HomeMy WebLinkAbout584"Newspaper article, photocopied from The Bay News, August 26, 1992 pg.7,
by Bruce Findlay RR 2, Claremont.
Pigeon and turkey shoots in rural Southern Ontario? They're not held here! Certainty
not as military training...at least, not now.
But much of Southern Ontario in the summer 155 years ago, and increasingly during the fall,
was literally alive with such contests — and for just such a purpose.
It was 1837, a vitally important year for us as Canadians, a year of events which shook the
twin colonies of Upper and Lower Canada.
For those events became turning points which helped, drastically and positively,
to shape the democracy we were yet to become as a nation, sea to sea.
Had Dr. George H. Gallup, pollster extraordinaire, been available to keep track of public
opinion here that summer, substantial numbers of the contestants at those community-
organized shoots could have provided clear indication of the seething frustrations which
many in this 46-year-old colony (founded by the Quebec Act of 1791) were feeling —
and were preparing to act upon.
Rebellion was afoot, and those remarkably popular bird-kill exercises offered legitimate
fronts for the rebels as covert military target practice.
The colony was divided principally into districts in those days. The Home District,
centred on Toronto, included all or much of our present counties of York, Simcoe,
Ontario and Peel. Toronto's population then was about 9,500; the colony's 70,000-plus.
William Lyon Mackenzie, first mayor of Toronto, was central to the leadership of that
rebellion of Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1837. But he escaped to the United States with
various of his followers before the year was out.
There he became, eventually, the legislative correspondent in Albany,
for The New York Tribune. Later he sought and was granted royal pardon for his
rebellious sins and returned to die here.
He is buried under a stone supporting a large Celtic cross in the Toronto Necropolis.
Not far from Mackenzie's grave is a uniquely distinctive marker which covers the remains
of Peter Matthews of Pickering Township and Samuel Lount. They too were rebel leaders.
But they were captured with hundreds of others in the days which followed the 1837
rebellion. Most were freed on relatively short order under pledges to maintain the peace.
Some were imprisoned here or in England. Some escaped from prison.
Others were deported to the Van Diemen's Land penal colony in Australia.
Others were executed.
Peter Matthews began clearing unbroken forest for a homestead in Pickering in 1799 —
on lots 17 and 18. of Concession 6 northeast of Brougham (Bentley's Corners then).
He was 13 and had arrived that year with his United Empire Loyalist father,
Captain Thomas Matthews, and family. Later, Peter too became a commissioned officer
(a captain in some records, a colonel in others).
He fought against the Americans in 1812. Still in his teens,
he married Hannah Major of Majorville in Pickering Township,
an important milltown on Concession 5 that was named after the Major family and was to
change its name because of the rebellion.
Peter and Hannah Matthews were widely respected Baptists who raised 15 children
on that land which eventually became theirs. Then Peter, importuned by some of his
neighbors and accompanied by his brother David, led the rebellion raid to destroy the
Don Valley bridge.
Lount was a blacksmith in Holland Landing (Gwillimbury Township). He too had roots in
Pennsylvania, settling first near Newmarket.
A deeply religious Unitarian, he was renowned for his kindnesses to destitute settlers.
With his wife Elizabeth, they had eight children.
He manufactured and repaired farm implements.
But Lount also made pike heads and provided them as arms for the force of farmers,
mill keepers, merchants, craftsmen and other settlers he helped to recruit and lead on the
fateful march to Montgomery's Tavern.
These men weren't alone in the events that followed.
Jesse Lloyd of Lloydtown provided liaison for Mackenzie
Continued on Page 9
with Louis Joseph Papineau and Thomas Brown, leaders of the rebels in Lower Canada
(QWuebec) whose insrrectionwas to begin some six weeks before the rebellion in
Upper Canada. to be continued
Management consultant and former journlist Bruce Findlay of Pickering wrote this
account for this newspaper. He's a member of a Claremont-Brougham area citizen
group which for some years has been striving to bring much greater local recognition of
martyred 1837 freedom fighter Peter Matthews. - editor.
"