A settlers’ homestead, cleared from the bush in Upper Canada, ca. 1800. Pen Pictures of Pioneer Life in Upper Canada, ElectricCanadian.com/pioneer/pen/Chapter 21.htm. Liberty, democracy, and freedom from want, hunger and an oppressive aristocracy were said to prevail among peasants from Europe in the Upper Canada of 1821, but anarchy and doomed democracy were widely predicted. […]
Tag: Family Compact
Troubles with the Loyal Orange Order
When the Orange Order rode into Upper Canada in 1822 with a parade through the streets of York, it was very much an establishment occasion, but eight months later a petition was moved in the House of Assembly to have the outfit outlawed. The fraternal organization that commemorated the victory of William of Orange […]
More papers than people in 1836
Almost 430,000 copies of newspapers were circulated in Upper Canada in 1836 among a population of 370,000, of whom it was claimed perhaps one in 50 could read, according to Anna Brownell Jameson in her celebrated travel book, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada. Despite their shortcomings, Jameson found the Upper Canada newspapers […]
Fatal blast dampens Compact meeting
A reform newspaper unleashes its most vitriolic prose in a report of a meeting by supporters of Upper Canada’s Family Compact. The meeting, however, comes to a shattering end. From the Hamilton Free Press, April 12, 1832, reprinted in the Brockville Recorder, April 26. We understand a meeting was called at the Village of Victoria, […]
Mississauga Indians ask protection from drunk, wicked white men
In 1826, a group of Christian Mississauga First Nation people settled on a Methodist Church mission on the banks of the Credit River, in what is now Canada’s sixth largest city. Their Credit Indian Village thrived for a dozen years, with as many as 50 homes, a school, hospital, church, board sidewalks, “two public […]
You could be hanged for stealing turnips
Law and order 1822-1967 In early nineteenth century Canada, you could be hanged for stealing turnips. If you fell into debt, you could be imprisoned for life—in possibly the world’s worst prisons, perhaps together with your wife and children. Women were not sentenced to debtors’ prison, but if they lived on poverty street without means […]
Peasants Don’t Doff Hats As Anarchy Foreseen In Doomed Democracy
Liberty, democracy and freedom from want, hunger and an oppressive aristocracy were said to prevail among peasants from Europe in the Upper Canada of 1821. That was just 16 years before the peasants mounted armed rebellions against the ruling aristocracies of the Family Compact in Upper Canada and the Chateau Clique in Lower Canada. […]