PRESENTS
LEGENDS OF THE JUNCTION
REBELS ON DUNDAS
By Neil Ross
Canadians! Do you love freedom? I know you do. Do you hate oppression? Who
dare deny it? Do you wish perpetual peace and a government bound to enforce
the law to do to each other as you would be done by? Up then, brave Canadians!
Now is the day and the hour!
. . . words of William Lyon Mackenzie, first Mayor of Toronto, and leader of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. In Lower Canada (Quebec) and Upper Canada (Ontario), rebels rose up to challenge the established order and to push for a new Canadian nation that would reflect the political aspirations of the farmers and workers, and bring greater rights and freedoms to the Colonists while remaining loyal to the British Crown. The Junction, not yet a village was about to play its first pivotal role in Canadian history.
What nobody in Upper or Lower Canada had was true democracy. They could vote their representatives into government but their leaders had no power. Mackenzie was elected seven times and they hardly ever let him in the House. The rich people, the rich families, the Family Compact as they were called, made the rules. And you can bet the rules didn't help the poor farmers. There were few highways -- very few bridges or schools. Much of the good land had been kept for the government and the Church of England. If you got married in any other church other than the Church of England it wasn't a legal marriage. The situation was unacceptable to many and in the winter of 1837 they rebelled.
Mackenzie, a brash and eccentric journalist and politician (he wore a fiery red wig which he would throw into the air in moments of exuberance, and three overcoats to reflect bullets) was preparing to march on Toronto and to take the cache of guns stored at City Hall. He knew that the militia had been diverted to Lower Canada, but he needed to discover what the Governor, Sir Francis Bond Head, was planning in Upper Canada. Equally pressing, his ragtag rebellion was short of funds. So he conceived of a bold move.
The Peacock Tavern was located near the junction of the Dundas Highway and Weston Road (across from where Coffee Time Donuts is now) and catered to farm traffic. Its owner was a man named James Farr who had built the tavern and was a rebel sympathizer.
"Mackenzie led a small force of mounted gunman down to
intercept the western mail which was approaching Toronto by way of Dundas
Street. He stepped out of cover as the stage coach pulled up to the Peacock
Inn, and brought to an abrupt halt by waving his pistol at the driver. With
the efficiency of a bandit, Mackenzie lined up the passengers at gunpoint,
relieved them of their ready cash, which the rebels' exchequer badly needed
and ransacked the mail bags in search of more money, and dispatches of the
state of the western militia . . ."
From Firebrand by William Kilbourn.
The Tories, the members of the ruling Family Compact, spread the rumour that one woman had been stripped by the rebels. Actually, they took her suitcase . . . However, this leads to the legend that Mackenzie crossed the Niagara frontier disguised as a woman. Presumably a woman with a fiery red wig.
Mackenzie enjoyed being a highwayman so much that he attacked a few travelers on the way back to his headquarters at Montgomery's Tavern. There he scattered all the newspapers (broadsides) from the postbags to the Family Compact prisoners in the courtyard below.
Soon Mackenzie led his ill-fated march down Yonge Street where his rebels met the city militia in a comic opera battle. The skirmish ended with both sides in disarray and the Rebels in exile or in jail.
The reforms the rebels fought for were later won, through peaceful means, by leaders in Ontario and Quebec with a vision of a fair and inclusive country. That old rebel Mackenzie returned after years in exile with an official pardon. He spent his last days as an elected member of the newly united Province of Canada still railing against the system.
And the Junction still retains his rebel spirit.