William Lyon Mackenzie

Picture: Upper Canada History

William Lyon Mackenzie (1795-1861) was the grandfather of one of the nation's most famous Liberal PMs, William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Scotland-born, Mackenzie arrived in Upper Canada in 1820, and soon began to publish a newspaper called the Colonial Advocate in the city of York (later Toronto).

In this newspaper, and later as a politician, Mackenzie was a strong critic of the "family compact," an upper class clique that had control of the colonial government at the time.

In 1828, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for the first time. Though he was expelled for libel a number of times, each time he was re-elected.

He became the first mayor of Toronto in 1834, and indeed the first mayor in the Province of Ontario and in that role he established the city's motto and coat of arms, and established various civic institutions. Instead of running for a second term, however, he ran for and was elected to the legislature at the end of his term.

In 1836 he founded another newspaper, The Constitution. His Reform party shared the popular discontent at the time with political patronage, land granting policies, and the routine favouring of recent immigrants from England.

The Reform party twice got control of the Legislative Assembly and in 1836 Lieutenant-governor Sir Francis Bond Head was sent out to quell the discontent in the House. However, the situation only got worse and in 1837 economic uncertainty and a resulting food shortage led to a crisis. At first, Mackenzie wanted to pressure the government by working with Lower Canada and boycotting imported goods.

But when Head sent troops to Lower Canada, Mackenzie was at the head of the Upper Canada rebels,
many of whom were Americans. The group met in a tavern and drafted a new US-style constitution for Upper Canada. However, this first rebellion lasted only four days. Afterwards, Mackenzie lived in exile in the US, where he wrote for the New York Tribune until he was pardoned. He returned to Canada in 1849 where once again he served in parliament and worked as a journalist.

Meanwhile, in 1837  in Lower Canada, Louis-Joseph Papineau had led a similar rebellion. In that province, however, much of the conflict was more between the French majority and the English minority, who did not want to be ruled by them.

After this trouble, Britain sent Lord Durham to report on the troubles, and he returned with the recommendation that the two Canadas be joined. More moderate leaders such as Baldwin and Lafountaine took the helm, the Province of Canada was created by the Act of Union in 1840, and Canada was finally on the road to responsible government.