ MORE: "Sir John Henry Lefroy & Queen Victoria's Coronation"

Find on Google Maps

+ Cambridge Terrace (right side of the big park at the top of the photo): After getting back to England, Lefroy became a major figure in the administration of the Empire, including Governor of Bermuda and Director of Ordnance for the army. He lived here, in the swanky Cambridge Terrace, looking out over Regents Park.

+ St. Martin-in-the-Fields (on Trafalgar Square, the big square to the bottom-left of 12): As a baby, Lefroy was baptized here, in this church, by the Bishop of London.

+ St. George's, Hanover Square (just above 04): Lefroy also got married here, just like Sir John A. Macdonald and William Jarvis did.

+ The Egyptian Hall (on Piccadilly Road, a couple of blocks below 04): One of the most important moments of Paul Kane's life happened here, too. The young artist from Toronto saw a lecture at the Egyptian Hall by the American painter George Caitlin. Caitlin had dedicated his life to painting the people of the First Nations (sometimes very inaccurately). Kane was so inspired, he decided to do the same thing in Canada. 


 

14 THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH. It was a guy from Toronto who created Doctor Who. Sydney Newman worked at the NFB and the CBC before eventually landing a gig in England as Head of Drama for the BBC. He'd been a big science-fiction fan growing up in Toronto, so one of the first things he did at his new job was to assemble a groundbreaking team — including the first woman producer in BBC history, as well as the first Indian-born director — to make a new show about a strange old man who travelled through time and space in a police box. It would prove to be one of the most successful television programs of all-time.

 And that was in large part thanks to the Daleks. The genocidal aliens — giant salt-shakers armed with toilet plungers — were featured in the second story Doctor Who ever told. And they were a smash hit. At first, Newman wasn't pleased. He wanted the show to be educational. He didn't want any "bug-eyed monsters." But he quickly changed his tune. In the second season of the show, the Daleks were back in a serial that included one of the most iconic moments in British television history: the invading aliens rolled across Westminster Bridge during the Dalek invasion of Earth.

READ MORE: "The Torontonian roots of Doctor Who — The Canadian Behind the Legendary TV Show"

Find on Google Maps

+ BBC Broadcasting House (to the bottom-left of 02): The old BBC headquarters, where Newman used to work, are way off to the left of this photo. But the brand new headquarters are on Regent Street where, more than 50 years later, they still boast Doctor Who as one of the most popular parts of their schedule. 


 

15 The Colonial Office. We end here, in Whitehall, just down the street from the Houses of Parliament. Because once upon a time, this building was the very heart of the British Empire. Today, they call it the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, but it used to be known as the Colonial Office. For more than a century, this is the spot where Canada was essentially ruled from. As a result, some of the most important moments in Canadian history happened right here. Many of the most powerful and important Canadians have sailed all the way across the Atlantic to come to this spot: all in the hope of getting a meeting with the British bureaucrats who ran this place. They waited long hours in reception, presented petitions, negotiated with our imperial overlords... sometimes they were turned away altogether. Some of them had names that are still familiar to Canadians today: Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir George-Étienne Cartier, William Lyon Mackenzie, Sir Sandford Fleming, Robert Baldwin...

But maybe most important of all, this is where the Privy Council used to meet. And even though they were all British judges, they served as the court with the highest authority over Canadian law. Higher even than the Supreme Court of Canada. So it was in this building in 1929 that the British judges on the Privy Council overruled the Canadian courts: they declared that women are, in fact, persons. To this day, it's one of the most famous and important moments in the history of our country — even if it happened six thousand kilometers away.

READ MORE: "Three Dreams in the Heart of the British Empire"

Find on Google Maps
 

-----

Read more posts about The Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour and the connections between the history of Toronto and the United Kingdom here. 

 The original photo was taken by Wikimedia Commons user Stevekeiretsu in 2006. You can find it here. I've cropped it and adjusted the contrast and colour balance.