Reminiscences Of A Canadian Pioneer For The Last Fifty Years: An Autobiography

HUNTER, ROSE & COMPANY.

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four, by Samuel Thompson , in the office of the Minister of Agriculture....

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PREFACE.

I t was in consequence of a suggestion by the late S. J. Watson, Librarian of the Ontario Legislature—who urged that one who had gone through so many experiences of early Canadian history as myself, ought to put the same on record—that I first thought of writing these "Reminiscences," a portion of which appeared in the Canadian Monthly Magazine . For the assistance which has enabled me to complete and issue this volume, I am obliged to the kind support of those friends who have subscribed for it

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CHAPTER I.

T he writer of these pages was born in the year 1810, in the City of London, and in the Parish of Clerkenwell, being within sound of Bow Bells. My father was churchwarden of St. James's, Clerkenwell, and was a master-manufacturer of coal measures and coal shovels, now amongst the obsolete implements of by-gone days. His father was, I believe, a Scotsman, and has been illnaturedly surmised to have run away from the field of Culloden, where he may have fought under the name and style of Evan McTav

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CHAPTER II.

T he course of my narrative now requires a brief account of my mother's only brother, whose example and conversation, more than anything else, taught me to turn my thoughts westwards, and finally to follow his example by crossing the Atlantic ocean, and seeking "fresh fields and pastures new" under a transatlantic sky. John Isaac Hawkins was a name well known, both in European and American scientific circles, fifty years ago, as an inventor of the most fertile resource, and an expert in all matt

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CHAPTER III.

H aving been an indulged youngest child, I found the life of a printer's boy bitterly distasteful, and it was long before I could brace myself up to the required tasks. But time worked a change; I got to be a smart pressman and compositor; and at eighteen the foremanship of the office was entrusted to me, still without remuneration or reward. Those were the days of the Corn Law League. Col. Peyronnet Thompson, the apostle of Free Trade, author of the "Catholic State Waggon" and other political t

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CHAPTER IV.

" M artin Doyle," was the text-book which first awakened, amongst tens of thousands of British readers, a keen interest in the backwoods of what is now the Province of Ontario. The year 1832, the first dread year of Asiatic cholera, contributed by its terrors to the exodus of alarmed fugitives from the crowded cities of the old country. My brothers Thomas and Isaac, both a few years older than myself, made up their minds to emigrate, and I joyously offered to join them, in the expectation of a g

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CHAPTER V.

T he Town of Galway is a relic of the times when Spain maintained an active commerce with the west of Ireland, and meddled not a little in the intrigues of the time. Everybody has read of the warden of Galway, who hanged his son outside a window of his own house, to prevent a rescue from justice by a popular rising in the young man's favour. That house still stood, and probably yet stands, a mournful memento of a most dismal tragedy. In 1833 it was in ruins, as was also the whole long row of mas

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CHAPTER VI.

I n the month of July we were ready for sea again. In the meantime Captain Ward had got together a new list of passengers, and we more than doubled our numbers by the addition of several Roman Catholic gentlemen of birth and education with their followers, and a party of Orangemen and their families, of a rather rough farming sort, escaping from religious feuds and hostile neighbours. A blooming widow Culleeney, of the former class, was added to the scanty female society on board; and for the fi

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CHAPTER VII.

T he St. Lawrence River was gained, and escaping with a few days' quarantine at Grosse Isle, we reached Quebec, there to be transferred to a fine steamer for Montreal. At Lachine we were provided with large barges, here called batteaux, which sufficed to accommodate the whole of the Asia's passengers going west, with their luggage. They were drawn by Canadian ponies, lively and perfectly hardy little animals, which, with their French-Canadian drivers, amused us exceedingly. While loading up, we

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CHAPTER VIII.

W hen we landed at York, it contained 8,500 inhabitants or thereabouts, being the same population nearly as Belleville, St. Catharines, and Brantford severally claimed in 1881. In addition to King street the principal thoroughfares were Lot, Hospital, and Newgate streets, now more euphoniously styled Queen, Richmond and Adelaide streets respectively; Church, George, Bay and York streets were almost without buildings; Yonge street ran north thirty-three miles to Lake Simcoe, and Dundas street ext

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CHAPTER IX.

W e had walked a distance of eight miles, and it was quite dark, when we came within sight of the clearing where we were advised to stop for the night. Completely blockading the road, and full in our way, was a confused mass of felled timber, which we were afterwards told was a wind-row or brush-fence. It consisted of an irregular heap of prostrate trees, branches and all, thrown together in line, to serve as a fence against stray cattle. After several fruitless attempts to effect an entrance, t

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CHAPTER X.

B efore day-break breakfast was ready, and proved to be a more tempting meal than the supper of the night before. There were fine dry potatoes, roast wild pigeon, fried pork, cakes, butter, eggs, milk, "China tea," and chocolate—which last was a brown-coloured extract of cherry-tree bark, sassafras root, and wild sarsaparilla, warmly recommended by our host as "first-rate bitters." Declining this latter beverage, we made a hearty meal. It was now day-break. As we were new comers, Root offered to

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CHAPTER XI.

I magine yourself, gentle reader, who have perhaps passed most of your days between the wearisome confinement of an office or counting-house, and a rare holiday visit of a few days or weeks at your cousin's or grandfather's pleasant farm in the country—imagine yourself, I say, transplanted to a "home" like ours. No road approaches within ten miles; no footpath nearer than half that distance; the surveyor's blaze is the sole distinctive mark between the adjoining lots and your own; there are tree

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CHAPTER XII.

W e had selected, on the advice of our guide, a tolerably good hard-wood lot in the centre of the Township of Sunnidale, part of which is now the site of the village of New Lowell, on the Northern Railway. To engage a young Scotch axeman from the County of Lanark, on the Ottawa river; to try our virgin axes upon the splendid maples and beeches which it seemed almost a profanation to destroy; to fell half an acre of trees; to build a bark wigwam for our night's lodging; and in time to put up a su

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CHAPTER XIII.

I need not weary the reader with details of our farming proceedings, which differed in no respect from the now well-known routine of bush life. I will, however, add one or two notices of occurrences which may be thought worth relating. We were not without wild animals in our bush. Bears, wolves, foxes, racoons, skunks, mink and ermine among beasts; eagles, jays, many kinds of hawks, wood-peckers, loons, partridges and pigeons, besides a host of other birds, were common enough. Bears' nests aboun

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CHAPTER XIV.

I n the autumn of 1835, we were favoured with a visit from Mr. A. B. Hawke, chief emigrant agent for Upper Canada, and a gentleman held in general esteem, as a friend to emigrants, and a kind-hearted man. He slept, or rather tried to sleep, at our shanty. It was very hot weather, the mosquitoes were in full vigour, and the tortures they inflicted on the poor man were truly pitiable. We being acclimatised, could cover our heads, and lie perdu , sleeping in spite of the humming hosts outside. But

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CHAPTER XV.

S ir John Colborne, as has been mentioned already, did all in his power to induce well-to-do immigrants, and particularly military men, to settle on lands west and north of Lake Simcoe. Some of these gentlemen were entitled, in those days, to draw from three to twelve hundred acres of land in their own right; but the privilege was of very doubtful value. Take an example. Captain Workman, with his wife, highly educated and thoroughly estimable people, were persuaded to select their land on the Ge

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CHAPTER XVI.

A mong the duties handed over to my brother Thomas, by his predecessor in the emigrant agency, was the care of a large medicine chest full of quinine, rhubarb, jalap, and a host of other drugs, strong enough for horses as well as men, including a long catalogue of poisons, such as arsenic, belladonna, vitriol, &amp;c. To assist in the distribution of this rather formidable charge, a copy of "Buchan's Domestic Medicine" was added. My brother had no taste for drugs, and therefore deputed the c

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CHAPTER XVII.

T he chief inconvenience we sustained in Nottawasaga arose from the depth of snow in winter, which was generally four feet and sometimes more. We had got our large log barn well filled with grain and hay. Two feet of snow had fallen during the day, and it continued snowing throughout the night. Next morning, to our great tribulation, neither snow nor roof was to be seen on the barn, the whole having fallen inside. No time was to be lost. My share of the work was to hurry to the Scotch line, ther

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CHAPTER XVIII.

H aving been accustomed to gardening all my life, I have taken great pleasure in roaming the bush in search of botanical treasures of all kinds, and have often thought that it would be easy to fill a large and showy garden with the native plants of Canada alone. But of course, her main vegetable wealth consists in the forests with which the Provinces of Quebec and Ontario were formerly clothed. In the country around the Georgian Bay, especially, abound the very finest specimens of hardwood timbe

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CHAPTER XIX.

T he Scottish settlers in Nottawasaga were respectable, God-fearing, and though somewhat stern in their manners, thoroughly estimable people on the whole. They married young, had numerous families, and taught their children at an early age the duties of good citizenship, and the religious principles of their Presbyterian forefathers. Among them, not the prettiest certainly, but the most amiable and beloved, was Flora McDiarmid, a tall, bright-complexioned lass of twenty, perhaps, who was the chi

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CHAPTER XX.

F or nearly three years we continued to work on contentedly at our bush farm. In the summer of 1837, we received intelligence that two of our sisters were on their way to join us in Canada, and soon afterwards that they had reached Toronto, and expected to meet us at Barrie on a certain day. At the same time we learnt that the bridge across the Nottawasaga river, eleven miles from Barrie, had given way, and was barely passable on foot, as it lay floating on the water. One of our span of horses h

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CHAPTER XXI.

M y sisters had come into the woods fresh from the lovely village of Epsom, in Surrey, and accustomed to all the comforts of English life. Their consternation at the rudeness of the accommodations which we had considered rather luxurious than otherwise, dispelled all our illusions, and made us think seriously of moving nearer to Toronto. I was the first to feel the need of change, and as I had occasionally walked ninety miles to the city, to draw money for our road contracts, and the same distan

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CHAPTER XXII.

T o make my narrative intelligible to those who are not familiar with the times of which I am about to write, I must revert briefly to the year 1834. During that year I made my first business visit to Toronto, then newly erected into a city. As the journey may be taken as a fair specimen of our facilities for travelling in those days, I shall describe it. I left our shanty in Sunnidale in the bright early morning, equipped only with an umbrella and a blue bag, such as is usually carried by lawye

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CHAPTER XXIII.

I n the course of the years 1835, '6 and '7, I made many journeys to Toronto, sometimes wholly on foot, sometimes partly by steamboat and stage. I became very intimate with the Todd family and connections, which included Mrs. Todd's brother, William P. Patrick, then, and long afterwards, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly; his brother-in-law, Dr. Thomas D. Morrison, M. P. P.; Thomas Vaux, Accountant of the Legislature; Caleb Hopkins, M. P. P., for Halton; William H. Doel, brewer; William C. Keele

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CHAPTER XXIV.

I n November, 1837, I had travelled to Toronto for the purpose of seeking permanent employment in the city, and meant to return in the first week of December, to spend my last Christmas in the woods. But the fates and William Lyon Mackenzie had decided otherwise. I was staying for a few days with my friend Joseph Heughen, the London hairdresser mentioned as a fellow-passenger on board the Asia , whose name must be familiar to most Toronto citizens of that day. His shop was near Ridout's hardware

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CHAPTER XXV.

I t is now forty-five years since the last act of the rebellion was consummated, by the defeat of Duncombe's party in the London district, the punishment of Sutherland's brigands at Windsor, and the destruction of the steamer Caroline and dispersal of the discreditable ruffians, of whom their "president," Mackenzie, was heartily sick, at Navy Island. None of these events came within my own observation, and I pass them by without special remark. But respecting Sir Francis Bond Head and his antago

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CHAPTER XXVI.

W hatever may be thought of Sir Francis B. Head's policy—whether we prefer to call it mere foolhardiness or chivalric zeal—there can be no doubt that he served as an effective instrument in the hands of Providence for the building up of a "Greater Britain" on the American continent. The success of the outbreak of 1837 could only have ended in Canada's absorption by the United States, which must surely have proved a lamentable finale to the grand heroic act of the loyalists of the old colonies, w

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CHAPTER XXVII.

M y good friend and host, Henry Cook Todd, was one of the most uncompromising Tories I ever met with. He might have sat for the portrait of Mr. Grimwig in "Oliver Twist." Like that celebrated old gentleman, "his bark was aye waur than his bite." He would pour out a torrent of scorn and sarcasm upon some luckless object of his indignation, public or private; and, having exhausted the full vials of his wrath, would end with some kind act toward, perhaps, the very person he had been anathematizing,

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

E arly in the year 1838, I obtained an engagement as manager of the Palladium , a newspaper issued by Charles Fothergill, on the plan of the New York Albion . The printing office, situated on the corner of York and Boulton Streets, was very small, and I found it a mass of little better than pi , with an old hand-press of the Columbian pattern. To bring this office into something like presentable order, to train a rough lot of lads to their business, and to supply an occasional original article,

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CHAPTER XXIX.

T he burning of St. James's Cathedral in 1839, marks another phase of my Toronto life, which is associated with many pleasant and some sorrowful memories. The services of the Church of England were, for some months after that event, conducted in the old City Hall. The choir was an amateur one, led by Mr. J. D. Humphreys, whose reputation as an accomplished musician must be familiar to many of my readers. Of that choir I became a member, and continued one until my removal to Carlton in 1853. Duri

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CHAPTER XXX.

I have frequently remarked that, although in England any person may pass a life-time without becoming acquainted with his next-door neighbour, he can hardly fall into conversation with a fellow-countryman in Canada, without finding some latent link of relationship or propinquity between them. Thus, in the case of Mr. C. Poulett Thomson, I trace more than one circumstance connecting that great man with my humble self. He was a member—the active member—of the firm of Thomson, Bonar &amp; Co.,

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CHAPTER XXXI.

H aving, I hope, sufficiently exposed the misrepresentations of party writers, who have persistently made it their business to calumniate the Loyalists of 1837-8, I now proceed to the pleasanter task of recording the good deeds of some of those Loyalists, with whom I was brought into personal contact. I begin with— No Toronto citizen of '37 can fail to recall the bluff, hale, strongly-built figure of George Taylor Denison, of Bellevue, the very embodiment of the English country squire of the tim

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CHAPTER XXXII.

M y first introduction to this gentleman was on the day after I landed at Barrie, in 1833. He was then living at his log cottage at Shanty Bay, an indentation of the shore near the mouth of Kempenfeldt Bay, at the south-west angle of Lake Simcoe. I was struck with the comparative elegance pervading so primitive an establishment. Its owner was evidently a thorough gentleman, his wife an accomplished lady, and their children well taught and courteous. The surrounding scenery was picturesque and de

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CHAPTER XXXIII.

I have mentioned that I was educated as a Swedenborgian, or rather a member of the New Jerusalem Church, as the followers of Emanuel Swedenborg prefer to be called. As a boy, I was well read in his works, and was prepared to tilt with all comers in his cause. But I grew less confident as I became more conversant with the world and with general literature. At the age of fifteen I was nominated a Sunday-school teacher in a small Swedenborgian chapel in the Waterloo road, and declined to act becaus

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HYMN FOR EASTER.

"Christ is risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. "For since by man came death; by man came also the resurrection of the dead. "For as in Adam all die; even so in Christ shall all be made alive." Hallelujah! Amen. Hallelujah! Amen....

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THE SINNER'S COMPLAINT AND CONSOLATION.

In explanation of my having become, in 1840, printer of the Church newspaper, I must go back to the date of Lord Sydenham's residence in Toronto. The Loyalist party, as stated already, became grievously disgusted with the iron grasp which that nobleman fastened upon each and every person in the remotest degree under government control. Not only the high officers of the Crown, such as the Provincial Treasurer and Secretary, the Executive Councillors, the Attorney-General and the Sheriff, but also

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CHAPTER XXXIV.

I have lately astonished some of my friends with the information, that William Lyon Mackenzie was originally an advocate of the Clergy Reserves—that is, of state endowment for religious purposes—a fact which makes his fatal plunge into treason the more to be regretted by all who coincide with him on the religious question. In Lindsey's "Memoirs" we read (vol. 1, p. 46): "A Calvinist in religion, proclaiming his belief in the Westminster Confession of Faith, and a Liberal in politics, yet was Mr.

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CHAPTER XXXV.

F rom the arrival of Sir Charles Bagot in January, 1842, up to the departure of Lord Metcalfe in November, 1844, was a period chiefly remarkable for the struggles of political leaders for power, without any very essential difference of principle between them. Lord Cathcart succeeded as Administrator, but took no decided stand on any Canadian question. And it was not until the Earl of Elgin arrived, in January, 1847, that anything like violent party spirit began again to agitate the Provinces. In

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CHAPTER XXXVI.

I t was in the year 1841, that the Rev. Dr. John McCaul entered upon his duties as Vice-President of King's College, after having been Principal of Upper Canada College since 1838. With this gentleman are closely connected some of the most pleasurable memories of my own life. He was a zealous promoter of public amusement, musical as well as literary. Some of the best concerts ever witnessed in Toronto were those got up by him in honour of the Convocation of the University of Toronto, October 23r

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CHAPTER XXXVII.

M y new partner, Mr. William Rowsell, and Mr. Geo. A. Barber, are entitled to be called the founders of the St. George's Society of Toronto. Mr. Barber was appointed secretary at its first meeting in 1835, and was very efficient in that capacity. But it was the enthusiastic spirit and the galvanic energy of William Rowsell that raised the society to the high position it has ever since maintained in Toronto. Other members, especially George P. Ridout, William Wakefield, W. B. Phipps, Jos. D. Rido

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CHAPTER XXXVIII.

T he 7th of April, 1849, will be fresh in the memory of many old Torontonians. It was an unusually fine spring day, and a large number of farmers' teams thronged the old market, then the only place within the city where meat was allowed to be sold. The hotel stables were crowded, and among them those of Graham's tavern on King and George Streets. At two o'clock in the afternoon, an alarm of fire was heard, occasioned by the heedlessness of some teamster smoking his after-dinner pipe. It was only

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CHAPTER XXXIX.

O n the 25th of the same month of April, 1849, the Parliament Houses at Montreal were sacked and burnt by a disorderly mob, stirred up to riot by the unfortunate act of Lord Elgin, in giving the royal assent to a bill for compensating persons whose property had been destroyed or injured during the rebellion in Lower Canada in 1837-8. That the payment of those losses was a logical consequence of the general amnesty proclaimed earlier in the same year, and that men equally guilty in Upper Canada,

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CHAPTER XL.

T he Union of all the British American colonies now forming the Dominion of Canada, was discussed at Quebec as long ago as the year 1815; and at various times afterwards it came to the surface amid the politics of the day. The Tories of 1837 were generally favourable to union, while many Reformers objected to it. Lord Durham's report recommended a general union of the five Provinces, as a desirable sequel to the proposed union of Upper and Lower Canada. But it was not until the passage of the Re

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CHAPTER XLI.

T he very brief summary which I have been able to give in the preceding chapter, may suffice to show, as I have desired to do, that no lack of progressiveness, no lack of patriotism, no lack of energy on great public occasions, is justly chargeable against Canadian Tories. I could produce page after page of extracts, in proof that the objects of the League were jeered at and condemned by the Reform press, led by the Globe newspaper. But in that instance stance Mr. George Brown was deserted by hi

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CHAPTER XLII.

M y first step in public life was in 1848. I had leased from the heirs of the late Major Hartney (who had been barrack-master of York during its siege and capture by the American forces under Generals Pike and Dearborn in 1813) his house on Wellington street, opposite the rear of Bishop Strachan's palace. I thus became a resident ratepayer of the ward of St. George, and in that capacity contested the representation of the ward as councilman, in opposition to the late Ezekiel F. Whittemore, whose

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CHAPTER XLIII.

O n the 9th day of October, 1849, Lord Elgin made his second public entry into Toronto. The announcement of his intention to do so, communicated to the mayor, Geo. Gurnett, Esq., by letter signed by his lordship's brother and secretary, Col. Bruce, raised a storm of excitement in the city, which was naturally felt in the city council. The members were almost to a man Tories, a large proportion of whom had served as volunteers in 1837-8. The more violent insisted upon holding His Excellency perso

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CHAPTER XLIV.

T he number of citizens is becoming few indeed, who remember Toronto Bay when its natural surroundings were still undefaced and its waters pure and pellucid. From the French Fort to the Don River, curving gently in a circular sweep, under a steep bank forty feet high covered with luxuriant forest trees, was a narrow sandy beach used as a pleasant carriage-drive, much frequented by those residents who could boast private conveyances. A wooden bridge spanned the Don, and the road was continued the

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CHAPTER XLV.

O f all the members of the City Council for 1850, and up to 1852, John G. Bowes was the most active and most popular. In educational affairs, in financial arrangements, and indeed, in all questions affecting the city's interests, he was by far the ablest man who had ever filled the civic chair. His acquirements as an arithmetician were extraordinary; and as a speaker he possessed remarkable powers. I took pleasure in seconding his declared views on nearly all public questions; and in return, he

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CHAPTER XLVI.

I n 1853, I removed to the village of Carlton West, on the gravel road to Weston, and distant seven miles north-west of the city. My house stood on a gravel ridge which stretches from the Carlton station of the Northern Railway to the River Humber, and which must have formed the beach of the antediluvian northern ocean, one hundred and eighty feet above the present lake, and four hundred and thirty above the sea. This gravel ridge plainly marks the Toronto Harbour at the mouth of the Humber, as

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CHAPTER XLVII.

I n May, 1853, I sold out my interest in the Patriot to Mr. Ogle R. Gowan, and having a little capital of my own, invested it in the purchase of the Colonist from the widow of the late Hugh Scobie, who died December 6th, 1852. It was a heavy undertaking, but I was sanguine and energetic, and—as one of my friends told me—thorough. The Colonist , as an organ of the old Scottish Kirk party in Canada, had suffered from the rivalry of its Free Kirk competitor, the Globe ; and its remaining subscriber

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CHAPTER XLVIII.

U p to the year 1857, I had gone on prosperously, enlarging my establishment, increasing my subscription list, and proud to own the most enterprising newspaper published in Canada up to that day. The Daily Colonist consisted of eight pages, and was an exact counterpart of the London Times in typographical appearance, size of page and type, style of advertisements, and above all, in independence of editorial comment and fairness in its treatment of opponents. No communication courteously worded w

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CHAPTER XLIX.

W hen I began to feel the effects of official hostility in Quebec, as above stated, I was also suffering from another and more vital evil. I had taken the contract for parliamentary printing at prices slightly lower than had before prevailed. My knowledge of printing in my own person gave me an advantage over most other competitors. The consequence of this has been, that large sums of money were saved to the country yearly for the last twenty-four years. But the former race of contractors owed m

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CHAPTER L.

I resided for eighteen months in the old, picturesque and many-memoried city. My house was a three-story cedar log building known as the White House, near the corner of Salaberry Street and Mount Pleasant Road. It was weather-boarded outside, comfortably plastered and finished within, and was the most easily warmed house I ever occupied. The windows were French, double in winter, opening both inwards and outwards, with sliding panes for ventilation. It had a good garden, sloping northerly at an

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CHAPTER LI.

I suppose it is in the very nature of an autobiography to be egotistical, a fault which I have desired to avoid; but find that my own personal affairs have been often so strangely interwoven with public events, that I could not make the one intelligible without describing the other. My departure from Quebec, for instance, was caused by circumstances which involved many public men of that day, and made me an involuntary party to important political movements. I have mentioned that, with the sanct

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CHAPTER LII.

I n chapter xxxv . I noticed the almost simultaneous entrance of these two men into political life. Their history and achievements have been severally recorded by friendly biographers, and it is unnecessary for me to add anything thereto. Personally, nothing but kindly courtesy was ever shown me by either. In some respects their record was much alike, in some how different. Both Scotchmen, both ambitious, both resolute and persevering, both carried away by political excitement into errors which

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CHAPTER LIII.

I have several times had occasion to mention this gentleman, who first came into notice on his being arrested, when a young man, and temporarily imprisoned in Buffalo, for being concerned in the burning of the steamer Caroline , in 1838. He was then twenty-three years old, was a native of Ireland, a Roman Catholic by religious profession, and emigrated to Canada in 1827. I engaged him in 1853, as assistant-editor and correspondent at Quebec, then the seat of the Canadian legislature. He had prev

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CHAPTER LIV.

T he Rev. Henry C. Cooper was the eldest of a family of four brothers, who emigrated to Canada in 1832, and settled in what is known as the old Exeter settlement in the Huron tract. He was accompanied to Canada by his wife and two children, afterwards increased to nine, who endured with him all the hardships and privations of a bush life. In 1848 he was appointed to the rectory of Mimico, in the township of Etobicoke, to which was afterwards added the charge of the church and parish of St. Georg

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CHAPTER LV.

I n 1860, soon after my return to Toronto, I was asked by my old friend and former partner, Mr. Henry Rowsell, to take charge of the Beaver Mutual Fire Insurance Company, which had been organized a year or two before by W. H. Smith, author of a work called "Canada—Past, Present, and Future," and a Canadian Gazetteer. Of this company I became managing director, and continued to conduct it until the year 1876, when it was legislated out of existence by the Mackenzie government. I do not propose to

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CHAPTER LVI.

T he summer of 1870 will be long remembered as the year of the Ottawa fires, which severely tried the strength of the Beaver Company. On the 17th August in that year, a storm of wind from the south-west fanned into flames the expiring embers of bush-fires and burning log-heaps, throughout the Counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Carleton and Ottawa, bordering on the Ottawa River between Upper and Lower Canada. No rain had fallen there for months previously, and the fields were parched to such a degree a

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CHAPTER LVII.

I n the course of the ordinary routine of a fire insurance office, circumstances are frequently occurring that may well figure in a sensational novel. One or two such may not be uninteresting here. I suppress the true names and localities, and some of the particulars. One dark night, in a frontier settlement of the County of Simcoe, a young man was returning through the bush from a township gathering, when he noticed loaded teams passing along a concession line not far distant. As this was no un

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CHAPTER LVIII.

I n the year 1875, the blow fell which destroyed the Beaver Insurance Company, and well nigh ruined every man concerned in it, from the president to the remotest agent. In April of that year, a bill was passed by the Dominion Legislature relative to mutual fire insurance companies. It so happened that the Premier of Canada was then the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, for whose benefit, it was understood, the Hon. George Brown had got up a stock company styled the Isolated Risk Insurance Co., of which

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CHAPTER LIX.

O n the 20th day of April, 1844, I was standing outside the railing of St. James's churchyard, Toronto, on the occasion of a very sad funeral. The chief mourner was a slightly built, delicate-looking young man of prepossessing appearance. His youthful wife, the daughter of the late Hon. H. J. Boulton, at one time Chief Justice of Newfoundland, had died, and it was at her burial he was assisting. When the coffin had been committed to the earth, the widowed husband's feelings utterly overcame him,

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CHAPTER LX.

A bout the year 1843, the first effort to establish a free public library in Toronto, was made by myself. Having been a member of the Birkbeck Institute of London, I exerted myself to get up a similar society here, and succeeded in enlisting the sympathies of several of the masters of Upper Canada College, of whom Mr. Henry Scadding (now the Rev. Dr. Scadding) was the chief. He became president of the Athenæum, a literary association, of which I was secretary and librarian. In that capacity I co

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CHAPTER LXI.

I n the month of July, 1850, the Mayor and citizens of Buffalo, hearing that our Canadian legislators were about to attend the formal opening of the Welland Canal, very courteously invited them to extend their trip to that city, and made preparations for their reception. Circumstances prevented the visit, but in acknowledgment of the good will thus shown, a number of members of the Canadian Parliament, then in session here, acting in concert with our City Council, proposed a counter-invitation,

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CHAPTER LXII.

T he year 1851 is memorable for the celebration, at Boston, of the opening of the Ogdensburg Railway, to connect Boston with Canada and the Lakes, and also of the Grand Junction Railway, a semicircular line by which all the railways radiating from that city are linked together, so that a passenger starting from any one of the city stations can take his ticket for any other station on any of those railways, either in the suburbs or at distant points. I am not aware that so perfect a system has be

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CHAPTER LXIII.

I n chapters xlvi. and l. of this book, I have referred to certain conversations I had with Sir Wm. Logan, on the existence of ocean beaches, extending from Newfoundland to the North-West Territory, at an altitude of from twelve to fifteen hundred feet above the present sea level. Also of a secondary series of beaches, seven hundred feet above Lake Ontario, at Oak Ridges, eighteen miles north of Toronto; and a third series, one hundred and eighty to two hundred feet above the Lake, which I belie

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CHAPTER LXIV.

W hile I was a member of the City Council, the question of the proper qualification for electors of municipal councils and of the legislature, was much under discussion. I told my Reform opponents, who advocated an extremely low standard, that the lower they fixed the qualification for voters, the more bitterly they would be disappointed; that the poorer the electors the greater the corruption that must necessarily prevail. And so it has proved. In thinking over the subject since, I have been le

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CHAPTER LXV.

I have, I believe, in the preceding pages, established beyond contradiction the historical fact, that the Conservative party, whatever their other faults may have been, are not justly chargeable with making use of the Protection cry as a mere political manoeuvre, only adopted immediately prior to the general elections of 1878. I have mentioned, that when I was about eighteen years of age, the Corn-Law League was in full blast in England. I was foreman and proof-reader of the printing office when

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CHAPTER LXVI.

I may venture, I hope, to put down here some of the conclusions to which my fifty years' experience in Canada, and my observation of what has been going on during the same term in the United States, have led me. It is a favourite boast with our neighbours, that all North America must ultimately be brought under one government, and that the manifest destiny of Canada will irresistibly lead her on to annexation. And we have had, and still have amongst us, those who welcome the idea, and some who h

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CHAPTER LXVII.

T he following account of the rise and progress of this institution, has been obligingly furnished me by one of its earliest and best friends, Mr. William Edwards, to whom, undoubtedly, more than to any other man, it has been indebted for its past success and usefulness: The Toronto Mechanics' Institute was established in January, 1831, at a meeting of influential citizens called together by James Lesslie, Esq., now of Eglinton. Its first quarterly meeting of members was held in Mr. Thompson's s

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CHAPTER LXVIII.

T he establishment of Free Libraries, adapted to meet the wants of readers of all classes, has made rapid progress within the last few years. Some, such as the Chetham Library of Manchester, owe their origin to the bequests of public-spirited citizens of former days; some, like the British Museum Library, to national support; but they remained comparatively unused, until the modern system of common school education, and the wonderful development of newspaper enterprise, made readers of the worki

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CHAPTER LXIX.

After having spent the greater part of half a century in various public capacities—after having been the recipient of nearly every honorary distinction which it was in the power of my fellow-citizens to confer—there now remains for me no further object of ambition, unless to die in harness, and so escape the taunt— Three times have I succeeded in gaining a position of reasonable competence; and as often—in 1857, 1860 and 1876—the "great waterfloods" have swept over me, and left me to begin life

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