Part 9

From survivors, and from a few printed memorials, one finds that what was known as Training Day seems to have been a great farce in Upper Canada. The 4th of June, King George’s birthday, was its date. Descriptions of it take one back to the Duke of Brunswick’s lament over his army--that if it had been generaled by shoemakers and tailors it could not have been worse, for the Duke’s general marched with his division like cabbages and turnips in defile. Here there was no likeness to anything so formal; the army manœuvres partook of the wild luxuriance of native growths. If twelve were the hour for muster on the common at Fort George, it was sure to be after one before the arduous work of falling in began. “The men answered to their names, as the rolls of the various companies were called, with a readiness and distinctness of tone which showed that, in spite of the weather, they were wide-awake,” says the chronicle. Once they became more active a scene ensued which could not fail to gladden the eyes of the onlookers. In time, either slow or quick, the men did not seem to be guided by any rule of book, but exemplified home-made tactics, presenting lines for which mathematicians have yet furnished no name, putting out flanking parties at either end, and as nearly squaring a circle and circling a square as possible. “Though many jokes were passed, fewer sods were thrown than usual.” Even later than ’37, once men had been out and had come home veterans their services were in demand by officers newly appointed. As in the days of the good Duke of York, ignorance was an officer’s perquisite; then some intelligent sergeant whispered the word of command which his officer was ashamed to know; here, the poor officer was willing, but perhaps had a sergeant as ignorant as himself. However, he was not too haughty to search for some private to help him. “Say, they tell me you were out,” said one of these officers to a private; “I suppose you know something of military training. Now, I am a captain and don’t know anything, and I believe I’ll appoint you my sergeant.” The scene of initiation was by the Little Thames, on what was later to be a Court House site, thenceforward to be known as Stratford. The captain wore the battered remains of a tall silk hat, a black tailed coat, white linen trousers about six inches too short, and hose a world too wide for his shrunk shanks. The hastily-made sergeant, Tom Stoney, a blue-eyed young Irishman with a spice of fun but kind at heart, armed his superior officer with his own cavalry sword, and taking him into his small saddler-shop made himself military tailor as well. The captain never would have rested without spurs had he known that the late King on his first appearance in military uniform, although unmounted, wore a pair of gold ones that reached halfway up his legs like a gamecock. Stoney drew down the white pantaloons as far and as tight as possible, sewed on buttons, and cut and sewed two leather straps to aid in keeping the captain together. The men were got into line; the captain meekly took his place among them. “Right face!” cried the sergeant, and off flew a button, up went the trouser-leg to the knee--“pursued my humour, not pursuing his”--rejoicing in regained freedom, relented and came down again. Clump-clamp went the leather strap with every step. The sergeant’s commands came quicker than ever, the captain perspired, and toiling behind his men removed his silk hat to wipe his streaming face. Then he ventured his first “command”: “I think we have had enough drill; we’ll march down to the distillery, boys, if you like.” And they did.

In the Talbot District, Training Day since 1812 had been kept up with constancy. In spite of that, the inhabitants were somewhat unprepared when ’37 came. But the gathering of the Loyalists, however isolated they were from one another, was willing and surprisingly quick. Old officers of the army sought for and gathered up volunteers; they had neither drum nor fife, but there was a ready response from willing hearts, and from hands equally willing, however uncouth and unused to arms. The most embarrassing hindrances, sometimes, to everything like organization and drill and obedience to orders were those same old soldiers when, as was generally the case, they knew more than their officers. They stood in the ranks, and at the same time found fault with every word of command, so that they demoralized that which they had brought together. No set of volunteers was more difficult to handle than the old soldiers who had settled in Adelaide. Captain Pegley, although himself a retired regular officer, found them almost unmanageable when mixed with the more docile farmers and farmers’ sons. After much adjuration he at length broke out into exclamations which, on the whole, suited his mixed audience better than set military phrase. “Haw, man! gee, man!” cried he, a startling contrast to the studied politeness of some of the subs, who, with nothing whatever of the drill-sergeant tone, whenever the openings in the ranks were too wide, would say, “Won’t you be kind enough to step nearer this way; now, you men, be good enough to keep your places.” The sharpest order delivered by these subs was, “Halt! and let the others come up, can’t you!” Wheeling into line disclosed a line looking like the snake fence surrounding the stubble field which contained the wheel.

Marching in quick time with one bagpipe and a fiddle, or with a single drum and fife, was not antidote enough to the stubble as they passed the gallant Lieutenant-Colonel in blue frock coat, white trousers shoved up from his boots, a round hat above his fat face, seated in unostentatious dignity on his venerable white mare, whose sides were blown out with grass and her neck adorned with a rope halter. “Now, men, _won’t_ you fall in,” he would pathetically inquire, while they showed every disposition to fall out. For, instead of the drum boy, in the centre of the parade-ground was a keg containing that liquid which in Lower Canada, when carried in a seal-skin covered bottle, was known as _Lac dulce_, or sometimes as old man’s milk. Then would Captain Rappelje command to drink the Sovereign’s health, which was done _con amore_; trials of strength, boxing and wrestling, would follow, when “Abe would knock Jehial as straight as a loon’s foot.”

What would men not do to keep these kegs full. Once Colonel Bostwick and Captain Neville were temporarily absent at the same time, while certain points on the river were guarded against surprise; the rebels were hourly expected, but failed to appear. Advantage was taken of the officers’ absence to cross at one of these points, to replenish the canteen. The boat, showing lights, returned before the expected time. Those on the pier bethought them of a Yankee boast to come across and eat the small village before breakfast. They prepared to fire into the boat, but changed their minds, and rushed to where their Captain and a companion were soundly sleeping. The pile of discarded clothing by the couch had been rather mixed, and the Captain measured six foot odd; his companion’s valour was contained in few inches.

“Come, come quick, quick, the rebels are upon us!” brought them to their feet, the big Captain thrusting himself as far as he could, and farther than the garments bargained for, into the unmentionables of the smaller man. They refused to cover below the calf; he tried to withdraw, they were obdurate, and in an agony of thought the enemy’s knock was heard. The small man had meanwhile decamped with a train at either heel. The Captain seized a jacket which matched the rest of his suit; in desperation he took the quilt, and in toga arrayed, like “that hook-nosed fellow of Rome,” reached the wharf in time to receive the whiskey kegs, where he delivered a lecture on breach of discipline and ordered the men to the guard-house. This Captain was a formidable figure out of his quilt, in his own red uniform with white facings and girt with a sword whose hilt of ivory and brass was further decorated with two beavers conventionalized beyond even the requirements of modern art. The sash, of double twisted silk, strange to say had been the property of John Rolph, who, during his life in Middlesex, had made his home in Captain Neville’s house--a queer foregathering, for we all know the one, and the latter was after the pattern of the U. E. Loyalist definition in 1777:

“By Tory now is understood A man who seeks his country’s good.”

Captain Neville and Colonel Mahlon Burwell had a friendly rivalry as to who would furnish the country to which they were both so devoted with the most warlike sons. Leonidas, Blucher, Hannibal, Napoleon and Brock, did they call their unprotesting infants, until a mother rose to the assertion of her prerogative when Wolfe was suggested for one of her babies. The most warlike of this cream of heroism weighed but two pounds when he came into the world, and was put in his father’s carpet slipper to be weighed. Great, then, was the consternation when at the outbreak the following regimental order was issued, embracing fathers and sons:

“You are hereby ordered and required to warn all the men from sixteen to sixty, within limits of the late Captain David Rappelje’s company, to meet at St. Thomas, 13th inst., on Wednesday, with arms and ammunition, of whom I will take command.” The same village walls held another order from Sir Francis Bond Head. The result was more men brought together than ever before in the history of the settlement. The Mansion House was the great rallying point, and here, after the Scotch fashion, business was discussed, the suspected ones talked over by the extra loyal, and toasts and maledictions drunk according to the politics of the thirsty. That part of the country was one of the most disaffected sections, and neighbour looked upon neighbour with suspicion.

Some time before this, roused out of his retirement by the tales of agitation which he heard, Colonel Talbot attended the only political meeting of his Canadian life. On St. George’s Day of the year when Sir John Colborne, one of his nearest friends, took such a conspicuous part in the provincial elections, a large party of his people went out to meet the Colonel on the way from his Canadian Malahide castle. They found him on the top of Drake’s Hill, from which a beautiful view was afforded of the pleasant valley they were ready to defend. He entered the town, surrounded by waving flags bearing “The Hon. Thomas Talbot, Founder of the Talbot Settlement,” and other descriptive legends. The venerable figure of the eccentric lord of the manor, Executive Councillor, friend and fellow-officer of Wellington, stood there surveying his flock, the majority cheering him to the echo; but knots here and there bestowed unfavourable glances on them and him. His address was full of wit and sage advice. Some of the veterans, clad like himself in home-spun, who had toiled under his eye and by his aid had emerged from poverty to wealth, stood, with hands in their capacious pockets, looking up at him as if they “could fairly swallow his words.” When he referred to the pains he had taken to preserve loyalty among them, “That’s true, Colonel,” came as involuntary response. “But,” said he, “in spite of all my efforts, some black sheep have got into the flock--aye, and they have got the r-r-rot-t-t, too!”

His well-known aversion to altercation or controversy resulted in his being the only speaker. A loyal address was dictated by him extolling the blessings of government as then enjoyed and resting the blame of disaffection on the religious teaching of a certain lot of immigrants who had come to the Talbot Settlement in time to enjoy its prosperity, and then, not having the devotion bred by being first-comers, found it easy to pick flaws. The year ’37 brought to them a mysterious individual mounted on a cream-coloured horse which ambled him along the lanes and roads of Yarmouth. Like the clock peddler, the stranger wore deep green glasses in his spectacles. After his labours of disseminating dissension were over he managed to make his escape, but the cream-coloured nag figured as an officer’s charger on the Loyalist side--according to his late owner’s opinion, much after the manner of the unmounted Glengarries whose humour it was to steal at a moment’s rest--“convey, the wise it call”--but from the opposite point of view was _pressed_ into government service. It was an animal of no prejudices, for with its rider it was always in the van.

Of those whose looks burned as they listened to the Colonel, and who would not subscribe to the address, some were yet to stand upon the drop to die for treason--a dignified name with which Colonel Talbot, in common with Drew, Prince and others, would have had little patience. These disaffected were chiefly influenced by an Englishman, George Lawton, who, like a good many of the demagogues of that day, had been a factious pate elsewhere. Concerned in the Bristol Riots, he was well up in the catch-words which thrilled the crowds there, and he used his strong mind and nimble tongue upon Canadian complications. He had to escape, somehow, from the consequences of his acts at home; so a sham illness and a sham death, a stuffed coffin and a funeral, and a voyage of the supposed deceased brought George Lawton to the Talbot District to sow those “seed-grains” of revolutionary doctrine which were to make him a second time an outcast. One of the first persons he met in this country was a chief mourner who had followed his coffin to the grave.

As early as ’33, Colonel Talbot writes to a friend: “My rebels endeavoured to hold a meeting at St. Thomas on the 17th, Dr. Franklin’s birthday as I am informed, but in which they were frustrated by my Royal Guards, who routed the rascals at all points and drove them out of the village like sheep, numbers with broken heads leaving their hats behind them--the glorious work of old Colonel Hickory. In short, it was a most splendid victory. Mr. Fraser, the Wesleyan minister, behaved admirably on the occasion, and I scarcely think they will venture to call another meeting in St. Thomas. Their object was to form a political union, the articles of which were to elect the Legislative Council and magistrates.”

At all periods of the Rebellion Talbot’s District provided much “sympathy.” Several men from Port Stanley set out to join the sympathisers who were making ready at Detroit. Their small vessel was provided with boiler and machinery, and they made fair headway until off a spot near the Lake Road, when the rudder gave way. In a frenzy of conscience the boat made for her own shore and stuck in the sand-bank. Just at that point there happened to be a small company of dragoons, who, when they saw the boat coming towards them, with armed men in it, divided into two parties and galloped off in opposite directions. The officer of the company, in two minds to go both ways at once, solved his difficulty by popping under an upturned canoe. The would-be saviours of their country in the rebel boat got clear of the sand-bank and made off, upon which the dragoons galloped back to look after their captain. After a careful search, for he was very coy, they found him under his canoe canopy, not a bad makeshift where umbrellas were not procurable.

* * * * *

There was scarcely a locality which did not give evidence that the rebel spirit had a lodgment not far off. But also in each there were martial spirits eager and willing to lead or be one of loyalist troops. Some of them tell their own stories so well that it would be a pity to garble or curtail them. One man describes how he gave up his professional work, as the winter and the Rebellion were coming on together. “... The political horizon at that time looked rather squally. The Rads. were holding frequent meetings in different parts of the country, at which loud and long speeches were made to the ignorant and wicked, until it broke out in a general rising among the disaffected portion--which was the largest portion of the County of York. In Simcoe the Rads. were fully half the population; but they did not turn out for fear of the other half, among whom were many fiery Orangemen. And to this Order I attribute the safety of our country, although many loyal men, not Orangemen, turned out in behalf of the Government. Without these men we should have failed, as, before troops could arrive from England, the Yankees would have flooded the country.

“The Home District appeared to be the stronghold of the disaffected in Upper Canada. On the 4th of December, as I was going towards Queensville, I met five or six men with rifles, whom I knew to be fond of hunting deer. We talked about hunting and I went on my way, when I met sixty or seventy more, straggling along, some with guns, some with swords, and others unarmed. They had several waggons with them, which appeared loaded, but were covered up. I began to suspect their object, but could get no satisfaction to my questions. Then I met a young fellow whom I followed into his father’s house, and saw his father give him a pair of boots and some money. That convinced me. I then turned back and followed the party, when I met a man who told me my suspicions were correct, and that they were going to take Toronto. I advised him to go home, but he said he dare not; so then I told him he had better go to the States. He said he would, and I afterwards learned that he took my advice. On my way south I went into the tavern on Tory Hill, and asked the landlady if she understood the movement, to which she replied that they were going to take Toronto, and she had known it for several days. Her husband and several others had gone there three days before, and I may say here that when I went to the city I found him there as a volunteer--either that or go to prison. I next saw Mr. Samuel Sweasey, and asked him if he understood the movement. ‘Yes, they are going to take Toronto, rob the Bank, hang the Governor, and when they come back they will hang _you_,’ When I asked him where his sons were, he said he had sent them to the woods to get rid of them, as the rebels were after them.” Between this narrator and his friends the news was soon pretty well spread in the neighbourhood of the Landing, Bond Head, Bradford and Newmarket as to what he had seen and heard. “Farther on I met several men, too great cowards to turn out with the rebels, but mean enough to give me great abuse on account of my principles.” He and various other officers met at Newmarket, and agreed to do all possible to raise quickly what force they could in their respective neighbourhoods, the narrator being assisted by one of his sons, who was a sergeant. “Two men had been sent from Newmarket to inform the Governor that there were a number up here he could depend on. These men were taken prisoners by Mackenzie’s party.... We felt much the want of arms. Orders were given to search for and seize all the arms that could be found; but we had poor success, as most of them were in the hands of the rebels and the rest were hidden away to prevent our getting them. About the 9th we heard that John Powell had shot Anderson,” followed by the rest of the doings after Montgomery’s. News reached the men of the north slowly, and for many reasons their march to the assistance of the city was delayed. “At McLeod’s inn, on Yonge Street, a most cowardly affair occurred. Some twenty-five or thirty of the Scotch and a few others, on hearing that a body of men under Lount was stationed in the Ridges, whom we might have to fight, turned tail and went home. Their minister did all he could to dissuade them; but home they would go. When he found persuasion useless, he mounted his horse and called for volunteers. A few fell in with him, and he and they were with us when we took up our march for the city.

“A certain officer had assumed the command, and was mounted on a horse that had been taken from a Lloydtown man as he was trying to get home after Montgomery’s. When we got down as far as Willis’s farm, at the entrance to the Ridges, a halt was called and a council held, and, as it was yet feared by some that there was a strong force of rebels in the Ridges, it was decided that a few of us, about eight, and mounted, should form an advance guard to reconnoitre. A man from the Landing had gone into Willis’s and got a gun, which when the colonel saw he called to the man to let him have. The other objected, whereupon the colonel went up to him and, in the presence of us all, wrenched it out of his hands. We were then ordered, the disarmed man one of us, to advance, which we did. The eight of us had two guns, three swords, one club, and this little party went through the Ridges while the colonel and his reserve waited for about half an hour. Hearing nothing from us in the shape of a skirmish they ventured through. When we got to Bond’s Lake I got a pitchfork for the man from whom the colonel had taken the gun.” At Thornhill they learned that the rebels were completely dispersed, and many were for returning home; but it was decided to continue the march and tender their services to the Government. “By this time we mustered pretty strong, as several had joined us during the night and morning, many of whom I presume would have joined the other party had they been able to reach the city and make a stand there. We had now some twenty-five or thirty prisoners that we had picked up as we came. These we tied and placed in two strings, somewhat in the form of Ʌ.” Arrived in the city the volunteers were inspected by the Governor, and thanked by him in Her Majesty’s name for the tender of their services. “When they came opposite to where I was sitting on my horse, Colonel Carthew said, ‘A more loyal man does not live,’ and upon this the Governor bowed twice and passed on.” Some ten or twelve of them did not accept their billet upon the people, but went to a tavern and paid their own way. “I was officer of the guard on the night that Peter Matthews was brought into the Parliament House (used as head-quarters and prison) a prisoner. On the next night I went with Mr. Robinson, Dr. King and Sheriff Jarvis to the hospital, where Edgar Stiles, Kavanagh, and Latra were lying, to take their depositions.” On the next night he was sent “with a strong party to Sharon, where we captured some thirty or forty and sent them to Toronto. For three or four days I was at Newmarket attending to the guards, as we had a number of prisoners in the Baptist meeting-house.... I was ordered to where Collingwood now stands to look for Lount, who was said to be there at a lonely house of one John Brasier. When we had got as far as Bradford a man was sent after us with a report that Lount had been taken somewhere below Toronto. When I went to Newmarket again I found that in my absence several gentlemen who had been nowhere at the first had come in, had got commissions and my men.... After this, some eighteen or twenty of us about the Landing and Sharon joined and formed a company for our mutual defence, armed with muskets. For a while we met for drill weekly, then monthly, and soon not at all.”

Lloydtown, although the seat of disaffection, had its loyalists, too; but as they were in the face of such odds they had to temper the exhibition of their loyalty with discretion. One of themselves says that when the call came for their aid they made a prompt response, but took the precaution to leave the village in small parties.

But loyalty was a term on a sliding scale, and a Scotchman whose vote was Reform was every whit as loyal as his Tory acquaintance who “suspicioned” him.