Transcriber’s Note:
The correction listed in the Erratum hasbeen incorporated into the original.
HUMOURS OF ’37
GRAVE, GAY AND GRIM
REBELLION TIMES IN THE CANADAS.
BY
ROBINA AND KATHLEEN MACFARLANE LIZARS,
Authors of “In the Days of the Canada Company: the Story of the
Settlement of the Huron Tract.”
“The humours are commonly the most important and most
variable parts of the animal body.”
TORONTO:
WILLIAM BRIGGS,
Wesley Buildings.
| C. W. COATES, Montreal. | S. F. HUESTIS, Halifax. |
| 1897. | |
1
Entered, according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year onethousand eight hundred and ninety-seven, by Kathleen MacFarlaneLizars, at the Department of Agriculture.2
PREFACE.
The title of this book is built upon the assumption thathumour is a sense of incongruity, not that there was anythingspecially humorous in the affairs of ’37 beyond that which arosefrom the crudeness of the times.
A medium between the sacrifice of detail attendant on compilation,and the loss of effect in a whole picture through tooclose application of the historic microscope, has been attempted.True proportion is difficult to compass at short range, yet themotives, ideas and occurrences which produced the animositiesleading to the Rebellion were the inheritance, the specialproperty, of the men who lived then; and of them few remain.To those who do and who have so kindly given their reminiscencesspecial thanks are due. The works of the documentaryand the philosophic historian lie on the shelves ready to one’shand; but those who were “Loyalist” and “Rebel” arequickly dropping into that silence where suffering and injustice,defeat and victory, meet in common oblivion.
Like lichens on rocks, myths have grown about that time;but the myth is worth preserving for the sake of the germ oftruth which gave it birth. Historians sometimes tell the truth,not always the whole truth, certainly never anything but thetruth, and nothing is to be despised which gives a peep at thelife as it really was. For complexion of the times, the localcolour of its action, there can be nothing like the tale of theveteran, of the white-haired, dim-eyed survivor, whose quakingvoice tells out the story of that eventful day. A page fromPepys or Bellasys lifts a curtain upon what really took placewhen the historic essence fails; then some morsels of secret3history come to light, and motives and actions hitherto puzzlingstand revealed.
Were all contributed sentences herein to have their rights ininverted commas the publisher’s stock would be exhausted.The prejudice in favour of Italics has not been observed incertain cases. “A bas les prejudices;” in Canada French isnot a foreign language.
It is also assumed that every Canadian is familiar with Canadianhistory, and that some one