John Graves Simcoe, Napoleon Bonaparte & The Politics of Horse Shit

This is a photo of horse shit. But it's not just any photo of horse shit. This horse shit is on Woodbury Common — a beautiful patch of heathland in the English countryside. And with horse shit on Woodbury Common, you can tell a story about the founder of Toronto — John Graves Simcoe — and about a man who challenged him to a duel over that dung.

This was a few years after Simcoe founded Toronto. He'd come back home to England by then, returning to his country in a deeply troubled time. England was at war with France.

The French Revolution had started many years earlier; it was already well underway by the time Simcoe and his family left home for Canada. But things had gotten even bloodier while they were gone: Simcoe founded Toronto in July of 1793; the Reign of Terror began just a couple of months after that, while the Simcoes were living in a pair of fancy tents pitched at the mouth of Garrison Creek. 

And even there — six thousand kilometers from the guillotines of Paris — news of the atrocities reached them. In August, the Simcoes were visited by a pair of fleeing French aristocrats hoping to settle in Upper Canada. They told a morbid story about King Louis' botched attempt to escape his captors. By the time they shared that anecdote, the French king had already lost his head.

A few months later, Marie Antoinette followed her husband to the guillotine. News of her death took many weeks to travel across the Atlantic and up the St. Lawrence to the Canadian frontier. When it did, Simcoe marked the occasion with solemn respect. That evening, the settlers of Toronto dressed all in black, postponing the dance they had planned for the night. They might hate the French, but they were staunch monarchists — many of them had already suffered through the horrors of the American Revolution and were deeply upset by the idea of yet another bloody, democratic uprising.

It was a frightening time. The French Revolution sparked decades of war between France and the monarchies of Europe, including Britain. At the very same time that Simcoe was busy planning the first few blocks of Toronto, he was also busy worrying that the war back home would spread to North America. Even now, French revolutionaries were stirring up trouble in the United States, trying to get the Americans to join the war and invade Canada. Some had even travelled into Québec, where they hoped to convince the French Canadians to rise up and launch their own revolution. As the Simcoes slept in their tents at night, they worried that at any moment an enemy ship might sail over the horizon — or enemy soldiers burst from the woods. Simcoe's wife, Elizabeth, had nightmares about it.

John Graves Simcoe

Things only got scarier when they began to head home for England. As the Simcoes sailed out of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, French warships were waiting. They chased them out into the Atlantic, seizing other English vessels who were sailing nearby. As the Simcoes' ship dodged icebergs off the coast of Labrador, Elizabeth and the children hid themselves in the cramped quarters below deck. They could hear guns in the distance. It took weeks to sail across the open ocean before the Simcoes finally reached the safety of home.

Even then, it wasn't over. The British would be at war with the French for most of the next twenty years. And things would only get worse. By the time the Simcoes got back to England, a new French general had begun to make a name for himself. Napoleon Bonaparte would prove to be one of the most brilliant and most power hungry dictators in history.

The wars against the French would dominate the rest of Simcoe's life. In the end, he would die fighting them.

But first, he had an important role to play. Simcoe didn't always get along with his superiors, but he did earn the respect of some of the most powerful men in England: Prime Minister Addington, Admiral Nelson, the Duke of York; he even spent time with "Mad" King George. His experience was especially respected when it came to military matters. He'd been one of the most celebrated heroes on the British side of the American Revolution. And as the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, he'd been responsible for preparing the defences of the new province in case of an American invasion. And so, just a couple of years after his return to England, Simcoe was given a new job: preparing part of England in case of a French invasion.

At times, it seemed as if that invasion could happen at any moment — especially once Napoleon was in charge. Having already expanded his empire on the Continent, the French general began to assemble an army to bring England to its knees. Two hundred thousand men were being trained on the coast of France: the Armée d'Angleterre. A whole flotilla of barges was built to carry them across the English Channel. For a while, Napoleon was even toying with the idea of deploying the world's first air force: a fleet of hot air balloons to support the attack. There were rumours of a giant tunnel being dug beneath the Channel. And of a massive raft powered by windmills. To pay for it all, Napoleon had already sold the Louisiana Territory to the Americans. He was so sure his invasion was going to succeed that he built a triumphal arch to commemorate it before it had even happened.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Channel, Simcoe was getting ready for the invasion. The British government had put him in charge of the entire defence of the West Country. Devon, Cornwall and Somerset would be under his command. If the French landed there, Simcoe and his men would answer with a scorched earth campaign. They would evacuate all women and children, the elderly and the sick — and all the livestock, too. Everything they left behind would be destroyed. The French would find nothing to eat.

Instead, they would be met by the biggest military force Britain had ever assembled. More than six hundred thousand men were ready to fight — nearly 10% of the entire population of England. In the West Country alone, Simcoe was in command of twelve thousand men.

Woodbury Common

But they weren't all experienced soldiers. Professional troops were joined by volunteers and conscripted militia. They needed lots of training. And to do that training, Simcoe sometimes took them to Woodbury Common.

Woodbury Common is high in the gorgeous green hills of Devon. It's just a few kilometers from the Simcoes' summer home in the seaside town of Budleigh Salterton. And it's not too far from their country estate in the Blackdown Hills, either. It's a beautiful place: gently rolling hills covered with flowers, shrubs and short grass. It's typical heathland; in fact, if you look up "heath" on Wikipedia, the first photo you'll see is a photo of Woodbury Common. It's one of England's official Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

At the very highest point on the Common, you'll find a patch of trees. They're growing on the remains of massive earthworks. The big ditches are what's left of the ancient Woodbury Castle: an Iron Age hill fort built in the days of the druids; it's more than two thousand years old. From the lands around the castle, you can see for miles and miles in every direction — all the way back down to the sea. It's the perfect spot for a military base. In fact, the British army still trains there to this day.

And so about two hundred years ago, you could find thousands of Simcoe's troops camping on Woodbury Common as they awaited Napoleon's arrival — and with those camping men came hundreds of horses.

That, finally, bring us to the horse shit.

With all those horses trotting around, there was, of course, plenty of dung on Woodbury Common. And the question of who was ultimately responsible for it — Simcoe's troops or the local land owner — sparked a fight that nearly ended in a duel. But not for the reason you might think.

The principal owner of the lands around Woodbury Common was a man by the name of Lord Rolle. History would eventually remember him as the man who tripped during Queen Victoria's coronation and rolled down the steps to the throne. He and Simcoe didn't get along at all. Rolle was pretty pissed off by the inconvenience caused by all the men camping on the Common. And he was even more pissed off by the fact that they were cleaning up after themselves. Simcoe was making sure that all the horse shit was being collected and taken away. Rolle was furious. He wanted that horse shit for himself. It was valuable manure.

Rolle began a letter-writing campaign. He complained to the authorities, insisting that tradition dictated that any horse shit left by the military on common land belonged to the local lord of the manor: him. Simcoe was stealing his shit. And if Simcoe got away with it, it would set a dangerous precedent: any British general would be allowed to trample the rights of any lord. The question of the horse shit on Woodbury Common, Rolle argued, was a question of importance to every single subject in the British Empire.

Simcoe, for his part, sent a flurry of his own letters arguing the opposite. And as the letters flew back and forth, the fight escalated. Before long, Rolle was ordering his men to physically stop Simcoe's troops from removing the shit from the Common. The dispute was getting so serious that it was eventually forwarded all the way to the man in charge of the entire British military: the Duke of York (the son of "Mad" King George III and the guy who Simcoe had originally named Toronto after — back when it was still known as the town of York).
 

Woodbury Castle

In the end, Simcoe lost the battle of the Woodbury Common horse shit. His orders came directly from Whitehall — the heart of the British government at Westminster. The manure belonged to Rolle. He would be compensated for the shit that had already been taken away. And he would be allowed to keep any dung produced by Simcoe's horses in the future — as long as he sold it to the public at an appropriate discount.

But Rolle still wasn't satisfied. He was so angry with Simcoe that he challenged him to a duel. He wanted, he declared, to have a fist-fight with the founder of Toronto.

 
Simcoe was not impressed. Gentlemen, he replied, didn't fight with their fists. It was unseemly. If Rolle wanted to have a duel, they could have a duel: with pistols or with swords. It didn't count if there was no chance you might die.

Rolle backed down.

And so did Napoleon. The tiny French Emperor never did invade England. Instead, he marched his army east into the heart of Europe. But it wasn't the end of Simcoe's connection to the man. There was one sad chapter left to come.

It didn't take long for the French army to invade Spain and Portugal. The Peninsular War — as it was called — would rage for years on end. It was a bloody campaign. Tens of thousands were killed or wounded. Simcoe's own son, Francis, would die during the Siege of Badajoz in Portugal. (Just a toddler when Toronto was founded, his parents had jokingly named their log cabin in his honour: Castle Frank. We still remember it today in the name of a subway station.)

By then, John Graves Simcoe was already dead. He died during that same campaign. His preparations for Napoleon's invasion had earned him a promotion: Commander-in-Chief of the entire British army in India. But just before he left for his new post, he got new orders: his services were once again desperately needed in the fight against the French. Simcoe sailed to Portugal. But the ship he sailed on was damp and newly painted. He had always suffered from terrible respiratory problems — in fact, that's why he'd been forced to come home from Canada.

Simcoe was deathly ill by the time he made it to Lisbon. He would never recover. He was loaded back onto the same sickly ship and sent home across the Channel to England. He died in Exeter just a few days later.

As for Napoleon, well, he did finally make it to Devon one day. But it wasn't at the head of an invading army. Instead, he saw those rolling green hills from the deck of a British ship as it sailed by. It was all over; he'd lost the Battle of Waterloo and was now being held prisoner. Defeated for the final time, the French general asked if he could retire in England with a small parcel of land. His request was refused. The British didn't let him off that ship; he was never to set foot in Devon. Instead, they kept sailing, taking him far away to the isolated island of Saint Helena where he would live out the rest of his days in peace and frustrating quiet.

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More than two hundred years after Simcoe founded our city, Toronto is still wrestling with the question of who is responsible for our horse shit. You can read more about that on the CBC News website here.

Read more of my posts about the Simcoes: the story of John Graves Simcoe's vision for Toronto (a city so awesome it would undo the American Revolution); the story of Elizabeth Simcoe's 1794 nightmare; the story of their dog, Jack Sharp; the story of their cat; the story of how they fell in love and the magical hills where it happened; the story of their summer home in Budleigh Salterton; the story of their connection to Samuel Coleridge and his family; the story of the Simcoe family and Exeter and death.

The first person to alert me to the story of Simcoe and the shit was Michael Downes at the Fairlynch Museum in Budleigh Salterton. You can find the museum at their website, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

Simcoe's biographers, Mary Beacock Fryer and Christopher Dracott, cover the story in their book, which you borrow from the Toronto Public Library here or buy here.

You can learn more about Napoleon's brief stay in Devon in Devonshire Magazine here.

Photos of Woodbury Common and Woodbury Castle by me: Adam Bunch.

This post is related to dream 01 Metropolitan York John Graves Simcoe, 1793

This post is related to dream 30 The Conference of the Beasts Francis Simcoe, 1796

This post is related to dream 34 The Upper Canadian Ball Elizabeth Simcoe, 1793

UK Tour Photos: Northamptonshire, Birthplace of the Simcoes

A year later, I'm still posting photos from the Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour. I hadn't originally planned on visiting Northamptonshire, but upon my arrival in England, I was invited to spend a day in the lovely county of spires and squires. It's the part of the country where both John Graves Simcoe, the founder of Toronto, and his future wife, Elizabeth, were born. It's a strange coincidence — despite being born within a few kilometers of each other, it seems they didn't meet and fall in love until many years later far away in the rolling hills of Devon.

My hosts for the day were Ioan and Alice Thomas. Ioan a retired biology teacher who used to work at the local Oundle School — he inspired one of his students to pursue a career in science: a boy by the name of Richard Dawkins. Ioan and Alice are both very interested in their local history, which means that they are both very interested in the history of the Simcoes. They were nice enough to show me around the countryside, stopping to visit some of the Simcoes' childhood haunts, including the churches they attended as children and the mansion where the founder of Toronto was born.

You can check out all of my photos from my day in Northamptonshire on Facebook right here:

FULL GALLERY

And, as always, you can follow me on Instagram at @todreamsproject.

Toronto's Founding Dog & How He Almost Got Eaten

It was the summer of 1793. The summer our city was founded. On an early Tuesday morning, as the late July sun rose above Lake Ontario, a British warship sailed into Toronto Bay. She was the HMS Mississauga. She had sailed overnight from Niagara, arriving in darkness, waiting for dawn and a local fur trader to show her the way through the treacherous shoals at the mouth of the harbour. On board was the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada: John Graves Simcoe. His family was with him, too. The Simcoes had come to found a new capital for the new province: a tiny muddy town that would eventually grow into a booming metropolis of concrete and glass filled with millions of people.

The Simcoes weren't alone. They had brought their pets with them. There was a white cat with grey spots and a big friendly beast of a dog. He was a Newfoundland. His name was Jack Sharp.

Newfoundlands are a Canadian dog. By the time Jack Sharp was born, his breed had already been living on the island of Newfoundland for centuries. They've been there so long that no one is entirely sure where they came from — how they were first bred or evolved. Some people like to say they're descended from the big black bear dogs the Vikings brought with them across the Atlantic a thousand years ago. Others say their ancestors were the wild wolves of Newfoundland, or the domesticated hunting dogs of the local First Nations people. But most seem to think they were probably bred by the first European fishermen to come to Canada — sailors from the Basque Country and from Portugal who spent their summers fishing the waters off the coast of Newfoundland in the very early 1500s. However it happened, by the time the first colonists made the island their permanent home, the Newfoundland dog was solidly established as its own distinct breed.

They were perfect for life on the frontier. Big and strong and brave. Smart and loyal. They have webbed feet and a thick, waterproof coat, so they're fantastic swimmers. Just like their cousins the St. Bernards, they're famous for rescuing people. When the first European explorers headed west toward the Pacific, Newfoundlands were at their side — one travelled with the famous British-Canadian map-maker David Thompson; another with the Americans Lewis and Clark. The dogs became a familiar sight for Canadian pioneers.

The Niagara River by Elizabeth Simcoe, 1790s

Jack Sharp was one of those frontier dogs. He lived in Niagara-on-the-Lake back in the days when it was still a new settlement — so new it didn't even have a church yet; an isolated outpost at the spot where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario. It was called Newark back then, a tiny town with a tiny population. But for a few brief years, it was the centre of political power in Upper Canada: the brand new capital of the brand new province, which had recently been created as a safe haven for Loyalist refugees in the wake of the American Revolution. 

The first Governor of the new province arrived at Niagara in the summer of 1792. It took John Graves Simcoe and his family nearly a year to make the long trip from England all the way out to the edge of the Canadian frontier. They spent two months sailing across the Atlantic, an entire winter stuck in Quebec City, and another two months travelling up the St. Lawrence and across Lake Ontario.

Back home in England, they'd enjoyed life on a sprawling country estate with a legion of servants to take care of them. At Niagara, life was much more rustic. They pitched a pair of elaborate tents on the banks of the river — the same canvas houses once used by the legendary explorer Captain Cook on his famous travels through the Pacific. The Simcoes still had plenty of help and lots of nice things, but life in Canada was much more difficult than it had been back home. The Governor's wife, Elizabeth, even suffered from a bout of malaria.

Still, the Simcoes did all they could to bring their British way of life to Upper Canada — that was, in fact, part of their mission. While the Governor busied himself running his new province, Elizabeth kept a detailed diary, painted watercolours, did needlework and entertained the most powerful Upper Canadian families. Her calendar was filled with social events: dinners, dances, balls and card games with people like the Jarvises, the Russells and Chief Justice Osgoode. Even Prince Edward, the future father of Queen Victoria, came all the way to Niagara for an official state visit. And there were visits from important First Nations allies, too, like the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, Thayendanegea.

Elizabeth Simcoe

Elizabeth also had a family to run. The Simcoes had brought their youngest children with them to Canada: Sophia was in her terrible twos; Francis had just turned one. Even with a pair of nurses to help, the toddlers were more than a handful. And Elizabeth was pregnant yet again. That winter in the canvas house, she gave birth to a baby girl they named Katherine.

Even on the frontier, the Simcoe children would grow up with plenty of pets. Once they got to Upper Canada, the Simcoes had been given a white cat with grey spots and a hound called Trojan. Trojan was a gift for the kids, but it was Elizabeth Simcoe that he loved best. He even slept in her room inside the canvas house at night. And soon, there was another new addition to the menagerie. Jack Sharp had been the sheriff's dog. But when the Simcoes arrived, the big Newfoundland quickly fell in love with them. Before long, he had managed to adopt them as his own, joining their growing family. 

Elizabeth wrote about the animals in her diary — and about the mischief they caused. When Jack Sharp joined Governor Simcoe on a long trip to Detroit, the big dog faced off against a raccoon and then attacked a porcupine and earned a neck full of quills. When Elizabeth left Trojan alone in her tent with a map she'd painstakingly drawn, the hound tore it to pieces. (Governor Simcoe, who fancied himself something of a poet, even wrote some verses to mark the occasion: "Upon the Dog Trojan tearing the Map of N. America.")

Sadly, Trojan wouldn't live to see Toronto. He met a tragic end in the spring of 1793 — on a strangely hot day in early April. The heat was sweltering, recorded as high as 45°C. It was so hot that Trojan fell ill. When one of Simcoe's soldiers saw the symptoms, he made a terrible mistake: he thought Trojan had contracted rabies. He hadn't — if he had, he would have been scared of the water and wouldn't have waded out into the river to cool off like he did. But the soldier didn't know any better: he shot the dog dead.

So that summer, when the Simcoe family left Niagara, it was only their cat and Jack Sharp who came with them. 

They left because Niagara wasn't going to be safe anymore. Soon, the Americans would be taking over the other side of the river; it was one of the peace terms negotiated in the wake of the Revolution. The big guns of Fort Niagara were over there — just across the mouth of the river from Niagara-on-the-Lake. The tiny capital would be almost impossible to defend if the Americans decided to invade. And it seemed inevitable they would. Simcoe needed to find a new capital. Fast.

Toronto harbour by Elizabeth Simcoe, 1793

The spot he eventually picked was directly north across the lake from Niagara: a place called Toronto. There, a natural harbour had been formed by a long sandbar that would eventually become the Toronto islands. There was only one way into the bay, so it would be relatively easy to defend against an attack. That's where Simcoe would build his new capital.

In the middle of July, the Governor sent a hundred soldiers across the lake to begin work. They were the Queen's Rangers; some of them, the very same men Simcoe had commanded while fighting against the American rebels during the Revolution. At Toronto, his troops would build on land the British had "bought" from the Mississaugas years earlier (with a document so sketchy the Canadian government would eventually settle a land claim for $145 million). Simcoe's men made camp at a spot near the entrance to the harbour, at the mouth of what would become known as Garrison Creek. There, they got to work felling trees, hacking away at the ancient forest that towered over the shore. Great pines and oaks came crashing to the ground. In their place, a military base began to take shape: Fort York. It was the beginning a brand new town. Simcoe would call it York; we call it Toronto.

Back at Niagara, the Simcoes were getting ready to follow the Queen's Rangers across the lake. The Governor had just finished overseeing a session of the Upper Canadian legislature — one of the most important parliamentary sessions in Canadian history. Simcoe wanted to abolish slavery; the elected assembly balked. Slave-owning families like the Jarvises and the Russells were planning to bring their slaves with them to the new capital. Simcoe convinced them to accept a comprise: they could keep the slaves they already owned, but no new slaves could enter the province and the children of slaves would be freed when they reached the age of 25. The Act Against Slavery was the first law to abolish slavery in the history of the British Empire.

It was at the very end of that same month — on July 29th — that the Simcoes left Niagara. That night, the family and their pets climbed aboard the HMS Mississauga. She was a big warship: an armed schooner. An impressive way to travel — for a human or a dog.

As the Simcoes slept, the warship sailed north across the lake. Early the next morning, she made her careful way into Toronto Bay.

Toronto shoreline by Elizabeth Simcoe, 1796

It was the middle of the afternoon by the time the Governor and his wife went ashore for the first time. And when they did, they brought the dog with them.

Jack Sharp was far from the first canine to ever set paw on this land. Wolves and foxes roamed the woods around Toronto. And domesticated dogs had been here as long as humans had. The people of the First Nations and their ancestors had been hunting with them on the northern shore of Lake Ontario for thousands and thousands of years before our city was founded. As the Wendat-Huron historian George Sioui points out, dogs played an important role in the spiritual life of his own nation. The first racist French missionaries — anxious to paint the First Nations as "uncivilized" — claimed those dogs were only being raised for their meat. "Like sheep," they said. But in fact, dog meat was only consumed during important ritual ceremonies, and the people shared a close bond with their canine companions. The Wendat had long said that souls travel a path through the stars when they die: humans along the Milky Way and their dogs along a celestial dog path right next to them. In more recent years, as the first Europeans arrived, other dogs must have visited Toronto. Many of the explorers, fur traders and early settlers who passed through the area probably had dogs with them, too.
 
So Jack Sharp wasn't Toronto's first dog. Not by a long shot. But he was our city's founding dog: the canine member of the first family to establish the town that would grow into our modern metropolis.

A few days after they arrived, the Simcoes pitched their canvas houses just across the creek from Fort York, where they could watch as the Queen's Rangers hammered and sawed away. That's when they brought the children ashore, along with the nurses and servants. By the end of the first week of August, the entire family, including Jack Sharp, was living in the fancy tents at the mouth of Garrison Creek. In the months to come, the town itself would begin to take shape: the first ten blocks were carved out of the woods where the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhoood is now. From George Street over to Berkeley; from Front Street up to Adelaide.

It's easy to imagine what life in Toronto must have been like for Jack Sharp. Splashing in the shallows of the harbour as waterfowl scattered into the sky. Playing with the Simcoe children on the beach. Racing through the old forest, chasing chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels.

Toronto 1793 (with HMS Mississauga) by Elizabeth Simcoe

But for the humans, life on shore at Toronto was even harder than life at Niagara had been. There, at least, the settlers enjoyed an established town. Here, the town was still being built. Many of the province's other most powerful families were shocked by the Simcoes' living conditions. As Peter Russell wrote to his sister, "you have no conception of the Misery in which they live..." The other leading political families dragged their feet, staying at Niagara as long as they could before following the Simcoes across the lake.

The First Family of Upper Canada suffered through an entire winter at Toronto. But the most terrible moment of the Simcoes' time in Canada came the following spring. Katherine Simcoe had been a very healthy baby; she was more than a year old now, beginning to walk and to talk, old enough to start playing with the cat and Jack Sharp. But in April she suddenly fell very ill. It may have been malaria or some other similar disease. A fever turned into a terrifying night of uncontrollable spasms. By morning, she was gone. She was buried in a new cemetery near the fort; today, it's a park we call Victoria Memorial Square, just a bit south-east of Bathurst & King.

For the Simcoes, death was never far away. The previous fall, Jack Sharp had had his own brush with mortality. And Governor Simcoe, too.

It came during a long trip north. Simcoe wanted to find the best route from Toronto all the way up to Lake Huron. Easy movement through the province would be vital in case of an American invasion. And that was seeming ever-more imminent: the British were now at war with France, the Americans' allies, caught up in the violence that engulfed Europe in the wake the French Revolution. Simcoe was worried the trouble would spread across the Atlantic — which it soon would with the War of 1812. The Simcoes' peaceful life at Toronto felt precarious. Enemy ships might sail over the horizon at any moment; enemy troops might emerge from the woods. As she slept in her canvas house at night, Elizabeth had nightmares about it. In fact, when the Simcoes finally sailed home to England, French warships would be waiting to chase them out of the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Both John Graves Simcoe and his son Francis would eventually die in the fight against Napoleon.

So that September, Simcoe and his men headed north with the help of Ojibway guides. Jack Sharp went with them, too. They travelled up a portage route called the Toronto Carrying-Place. The big dog made for something of an awkward passenger in a canoe, but they made quick progress up the Humber River, through the marshlands far to the north of Toronto, and then along the Holland River to a lake the French called Lac aux Claies.

John Graves Simcoe

When they arrived, Simcoe renamed the lake, like he was renaming just about everything he found in Upper Canada. He called it "Lake Simcoe" — not after himself, but after his father, who had died in Canada during the last war against the French, just a few months before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.

There, Simcoe found his route north. It wouldn't be hard to get from Lake Simcoe to Lake Huron — and to make things even easier, he would have a road built north from Toronto toward the Holland River. He named the road after a friend, the British Secretary at War: Sir George Yonge.

But getting home now — with Yonge Street still just a dream — would prove to be an unexpectedly perilous challenge.

As Simcoe, his men, his dog and the Ojibway guides all headed back south toward Toronto, their luck began to turn against them. One man had nearly severed a toe and couldn't walk anymore; others would fall ill. The party was forced to split up. The group Simcoe was with only had enough food for one day, but had a five-day journey ahead of them. From there, things quickly got worse. They were taking a different route home than the one they'd taken north: this time, they were heading along the eastern fork of the Toronto Carrying-Place portage route, which headed south down the Rouge River. They got lost along the way, stumbling through the woods for days on end, never quite sure where they were. Meanwhile, their rations were growing dangerous low. If they didn't find home soon, they would starve.

Things were getting desperate. So a plan took shape. If they didn't find Toronto that day, they would have no choice. They would kill Jack Sharp. And then eat him.

The Newfoundland was spared just in the nick of time. First, the men came across a surveyor's line. It was a good sign. And then, through the trees they spotted it: Lake Ontario. They finally knew where they were: just a few kilometers from the tiny new Upper Canadian capital. They were ecstatic. That morning, they wolfed down the rest of their food for breakfast and then finally headed west toward home.

The founder of Toronto was saved. And so was Toronto's founding dog. 

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That painting at the top of this post isn't Jack Sharp, but another famous Newfoundland dog called Bob. The painting is called "A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society" by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, painted in 1831. Bob was found in a shipwreck off the coast of England and would go on to save twenty-three people from drowning in the Thames over the course of fourteen years.

You can read my post about the Simcoe's cat here, about Elizabeth Simcoe's nightmare here, and about John Graves Simcoe's vision for Toronto (a city so awesome it would undo the American Revolution) here.

You can read Elizabeth Simcoe's diary online here. You can borrow it from the Toronto Public Library here. Or buy it from Amazon here.

You can read excerpts from Elizabeth Simcoe biography, by Mary Beacock Fryer, on Google Books here, buy it here, or borrow it here from the Toronto Public Library. Her biography of John Graves Simcoe written with Christopher Dracott is here and here. While her biography of Francis Simcoe is here and here.

You can read Bathsheba Susannah Wesley's fascinating Master's thesis about her habit of setting small fires during her time in Canada here [PDF]. The always excellent Dictionary of Canadian Biography has a full bio for Elizabeth Simcoe here. And John Graves Simcoe here. You can learn more about the soldiers who built Toronto, the Queen's Rangers, here. And learn more about the Simcoe's canvas houses here.

Learn more about the historian George Sioui from the Tyee here. The New York Times has a history of dogs in the early Americas here. Cheryl MacDonald writes about Jack Sharp and other famous Newfoundlands in her book "Celebrated Pets" on Google Books here. Jack Sharp also gets mentions in a footnote to Richard D. Merritt's "On Common Ground: The Ongoing Story of the Commons in Niagara-on-the-Lake" on Google Books here.

Elizabeth Simcoe's painting of the Toronto harbour comes from the Toronto Public Library's Digital Archives here.  Her painting of the Toronto shoreline comes via Heritage Toronto here. Her painting of the Niagara River comes from the Wikimedia Commons here. 

This post is related to dream 01 Metropolitan York John Graves Simcoe, 1793

This post is related to dream 30 The Conference of the Beasts Francis Simcoe, 1796

This post is related to dream 34 The Upper Canadian Ball Elizabeth Simcoe, 1793

UK Tour Photos: The Blackdown Hills of Devon

There's a little piece of Canada in the middle of the English countryside. It's in the West Country, in Devonshire, in the Blackdown Hills. It's a land of magic and myth. Of fairies and pixies. Of warrior ghosts and witchcraft. Of Druids and Romans. Of poachers and smugglers. Of Iron Age hill forts, Bronze Age burial mounds and Stone Age earthworks. And this is where — more than 200 years ago — the founders of Toronto met and fell in love. The Simcoes grew old together here. This is where they're buried. They lie at rest with their children at Wolford Chapel, a small church they built on their estate looking out across these green hills. More than a century later, the land the chapel sits on was given to Ontario. It's officially part of Canadian territory. A Canadian flags flies outside.

I came to Devon to explore the Blackdown Hills as part of the Dreams Project's UK Tour last summer. I left dreams here for the Simcoes — and for Henry Scadding, who also grew up in these parts. I've already written a bit about it: a post about the ancient church where the Simcoes got married is here; there's a post about how they fell in love here.

But now I've finally posted a full gallery of my photos from my day wandering through the hills. You can check it out on Facebook right here:

FULL GALLERY

And, as always, you can follow me on Instagram at @todreamsproject.

UK Tour Photos: Budleigh Salterton

1797. The city of Toronto was just four years old. We were still called York back then, still just a tiny little wooden town cut out of the forest on the northern shore of Lake Ontario. But the guy who had founded our town was already thousands of kilometers away. John Graves Simcoe — the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada — headed home to England with his family just a few years after they first pitched their fancy tent at the mouth of Garrison Creek.

They came home to their beautiful country estate in the rolling hills of Devon. But they also bought themselves a new place, somewhere to hang out during the summer months. It was just down the River Otter from their estate, in the seaside town that sits at the mouth of the river, surrounded by towering red cliffs. It's called Budleigh Salterton. Today, it's in the middle of a World Heritage Site. Those cliffs stretch west for more than 150 kilometers, the only place in the world where you'll find the entire history of the dinosaurs. They call it the Jurassic Coast.

The house in Budleigh Salterton where the Simcoes lived is still there today. It's undergone lots of renovations and additions over the years, but it's still called Simcoe House. There's even a plaque outside. So, on Day Ten of the Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour, I headed to Budleigh Salterton, to leave dreams for the Simcoes there. I got to spend a night at the pub with all the friendly people who run the local Fairlynch Museum. And I took a big walk up into the heathland north of the town, up to the Iron Age hill fort where Simcoe trained men to fight Napoleon. And I followed the path along the top of those towering red cliffs, still eroding away just like they were in the days when the Simcoes called this place home.

I've already written a big post about the history of Budleigh Salterton here. And now you can check out my photos from the day I spent roaming the area on Facebook — whether or not you have an account — right here:

FULL GALLERY

And, as always, you can follow me on Instagram at @todreamsproject.

How The Simcoes Fell In Love — And The Magical Hills Where It Happened

UK TOUR DAY TWELVE (THE BLACKDOWN HILLS): These are the Blackdown Hills. They're one of England's official "Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty," all rolling green hillsides and yellow fields and ancient trees lining roads so old they've worn deep groves into the ground. It's a land of magic and of myth: of pixies and fairies, of warrior ghosts and witchcraft, of Druids and Romans, of poachers and smugglers, of Iron Age hill forts, Bronze Age burial mounds and Stone Age earthworks. And this is where the founders of Toronto fell in love.

The story of the Simcoes starts with a man named Samuel Graves. He was an Admiral in the British navy; he spent much of the 1700s fighting. He was the Captain of a ship during the Seven Years' War and he was the head of the whole North American fleet during the early days of the American Revolution. That bit didn't go very well: he was ordered to control the entire east coast of the United States with only a couple dozen ships. Those orders have gone down in history as one of the most impossible tasks ever asked of a naval officer. Graves was doomed to fail. Eventually, he was replaced and he headed home to his country estate, where he'd live out the rest of his days in relative peace and quiet.

His house — Hembury Fort House — was in the Blackdown Hills. In fact, it still is; it's a retirement home now. And while Admiral Graves didn't have any children of his own to take care of, he did have a niece. Her name was Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim.

She was an orphan from the very beginning. Her father had been a military man, just like Graves. Thomas Gwillim had fought in Canada during the Seven Years' War, as Aide-de-Camp to the legendary General James Wolfe. He was there at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, one of the most famous moments in all of Canadian history. And unlike Wolfe, he survived. But the Seven Years' War had been raging on battlefields all over the world — it was the first truly global war; one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. So after Canada, Thomas Gwillim was sent to Germany. And it was there, for a reason that has been lost to history, that he died.

He never knew that his wife was pregnant. It was a surprise: she was 38; they'd never had any other children. And soon, she would follow her husband to the grave. The strain of giving birth was too much for her. She lived just long enough to see her baby daughter before she passed away. That's how the infant Elizabeth got her middle name — Posthuma — because both her parents were dead.

Growing up as an orphan, young Elizabeth spent her childhood living with relatives. Some were in Northamptonshire — in the middle of England, "the county of spires and squires" — where she was born. Some were in the verdant Wye Valley, on the border with Wales. But it seems that most of her time was spent with her uncle, Admiral Graves, in the Blackdown Hills. She became the daughter he never had.

"Elizabeth fell in love with the beautiful Devon landscape," her biographer, Mary Beacock Fryer, writes, "which she grew to regard as her spiritual home. She roamed the rolling countryside, and the moor rising above the green fields with their underlayer of red sandy soil." She went for long rides and walks through the hills, sketching the countryside and collecting plants. At home, she turned those sketches into watercolours and stayed up late reading or chatting with her best friend. Those same skills would eventually earn her an important place in Torontonian history — her diary, drawings and paintings provide a remarkable record of the founding of the city.

But Elizabeth wasn't the only young person who shared the affections of the old Admiral. During his days in the Royal Navy, Graves had become friends with the captain of another ship: Captain John Simcoe. He, too, fought in Canada during the Seven Years' War. But he never came home. He caught pneumonia just a few months before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and was buried at sea near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. He left a wife and two sons behind. The eldest was named after his father and got his middle name from his godfather, Admiral Graves. He was called John Graves Simcoe.

Simcoe followed in the footsteps of his father and his godfather, fighting for the British in North America. This time, it was during the American Revolution, where he quickly made a name for himself as one of the Redcoats' most successful commanders. He adopted guerrilla tactics, never lost  a battle, survived serious wounds and months in an American prison. But while he was gone, his mother died. Simcoe was still in his 20s — now he was an orphan, too.

After the war was over, he returned home to England to nurse his wounds. And since he didn't have any immediate family left to stay with, he headed to his godfather's house in the Blackdown Hills.

There's a chance he might have already met Elizabeth by then. But even if he had, she would make a whole new impression now. She was 19 years old, pretty and slight, just about 5 feet tall. She could paint and draw and do needlework, was well-read and spoke three languages. And for his part, Simcoe was a dashing young officer in his late 20s, a hero of the war against the American rebels with political ambitions and a passionate interest in the distant Canadian colonies.

Simcoe, too, fell in love with the Blackdown Hills. He was fascinated by the history of the place — those stories of fairies and ghosts and smugglers. As soon as his wounds had healed enough, he started to join Elizabeth on her long walks through the countryside, up and down those big green hills. They would both make sketches of the picturesque landscape and turn them into full paintings when they returned home to Hembury Fort House. And while at first, they were accompanied by the Admiral's wife — who was skeptical of the young relationship — soon, she let them go out on their own. They would stride down those ancient, sunken roads, with Elizabeth having to run every few steps in order to keep up with the tall soldier.

"From walks the couple graduated to long rides each morning before breakfast," Fryer writes in her biography. "To Mrs. Graves’ chagrin, she found herself looking on, helpless, as the two were obviously falling in love. Admiral Graves was delighted with the train of events, and sought to give the couple every encouragement."

It worked. Just a few months after Simcoe arrived in the Blackdown Hills, the two were engaged. It was the summer of 1782. That December, they made the short trip down the hill from Hembury Fort House to a nearby church in the tiny village of Buckerell. There, they were married in front of their friends and their surviving family members. With Elizabeth's inheritance, they bought a beautiful estate of their own, just across the fields from Hembury, where they would raise their family. They spent the rest of their lives in the very same hills where they'd first fallen in love.

Except, of course, for one long trip to Canada, founding a new city in a new province in another land they loved.

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Dreams for the Simcoes outside Hembury Fort House

The fields of the Blackdown Hills

The view from the Simcoes' estate

Road through the Simcoes' estate

The cows of the Blackdown Hills

The ancient, sunken roads

The road down the Hembury Fort hill

The village where the Simcoes got married

St Mary & St Giles, where the Simcoes got married

A dream for John Graves Simcoe

A dream for Elizabeth Simcoe

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

I've already written posts about: the ancient red soil beneath the Blackdown Hills; the ancient church where the Simcoes got married; the ancient River Otter, which flows along the southern edge of the Simcoes' estate; the deaths of John Graves Simcoe, his mother and his brother. I'll be writing more about the Blackdown Hills, too, including the nearby chapel which is officially part of the province of Ontario and the prehistoric fort that gave Hembury Fort House its name.

You can buy Mary Beacock Fryer's biography of Elizabeth Simcoe here, or buy it here. You can do the same for her biography of John Graves Simcoe — co-written with Cristopher Dracott — here and here. And Elizabeth Simcoe's own diary here and here.

You can read about "The battle of the fairies and the pixies" in the Blackdown Hills on Landscape Tales, the blog of Dr. Lucy Ryder of the University of Chester. She also tells the story of some of the ghosts of the Blackdown Hills: Part One and Part Two.

This post is related to dream 01 Metropolitan York John Graves Simcoe, 1793

This post is related to dream 34 The Upper Canadian Ball Elizabeth Simcoe, 1793