Canadian Transport Sourcebook

VII

CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE CANADA COMPANY

DISAPPOINTED AS he was, after eight years of untiring work for the community, at not being able to air grievances publicly by election to the Legislative Assembly in 1836, Van Egmond has nevertheless left in writing his arraignment of the Canada Company under Commissioner Thomas Mercer Jones, supported in such detail by apparently indisputable facts and figures that, taken altogether, it forms a highly valuable contribution to a knowledge of the political discontent in the Province that crystallized into the rebellion of 1837. He tells a long story of the Company's neglected duties and broken promises in regard to such matters of prime importance as canals, bridges, highroads, churches, wharves, schoolhouses. Not a canal has been built. Bridges only on the main roads, and with the expenditure of large sums of money which, according to the Home Government's distinctly expressed intention, should have been applied to the erection of churches and schoolhouses, the opening of side and concession roads and bridges for communication between neighbour and neighbour. As for churches, John Galt had planned to establish one at every six miles along the Huron Road; the Company has built not one. Van Egmond says he received in 1829 a solemn promise of 200 acres for churches and schoolhouses, provided he made a good commencement of a settlement. Though he succeeded in this, cleared at his own expense 4 acres of land, built a schoolhouse and paid for two years the schoolmaster's wages, and on some sabbaths more than 100 settlers attended divine service in his own house, the Company took back the promised 200 acres to themselves. As for the schoolhouses, "they were and are yet too prudent to build any such for us .... Well aware of it, that well kept and spirited horses are apt sometimes to kick, to raise high up their heads, and to throw their merciless riders, they always have been, and are yet, very attentive to keeping us down, poor, lean, and in ignorance besides."

For work on the construction of roads the Company used a method of payment which made it not only extremely difficult for the contractor to pay his men, but in the end amounted to fraud upon the settlers. Only one-third of the payment by the Company was made in money, the remaining two-thirds in "Land Credit". This Land Credit could be used for the purchase of land, at first in the Huron Tract only, but later elsewhere as well. This meant that the contractors had ready cash with which to pay wages for only about a year and a half. The Land Credits, which they had had to accept from the Company, had then to be used. The difficulty—often the impossibility—of finding workers who were willing to accept payment in anything but cash, resulted in great loss to the contractor owing to a great slump in the face value of the Land Credits which he had to accept himself from the Company. As Van Egmond points out, this amounted to fraud and personal gain on the part of the members of the Canada Company, who had instructions to pay wholly in money allowed them by the Imperial Government.

Van Egmond and his family of five sons and three daughters were energetic and industrious people. It is reported that he had become at one time the owner of 13,000 acres. One wonders if this great estate was entirely a voluntary purchase, or perhaps largely by "Land Credits" which, as a contractor, he had had to accept in payment from the Canada Company, and was practically compelled in turn to use in purchasing land from them.

The dominating role of the Company is humorously illustrated by the remark of an old man who had known it in its palmy days. In front of the Company offices in Goderich were two large posts, on which notices were posted. On being asked if all public notices were posted there, he replied: Why, dammit, there was no public; you were Canada Company or you were nothing.

The autocratic and unenlightened conduct of the Company after John Galt's departure embittered Van Egmond more and more. The fact that as a candidate in the election of 1836 he polled such a considerable portion of votes means that a large section of the settlers in the Huron Tract were with him in his condemnation of the Company's methods and his criticism of the general policy of the Government. He was not at first in sympathy with the violent propaganda of Mackenzie, but in their common advocacy of responsible government they found themselves travelling the same road, and from about 1835 they gradually came into touch with each other. Van Egmond writes to Mackenzie: "Our present disease requires the strongest of remedies; we the patients need a radical cure, no palliatives, humbugs."