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Upper
Canada
Upper Canada (southern Ontario) is a political creation of British Parliament (1791). Before the colony came into existence, the area it encompassed was home to many nations: the Hurons (Wendat), Iroquois (FIve Nations), and Mississauga (Anishnabeg, Chippewa, Ojibwa). The French claimed it as part of New France, sections were said to belong to Rupert's Land (the Hudson't Bay Company) and the American colonies repeatedly tried to gain a toehold. The first steps towards colonization came with French and English explorers and adventurers working their way along the rivers to the interior where they met and traded with whichever nations they encountered. When the French arrived, the strongest nation in the region were the Huron who traded far to the north and west. A handful of French missionaries and artisans tried to establish a permanent colony in Wendake (Huronia) but ultimately failed to gain power when the Iroquois (Six Nations) defeated the Hurons. The French however continued to claim the land as part of New France and the Iroquois eventually retreated from the area, leaving it to be inhabited by Mississauga (Ojibwa). Until the end of the French Regime, coureurs des bois continued to explore and trade throughout the Great Lakes area. They were not unchallenged. From 1670, the English Hudson's Bay Company claimed all the land along rivers emptying into Hudson's Bay. To fortify their military and commercial position, the French built a blockhouse on the Humber River offering natives good prices for their furs. Since they were also closer to hand, the French traders attracted businesss with the result that New York profits dropped by half. The British responded with a fort at Oswego in 1726. The French reciprocated with Fort Niagara at the mouth of the Niagara river and improvements to the fort on the Humber. After 1731 the French extended their trade by building a series of blockhouses along the Great Lakes and into the Prairies, cutting off fur trade into the Hudson's Bay area. Their tactic was to bring trade to the natives rather than requiring the natives travel miles to the trading posts of the English. It worked. Despite European claims, the land effectively belonged to the First Nations well into the mid-18th century. European settlement continued to cling to the Atlantic seaboard and eastern rivers. As late as 1780 the population of the "Golden Horseshoe" from Oshawa to Niagara Falls was about 500 people and most of these were Credit River Mississauga. Things were about to change.
In 1760, New France surrendered to the British. By the Treaty of Paris, a new British colony called Quebec now extended from deep within the Ohio Valley to Rupert's Land. Most of the land was sparsely populated. Most of the inhabitants were French or Indian and in recognition of this two important laws were passed. French law and culture was retained while native rights to land around the Great Lakes was officially recognized. On paper it looked like British North America was the dominant power throughout eastern North America. Truthfully, it was a power divided by its colonists' ambitions. Those divisions became manifest with the American War of Independance which in part was a reaction against the presence of a French-speaking competitor hemming in English-speaking colonies that wanted to expand trade and settlement westwards. When the USA emerged victorious, loyalists and the Crown's Indian allies still living in the new country were evicted, their property confiscated. No-one knows how many immigrated to Canada. Up to 1/3 of colonists may have been loyal at the start of the war; somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 emigrated afterwards, mostly to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In NB alone the population leapt from about 3500 to 15,000 almost overnight. Across British North America, govenments prepared for the arrival of impoverished Loyalists. In New Brunswick (part of Nova Scotia at the time) land left uncleared by earlier speculators was reclaimed by the Crown and given to the Loyalists. In Quebec Governor Sir Frederick Haldimand set aside 3 regions for loyalist occupation: along the St. Lawrence, around the Bay of Quinte and in the Niagara Penisula. He established a string of townships along the border to be settled by disbanded regiments of soldiers. Each head of a family was eligible to receive 100 acres. Field officers could have over 1000 acres. Clothing, tools and provisions were supplied for 3 years. To establish Loyalists in Niagara, the British bought a 6.5 km wide swathe of land along the west bank of the Niagara River in 1781 for 300 suits of clothing. The Mississauga then sold the rest of Niagara Penninsula (1.2 million acres) for £1,180 in 1784. In 1787 they sold all the land between the Bay of Quinte and the Etobicoke River, north to Lake Simcoe and Rice Lake (the Toronto Purchase). Finally, the British purchased a large tract of land from the Mississauga along the Grand River for loyalist Iroquois.
By 1791, there were 12,000 people in sourthern Ontario (150,000 in Quebec). Over the next few decades the English speaking population, supplemented with immigrants from Europe and the USA, would equal the French, however the traditions of the people in the two colonies were distinct. American immigrants were used to a more hands-off style of government than existed in Quebec. They expected to be subjects of the King but they also expected to participate in government through some form of representation. The government andn legal system imposed by the Quebec Act was intolerable to them and in recognition of this the 1791 Constitutional Act divided the colony in two along the Ottawa River allowing French and English colonists to enjoy distinct traditions. One-seventh of all public lands was set aside as Clergy Reserves to provide ministers (Church of England only) with rent. Another seventh was set aside as Crown reserves to defray the cost of adminstration. Reserving land was an unpopular policy that might seem irrelevant given the amount of free land available for Loyalists swearing an oath of allegiance or others willing to pay the costs of a survey. However, Reserves often boxed in settlers and towns, preventing them from buying property adjacent to their current holdings. Land reform would become a hot topic after the War of 1812. The Constitutional Act also provided for a system of government with a Lieutenant Governor and Assembly ruling in each colony and a Governor-in-Chief (Lord Dorchester) presiding over both. John Graves Simcoe, the first Lt. Gov. of Upper Canada fought for the British in the American Revolutionary War. His ambition was to create a colony that would show Americans the merit of returning to the Crown. One of his first acts upon arrival in Upper Canada was to advertise in the USA that land was available to almost anyone who swore allegiance to the King and promised to clear 2 acres in a set period of time. To provide enough lots, a number of townships were created varying from 9-12 miles square, divided into farms of 200 acres each. By 1796 there were 25000 whites along the north shore of Lake Ontario alone. Unlike the Loyalists, many of these immigrants were sympathetic to American ideals and maintained bonds with family and friends in the USA.
As late as 1810, land remained cheap in Upper Canada while prices sky-rocketed south of the border. Most of the American immigrants and Loyalists understood what it meant to be a pioneer. Most were farmers or tradesmen: carpenters, shoemakers, and the like. They understood the work involved in reaching lands by way of Indian trails, clearing trees six feet in diameter and 150 feet tall with an axe, planting crops in virgin soil, and building log homes. While they cleared their lands, Simcoe was busy entrenching a class-based society. While the majority of Canadians might lean towards democracy, the administration of the colony was placed squarely in the hands of an elite group of men, many of whom were new immigrants from England (as was Simcoe). But it was more complicated than that. An elite requires servants and with free land and opportunities, few people were willing to take the job. Simcoe's own servants deserted once they arrived in Upper Canada. Slavery existed but Simcoe quickly outlawed it allowing only that those people who already owned slaves could keep or sell them. Ten counties were formed to vote representatives to the Legislative Assembly, but in some counties alternatives to the favoured candidates were prevented from running and voters were wooed with alcohol and feasts. Simcoe appointed his friends to plum government jobs and gave them land. Even after Simcoe left (1796), they formed the gentry swelled by incoming British professionals and merchants. They earned themselves the name "The Family Compact" as a closely knit clique of some 20 families, supporting the monarchy, the Church of England and a class-based society.
At the other end of the socio-economic scale were workers and craftspeople in the towns and a large rural population. In the early years of Upper Canada, the pioneering farm families faced hard work and rough living. There were few roads and travel was often along Indian trails or by boat along the rivers. They were given uncleared land that might contain thick trees and swamps. It had to be cleared before the first years' crop could be sown. A log house and barn were needed before winter set in. There were no stores at hand to replenish stocks when food ran low. Neighbours lived far apart and there were no schools or churches until someone found the time to build them. Town life was also hard. Outside the Family Compact there were a number of shop-keepers, surveyors, businessmen, doctors and builders, tradesmen, servants, bricklayers, cabinet-makers, and unskilled labourers. Many of the latter were discharged soldiers with no wish to return to Britain and little or no education (except the Queen's Rangers who were often carpenters or tradesmen and who were given early discharge and land if they could find someone to replace them.) Hours of work were long and there was no charity to support those who faltered. The area was poorly protected from attack with few garrisons and the Governor-iin-Chief, Lord Dorchester, seemed unwilling to invest heavily in military fortifications. Canada as a whole was not strongly defended despite fears of invasion from the still new United States. In 1810 the armed forces were limited to 4000 British regulars and 4000 Canadian regulars. In Upper Canada they were stationed at Toronto, St. Joseph's Island, Amherstburg, Chippawa, Fort Erie, Fort George and Kingston. At the outbreak of the war there were only 1450 regulars in Upper Canada. There was also a tiny navy, part of the Quartermaster-General's department, with less than 150 men. In 1812 the navy consisted of the 24-gun Royal George the 16-gun Maria, 12-gun Prince Regent and 2 small schooners. They were supported by the steamship Accomodation that served as military transport. The war lasted three years and showed that many of the American immigrants had divided loyalties. Many people lost their lives and others lost property; towns like York were pillaged and partly burned, but Canadians showed that on the whole, they preferred to remain subjects of the Crown than join the US. For a few years after the war there seemed to be little significant change in Upper Canada except that the immigrants continued to arrive and settle. By the end of the war there were 100,000 people in Upper Canada. But towns grew slowly. Roads remained mud, transport continued to be by boat, horse, wagon or foot. There were numerous fist-fights in the streets and in Toronto, 2 recorded duels. Temperance, democracy, land reform, compensation for losses from the war, and the economy were the political and social issues of the day. Trade with the US led to government customs houses to collect tarrifs. The new Lt. Gov. in 1818 was Sir Peregrine Maitland. Maitland was ordered to economize and his thoughts turned to land reform, specifically, how the government could make money from the Crown reserves when land was still so cheap. John Galt had a solution. Galt was the son of a sea-captain, a businessman and a famous writer trying to find a way to compensate Canadians who had lost property in the War. In 1820 he was offered a 3% commission on whatever compensation he could get from Britain. The Crown offered to match whatever contribution Upper Canada made. Upper Canada had no money. Galt suggested a land company buy up and develop the Crown and Clergy Reserves, the cash to be used to settle war claims. On July 30 1824, the Canada Company was created, with £1 million in capital from London merchants. The deal included most of the Crown lands and half the Clergy reserves or 2,213,443 acres at 3 shillings sixpence per acre. It was opposed by Bishop Strachan, a leading and notoriously confrontational leader of the Family Compact, who felt the Clergy Reserves were being undervalued. Rather than argue, the British Government excluded the Clergy lands and added the Huron Tract, recently purchased from First Nations. The final deal cost just over £344,375 but the Company was not required to pay the full price. Instead they were to use part of the money to improve the land. Two issues were overlooked. The war claims were not covered and Lt. Gov Maitland's approval was not sought. Maitland and the Family Compact were antagonized. But Galt ignored them. By 1827 he had registered the claim in Upper and Lower Canada and opened agencies in Montreal and Quebec. Guelph was then founded as a jumping off spot for surveying and improving the land. Later that summer he founded Goderich and the next summer, 1828 he organized the building of a road from Waterloo to Goderich, via Stratford. By then the roads in Upper Canada were improved and the Lakes were connected to the Hudson River and the Atlantic via the Erie Canal. The province was beginning its slow shift from an agricultural to an industrial base and with it, the population began to shift towards the cities where crowding, poverty and crime became issues. One of the culprits targeted at an early date for the rise in crime and the falloff in church participation was alcohol, specifically, hard liquor (rum) not beer nor wine. By the 1820s an early temperance movement, often led by Protestant clergymen was gaining ground claiming that drunkeness caused fatal injuries. Peter Scholefield in 1828 claimed that the District of Bathurst coroner told him that in 20 recent inquests, drunkeness had been a factor. The largest temperance society, the Sons of Temperance, formed after 1848 and issued uniforms while offering insurance benefits. (Leonard Tilly, one of the fathers of Confederation became their Most Worthy Patriarch, in 1854).
But by then Upper Canada was a thing of the past. The Act of Union joined the two colonies, Upper and Lower Canada, into one under a central government with two Assemblies, one elected and one appointed. The capital of Canada was placed at Kingston (then Montreal, then Toronto, then Quebec, and finally in 1865 it moved to Ottawa).
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