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.

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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

William Lyon Mackenzie's Mission To London

It was 1832. William Lyon Mackenzie was fed up. He'd spent the last decade fighting for democratic reform in Upper Canada. He'd founded a pro-democracy newspaper. Written passionate editorials. Led protests. Organized committees. He'd even run for office and been elected to the provincial Assembly, where he gained a reputation as one of the most radical champions of the Reform cause. This was before he became the first Mayor of Toronto — and long before before his failed revolution — but he was already one of the most polarizing figures in the province. Still, no matter how famous he got, he was blocked at every turn.

Upper Canada was still pretty new back then. The province that would one day become Ontario was only a few decades old. It had been founded in the late 1700s as a safe haven for refugees from the American Revolution. During that bloody war, they'd seen for themselves the horrors committed in the name of democracy. And it was followed closely by the terror of the French Revolution. So, many of the early settlers in Upper Canada had a deep distrust of democratic ideas — what the first Lieutenant Governor, John Graves Simcoe, once called "the tyranny of democracy."

Even now, in the 1830s, Upper Canada was a very conservative place. Most of the power in the province was concentrated in the hands of a few democracy-hating, monarchy-loving Tory families. "The Family Compact," Mackenzie called them. They fought hard to maintain the status quo. Those who argued in favour of democratic reform tended to find themselves in jail or in exile. And if Mackenzie and his Reform allies ever did manage to pass a motion through the elected Assembly, the British Lieutenant Governor was there to veto it.

Sometimes, things even got violent. Years earlier, Mackenzie's home and business (in Toronto, still called York back then, on Front Street at Frederick) had been attacked by an angry Tory mob. His family hid in fear as the young rioters — dressed in a parody of First Nations clothing — trashed the newspaper office, broke the printing press and tossed the type into the lake. Mackenzie sued and used the settlement to set up an even bigger operation. But things still weren't getting much better.

Toronto in the 1830s (King St. at Church)

So Mackenzie came up with a new plan. He had been inspired by American and French writers and thinkers who launched all out war against their own governments, but he wasn't planning on going anywhere near that far himself. While others had assembled armies and wheeled out the guillotine, he was still hoping for a peaceful resolution. He still believed in the British system. If he could appeal directly to the British government — if he could present them with his grievances in person — he was sure they would listen to reason. So Mackenzie decided to pay them a visit. He would go to London himself.

He spent much of 1831 getting ready for his big trip. He travelled all over the province, meeting people, making speeches, gathering support, collecting signatures for petitions. When he arrived in England, he planned on having a mountain of evidence to support him. Meanwhile, he kept up his propaganda campaign against the Tories and the Family Compact, calling them names, interrupting their meetings, demanding change, and generally being a thorn in their side.

The Family Compact struck back. That winter, the Tories in the Assembly voted to kick Mackenzie out of office. It sparked a crisis that lasted for months. A mob of Mackenzie's supporters burst into the Assembly and demanded new elections. The Lieutenant Governor refused. But in the by-election that followed, Mackenzie was re-elected in a landslide. Only one person in his riding voted against him. A victory parade of more than 130 horse-drawn sleighs marched down snowy Yonge Street to the sound of bagpipes, bringing their democratically elected representative back to office.

Five days later, the Tories kicked him out again. There was another by-election. And another landslide victory for the famous Reformer.

Mackenzie went back on the attack, pissing even more Tories off. During a visit to Hamilton, he was beaten by thugs and left bloodied in the street. In Toronto, he was pelted with garbage and burned in effigy. Riots broke out. His newspaper office was attacked again. Mackenzie feared for his life. He was only rescued thanks to Colonel FitzGibbon — a Tory hero of the War of 1812 who would one day lead an army against the man he had just saved.

Mackenzie was so scared, he went into hiding. And he stayed there until spring. Then, as the ice melted, he finally boarded a ship bound for London.

He got off the boat in England at one of the most important moments in modern British history. London was in turmoil. While Mackenzie had been fighting the Tories back home in Canada, Reformers and Radicals in England had been fighting the Tories there, too. Now, it looked like they might finally be getting somewhere. For the first time in more than 20 years, the Tories had lost an election. The reform-minded Whigs were in power. And they were planning on using it: the Great Reform Act would be a landmark in the history of British democracy, doing away with the "rotten boroughs" (out-of-date ridings with tiny populations that gave wealthy Tories a way to buy a bunch of extra seats). But every time the Whigs passed the bill through the House of Commons, the unelected Tories in the House of Lords killed it. The stalemate was plunging the nation into crisis.

Political cartoon about the Reform Bill

At the very moment Mackenzie arrived in London, that crisis was reaching a boiling point. The Whigs were trying to pass the bill again. This time, they demanded the King appoint new peers to the House of Lords to make sure the bill became law. When the King refused, the Whig Prime Minster (Earl Grey, of tea fame) resigned in protest. The Tory leader (the Duke of Wellington, of kicking Napoleon's ass fame) took over as Prime Minister.

The country shut down.

They called it "The Days of May." For about a week it seemed as if anything might happen. As the news spread across the United Kingdom, shops and factories shut down. Political unions mobilized. Huge crowds gathered in protest. There were riots. Westminster was flooded by hundreds of petitions with tens of thousands of signatures. There was an orchestrated run on the banks and people withheld their taxes — for a while it seemed as if the country might go bankrupt. Angry placards and posters lined the streets of London. There were whispers of revolution; as one historian later put it: "the air was charged with talk of pikes and barricades and swords rough-sharpened..."

William Lyon Mackenzie watched it all happen. As the crisis hit London, our future mayor was living just a couple of kilometers from Westminster. He wrote about what he saw in letters published in his newspaper back home in Toronto. He'd seen, he said, the Duke of Wellington, "the hero of Waterloo, pelted with mud and fish heads in the streets of London. Tory peers were hissed, hooted and groaned at as they entered their carriages."

Finally, King William and the Tories backed down. The Whigs returned to power and the bill was brought to a vote. Tory Lords abstained. Mackenzie was there himself that day, watching from the gallery in the House of Lords as the Great Reform Bill was finally passed.

Inspired, Mackenzie set to work trying to win similar reforms for Upper Canada. He spent more than a year living in London with his family, in cramped quarters with little income and plenty of mounting debt. At first, it all seemed to be worth it. Things were going well. As spring gave way to summer, Mackenzie — along with a couple of other Canadian Reformers — began to have a series of meetings with the Colonial Secretary. It was a major coup: those meetings were hard to get; many leading Reformers had tried and failed. Now, a radical Reform politician from Toronto finally had the ear of the man who oversaw the running of the entire British Empire.

Mackenzie was feeling optimistic. The Colonial Secretary, he wrote, struck him as "friendly and conciliatory... I left him with the impression strongly imprinted on my mind that he sincerely desired our happiness as a colony..." Mackenzie even got to meet Earl Grey, and was left positively gushing about the Prime Minister. "Well does Earl Grey merit the high station and distinguished rank to which he has been called," he wrote, "truth and sincerity are stamped on his open, manly, English countenance; intelligence and uprightness are inscribed on all his actions."

Colonial Secretary, Viscout Goderich

The British really did seem to be taking Mackenzie's complaints seriously. While he was living in London, he was invited to share his thoughts in the major newspapers. He published a book. And when he produced his petitions signed by tens of thousands of Upper Canadians, the documents were presented to the House of Commons with the support of the Whig government. They even asked him to submit a written copy of all of his grievances. Mackenzie responded with his usual passion: he stayed up for six straight days and nights, writing furiously, switching from one hand to the other when the first cramped up.

Even more importantly, the British government started making real changes, accepting a bunch of Mackenzie's suggestions. The Colonial Secretary sent a stern letter across the Atlantic to the members of the Family Compact. The Anglican and Catholic bishops were asked to resign their seats in the Assembly to further the separation of church and state. The post office, he told them, should be reformed. There should be an independent judiciary. They needed to stop kicking Mackenzie out of the Assembly. And they should publish the letter, so the people of Upper Canada could see for themselves what the government in London was recommending.

But the Family Compact wasn't about to give up that easily. They sent the letter back, claiming that Mackenzie's complaints were unworthy of "serious attention". One of Toronto's most conservative newspapers, The Courier of Upper Canada, called the letter "an elegant piece of fiddle-faddle, full of clever stupidity and condescending impertinence." The Tories had already kicked Mackenzie out of the Assembly once since he'd left for London. Now, despite the letter, they did it again.

This time they'd gone too far. The Colonial Secretary responded by firing two prominent members of the Family Compact: the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General. They'd both been leaders of the campaign against Mackenzie. For a few brief weeks, it looked as if the government in Westminster was finally taking Canadian Reformers seriously.

That was in March of 1833. In April, the Colonial Secretary was replaced. And everything changed. In May, Mackenzie got a nasty shock: as he left a meeting at the Colonial Office on Downing Street, he ran into the old Attorney-General. This was the same guy who had just been fired for his attacks on Mackenzie and his opposition to reform. The fired Solicitor-General would soon be joining him. They had come to London all the way from Toronto to defend themselves and undermine Mackenzie. And their plan was working.

Coldbath Fields Riot, 1833

The new Colonial Secretary was much more conservative than the last one. In fact, he would eventually leave the Whig Party to join the Tories. So, as you might expect, he had a very different attitude toward the Tories of the Family Compact. And he wasn't alone: many Whigs were beginning to change their tune. In England after the Great Reform Act, pro-democracy protests had continued to push for even more reform. The Whigs were losing patience. That same month, police brutally cracked down on a protest near Mackenzie's house. The tide was turning. And so, the new Colonial Secretary reinstated the Attorney-General and gave the Solicitor-General a sweet new job in Newfoundland. Just like that, Mackenzie's victory had evaporated. His mission had failed.

"I am disappointed," he wrote. "The prospect before us is indeed dark and gloomy."

He left London, never to return.

Mackenzie had plenty of time to think on the long voyage back home across the Atlantic. His faith in the British system had been deeply shaken. But the Colonial Secretary was far from the only person he'd met in London. He'd also spent plenty of time getting to know the Radicals and Reformers behind the democracy movement in England. He was good friends with Joseph Hume — a Radical Whig MP. And during the crisis over the Great Reform Act, Hume had welcomed him into the very heart of the movement. Mackenzie was taken into the back room of a tailor's shop just a few doors up from Trafalgar Square. There, he met Francis Place — the famous "radical tailor of Charing Cross," one of the leaders of the reform movement. He was the man behind many of the angry posters in London and the organized run on the banks. The back of his shop had been turned into a library filled with revolutionary ideas. (His collection still exists today, hailed as "one of the finest of its kind anywhere in the world.") The shop was ground zero for radical politics in England, where politicians and protesters alike came to discuss the ideas they were fighting for.

Place was much more radical than Mackenzie was — even on Canadian issues. So was Hume. They both believed the Canadian colonies should be independent. And that violence was an acceptable solution. If the Great Reform Act failed, Place was planning on leading a rebellion. He'd sent the government his plans earlier that very same day.

Mackenzie's Rebellion in 1837

As Mackenzie grew more and more frustrated, those ideas were going to make more and more sense to him. He'd gone to England because he believed the British government would listen. But he didn't believe that anymore. And when he got back to Toronto, the troubled continued. The Family Compact opposed democratic reforms at every turn and the British Lieutenant Governors continued to support them — in one election, the Governor even openly campaigned for the Tories.

Mackenzie grew ever more radical. Within a couple of years, he was publishing a letter by Hume in his newspaper, calling for Canadian independence from the "baneful domination of the Mother Country" even if that meant an armed revolution. A few years after that, Mackenzie took the advice. In the winter of 1837, he wrote a "Proclamation to the People of Upper Canada". He called for truly fair elections, meaningful reforms, and maybe most telling of all: "An end forever to the wearisome prayers, supplications, and mockeries attendant upon our connection with the lordlings of the Colonial Office, Downing Street, London." William Lyon Mackenzie was declaring independence.

Two weeks later, he gathered a rebel army on Yonge Street, just north of Toronto, and marched south into the city.
 

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This post is part of The Toronto Dreams Project's UK Tour, exploring the connections between the history of Toronto and the United Kingdom. You can read more here. 

During the Tour, I left a few dreams for William Lyon Mackenzie at spots around London related to his trip. Like here, at Brunswick Square, where he lived with his family and stayed up all night writing, near where University College is today:

Outside the House of Lords at Westminster, where he came to see the Great Reform Act passed:

Outside the Foreign & Commonwealth Office at Downing Street, which used to be called the Colonial Office and still stands on the same spot as the old Colonial Office, where Mackenzie came to argue in favour of democratic reform in Upper Canada:

 

At 16 Charing Cross, the address of Francis Place's tailor's shop, where Mackenzie came to meet the famous Radical leader: 

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I've written lots more about William Lyon Mackenzie, his rebellion, and the battle for Canadian democracy in a series of posts starting here.

Many of the details in this post come thanks to William Kilbourn's Mackenzie biography: The Firebrand: William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada. You can buy it here, borrow it from the Toronto Public Library here, or read it on Google Books here. Electric Canada also talks a lot of Mackenzie's mission to London here.

You can read J.R.M. Butler's book, The Passing of the Great Reform Bill here. You can read Mackenzie's "Proclamation to the People of Upper Canada" here. And you can learn more about Upper Canada's relationship with the Colonial Office thanks to the late William R. Wilson's wonderfully helpful "Historical Narratives of Early Canada" here.  Mackenzie's biography in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography is online here. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Somewhat tangentially, something I stumbled across while researching this post: Chris Raible has share some interesting thoughts on the history of Mackenzie's famous red wig here.

Images: Toronto in the 1830s via Wikimedia Commons; political cartoon about the Reform Bill via The Camden Review; Viscout Goderich via Wikimedia Commons; the Coldbath Fields Riot via The Islington Tribune; The Rebellion of 1837 by C.W. Jeffreys via Parks Canada.

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

A Song for the Exiled Rebels: "Un Canadien errant"

So I've been watching Canada: A People's History (which some valiant hero has posted on YouTube here). And it led me to this neat discovery: a song called "Un Canadien errant", which was written after the Rebellions of 1837.

Torontonians remember the rebellions because William Lyon Mackenzie marched an army down Yonge Street. But the rebellion in Québec (Lower Canada back then) was an even bigger deal. The rebels there managed to win a couple of big victories over the British in the early going — making it seem for a brief while as if the idea of overthrowing our colonial overlords in favour of a new, independent, democratic republic wasn't that far-fetched an idea. Their success helped to inspire Mackenzie: he was in contact with the French-Canadian rebel leader, Louis-Joseph Papineau, and it was when every solider in Toronto was sent to fight in Québec that Mackenzie saw his opportunity.

Neither of the rebellions ended well. Here in T.O., Mackenzie and his rebels were overwhelmed at Montgomery's Tavern. In Québec, the biggest blow came at the Battle of St. Eustache. I've posted a painting of it above. That church in the background is particularly famous — the British trapped the rebels inside and then set fire to it. You can see the desperate men jumping from the windows to their deaths.

At the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa (which I visited back in December), they've actually got part of the door handle from the church on display (just below a reproduction of that very same painting):

And they've got some handcuffs from the 1830s, too:

Many of the rebels were arrested — both in Toronto and in Québec — and would have worn handcuffs like those. Some were hanged. Many more were sent into exile without trial. They were forced to leave their friends and family behind and live in the United States. Or Bermuda. Or Australia. And that's where the song comes in.

"Un Canadien errant" was written by a student at the Séminaire de Nicolet on the banks of the St. Lawrence River in 1842. It's a lament for those exiled rebels. The lyrics tell the story of a Canadian far from home, in a strange land, who sits beside a stream one sad day. He talks to the water, asking that if it should ever find itself flowing through Canada to tell his friends back home that he still remembers them. Some people even say that's where the Québecois motto "Je me souviens" comes from — it's in the lyrics of the song.

"Un Canadian errant" became an anthem, not just for the Lower Canadian rebels, but for Mackenzie's exiled rebels as well. (In English, it's called "The Wandering Canadian".) There's an Acadian version, too — the British forced them off their lands in the Maritimes during the Great Upheaval in the 1700s. And more recently, it has become a song for any Canadian who finds themselves homesick in some faraway land.

The song has been recorded many many times. There's a version from 1917 here. Nana Mouskouri does it here. Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland have a version here. It was even used as the Canadian theme music for the legendary geographic video game Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?

But I'll post three versions below. The first is by Ian & Sylvia. They were a famous folk duo in the '60s who got their start in Toronto as part of the Yorkville scene and helped launch a revival of the song. The second is maybe my favourite version of the tune, recorded by Laurena Segura, a teenager in Montreal who just signed her first record contract. (I just interviewed her for The Little Red Umbrella over here.) And finally, there's Leonard Cohen, listening to the song on his balcony in Montreal in the 1980 documentary, The Song of Leonard Cohen.

You can also find the lyrics and chords to "Un Canadien errant" here, so you can learn to play it yourself.

And I've got a much more detailed series of posts about Mackenzie, Papineau and the battle for Canadian democracy here.

Revolution! ish!

John Rolph

This is the fifth in a series of posts about William Lyon Mackenzie and the birth of Canadian democracy. Part one here. Part two here. Part three here. Part four here.

It was only Saturday, but John Rolph was already worried. On Thursday, he was supposed become our very first President. William Lyon Mackenzie had personally asked him to do it. After the rebel army marched down Yonge Street and triumphantly seized power, they were going to "spontaneously" ask Rolph to lead them until they could hold elections. Rolph was a famous doctor, one of the leading figures of the Reform movement. He'd almost been picked over Mackenzie as our first mayor. And he — along with another Reformer, Robert Baldwin — had famously been picked by the dumbass conservative Lieutenant Governor, Bond Head, to sit on his Executive Council when he first got to Toronto. They only made it three weeks before they resigned in protest because he wasn't listening to them. It had been one of the most important moments in the build-up to the revolution. But now, with only five days left until the Reformers were supposed to seize power, Rolph felt like it might all be slipping away. As the rebel army gathered north of Toronto, he was still downtown. And he didn't like the look of things down there. It kind of looked like the government was finally starting to get organized.

Rolph knew about the emergency Executive Council meeting where Colonel FitzGibbon had burst in with news of the rebel preparations. He figured they were bound to have already seen Mackenzie's handbills calling for revolution; people had been coming in from the countryside to warn them. There were rumours that they were finally preparing the militia. And that the militia was going to be armed with the weapons stored at City Hall— the very same weapons the rebels were planning on stealing to use themselves. Worst of all, bad news from Quebec: the revolution in Lower Canada was falling apart. Two days after their first victory, the rebels had been overrun, massacred by British troops. Louis-Joseph Papineau and Wolfred Nelson had fled to the United States. Many of the other Patriotes were in prison. Rumour had it that a warrant for Mackenzie's arrest had been issued, too. The way things were going, it could all be over before Thursday.

So Rolph sent word to the rebels north of the city. They were gathering at Montgomery's Tavern on Yonge, a couple of blocks up from Eglinton. If they were going to do this thing, he told them, they needed to do it soon. Like on Monday. Otherwise, it might be too late.

But changing the date of the revolution was not such an easy thing to do. Things were already getting pretty confused up at the tavern. No one, for instance, had thought to tell John Montgomery, a big Reform guy, that they were going to use his place. And he'd leased it out to another guy who didn't give a crap about the revolution. He gave a crap about getting paid for all the food they wanted to eat. The rebels didn't have much money; so they didn't get much food. There weren't enough weapons either. And hell, until Sunday night, Mackenzie wasn't even there yet. He was still traveling around, telling people to show up on Thursday. When he finally did get there, he was furious. He wanted to stick with the original plan. He wanted to wait for more men. And he especially wanted to wait for Anthony Von Egmond, the Dutch dude who was going to lead the army, who had real experience, who had fought in the Napoleonic wars, and who was going to meet them there on Thursday.

Finally, on Monday night, John Rolph rode up from the city to convince Mackenzie in person. Eventually, all of the rebel leaders were on the same page. New plan: they would let the men rest overnight and then march in the morning. The Canadian Revolution was being moved up to Tuesday.

Robert Moodie gets shot

But they couldn't even wait that long to start killing each other.

The first to go was Robert Moodie. He was a retired army officer. And a conservative. He lived in Richmond Hill, where he'd heard all about Mackenzie's plans. And he was ballsy, too, so as far as he was concerned, he was going to go right ahead and warn Bond Head. That night, he and a couple of other guys rode straight down Yonge Street at the rebel barricades. They had blocked the road and were making prisoners out of anyone who might warn the city. But Robert Moodie wasn't going to be taken prisoner. He charged right at them screaming, "Who are you, who dare to stop me upon the Queen's highway?" He fired his pistol above their heads to drive them off.  They fired back.

People say that while he lay there bleeding on Yonge Street, he moaned, "I am shot—I am a dead man." He was right. The rebels lifted him up out of the road and into the tavern. It took him two hours to die.

Now, William Lyon Mackenzie wasn't there for that. He'd been all antsy and nervous; he couldn't just wait around all night without doing anything, so at about ten o'clock he'd left with a scouting party. He rode south with four other men: Captain Anthony Anderson (who was going to lead the troops in Von Egmond's absence),  Joseph Shepard (who I'm really only mentioning because his family owned a farm near  Yonge and Sheppard — the street is named after them with an accidental second "p") and two other dudes who we don't really care about.

Meanwhile, down in Toronto, FitzGibbon was also antsy and nervous. He didn't sleep at home that night, worried that the rebels would come kill him in his sleep. Instead, he set up shop at the Parliament Buildings on King Street and before calling it a night, he too led some men out on a scouting mission. A couple of them were sent on ahead. One of them was John Powell. He was a pretty famous judge and politician, a hardcore Tory. He was the one who let Samuel Jarvis off scot-free after Jarvis killed Jean Ridout in their famous duel. That was about a year before Jarvis married Powell's daughter. It was exactly the kind of conflict of interest bullshit that drove the Reformers crazy.

The second death of the night came when the two scouting parties ran into each other. Mackenzie's men caught Powell by surprise and took him prisoner. But the way that Mackenzie made sure that Powell wasn't carrying any weapons was by asking him politely if he was carrying any weapons and then taking his word as a gentleman. Powell lied. And then, once Mackenzie had turned him over to Captain Anderson to be taken back to the tavern, he pulled the pistols he was carrying, shot Anderson in the back and escaped. The bullet severed Anderson's spine. He died instantly. The rebels had lost their back-up commander.

Toronto was in chaos for the rest of the night. Powell rushed downtown to warn Bond Head; Bond Head rushed to get his family on a steamer out of town and then ran around like a lunatic for a while. While he was doing that, the students of Upper Canada College went to ring the school's bells in warning. But their headmaster told them to go back to bed. When FitzGibbon went to ring the bells of St. James Cathedral, no one could find the keys to the bell tower. He was about to break down the door with an axe when they finally found them. In the end, a couple hundred men answered the call, taking up arms and rushing to King Street to defend City Hall and the Parliament Buildings.

The March of the Rebels Upon Toronto

By morning, on what was supposed to be the dawn of their glorious revolution, the rebels were feeling more than a little discouraged. They could hear the bells ringing in the city below. They'd lost the element of surprise. Plus, they'd heard about what was happening in Quebec. That very day, martial law was declared in Montreal. Von Egmond wasn't showing up until Thursday, Anderson was dead, and Mackenzie's next pick for commander, Samuel Lount, was a blacksmith who didn't really feel up to the challenge of leading an entire army. So when the men — 500 strong now — finally did start marching down Yonge Street just before noon, it was Mackenzie who was at their head, riding a white horse and wearing as many jackets as he could possibly squeeze into, apparently trying to make himself bulletproof. A lot of the people who marched with him that day agreed: he was acting even crazier and more erratic than usual. Which was saying something. It seems Mackenzie might have been coming a bit unhinged.

It was a long, slow march. They'd only made it to St. Clair before Mackenzie had them stop for lunch. He went to the postmaster's house and forced the postmaster's terrified wife to make a meal for his troops. Some never bothered marching any further south than that — they just hung out on the lawn eating boiled beef and drinking whiskey. Then came the emissaries from Bond Head. The government was trying to stall the rebels by getting them to talk about a truce. But since they had to send men who the rebels wouldn't shoot, they chose Robert Baldwin and John Rolph. Not exactly the crown's most loyal subjects. Rolph warned the rebels to hurry the fuck up; the government was still disorganized. But Mackenzie didn't really listen: he paused again near Bloor to burn down the house of a Tory who had pissed him off once. And then he tried to burn down the house of the sheriff, who was yet another member of the Jarvis family: William Botsford Jarvis. His wife had named their flowery hillside estate Rosedale. Lount was barely able to talk Mackenzie out of it.

So with all of these delays, it was dusk by the time the army had gotten all the way down to College. And  it was there, for the very first time, that the rebels would face off against government troops. FitzGibbon had sent the sheriff and 26 other men there — against Bond Head's orders — to hide behind some shrubs and ambush the rebels. It worked. They fired a volley into the rebel ranks. They even hit a couple of them. And then, as the front line of rebels returned fire, the loyalists all ran away as fast as they could. Sheriff Jarvis called after them to stand and fight, but it was no use.

Sheriff Jarvis and his family

Luckily for the loyalists, the rebels were just as inexperienced. When the front line of their ranks dropped to one knee to reload their guns, the guys behind them figured they'd all been shot. So they ran away, too. Most people seem to think that if the rebels had kept marching south into the city, they'd have captured it that night. But they also seem to think that if they had, things might have gotten really bloody. Once the monarchy-loving army in Quebec was finished with the rebels there, they could have easily marched west to attack Mackenzie in Toronto. That could have been a horrifying mess. Not to mention that Mackenzie had already started vengefully burning things to the ground. But instead of marching south, most of the rebels headed back to the tavern to regroup. Some kept going all the way home.

And that brings us to Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the rebels didn't do very much. They decided to wait for Von Egmond after all. Mackenzie did lead some men out to rob a stagecoach and a tavern to help pay their bills. And John Rolph decided it was time to save his own skin. One of the other big-name Reformers in the city was arrested for treason that day. Rolph escaped. He made it to the States by pretending he was going to visit a patient. It be would another six years before he could come home to the city that had almost made him President.

But Wednesday went much, much, much, much better for the government. Their reinforcements arrived. They came from Hamilton and from Pickering and from Niagara and from Peel and from a host of other towns. By morning there were more than a thousand of them. Enough to go crush the rebels. So that's what they decided to do.

That Thursday was a clear, bright day in an unusually warm December. The army's muskets and cannons glinted in the sun. Bond Head climbed up on his white horse in his white uniform and led his army north. It was commanded by some of the richest, most powerful men in the history of our city. John Strachan, our first Anglican bishop, Toronto's great hero from the War of 1812, the guy who sort of founded U of T and was the figurehead of the Family Compact, rode at Bond Head's side. Samuel Jarvis, one of Strachan's former students, whose family had been here since allllll the way back in 1798, whose incompetence and corruption had been pissing Reformers off pretty much ever since, and who had even broken Mackenzie's newspaper press and thrown the typeface into the lake, well, he headed up a group on one of the flanks. Colonel FitzGibbon, the guy who had received Laura Secord's legendary warning in the War of 1812 and helped us defeat the Americans, who had once saved Mackenzie's life and had, until a couple days ago, been the lone voice calling for the government to take the threat of revolution seriously, led another group. Judge Jones, who had scoffed at FitzGibbon's warnings to the Executive Council, was there, too. Even Bond Head's aide-de-camp was a future mayor. And as the army marched up Yonge Street out of the city, loyalist citizens cheered them on. They leaned out their windows waving flags. A military band joined the troops, with the drone of bagpipes filling the air.

Up at Montgomery's Tavern, the rebels were just plain not ready. Von Egmond had finally arrived that morning, took one look at his men, and declared Mackenzie's plan to immediately attack the city  "stark madness". Mackenzie almost shot him for that. Instead, they sent a farmer, Peter Matthews, off with some men to burn a bridge over the Don as a decoy. It didn't work. Bond Head's army kept coming. Soon, the rebels could see the metallic gleam of their enemies' guns as they crested the hill down at St. Clair. At the spot where Mount Pleasant Cemetery is now, the government's cannons let loose with their first volley. The cannonballs crashed through the woods. They were still too far south. But soon, they were close enough.

The Battle of Montgomery's Tavern

The second volley smashed through the tavern's dinning room window and brought down three of the building's chimneys. Men scattered and poured of the building. The government troops surged forward and opened fire with their rifles and muskets. A few rebels were hit. A few would die. Mostly, they ran away. Fifteen or twenty minutes after it started, the Battle of Montgomery's Tavern was already over. The government had won. The rebels had lost. The Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 had failed. Democracy would have to wait.

As Bond Head's men began to loot the area, the Lieutenant Governor ordered the tavern burned to the ground. Some rebels were arrested. Others just got a stern lecture and were sent home.  As for Mackenzie, he was one of the leaders lucky enough to escape to the United States. With a price on his head, he slipped across the border and settled on Navy Island in the Niagara River. He declared a new Republic of Canada and led an irrelevant government in exile. It would be more than a decade before he could come home. 

The Battle of Montgomery's Tavern marked the beginning of a dark time for Torontonians who believed in democracy. Bond Head and the Tories cracked down. Even people who had never supported the rebels were denounced as traitors. Some were fired from their jobs. Some were arrested.  Some were deported to Australia. Von Egmond was captured and died of pneumonia in a shitty jail cell. Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were tried and convicted and sentenced to hang. Lount's wife personally delivered a petition with thousands of signatures and begged for her husband's life. Even Sheriff Jarvis was moved to tears. But she was ignored. "I'm not ashamed of anything I've done," Lount declared on the gallows just before the rope snapped his neck. And he was the fortunate one. Matthews kicked around for a good minute before the last of his life drained out of him.

The Reform movement was left in tatters. The next mayor of Toronto would be super-Tory John Powell — hailed as a hero for having shot Anthony Anderson in the back of the neck. It would be nearly ten years before another liberal ran the city. In just about every single way you could possibly imagine, the revolution had been a complete and total failure.

But here's the thing. The fight for democracy in Canada was far from over. And the Reformers were going to win it. Mackenzie's ridiculous, poorly-planned, poorly-executed disaster of a rebellion actually ended up being one of the major catalysts for change. After more than fifty years under dictatorial British rule, we were finally going to seize power over our own affairs. Canada, you see, was about to get responsible fucking government.


Continue reading with Part Six, The Bloody Aftermath of the Bloody Rebellion, here.

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A version of this story will appear in The Toronto Book of the Dead Coming September 2017 Pre-order from Amazon, Indigo, or your favourite bookseller

There a million great resources to learn about the events during the Rebellion of 1837. I leaned especially heavily on a few of them. There's a great book about it all, written in the late-1880s, that you can read online here. I also took a lot from The Toronto Story and Toronto: The Place of Meeting. There's also some information here and here and all over the Wikipedia pages of the people involved. You can see the poster offering a reward for Mackenzie's capture here.

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

This post is related to dream 12 John Rolph's Beard John Rolph, 1867