curiosity at the pure negress, Amy Pompadour, here in York, knowing that
she had once been legally made a present of by Miss Elizabeth Russell to
Mrs. Captain Denison.
But enough of the subject of Canadian slavery, to which we have been
inadvertently led.
The old Court House, when abandoned by the law authorities for the new
buildings on King Street, was afterwards occasionally employed for
religious purposes. By an advertisement in the _Advocate_, in March,
1834, we learn that the adherents of David Willson, of Whitchurch,
sometimes made use of it. It is there announced that "the Children of
Peace will hold Worship in the Old Court House of York, on Sunday, the
16th instant, at Eleven and Three." Subsequently it became for a time
the House of Industry or Poor House of the town.
Besides the legal cases tried and the judgments pronounced within the
homely walls of the Old Court House, interest would attach to the
curious scenes--could they be recovered and described--which there
occurred, arising sometimes from the primitive rusticity of juries, and
sometimes from their imperfect mastery of the English language, many of
them being, as the German settlers of Markham and Vaughan were
indiscriminately called, Dutchmen. Peter Ernest, appearing in court with
the verdict of a jury of which he was foreman, began to preface the same
with a number of peculiar German-English expressions which moved Chief
Justice Powell to cut him short by the remark that he would have to
commit him if he swore:--when Ernest observed that the perplexities
through which he and the jury had been endeavouring to find their way,
were enough to make better men than they were express themselves in an
unusual way.--The verdict, pure and simple, was demanded. Ernest then
announced that the verdict which he had to deliver was, that half of the
jury were for "guilty" and half for "not guilty." That is, the Judge
observed, you would have the prisoner half-hanged, or the half of him
hanged. To which Peter replied, that would be as his Lordship
pleased.--It was a case of homicide. Being sent back, they agreed to
acquit.
Odd passages, too, between pertinacious counsel and nettled judges
sometimes occurred, as when Mr. H. J. Boulton, fresh from the Inner
Temple, sat down at the peremptory order of the Chief Justice, but
added, "I will sit down, my Lord, but I shall instantly stand up again."
Chief Justice Powell, when on the Bench, had a humorous way
occasionally, of indicating by a kind of quiet by-play, by a gentle
shake of the head, a series of little nods, or movements of the eye or
eyebrow, his estimate of an outre hypothesis or an ad captandum
argument. This was now and then disconcerting to advocates anxious to
figure, for the moment, in the eyes of a simple-minded jury, as oracles
of extra authority.
Nights, likewise, there would be to be described, passed by juries in
the diminutive jury-room, either through perplexity fairly arising out
of the evidence, or through the dogged obstinacy of an individual.
Once, as we have heard from a sufferer on the occasion, Colonel Duggan
was the means of keeping a jury locked up for a night here, he being the
sole dissentient on a particular point. That night, however, was
converted into one of memorable festivity, our informant said, a
tolerable supply of provisions and comforts having been conveyed in
through the window, sent for from the homes of those of the jury who
were residents of York. The recusant Colonel was refused a moment's rest
throughout the live-long night. During twelve long hours pranks and
sounds were indulged in that would have puzzled a foreigner taking
notes of Canadian Court House usages.
When 10 o'clock a.m. of the next day arrived, and the Court
re-assembled, Colonel Duggan suddenly and obligingly effected the
release of himself and his tormentors by consenting to make the
necessary modification in his opinion.
Of one characteristic scene we have a record in the books of the Court
itself. On the 12th of January, 1813, as a duly impanelled jury were
retiring to their room to consider of their verdict, a remark was
addressed to one of their number, namely, Samuel Jackson, by a certain
Simeon Morton, who had been a witness for the defence: the remark, as
the record notes, was in these words, to wit, "Mind your eye!" to which
the said Jackson replied "Never fear!" The Crier of the Court, John
Bazell, duly made affidavit of this illicit transaction. Accordingly, on
the appearance in court of the jury, for the purpose of rendering their
verdict, Mr. Baldwin, attorney for the prosecution, moved that the said
Jackson be taken into custody: and the Judge gave order "that Samuel
Jackson do immediately enter into recognizances, himself in L50, and two
sureties in L25 each, for his appearance on the Saturday following at
the Office of the Clerk of the Peace, which," as the record somewhat
inelegantly adds, "he done." He duly appeared on the Saturday indicated,
and, pleading ignorance, was discharged.
In the Court House in 1822 was tried a curious case in respect of a
horse claimed by two parties, Major Heward, of York, and General
Wadsworth, commandant of the United States Garrison at Fort Niagara.
Major Heward had reared a sorrel colt on his farm east of the Don; and
when it was three years old it was stolen. Nothing came of the offer of
reward for its recovery until a twelvemonth after the theft, when a
young horse was brought by a stranger to Major Heward, at York, and
instantly recognized by him as his lost property. Some of the major's
neighbours likewise had no doubt of the identity of the animal, which,
moreover, when taken to the farm entered of his own accord the stable,
and the stall, the missing colt used to occupy, and, when let out into
the adjoining pasture, greeted in a friendly way a former mate, and ran
to drink at the customary watering place. Shortly after, two citizens of
the United States, Kelsey and Bond, make their appearance at York and
claim the horse which they find on Major Heward's farm, as the property
of General Wadsworth, commandant at Fort Niagara. Kelsey swore that he
had reared the animal; that he had docked him with his own hands when
only a few hours old; and that he had sold him about a year ago to
General Wadsworth. Bond also swore positively that this was the horse
which Kelsey had reared, and that he himself had broken him in, prior to
the sale to General Wadsworth. It was alleged by these persons that a
man named Docksteader had stolen the horse from General Wadsworth at
Fort Niagara and had conveyed him across to the Canadian side.
In consequence of the positive evidence of these two men the jury gave
their verdict in favour of General Wadsworth's claim, with damages to
the amount of L50. It was nevertheless generally held that Kelsey and
Bond's minute narrative of the colt's early history was a fiction; and
that Docksteader, the man who transferred the animal from the United
States side of the river to Canadian soil, had also had something to do
with the transfer of the same animal from Canada to the United States a
twelvemonth previously.
The subject of this story survived to the year 1851, and was recognized
and known among all old inhabitants as "Major Heward's famous horse
Toby."
Within the Court House on Richmond Street took place in 1818 the
celebrated trial of a number of prisoners brought down from the Red
River Settlement on charges of "high treason, murder, robbery, and
conspiracy," as preferred against them by Lord Selkirk, the founder of
the Settlement. When our neighbourhood was itself in fact nothing more
than a collection of small isolated clearings, rough-hewn out of the
wild, "the Selkirk Settlement" and the "North West" were household terms
among us for remote regions in a condition of infinite savagery, in
comparison with which we, as we prided ourselves, were denizens of a
paradise of high refinement and civilization. Now that the Red River
district has attained the dignity of a province and become a member of
our Canadian Confederation, the trial referred to, arising out of the
very birth-throes of Manitoba, has acquired a fresh interest.
The Earl of Selkirk, the fifth of that title, was a nobleman of
enlightened and cultivated mind. He was the author of several literary
productions esteemed in their day; amongst them, of a treatise on
Emigration, which is spoken of by contemporaries as an exhaustive,
standard work on the subject. For practically testing his theories,
however, Lord Selkirk appears to have desired a field exclusively his
own. Instead of directing his fellow-countrymen to one or other of the
numerous prosperous settlements already in process of formation at
easily accessible and very eligible spots along the St. Lawrence and the
Lakes Ontario, Erie and Huron, he induced a considerable body of them to
find their way to a point in the far interior of our northern continent,
where civilization had as yet made no sensible inroad; to a locality so
situated that if a colony could contrive to subsist there, it must
apparently of necessity remain for a very long period dismally isolated.
In 1803, Bishop Macdonell asked him, what could have induced a man of
his high rank and great fortune, possessing the esteem and confidence of
the Government and of every public man in Britain, to embark in an
enterprise so romantic; and the reply given was, that, in his opinion,
the situation of Great Britain, and indeed of all Europe, was at that
moment so very critical and eventful, that a man would like to have a
more solid footing to stand upon, than anything that Europe could offer.
The tract of land secured by Lord Selkirk for emigration purposes was a
part of the territory held by the Hudson's Bay Company, and was
approached from Europe not so readily by the St. Lawrence route as by
Hudson's Strait and Hudson's Bay. The site of the actual settlement was
half-a-mile north of the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers,
streams that unitedly flow northward into Lake Winnipeg, which
communicates directly at its northern extremity with Nelson River, whose
outlet is at Port Nelson or Fort York on Hudson's Bay. The population of
the Settlement in the beginning of 1813 was 100. Mr. Miles Macdonell,
formerly a captain in the Queen's Rangers, appointed by the Hudson's Bay
Company first Governor of the District of Assiniboia, was made by the
Earl of Selkirk superintendent of affairs at Kildonan. The rising
village was called Kildonan, from the name of the parish in the county
of Sutherland whence the majority of the settlers had emigrated.
The Montreal North West Company of Fur Traders was a rival of the
Hudson's Bay Company. Whilst the latter traded for the most part in the
regions watered by the rivers flowing into Hudson's Bay, the former
claimed for their operations the area drained by the streams running
into Lake Superior.
The North West Company of Montreal looked with no kindly eye on the
settlement of Kildonan. An agricultural colony, in close proximity to
their hunting grounds, seemed a dangerous innovation, tending to injure
the local fur trade. Accordingly it was resolved to break up the infant
colony. The Indians were told that they would assuredly be made "poor
and miserable" by the new-comers if they were allowed to proceed with
their improvements; because these would cause the buffalo to disappear.
The colonists themselves were informed of the better prospects open to
them in the Canadian settlements and were promised pecuniary help if
they would decide to move. At the same time, the peril to which they
were exposed from the alleged ill-will of the Indians was enlarged upon.
Moreover, attacks with fire-arms were made on the houses of the
colonists, and acts of pillage committed. The result was that in 1815,
the inhabitants of Kildonan dispersed, proceeding, some of them, in the
direction of Canada, and some of them northwards, purposing to make
their way to Port Nelson, and to find, if possible, a conveyance thence
back to the shores of old Scotland. Those, however, who took the
northern route proceeded only as far as the northern end of Lake
Winnipeg, establishing themselves for a time at Jack River House. They
were then induced to return to their former settlement, by Mr. Colin
Robertson, an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company, who assured them that a
number of Highlanders were coming, via Hudson's Bay, to take up land at
Kildonan. This proved to be the fact; and, in 1816, the revived colony
consisted of more than 200 persons. On annoyance being offered to the
settlement by the North West Company's agent, Mr. Duncan Cameron, who
occupied a post called Fort Gibraltar, about half a mile off, Mr. Colin
Robertson, with the aid of his Highlandmen, seized that establishment,
and recovered two field-pieces and thirty stand of arms that had been
taken from Kildonan the preceding year. Cameron himself was also made a
prisoner. (Miles Macdonell, Governor of Assiniboia, had been captured by
the said Cameron in the preceding year, and sent to Montreal.) A strong
feeling was aroused among the half-breeds, far and near, who were in the
interest of the North West Company. In the spring of 1816, Mr. Semple,
the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, appeared in person at the Red
River, having been apprized of the growing troubles. During an angry
conference on the 18th of June, with a band of seventy men, headed by
Cuthbert, Grant, Lacerte, Fraser, Hoole, and Thomas McKay, half-breed
employes of the North West Company, he was violently assaulted; and in
the melee he was killed, together with five of his officers and sixteen
of his people. Out of these events sprang the memorable trials that took
place in the York Court House in 1818.
The Earl of Selkirk being desirous of witnessing the progress made by
his emigrants at Red River, paid a visit to this continent in the autumn
of 1815. On arriving at New York he heard of the dispersion at Kildonan,
and the destruction of property there. He proceeded at once to Montreal
and York to consult with the authorities. The news next reached him that
his colony had been re-established, at least partially. He immediately
despatched a trusty messenger, one Lagimoniere, with assurances that he
himself would speedily be with them, bringing proper means of
protection. But Lagimoniere was waylaid and never reached his
destination.
It happened, about this time, in consequence of the peace just
established with the United States, that the De Meuron, Watteville and
Glengarry Fencible Regiments were disbanded in the country. About eighty
men of the De Meuron, with four of the late officers, twenty of the
Watteville, and a few of the Glengarry, with one of their officers,
agreed to accompany Lord Selkirk to the Red River. On reaching the
Sault, the tidings met the party of the second dispersion of the colony,
and of the slaughter of Governor Semple and his officers. The whole band
at once pushed on to Fort William, where were assembled many of the
partners of the North West Company, with Mr. McGillivray, their
principal Agent. Here were also some of the persons who had been made
prisoners at Kildonan.
Armed simply with a commission of a Justice of the Peace, Lord Selkirk
then and there, at his encampment opposite Fort William across the
Kaministigoia, issued his warrant for the arrest of Mr. McGillivray.
It is duly served and Mr. McGillivray submits. Two partners who came
over with him as bail are also instantly arrested. The prisoners had
been previously liberated and information was procured from them.
Warrants were then issued for the arrest of the remainder of the
partners, who were found in the Fort. Some resistance was now offered.
The gate of the Fort was partially closed by force; but a party of
twenty-five men instantly rushed up from the boats and cleared the way
into the Fort. At the signal of a bugle-call more men came over from
the encampment, and their approach put an end to the struggle. The
arrests were then completed, and the remaining partners were marched
down to the boats. "At the time this resistance to the warrant was
attempted there were," our authority informs us, "about 200 Canadians,
_i. e._, French, in the employment of the Company, in and about the
Fort, together with 60 or 70 Iroquois Indians, also in the Company's
service."
The Earl of Selkirk was plainly a man not to be trifled with; a chief
who, in the olden time, would have been equal to the roughest emergency.
The prisoners brought down from Fort William, and after the lapse of
nearly two years placed at the Bar in the Old Court House of York, were
arraigned as follows: "Paul Brown and F. F. Boucher, for the murder of
Robert Semple, Esq., on the 18th of June, 1816; John Siveright,
Alexander McKenzie, Hugh McGillis, John McDonald, John McLaughlin and
Simon Fraser, as accessories to the same crime; Cooper and Bennerman,
for taking, on the third of April, 1815, with force and arms, eight
pieces of cannon and one howitzer, the property of the Right Hon.
Thomas, Earl of Selkirk, from his dwelling house, and putting in bodily
fear of their lives certain persons found therein." The cannons were
further described as being two of them brass field-pieces, two of them
brass swivels, four of them iron swivels.--In each case the verdict was
"not guilty."
The Judges were Chief Justice Powell, Mr. Justice Campbell, Mr. Justice
Boulton, and Associate Justice W. Allan, Esq. The counsel for the Crown
were Mr. Attorney-General Robinson and Mr. Solicitor-General Boulton.
The counsel for the prisoners were Samuel Sherwood, Livius P. Sherwood,
and W. W. Baldwin, Esq.
The juries in the three trials were not quite identical. Those that
served on one or other of them are as follows:--George Bond, Joseph
Harrison, Wm. Harrison, Joseph Shepperd, Peter Lawrence, Joshua Leach,
John McDougall, jun., Wm. Moore, Alexander Montgomery, Peter Whitney,
Jonathan Hale, Michael Whitmore, Harbour Stimpson, John Wilson, John
Hough, Richard Herring.
The Earl of Selkirk was not present at the trials. He had proceeded to
New York, on his way to Great Britain. He probably anticipated the
verdicts that were rendered. The North-West Company influence in Upper
and Lower Canada was very strong.
At a subsequent Court of Oyer and Terminer held at York, a true bill
against the Earl and nineteen others was found by the Grand Jury, for
"conspiracy to ruin the trade of the North-West Company." Mr. Wm. Smith,
Under-Sheriff of the Western District, obtained a verdict of L500
damages for having been seized and confined by the said Earl when
endeavouring to serve a warrant on him in Fort William; and Daniel
McKenzie, a retired partner of the North-West Company, obtained a
verdict of L1,500 damages for alleged false imprisonment by the Earl in
the same Fort.--Two years later, namely, in 1820, Lord Selkirk died at
Pau, in the South of France.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
XXI.
QUEEN STREET--FROM YONGE STREET TO COLLEGE AVENUE.--DIGRESSION SOUTHWARD
AT BAY STREET; OSGOODE HALL; DIGRESSION NORTHWARD AT THE AVENUE.
Leaving now the site of our ancient Court House, the spot at which we
arrive in our tour is one of very peculiar interest. It is the
intersection at right angles of the two great military ways carved out
through the primitive forest of Western Canada by order of its first
Governor. Dundas Street and Yonge Street were laid down in the first MS.
maps of the country as highways destined to traverse the land in all
future time, as nearly as practicable in right lines, the one from east
to west, the other from south to north. They were denominated "streets,"
because their idea was taken from the famous ancient ways, still in
several instances called "streets," which the Romans, when masters of
primitive Britain, constructed for military purposes. To this day it is
no unpleasant occupation for the visitor who has leisure, to track out
the lines of these ancient roads across England. We ourselves once made
a pilgrimage expressly for the purpose of viewing the intersection of
Iknield Street and Watling Street, in the centre of Dunstable, and from
our actual knowledge of what Canada was when its Yonge Street and Dundas
Street were first hewn out, we realized all the more vividly the
condition of central England when the Roman road-makers first began
their work there.
Dundas Street has its name from the Right Hon. Henry Dundas, Secretary
of State for the Colonies in 1794. In that year Governor Simcoe wrote as
follows to Mr. Dundas:--"Dundas Street, the road proposed from
Burlington Bay to the River Thames, half of which is completed, will
connect by an internal communication the Detroit and settlements at
Niagara. It is intended," he says, "to be extended northerly to York by
the troops, and in process of time by the respective settlers to
Kingston and Montreal." In another despatch to the same statesman he
says:--"I have directed the surveyor, early in the next spring to
ascertain the precise distance of the several routes which I have done
myself the honour of detailing to you, and hope to complete the Military
Street or Road the ensuing autumn." In a MS. map of about the same date
Dundas Street is laid down from Detroit to the Pointe au Bodet, the
terminus on the St. Lawrence of the old boundary line between Upper and
Lower Canada. From the Rouge River it is sketched as running somewhat
further back than the line of the present Kingston Road; and after
leaving Kingston it is drawn as though it was expected to follow the
water-shed between the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence. A road is sketched,
running from the Pointe au Bodet to the Ottawa, and this Road is struck
at an acute angle by Dundas Street.
A manuscript note appears on the map, "The Dundas Street is laid out
from Oxford to the Bay of Quinte; it is nearly finished from Oxford to
Burlington Bay."
In 1799 the _Constellation_, a paper published at Niagara, informs its
readers, under the date of Friday, August 2nd, in that year, that "the
wilderness from York to the Bay of Quinte is 120 miles; a road of this
distance through it," it then says, "is contracted out by Government to
Mr. Danforth, to be cut and completed by the first of July next; and
which, when completed, will open a communication round the Lake by land
from this town [Niagara] with the Bay, Kingston, &c. Hitherto," the
_Constellation_ continues, "in the season of winter our intercourse with
that part of the province has been almost totally interrupted. Mr.
Danforth has already made forty miles of excellent road," the editor
encourages his patrons by observing, "and procured men to the number
sufficient for doing the whole extent by the setting in of winter. It
would be desirable also," Mr. Tiffany suggests, "were a little labour
expended in bridging the streams between Burlington Bay and York; indeed
the whole country," it is sweepingly declared, "affords room for
amendment in this respect."
It is plain from this extract that if the men of the present generation
would have a just conception of what was the condition of the region
round Lake Ontario seventy years ago, they must pay a visit to the head
of Lake Superior and perform the journey by the Dawson road and the rest
of the newly-opened route from Fort William to Winnipeg.
The _Gazette_ of December 14, 1799, was able to speak approvingly of the
road to the eastward. "The road from this town (York) to the Midland
District is," it says, "completed as far as the Township of Hope, about
sixty miles, so that sleighs, waggons, &c., may travel it with safety.
The report which has been made to the Government by the gentlemen
appointed to inspect the work is," the _Gazette_ then proceeds to say,
"highly favourable to Mr. Danforth, the undertaker; and less
imperfections could not be pointed out in so extensive a work. The
remaining part," it is added, "will be accomplished by the first of July
next." The road to which these various extracts refer, is still known as
the Danforth Road. It runs somewhat to the north of the present Kingston
Road, entering it by the town line at the "Four Mile Tree."