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THE breakfast-room of Pine Towers, on a bright, sunny
morning, some three or four days after the death of
its much-respected mistress, held a large concourse
of the notables of York, and other private and official
gentry of the Province. They had come to take
part, on the previous day, in the funeral obsequies;
and were now, after a night’s rest and bountiful
morning repast, about to return to the Capital.
Among the number gathered to pay respect to the deceased
lady’s memory, as well as to show their regard
and sympathy for the bereaved husband, the good old
Commodore, were many whose names were “household
words” in the early days of Upper Canada.
Sixty years have passed over the Province since the
notable gathering, and all who were then present have
paid the debt of nature. Hushed now as are their
voices, the Macleod breakfast-room, on the morning we
have indicated, was a perfect babel of noise.
The solemn pageant of the previous day, and the sacred
griefs of those whom the grim Enemy had made desolate,
seemed at the moment to have been forgotten by the departing
throng; and for a time the young master of Pine Towers,
as he bade adieu to his father’s guests, witnessed
a scene in sharp contrast to yesterday’s orderly
decorum. It was with a sigh of relief that Edward
Macleod saw the last of the miscellaneous vehicles move
off, and the final guest take the road to the bateaux
on the lake, to convey him and those who were returning
by water to Holland Landing, there to find the means
of reaching the Capital.
Entering the house, empty
now of all but those who were left of its usual inmates,
including his sister’s friend, the beautiful Hélène—whom
he had hardly had an opportunity [Page 21] to
more than greet on his return from England—an
overpowering sense of desolation fell upon him.
Seating himself near his mother’s favourite window,
the young man’s loneliness and bereavement found
vent in tears. All the past came vividly before
him—a mother’s life-long devotion and tender
care; her thousand winning ways and loving endearments;
her pride in his future career and prospects; and the
recollection of the many innocent confidences which
a mother loves to pour into the ear of a handsome, grown-up
son, whose filial affection and chivalrous devotion
assure her that she still possesses charms to which
her husband and his contemporaries of a previous generation
had been wont sedulously to pay tribute. “Ah,
beautiful mother, it is not to-day nor to-morrow that
I shall fully realize that I am to see thee no more
on earth,” said the young man musingly, as he
left his seat and strode nervously up and down the room,
while his favourite hound from a rug by the large open
fire-place eyed his agitated movements.
Presently the young man’s
soliloquies were interrupted by the timid entrance of
his sister, Rose, followed by the more decided and stately
tread of the charming Hélène.
“Ah, Edward,”
said his sister, “you are alone. Have all
our guests gone?”
“Yes,” was
the reply, “and I am not sorry to have the house
again to ourselves.”
“You, of course,
include Hélène among the latter,”
observed Rose interrogatively.
“I do, certainly,”
was Edward’s instant and cordial response, as
he offered Hélène his hand to conduct
her down the steps into the conservatory and out on
to the lawn. “Miss DeBerczy, of course,
is one of us, though you told me this morning that she,
too, expressed a wish to be gone.” [Page
22]
Hélène interrupted
these remarks with the explanation that her wish to
take leave was owing to a mandate of her mother’s
which had reached her that morning.
“We shall all be
sorry at your leaving us so soon,” was Edward’s
courteous rejoinder. “But, when you go,”
he added, “you must permit me to accompany you
to ‘Bellevue,’ for I wish to pay my respects
to your mamma; it is a long time now since we met.
Besides, I have to deliver to her the cameos I brought
her from England and the family trinkets your uncle
entrusted to my care.”
“Mamma, I know,
is eager to receive them, and will be delighted to welcome
you back. In her note, by the way, she tells me
that Captain John Franklin has written to her from York,
asking permission to call upon her on his way north.
You know that the Arctic Expedition is to go overland,
by way of Penetanguishene and Rupert’s Land, and
is to effect a junction with Captain Beechey’s
party operating from Hudson’s Bay.”
“So I learned before
I left England,” replied Edward. “I hope
my father,” he added, “will be able to meet
the members of the Expedition. It would rouse
him from his grief, and I know that he takes a great
interest in Captain Franklin’s project.”
The conversation was now
monopolized by the ladies, for Hélène
took Rose aside to tell that young lady that her mamma
had given her some news of a young and handsome land-surveyor,
of Barrie, of whom she had heard Rose speak in terms
of warm admiration.
The gentleman referred
to was Allan Dunlop, who, Hélène related,
had been very useful at York to Captain Franklin, in
giving him information as to the route to be followed
by his Expedition on its way to the “hoarse North
sea.”
Rose visibly coloured
as she listened to the young man’s praises, in
the extract Hélène’s mother had
enclosed from [Page 23] Captain Franklin’s
communication. That young lady protested, however,
that Allan Dunlop was her brother’s friend, not
hers. “Indeed,” she added, “we
have only occasionally met at the Church at Barrie,
and I have not even been introduced to him.”
“Ah, and how is
it that his name is always on your lips after every
service I hear you have attended across the bay?”
queried Hélène archly.
The tints deepened on
Rose’s sweet, bright face as she apologetically
urged “that at such times there was doubtless
nothing better to talk about.”
Happily for Rose the embarrassing
conversation was interrupted by the return of her brother,
who rejoined the ladies to say that on the highway,
at the end of the avenue down which he had strolled,
a party of marines and English shipwrights, in command
of a naval officer, had just passed on their way to
the post, near Barrie, to proceed on the morrow by the
Notawassaga river to the Georgian Bay, and on to the
new naval station at Penetanguishene. A Mr. Galt,
who accompanied the party, and was on his way to the
Canada Land Company’s reserve in the Huron district,
had brought him letters from York, among which, he added,
was one from his old friend, Allan Dunlop, condoling
with him on the loss of his mother and sending his respectful
compliments to his father and his family.
“How curious!”
observed Hélène, “why, we’ve
just been talking of Mr. Dunlop.”
“You mean to say,”
interposed Rose, “that you have just
been talking of him.”
“Well! That is quite
a coincidence, Miss DeBerczy, but do you know my friend?”
asked Edward.
“No, I’ve
not that pleasure,” replied the beautiful Huguenot,
“but your sister, I believe, knows him—
“Oh, Hélène!
I do not!!” said Rose, interruptingly.
Edward turned towards
his sister, and for a moment [Page 24] regarded
her lovingly. After a pause, he said, “Well,
Sis, if you do know him, you know one of the
best and most promising of my early acquaintances, and
from what I have heard of him since my return, I feel
that I want to improve my own acquaintance with him,
and shall not be sorry to know that he has become your
friend as well as mine.”
“But, Edward, you
must wait till I do know him,” said Rose
with some emphasis. “I know your friend
by sight only, and have never spoken to him; though,
I confess, I have heard a good deal of him in the recent
election, and much that is favourable, though papa has
taken a great dislike to him on account of his political
opinions.”
“Ah, papa’s
Tory prejudices would be sure to do injustice to Dunlop,”
Edward rejoined; “but, I fear,” he added,
“there is need in the political arena of Upper
Canada of just such a Reformer as he.”
At this stage of the conversation
the old Commodore was observed on the veranda, and Tredway
approached the group to announce that lunch was on the
table.
Commodore Macleod, as
may be inferred from his son’s remark about his
father’s Tory prejudices, was a Tory of the old
school, a member of the Legislative Council of Upper
Canada, and a firm ally and stiff upholder of the Provincial
Executive, who had earned for themselves, by their autocratic
rule, the rather sinister designation of “the
Family Compact.” As a trusted friend and
loyal supporter of the oligarchy of the day, whom a
well-known radical who figured prominently in the later
history of the Province was wont to speak of as that
army of placemen and pensioners, “Paymasters,
Receivers, Auditors, King, Lords and Commons, who swallowed
the whole revenue of Upper Canada”—the reference
to a man of the type of young Dunlop, who aspired to
political honours, was particularly [Page 25]
distasteful, and sure to bring upon the object
of his bitter animadversion the full vials of his wrath.
Ralph Macleod was a grand
specimen of the sturdy British seamen, who contributed
by their prowess to make England mistress of the seas.
He entered the navy during the war with Holland, and
served under Lord Howe, when that old “sea-dog,”
in 1782, came to the relief of Gibraltar, against the
combined forces of France and Spain. He served
subsequently under Lord Rodney, in the West Indies,
and was a shipmate of Nelson’s in Sir John Jervis’
victory over the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent.
For his share in that action Macleod gained his captaincy,
while his friend Commodore Nelson was made a Rear-Admiral.
In 1797 he was wounded at Camperdown while serving under
Admiral Duncan, and retired with the rank of Commodore.
Early in the century,
he married an English lady and came to Canada, where
for a time he held various posts on the naval stations
on the Lakes, and was with Barclay, on his flagship,
The Detroit, in the disaster on Lake Erie,
in September, 1813. Narrowly escaping capture
by Commander Perry’s forces at Put-in-Bay, he
joined General Proctor in his retreat from Amherstburg
to the Thames, and was present at the battle of Moravian
Town, where the Indian chief, Tecumseh, lost his life.
When the Treaty of Ghent
terminated the war and left Canada in possession of
her own, Commodore Macleod, with other old naval officers,
retired from the service, and took grants of land in
the neighbourhood of Lake Simcoe. Being possessed
of considerable private means, the Commodore built a
palatial residence on the borders of that lake, and
varied the monotony of a life ashore by an engrossing
interest in politics and the active duties of a Legislative
Councillor. The illness of his wife, to whom he
was devoted, had in the past two years almost entirely
withdrawn [Page 26] him from political
life, and lost to his colleagues in the Upper House
the services of one who took grim pleasure in strangling
bills obnoxious to the dominant faction which originated
in the Lower Chamber. His temporary withdrawal
from the Legislative Council, and the lengthened absence
in England of Dr. Strachan, that sturdy ecclesiastic
who was long the ruling spirit of the “Family
Compact,” emboldened the leaders of Reform to
inveigh against the Hydra-headed abuses of the time,
and sow broadcast the dragon-teeth of discontent and
the seeds of a speedy harvest of sedition.
Already, Wm. Lyon Mackenzie
had unfolded, in the lively columns of the The Colonial
Advocate, his “plentiful crop of grievances;”
while the harsh operations of the Alien Act, the interdicting
of immigrants from the United States, the arrogant claims
of the Anglican Church to the exclusive possession of
the Clergy Reserves, and the jobbery and corruption
that prevailed in the Land-granting Department of the
Government, all contributed to fan the flame of discontent
and sap the loyalty of the colony. In the Legislative
Assembly each recurring session added to the clamour
of opposition, and emphasized the demand for Responsible
Government and Popular Rights. But as yet such
demands were looked upon as the ravings of lunacy or
the impertinences of treason. Constitutional Government,
even in the mother-land, was not yet fully attained;
and, in a distant dependency, it was not to be expected
that the prerogative of the Crown, or the rights and
privileges of its nominee, an irresponsible Executive,
were to be made subordinate to the will of the people.
“Take care what you are about in Canada,”
were the irate words William IV. hurled at his ministers,
some few years after the period of which we are writing.
‘By—!” added this constitutional monarch,
“I will never consent to alienate the Crown Lands
nor to make the Council elective.” [Page
27]
With such outbursts of
royal petulance and old-time kingcraft, and similar
ebullitions from Downing Street, exhorting the Upper
Canadian Administration to hold tight the reins of government,
the reforming spirit of the period had a hard time of
it in entering on its many years conflict with an arrogant
and bureaucratic Executive. Of many of the members
of the ruling faction of the time it may not become
us now to speak harshly, for most of them were men of
education and refinement, and in their day did good
service to the State. If, in the exercise of their
office, they lacked consideration at times for the less
favoured of their fellow-colonists, they had the instincts
and bearing of gentlemen, save, it may be, when, in
conclave, occasion drove them to a violent and contemptuous
opposition to the will of the people. But men—most
of all politicians—naturally defend the privileges
which they enjoy; and the exceptional circumstances
of the country seemed at the time to give to the holders
of office a prescriptive right to their position and
emoluments.
At the period of which
we are writing, there was much need of wise moderation
on the side of the governed as well as on that of the
governing class. But of moderation there was little;
and the nature of the evils complained of, the non-conciliatory
attitude of the ruling oligarchy, and the licence which
a “Free Press,”—recently introduced
into the colony,—gave in formulating charges of
corruption, and in loosening the tongue of invective,
made it almost impossible to discuss affairs of State,
save in the heated terms familiar to irritated and incensed
combatants. It was at this period that the young
land-surveyor, Allan Dunlop, entered the Legislative
Assembly and took his seat as member for the Northern
division of the Home District. Though warmly espousing
the cause of the people in the ever-recurring collisions
with the different branches of the Government, and as
warmly asserting the rights and [Page 28] privileges
of the popular Chamber in its struggles with the autocracy
of the Upper House, the young Parliamentarian was equally
jealous of the reasonable prerogative of the Crown,
and temperate in the language he used when he had occasion
to decry its abuse. He was one of the few in the
Legislature who, while they recognized that the old
system of government was becoming less and less suited
to the genius and wants of the young Canadian community,
at the same time wished to usher in the new régime
with the moderation and tact which mark the work
of the thoughtful politician and the aims of the true
statesman. It has been said that one never knows
what is inside a politician. What was inside the
Reformer, Allan Dunlop, was all that became a patriot
and a high-minded gentleman. [Page 29]
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