Entered, according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, by Kathleen MacFarlane Lizars , at the Department of Agriculture....

The title of this book is built upon the assumption that humour is a sense of incongruity, not that there was anything specially humorous in the affairs of ’37 beyond that which arose from the crudeness of the times. A medium between the sacrifice of detail attendant on compilation, and the loss of effect in a whole picture through too close application of the historic microscope, has been attempted. True proportion is difficult to compass at short range, yet the motives, ideas and occurrences w

[We are indebted to Miss FitzGibbon for a copy of the Cobourg Star of February 7th, 1838, in which appears, under the above title, an epitome, from one point of view, of Rebellion events. Its humours make it a fitting introduction for the papers which follow.]...

“ Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age. ” The vivacious Pompadour enlivens the twenty years of her boudoir conspiracies playing les graces with her lord’s colonies. She throws the ring; Pitt, at the other end of the game, catches Canada. The mills of the gods in their slow grind have reversed the conditions of the contestants; the Norman conquest of England becomes a British conquest of New France. The descenda

Treason always labours under disadvantage when it makes preliminary arrangements; and it is often obliged to found combinations on defective data, not reckoning upon disturbing forces and the sudden appearance of the unforeseen. But if so in ordinary cases, what must it have been when, in Upper Canada, sympathy with the French and dissatisfaction with existing Upper Canadian institutions ended in a determination to combine forces and make a common cause. Each province had its distinct enemies; b

“ I put not my faith in Princes, for that would be forgetting the rules of Holy Writ; but, begging your pardon, I still put my faith in Peers. ” “‘ I am glad I am not the eldest son,’ said the younger Pitt when he heard of his father’s elevation to an earldom; ‘I want to speak in the House of Commons like papa. ’” “ A politic caution, a guarded circumspection, were among the ruling principles of our forefathers. ” The man who wrote the letter calculated to create trouble and promote that already

In 1837 people did not do things by halves. De mortuis nil nisi bonum doubled its meaning from the fervour of the abuse and obloquy cast upon the subject of it during life. William IV. found even his Queen—to whom, by the way, though she was jostled on the edge of accession by Mrs. Jordan and others, he seems to have been devoted—satirized, lampooned, vilified, by press and tongues alike. No sooner is he himself dead than his demise becomes “mournful intelligence,” “melancholy event,” “affecting

“ It appears to me that there is no danger in leaving Canada in Sir John Colborne’s hands for the present, and that his powers are amply sufficient for all emergencies that may arise. ” While in Upper Canada vigilance committees had merged into military organizations with much intended secrecy, in Lower Canada matters went with a higher hand. In the former, “shooting matches,” where turkeys took the place of Loyalists, were fashionable with the more advanced Reformers; sharp-shooting practice we

“ Up then, brave Canadians! Get your rifles and make short work of it. ” “ Sir Francis Bond Head’s entire government of Upper Canada was one long, earnest, undeviating opposition to the instructions of H. M. colonial ministers. ”— Blake. The winter of 1837, in England, was so severe that the mails were conveyed in sleighs, even in the southern counties, a freak of nature no doubt meant to put her in sympathy with the many million arpents of snow by that time dyed in patches with good Canadian bl

“We stop the press to announce the following horrible intelligence which has just been communicated by two gentlemen direct from the bloody scene: “The steamer Caroline , which was lying at the landing at Porter’s storehouse, was boarded this morning between the hours of twelve and one by about eighty men, who came in boats from the Canada side. The Caroline had on board from fifteen to twenty of our sleeping and defenceless citizens, who had lodgings on board. They are believed to have been mos

“Huron, distinguished by its lake, Where Manitoulin’s spirits wake,” before ’37 had but one central point, which, to use a Paddyism, was on the very confines of the still primeval forest. The mysterious wilderness had a few spots between Goderich and the other limit of the Canada Company, Guelph, in which woodmen, thinking solely of the grain and roots to be grown in the cleared spaces, were unconsciously ameliorating the climate of their continent by the patches of sunlight their axes were lett

“ Although our last toast, gentlemen,—Place aux dames, ‘The hand that rocks the cradle guides the State.’ ” “‘ Madame! Madame Cornelia, you are not worthy of the name you bear. ’ “‘ Sir, we do not live in the times of the Gracchi; I am not a Roman matron. ’ “ In truth, the poor lady was nothing more nor less than a good, tender mother and excellent wife, not very interesting, perhaps, to philosophers, but very acceptable in the eyes of heaven. ” During the Seven Years’ War the only tillers to be

On page 171, 8th line from foot of page, for “Colonel Foster, Adjutant-General,” read “Colonel Foster, Assistant Adjutant-General.” CONTENTS:—Spirit of the Times—The Father of the Company—Canada as the Company Found It—The Face of the Land—From Champlain to Gooding—The Kings of the Canada Company—The Colborne Clique—Gairbraid—Lunderston—Meadowlands—The Canada Company vs. The People—The People vs. The Canada Company—A Social Pot-Pourri—The Heart of Huron—The Bonnie Easthopes—The Cairn....

“Strong lights and shadows fill these pictures of the early settlers’ day, and the Misses Lizars, in handling large masses of material, have maintained the balance of their picture so well that it is something more than the most forcible and striking piece of word-painting in Canadian literature. The scenes portrayed in this book might be compared with some cinematographe views lately seen in the city, for not only are these flowery-waistcoated, or red-shirted, ancestors, as the case may be, viv

That the impulse of recent years to gather together and publish the historical records of the various localities has borne fruit, is amply attested in the following list of publications, all from our own presses. We commend to Public Libraries and to all intelligent readers the placing on their shelves of as many as possible of these valuable works:— For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publisher....

1 “Among French as well as among English military men, swearing on every trivial occasion was formerly so common that it was considered as quite the proper thing. A witty French author asserted that ‘God Damn était le fonds de la langue anglaise’—the root of the English language! whilst the Vicomte de Parny, an elegant writer, composed a poem in four cantos bearing that profane title. Long before and after the British soldiers ‘swore so dreadfully in Flanders;’ long before and after Cambronne ut