Drawing Borders: The American–Canadian Relationship during the Gilded Age 9781441199072, 9781628927863, 9781441109125

Citation preview

Drawing Borders

Drawing Borders The American–Canadian Relationship during the Gilded Age David R. Spencer

N E W YOR K • LON DON • N E W DE L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 175 Fifth Avenue New York NY 10010 USA

50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK www.bloomsbury.com First published 2013 © David R. Spencer, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spencer, David Ralph, 1941Drawing borders : the American-Canadian relationship during the Gilded Age / by David R. Spencer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-9907-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. United States--Relations--Canada--History--19th century--Caricatures and cartoons. 2. Canada--Relations--United States--History--19th century--Caricatures and cartoons. 3. Editorial cartoons--United States--History--19th century. 4. Editorial cartoons--Canada-History--19th century. 5. American wit and humor, Pictorial. 6. Canadian wit and humor, Pictorial. 7. United States--Politics and government--19th century--Caricatures and cartoons. 8. Canada--Politics and government--19th century--Caricatures and cartoons. I. Title. E183.8.C2S68 2012 070.4’42--dc23 2012025686

ISBN: 978-1-4411-0912-5 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents Prefacevii Acknowledgmentsix List of Illustrations xi 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Analyzing The Visual Clash of Cultures Laughing At Ourselves: The Introduction What God Hath Joined Together The Trojan Horse What’s a Fish Among Friends? Looking Through the One Way Mirror

1 9 21 89 131 191 225

Conclusions271 Bibliography283 Index291

Preface I often get asked why I would entertain the idea that a book on editorial cartoons should be greeted as a serious academic exploration. My response is quite simple “they tell stories founded in illustration that gives the scholar a view to what life and its issues looked like over 150 years ago beyond language.” Serious scholarship in this realm has been relatively new. There are challenges to be sure. Many of the archival collections have yet to be converted to digital libraries at the time of this composition. With the exception of the large depositories such as the Billy Ireland collection at Ohio State University, many sources are not even indexed or catalogued. Working with original paper copies and reel upon reel of microfilm can actually return the scholar to the days before computers became mainstays in the world of academic investigation. I first became intrigued with this branch of historical investigation when I attended a meeting of the American Journalism Historians Association in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho in the fall of 1990. One of the presenters took a look at how Canadian and American editorial cartoonists broached subject matters common to both. The inspiration that came along out there rapidly became an obsession, mind you, as a good one. I began drafting papers to present at academic conferences and eventually the study took me to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the American Journalism Historians Association, to whom I owe a great deal of thanks for their support over the years, the nineteenth Century Studies Association, and the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States. As well, I presented my findings in a number of places here at home for historical societies and senior citizens days. Throughout my scholarly travels I have noticed an increase in presentations on editorial cartoons. I am also pleased to note the founding and success of the International Journal of Comic Art which gives scholars in this field a solid and very respectable publication source. Like any form of scholarship this begs presentations beyond the critical academic circle to which we belong. Following a series of presentations in my own back yard, a number of students approached me regarding the founding of a study for editorial cartoons here at the University of Western Ontario. I felt

viii Preface

that it would be a good idea, and my fourth year honors seminar was born. It is now in its seventh year with a mandate to explore relevant social issues from the mid point of the nineteenth century to the First World War. And now, the final connection, this book which you are about to read and enjoy.

Acknowledgments A book project is never the result of one person’s labors. To thank all the people involved in this work would take a considerably large amount of paper. However, since appreciation will be certainly noted here, there will be an attempt to pass along salutations to a maximum number of people. First and foremost I turn my attention to Lucy Shelton Caswell, the retiring curator of the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. I used my one and only sabbatical to conduct a research program on early American editorial cartoons. The consequence of that relationship was the development of numerous articles and book chapters. The experience provided a lead in to the work that has resulted in Drawing Borders. Secondly, I must pay homage to John A. Lent, the founder and current editor of the International Journal of Comic Art. This project was started in 1998 and was nurtured in my home university where he spent a semester in 2000 with the Faculty of Information and Media Studies as the first academic to occupy the Rogers Chair for studies in journalism and new technologies. Although too numerous to cite by name, I must add the folks in both the American Journalism Historians Association and the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. These respected academics were always willing to lend a helping hand when needed and they did much to shape the final product that will be soon before you. My two decades of involvement with the organizations and the people who work within them has been a road of considerable enrichment in which I have grown as a scholar. I would be remiss if I did not cite the people with whom I work here at the University of Western Ontario (UWO). I know that they showed considerable patience when confronted with yet one more tale of comic art that I had just discovered. The study of comic art and in particular editorial cartoons is a relatively new adventure scholastically in both the United States and Canada. Often my colleagues would drop in to ask if I had seen the latest drawing lampooning some political figure either here or south of the border. It became a learning experience. When I first confronted the fact that what I was dealing with was a large contingent of drawings locked into microfilm. This led to hours and hours of photocopying. Now, however, in the digital age, I

x Acknowledgments

am an expert on shooting and editing digital images that are still on reel upon reel of film. No, I did not discover this process by myself. I owe Allen Noon, UWO’s photographer, a handshake for showing me how to save tons of time and still produce a quality product. And one cannot possibly forget the people at Bloomsbury, especially Katie Gallof who can only be described as an author’s best dream. And let us not forget family. Without them, this project would have never seen the light of day. So, thank you to everyone who made this project possible I know who you are, and that matters. David R. Spencer London, Ontario, Canada

List of Illustrations

Chapter 2. Clash of Cultures 2.1 The Moon, November 15, 1902

13

Chapter 3. Laughing At Ourselves: The Introduction 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 3.20 3.21 3.22 3.23 3.24 3.25

The Sprite, July 25, 1865  22 The Moon, Volume 19, October 4, 1902 23 Punch In Canada, October 1849 25 Punch In Canada, March 1850 26 Montreal City Directory, 1859 28 Bishop’s Palace Painting, McCord Museum Montreal  29 Lovell’s School Books, 1864 29 Diogenes, June 18, 1869 31 Diogenes, April 16, 1869 33 Grinchuckle, September 23, 1869 34 Diogenes, February 3, 1870 35 L’Ami Du Peuple, Montreal, 1885 36 Canadian Illustrated News, December 1, 1877 40 Canadian Illustrated News, December 29, 1877  40 Canadian Illustrated News, April 12, 1873 42 Canadian Illustrated News, July 23, 1870 43 www.ourheritage.net/julien_pages/julien1.html47 L’Opinion Publique, Décembre 13, 1873 49 L’Opinion Publique, Mars 5, 1877  51 Le Farceur, Octobre 26, 1878 52 The Jester, November 8, 1878 53 Canadian Illustrated News, August 14, 1880 54 Le Farceur, Février 1, 1879 55 Le Monde Illustré, Mai 7, 1887 56 Montreal Star, August 29–30, 1907  57

xii

List of Illustrations

By town Coons Portfolio Montreal Star, n.d. By town Coons Portfolio Montreal Star, n.d.  Le Patriote, 1904 Grip, May 31, 1873 Grip, July 19, 1873 Grip, August 9, 1873 Grip, August 16, 1873 Grip, August 23, 1873 Grip, October 23, 1873  C. W. Jeffreys, Canada’s Past In Pictures, Alonzo Ryan, Caricature Politique au Canada, Montreal, 1904 University of Western Ontario 3.37 Century Magazine, July 1897 3.38 Grip, November 17, 1886

3.26 3.27 3.28 3.29 3.30 3.31 3.32 3.33 3.34 3.35 3.36

58 59 60 65 67 69 71 73 75 80 81 83 84

Chapter 4. What God Hath Joined Together 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 4.20

Punch In Canada, September 28, 1849 Punch In Canada, October 20, 1849 Grinchuckle, November 18, 1869  Grip, June 7, 1884 Punch In Canada, February 23, 1850 Le Perroquet, February 25, 1865 Diogenes, April 30, 1869 Diogenes, November 5, 1969 Diogenes, November 20, 1868 Canadian Illustrated News, July 23, 1870 Canadian Illustrated News, January 24, 1880 Saturday Night Magazine, April 7, 1888 Grip, May 10, 1879 Grip, June 19, 1880 Grip, December 8, 1888 Grip, January 31, 1880 Grip, June 12, 1875 Grip, October 15, 1892 Canadian Illustrated News, April 29, 1876 Grip, January 19, 1889

90 94 96 97 98 100 102 103 104 106 107 108 111 113 114 116 117 118 120 121



4.21 4.22 4.23 4.24 4.25

List of Illustrations

Grip, May 10, 1879 Caricature Politique, 1904 Grip, May 20, 1893 The Moon, February 14, 1903 The Montreal Star, December 8, 1888

xiii

112 123 124 125 126

Chapter 5. The Trojan Horse 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 5.20 5.21 5.22 5.23 5.24 5.25 5.26 5.27 5.28 5.29

Punch In Canada, February 16, 1850 Punch In Canada, January 26, 1850 Punch In Canada, November 15, 1849 Canadian Illustrated News, May 30, 1863 R. Urtica, Ottawa., 1871 Grip, April 25, 1891 The Jester, September 27, 1878 Canadian Illustrated News, January 30, 1875 Canadian Illustrated News, April 10, 1875 Grip, February 27, 1875 Canadian Illustrated News, February 18, 1875 Canadian Illustrated News, April 10, 1875 Grip, September 4, 1875 Canadian Illustrated News, February 12, 1876 Grip, March 4, 1876 Canadian Illustrated News, March 18, 1876 Canadian Illustrated News, March 25, 1876 Canadian Illustrated News, December 9, 1876 Grip, November 18, 1876 Grip, December 2, 1876 Grip, July 6, 1878 Grip, February 1, 1879 Grip, March 8, 1879 Canadian Illustrated News, March 29, 1879 Grip, March 22, 1879 Grip, April 26, 1879 Grip, August 14, 1880 Le Canard, November 16, 1878 Grip, August 23, 1890

132 133 135 141 143 146 148 151 152 153 154 155 156 158 159 161 162 163 165 166 168 169 170 171 172 173 175 179 181

xiv

5.30 5.31 5.32 5.33

List of Illustrations

Grip, October 18, 1890 Caricature Politique, Montreal, 1904 The Moon, February 14, 1903 Montreal Star, 1920

182 184 185 186

Chapter 6. What’s A Fish Among Friends? 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 6.15 6.16 6.17

Map, Maritime Fishing Grounds The Hecklers on Grip, 1884 Grip, March 12, 1887 Grip, September 8, 1888 Canadian Illustrated News, February 18, 1871 Canadian Illustrated News, May 4, 1872 Canadian Illustrated News, December 8, 1877 Grip, May 29, 1880 Re-Print, Grip, March 5, 1887 Grip, September 17, 1887 Grip, May 19, 1883 Grip, October 29, 1887 Grip, March 3, 1888 Dominion Illustrated News, July 7, 1888 Dominion Illustrated News, August 18, 1888 The Moon, November 15, 1902 Montreal Star, 1920 

192 195 197 198 205 206 208 210 212 213 214 215 216 217 219 220 221

Chapter 7. Looking Through The One Way Mirror 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10

Le Perroquet, April 5, 1865 Canadian Illustrated News, January 29, 1879 Grip, March 7, 1875 Canadian Illustrated News, July 29, 1876 Canadian Illustrated News, April 5, 1879 Canadian Illustrated News, January 14, 1882 Grip, September 8, 1883 Grip, May 31, 1884 Grip, December 6, 1884 Grip, June 11, 1879

227 229 233 235 237 239 240 242 244 245



7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 7.15 7.16 7.17 7.18 7.19 7.20 7.21 7.22 7.23 7.24 7.25

List of Illustrations

Grip, June 25, 1879 Grip, July 30, 1887 Grip, June 25, 1887 Grip, August 6, 1887 Dominion Illustrated News, August 11, 1888 Saturday Night Magazine, June 9, 1888 Grip, October 20, 1888 Grip, November 21, 1891 Grip, December 19, 1891 Grip, February 18, 1893 Grip, February 25, 1893 Grip, March 4, 1893 Canadian Magazine, May 1897 Free Lance Caricature, 1904 The Moon, September 20, 1906

xv

246 247 248 249 250 252 254 257 258 261 262 263 264 266 267

1

Analyzing The Visual

As Hanno Hardt observed in 1992 in Critical Communication Studies, “media play a significant role in the creation and reinforcement of specific images of the world, the manufacture of consent and the positioning of political and economic interests.”1 For scholars who employ a cultural studies approach, and in particular those who examine it from the left side of the political spectrum, this should come as no surprise. The root cause of the situation deals with the exercise of power. However, at the risk of being trapped by ideological concerns, let it be understood that liberties will be taken in this study and there will be as well times that Marx will have to take a back seat to other modes of analysis. As Hardt has noted, “communication research benefits from the general search for social and political explanations of society and continues to be part of an interdisciplinary theoretical debate.”2 This concept, based as it will be in some cases on economic conditions, or, in others, as a political and historical study, will emerge as the framework that I intend to explore in my study of Canadian editorial cartoons that were published between 1849 and the turn of the century. So, precisely what were these images and what kind of messages did they display in the emergence of the second new nation in North America? Hardt provides some solid directions. He rejects any thoughts of the validity of a scientific approach to the study of communications noting the prevalence of so called value-free modes of analysis so prominent in the work of academics such as Talcott Parsons. This approach used a highly statistical form of analysis which blocked investigators from the blood and soul of their sources. Fortunately, in many cases, we are off the hook when it comes to editorial cartooning since reducing a drawing to a scientific imperative is mercifully impossible. So what in Hardt’s approach is valid for us? He argues that “recalling history remains a necessary condition for mapping a course of action; it is the key to identity and understanding.”3 This approach, in a general sense, will provide us with an enveloping modus operandi for analyzing the images that

2

Drawing Borders

found their way into illustrated journalism in nineteenth century Canada. But we must proceed with caution. As Leroy M. Carl noted in 1970 A key fact about the editorial cartoon is that it’s like no other pictorial form and therefore assumptions about Pictures-in-general cannot be made about this peculiar art form. It cannot be equated with a photograph. It’s unlike the comic strip which tells a story via several panels. In reality, it is a pictorial puzzle often using words as well as line drawings and caricatures.4

The Canadian illustrated press which provided a home for editorial cartoonists was unlike other journalistic adventures such as trade union journals, monetary reform publications, farm reform movement newspapers, single tax pamphlets and temperance sheets, and a host of others beyond the daily press in the last half of the Victorian period. The more significant of these journals could point to clear-cut class lines in their readership. In fact a great number of these newspapers were launched because there was a general feeling that alternate voices were being excluded from the daily press.5 Although it would appear that illustrated journalism with its frequent pokes at political society was part of an activist sense in journalism, as we shall see, the pattern of ownership would prove otherwise. Illustrated journalism was very much part of the ruling elite and the cartoons in the main expressed their point of view in pictures while the daily press did it in words. In his 1990 study The History of the Comic Strip, David Kunzle argued that the comic journal6 was a critical player in the European illustrated journalism of the period which was roughly from the early 1830s to just after the turn of the twentieth century. He expressed surprise that no significant study of the overall European devotion to illustrated commentary which we will see began primarily with Charles Philipon and Honoré Daumier in France and the Punch crowd in England has ever been undertaken.7 It is even more surprising when one comes to grip with the fact that Freud established wit and humor as essential psychological components for expression and survival. However, one must not forget that although democracy was on its way in Britain and continental Europe, poking fun and offering criticisms of powerful figures was still a risky business. In many respects, this work will aim to fill a gaping hole in the study of the relationship between editorial cartoonists and those who made history in the early years of this country. It will come as no secret that the birth and growth of the genre in Europe influenced the rise of illustrated



Analyzing The Visual

3

journalism in Canada both in the style and use of illustrations and the focus of editorial commentary. Mercifully, Canadian editorial cartoonists avoided being prosecuted or incarcerated because of their work. It would appear when one examines the amount of literature that has emerged in the search for knowledge in editorial cartooning that the academy in North America at least has paid some attention to the genre. Paul Somers, author of the reference work Editorial Cartooning and Caricature, notes that the first study was released in 1813 under the title An Historical Sketch of the Art of Caricaturing by James P. Malcolm. Following this claim, Somers lays out a rather extensive bibliography in the second chapter of his book.8 It would appear that Joshua Brown, a social historian who wrote the definitive study of the Leslie empire in nineteenth century New York would concur. As he states “the illustrated press has had its outstanding histories, as experienced by the pioneering work of Budd L. Gambee Jr., Madeleine B. Stern, Robert Taft, W. Fletcher Thompson and of course, Frank Luther Mott” – all Americans of course. Canadian contributions to the field are few and far between. Brown goes on, however, to make an important distinction which brings him closer to Kunzle. He notes The ubiquitous appearance of images from Frank Leslie’s and Harper’s Weekly as illustrations in contemporary history books and articles merely serves to corroborate the nineteenth century lives, events and conditions discussed in the surrounding text, their use for largely illustrative purposes ignores news images as evidence of a social practice in its own right.9

This was a theme presented a decade earlier by Thomas Kemnitz who argued that the editorial cartoon was a valuable tool in the hands of the historian if only historians would take advantage of the treasures that lay before them. A few biographies and studies of cartoonists have appeared and there have been some descriptive histories of the cartoon. But most of these works are concerned with the cartoon itself. Rather than with using cartoon material as evidence to answer wider questions. The cartoons are frequently fascinating but their value to historians lies in what they reveal about the societies that produced and circulated them.10

As valuable as the observations of Hardt and Kunzle will be for this study, one must delve into the actual world of editorial cartooning to apply analytical concepts. It is at this point, that the reader must recognize that there is a clear

4

Drawing Borders

distinction between what can be described as comic art and that which can be characterized as editorial cartooning. They are not one and the same thing, although editorial cartooning is part and parcel of a larger world in which illustrations reign. In fact, although both can fall under the large tent known as illustration, the rationale for their respective existences differs significantly. In order to arrive at some form of consensus as to how to approach the drawings in this study, I now turn to the ideas of Linus Abraham, Charles Press, John Nerone, and Kevin Barnhurst. Abraham’s 2009 study, “Effectiveness of Cartoons as a Uniquely Visual Medium for Orientating Social Issues,” borrows heavily from the 1982 paper by M. A. DeSousa and M. J. Medhurst, “Political Cartoons and American Culture: Significant Symbols of Campaign 1980,” which appeared in the journal Studies in Visual Communication. Abraham notes that there are four basic analysis functions outlined by the authors. These are An entertainment function which derives from the ability of cartoons to make us laugh at situations and individuals; an aggression-reduction function which derives from the fact that cartoons provide a symbolic avenue for the public to vent its frustrations against social leaders; an agenda-setting function, through providing readers with a sense of the most salient issues and topics in society; and a framing function, the product of its spatial limitations (its condensed nature) and therefore its need to distill complex social issues into a single frame that captures the essence of an issue.11

Charles Press’ approach is not significantly different than that posed by Abraham with the exception that he has reduced four categories to two. He sees editorial cartoons in both the entertaining model and the social commentary model. In this framework, the social approach invites the cartoonist to make a visual commentary about life and its problems.12 Of course, the dimension in this approach can be quite large, running from local irritations noted in the daily press to major situations such as economic decline and warfare but it will provide the framework for viewing the illustrations in this work. Most of the material in this study focuses on larger and more problematic issues such as annexation of the state to the Americans, problems with free trade, battles over fishing rights, and the quest for a monetary union with the Americans. As Press notes, all such controversies pitch the problem of the ideal against the reality of any given situation. And in the simplest of terms, the editorial cartoon has as its objective the need to influence readers in much the same way that the written editorial does.13 However, it does not have the



Analyzing The Visual

5

advantage of the written words, and as a result it treads within the familiar territory of exploiting cultural icons known in its day and age. As we shall see, certain assumptions have to be made. When a cartoonist creates a drawing say for example using a character from Greek or Roman mythology to relate an idea or concept, the artist needs to be relatively comfortable with the idea that his audience will understand the underlying message or at least the concept will be somewhat familiar. This brings the art to a much higher level and takes it well beyond its simplest form as we shall see in the chapters to come. In looking at the impact of editorial cartoons Press suggests the following approaches. First, one must concede that the cartoonist is presenting what that the artist believes to be the essence of truth in the issue which appears in the drawing. Out of this comes the second mode of analysis, namely the determination of the message contained in the illustration. In the final analysis, the cartoonist is attempting to influence how the reader feels about what is taking place in the drawing. One should be prepared to subject oneself to issues that reflect intellect, conscience, and emotion although not always at the same time in the same situation.14 A cartoon can reflect at a minimum one of three things or in some cases it can comment on all three conditions. First, it can be as Press describes the purely descriptive, or it can communicate laughing satire or in some cases destructive satire. In the final analysis, the main mission that drives editorial cartoonists today and certainly did so in the period we are studying is the grand desire to forge a link between citizens and the ruling class.15 In the world occupied by John Nerone and Kevin Barnhurst, a new element enters the dialogue, namely what they describe as a realist ethos which they argue makes its way into the world of literature and into the emerging social sciences in the late Victorian period. The catalyst, they declare, was the Victorian illustrated press period and its devotion to pictures which could not possibly circumvent the truth, or so it was said. Seeing was believing. As the century progressed, George Eastman’s inexpensive little Brownie camera brought the visual to virtually anyone who had an interest. As well, by the turn of the twentieth century, photographs began to appear in the daily press. But it was not clear which journals saw themselves as part of the daily press system or those who chose to operate on a higher plane such as Harper’s, which referred to itself as a journal of civilization. No matter what designation these newspapers/ journals used, the main ingredient in each issue was the illustration and it was the illustration which was commissioned to tell the tale.16 Nonetheless, many editors who worked in the illustrated press regarded their enterprises as

6

Drawing Borders

adjuncts to the written word. It was their role to illustrate the main events of the week which had already been reported in the daily press and employ when need be editorial cartoons to provide interpretation and commentary. One of the most critical processes one can invoke to interpret the messages being sketched in an illustration is to understand the context that a cartoonist had to deal with to create the cartoon in the first place. In other words, the scholar must be both respectful of the kind of propaganda contained in an illustration and be sensitive that the piece is directly linked to some sort of historical event, either yesterday or a century ago. In every respect, in this situation, it is the cartoonist who sets the agenda for any discussion which may emerge from his/her interpretation of the world. Editorial cartoons do not exist in a vacuum.17 It is important that readers approach this study with realistic expectations. It is in most respects a discussion of Canadian history, but a Canadian history as seen through the visions and interpretations of a community of editorial cartoonists who operated in this country between 1849 and the first decade of the twentieth century. In the final analysis, as Kemnitz argues, historians must consider the purpose for which cartoons were published.18 Their views may or may not reflect the reality of the situation they are attempting to interpret. As James Carey has noted When we study the history of journalism we are principally studying a way in which men in the past have grasped reality. We are searching out the intersection of journalistic style and vocabulary, created systems of meaning and standards of reality shared by writer and audience. We are trying to root out a portion of the history of consciousness. . . . Journalism not only reveals the structure of feeling of previous eras, it is the structure of feeling of past eras or at least significant portions of it.19

In the final analysis, Carey’s conclusions will provide one of the frameworks for interpreting what we will be seeing in the Victorian period in Canada’s journalism history as it pertains to the use of illustration and specifically in editorial cartoons. In this respect, he reinforces the value of the analytical tools outlined above as they pertain to the role of journalism studies as outlined by Hanno Hardt. Along with Hardt, Carey will be joined by the respect for historical viewpoints in Kemnitz, Abraham, and Press and the tenuous but nonetheless valuable connect between the search for reality and the technology discussed by Barnhurst and Nerone that produced it. It will be the reality of the world of John Henry Walker, Henri Julien, John Wilson Bengough as they



Analyzing The Visual

7

interpret their world in pictures along with the many others not quite so familiar that we will seek to understand.

Notes 1 Hanno Hardt, Critical Communication Studies, (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 187. 2 Hardt, 2. 3 Hardt, 7–8. 4 LeRoy M. Carl, “Political Cartoons: Inkblots of the Editorial Page,” Journal of Popular Culture, 4:1 (Summer 1970), 39. 5 David R. Spencer, “Alternate Visions: The Intellectual Heritage of Nonconformist Journalists in Canada,” Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt, News Workers: Toward a History of the Rank and File, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 160–1. 6 Depending on the author, the concepts of the comic journal, the illustrated journal and such are all part of a much larger family devoted to the publication of materials which are based in the use of illustration to communicate concepts and ideas. In many ways, they are interchangeable in this study. There will be no fine line between the various kinds of publications. 7 David Kunzle, The History Of The Comic Strip, (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1990), 6. 8 Paul Somers, Editorial Cartooning and Caricature, (Westport, CT and London: The Greenwood Press, 1998), 43. 9 Joshua Brown, Beyond The Lines, (Berkley, Los Angeles and London: The University of California Press, 2002), 3. 10 Thomas Kemnitz, “The Cartoon as A Historical Source,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, IV. I, (Summer 1973), 81. 11 Linus Abraham, “Effectiveness of Cartoons As A Uniquely Visual Medium For Orienting Social Issues,” Journalism Communication Monographs, Vol. 11, No. 2, 119. 12 Charles Press, The Political Cartoon, (Rutherford, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1981), 12–13. 13 Press, 14–15. 14 Press, 62. 15 Press, 75, 78–9. 16 Kevin G. Barnhurst and John Nerone, The Form of News, (New York and London: The Guilford Press, 2001), 115.

8

Drawing Borders

17 http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca 18 Kemnitz, 90. 19 James W. Carey, “The Problem Of Journalism History,” Journalism History Vol. 1, Number 1, 1974, 5.

2

Clash of Cultures

When Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and U.S. President Ronald Reagan broke into song with When Irish Eyes Are Smiling on the occasion of the so-called Shamrock Summit in Quebec City in 1985, all was right with the world. After all, Canadians and Americans are each other’s best friends, aren’t they? In 1989, our maturing relationship led to the signing of the Canada–U.S. free trade agreement following Mulroney’s re-election in 1988. This eventually was modified to include Mexico in what became the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA as it is popularly known. Not only do Canadians have excellent economic and political relationships with their neighbor to the South, the two nations also share the longest undefended border anywhere in the world. They have worked with each other in both peace and war while not always agreeing with each other. The threat that potential hostilities of a serious nature could possibly break out between the two seemingly inseparable partners is unthinkable on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel today. Yet, just a century and a half ago, the two friends were anything but. In 1783, a humiliated delegation of senior British diplomats signed the Treaty of Paris, formally recognizing the birth of a new nation, the United States of America. The dream of a single, hegemonic English-speaking nation from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico, which began when General James Wolfe’s troops scaled the cliffs of Cap Diamant at Quebec City in 1759 putting the French under Montcalm to flight, lay in tatters. With the birth of America, new ideas and new visions took root in a malleable and emerging political culture. American liberalism and republicanism posed serious threats to the loyal monarchists scattered throughout the many towns and villages north of the Great Lakes. Specifically, those colonists worried that American politicians had dreams of annexing the British administered lands. The fear was not without merit. The Americans had willingly provided the evidence. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin had traveled to Montreal to set up a printing press off which

10

Drawing Borders

flew leaflets encouraging settlers along the St. Lawrence to join with American colonists to address their grievances to the British Crown. Montrealers refused to join the conflict.1 Americans were clearly the enemy, one which deserved the derision which emanated from the Crown’s loyal subjects in the North American colonies. Concerns about American intentions were not alleviated by the events of June 18, 1812 when Congress declared war on Great Britain. Many in the Canadian colonies were convinced that U.S. involvement in what was essentially a war between Great Britain and France was designed to weaken British resolve by forcing a fight on two fronts, one in Europe, the other in North America. Napoleon’s prize, when France won the war, was to be the annexation of Britain’s possessions to the United States.2 Musing in the Brooklyn Eagle and Kings County Democrat on the possibility of American annexation of Mexico in 1846, Walt Whitman asked “And who shall say how many more years will elapse before Canada will join our noble union?”3 Pillorying the very symbol of American liberalism and republicanism was as natural to a true and very blue early Victorian Canadian as breathing. Although a significant number of Canadians, at least those with English as a mother tongue, shared a heritage in the same European soil as their American counterparts, the border between Canada and the United States was one of ideology as much as geography. Along with les habitants who chose to remain on the shores of the St. Lawrence after the British conquest, the country was populated initially by the outcasts of the American War of Independence. Rather than return to Britain where few of them had any future prospects, they accepted land grants in what are now southern New Brunswick, the Eastern Townships of Quebec, and in Ontario along the north shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie. In U.S. parlance, they were Tories. In their own minds, they were United Empire Loyalists.4 They were primarily Church of England in religious persuasion. They founded Canada’s first conservative political party,5 the party which eventually formed the nation’s first post-Confederation government. As political scientist Gad Horowitz wrote thirty years ago: (In true Toryism) The good of the individual is not conceivable apart for the good of the whole, determined by a natural elite consulting a sacred tradition. Canadian conservatives have something British about them …It is not simply their emphasis on loyalty to the crown and to the British connection, but a touch of the authentic Tory aura—traditionalism, elitism, the strong state and so on.6



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An early student of Loyalist history, one Miss Mary Agnes Fitzgibbon concurred: The Loyalists of Canada, among whom there were several American Loyalists who had emigrated to this country during the War of Independence and following years, exasperated by the horrors of the war and also by the vehement tone of some American writers, were reciprocally aggressive in their writings. Some of them retorted violently to such of the American publications “written for show, designed for sale, and, to this end, pandering to the worst passions of a morbid nationality.”7

The attitude is perhaps best expressed in this 1865 commentary by C. E. Holiwell, a book seller, stationer, printer, and bookbinder commissioned to the British garrison at Quebec City. Writing in his short-lived humor journal Sprite Holiwell wrote Lastly, the Sprite is a Canadian Sprite; but British in thought, British in feeling, and will endeavour to be British in expression. He is a lineal descendant of the Sprites of Shakespeare and Milton, and Burns and Moore, and he will not discredit his illustrious ancestry. He leaves his American cousins, their modes and manners with a consuming affection, but he loves the land of his fathers and her old world ways a little more; he will here on British soil inculcate the one, discourage the other. Above all, he will seek to preserve our mother tongue in all its purity. To those who would Yankeefy our spelling and our style (and there are quite a number of barbarians among our public writers who write American English), he gives due notice that further persistence in their misdeeds will bring down condign punishment upon their silly heads. To these and all other malefactors, imposters, cheats and shams, the last words of the Sprite are— Read, Tremble and Amend.8

It wasn’t enough to draw degrading parodies of American institutions. Canadian journals long after the end of the War of Independence continued to publish articles questioning some of the most familiar symbols of American life. At the turn of the twentieth century, this was still in vogue. The Montreal magazine North American Notes and Queries published a tract in which it was stated that the popular American rhyme Yankee Doodle was in fact not American at all but British. The anonymous author argued that the original rhyme was known as Fisher’s Jig. It was a popular English past-time to add new verses to already popular tunes, some of which were composed by unmarried, close female companions of Charles I. Two apparently lent their names to a four-line nursery rhyme that was still being sung in 1900 to the tune of Yankee Doodle.

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12 Lucy Locket lost per pocket, Kitty Fisher found it. Nothing in it, nothing on it, But the binding round it.9

Compared to Charles, it could be contended that Lucy Locket’s loss was insignificant. In many respects, little has changed in the attitude that Canadians express about their American neighbors. In spite of the official warmth that emanates from Ottawa and Washington, there remains on one hand a deep suspicion of American social and political values, although it is not flavored by the hyperbole so common in Victorian times. But on the other hand, there is a long-standing envy of American accomplishments particularly in the realm of mass culture. At the risk of being too general, it can be argued that most Canadians wish to preserve the more organic nature of their tory-oriented social structures while continuing to spend their hard-earned dollars at Disneyworld, making U.S. television shows top-rated programs on Canadian channels and continuing a long standing attempt to lure a National Football League team north of the border. It is a classic “have your cake and eat it too” scenario. Nonetheless, American penetration of Canadian life continues to worry many Canadians, in particular in academic, creative, and political circles. Americans can come only so close to the fiber which Canadian author Robertson Davies once described as a “socialist monarchy.”10, a system created by what Canadian political scientist Philip Resnick attributes to …the absence of a revolutionary tradition, the relative weakness of democratic values, a subservience to things British and imperialist (which) go hand in hand with the economic needs of a staples-based, capital short, semi peripheral political economy like Canada’s. What results is an amalgam of Tory ideology and a strong centralizing impulse, the grounding of a potentially powerful state structure on counter-revolutionary premises, something I am tempted to call Tory Jacobinism.11

Clearly this has no resemblance to the America of Alexis de Tocqueville, an America born in a bloody revolution which produced ideas which Seymour Martin Lipset coined as “Whig and classically liberal or libertarian—doctrines that emphasize distrust of the state, egalitarianism and populism—reinforced by a voluntaristic and congregational religious tradition.”12 There is little doubt that many of the same conflicts were on the mind of C. W. Jeffreys as he drew this



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Figure 2.1  The Moon, November 15, 1902

cartoon for the Toronto humor journal The Moon on November 15, 1902 (See Figure 2.1.) The commentary was provided by William T. Stead who re-printed some of Jeffrey’s cartoons in his American Review of Reviews. A decade later, Stead would give his life to save others in the sinking of the Titanic. The hypocrisy of what is obviously a family of means is hard to miss. The library wall is adorned with portraits of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, each garnished with the Union Jack in proper and reverent British fashion. Yet the family is lost in a world of American publications such as “Jolliers Weekly”, “Sadie’s Home Journal” and the “New York Sunday World” from this drawing which appeared in The Moon on November 15, 1902 All the headlines in these papers in one way or another point to supposed American arrogance and claims of superiority. Yet, our readers seem in no hurry to read any British or Canadian

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journals. In fact, not one appears anywhere in the cartoon. The artist was more than an illustrator. Jeffreys brought both a scholarly and historical approach to the many cartoons he contributed to The Moon from 1902 to 1904. His vision of Canadian–American relations came to Canadian journalism after spending ten years, from 1892 to 1901, as an artist for the New York Herald. In many respects, he was the product of both cultures. In particular, it was his continuing interest and understanding of the early history of Canadian–American relations that made many of his cartoons particularly biting. At the turn of the twentieth century, Jeffreys like many others, was well aware that Canadian–American relations during the nineteenth century had been anything but harmonious. In fact, at certain times, they were so strained that parties on both sides of the border feared that warfare would break out. One popular concept that held great sway in the Victorian era was the notion that the United States wanted to realize the British dream of an English-speaking nation from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico and was prepared to use its military to annex Canada to get its wish. In all, the century was marred by a number of disputes including a battle over possession of the Northwest Territories, disagreements on U.S. involvement in cross-border raids by Irish nationalists, arguments over fishing rights, battles over copyright enforcement, criminal extradition, reciprocity and free trade issues, aboriginal rights, and boundary disputes to name a few. It has been Canada’s relationship with her neighbor to the south which has colored much of her political, social, and economic decision-making as it does in contemporary times. Those such as Lipset believe that the Canadian Confederation of 1867 was the direct result of a well-entrenched fear in Upper and Lower Canada that the United States would turn its massive battle-hardened army northward once it had subdued the rebellious American South.13 It came close but after the War of 1812 the only American military person who has ever stepped onto Canadian soil has been an invited, and usually friendly, one. Yet concerns about the United States and its intentions in North America were deeply entrenched in the popular culture of the Victorian age. In the introduction to the Labor Reform Songster, Toronto radical journalist Phillips Thompson observed that “songs will reach thousands to whom arguments would be at first be addressed in vain, and even veterans in the movement will listen to an argument in a better mood for having drank [sic] some familiar truth in the setting of a well-remembered air.”14 Labor war tunes such as Solidarity Forever continue to be trotted out in modern times. If the



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argument of familiarity can be made for music, it can certainly be extended to the visual, and in particular to comics and caricatures, the backbone of editorial cartooning. As we have observed, the cartoon can capture the moment of a historical event, the crime of the century, and the rise and/or fall of the mighty. In many ways, its validity exists only in the time period when it was first sketched. Even cartoons drawn as little as two years ago, cease to have relevance for present-day audiences. However, as Thomas Kemnitz has noted “…cartoons are frequently fascinating, but their value to historians lies in what they reveal about societies that produced and circulated them.”15 It is highly likely that the first cartoon used in a journalistic setting was printed in Benjamin Franklin’s pamphlet Plain Truth, with the drawing Non Votis or The Waggoner and Hercules sometime in 1747.16 His most famous cartoon appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. It was a simple drawing of a snake which had been cut into eight parts representing the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, New England, and South Carolina. Unsettled by the prospect of Britain’s European Wars spilling over into North America, Franklin added the caption “Join Or Die” through which he urged the American colonies to join together to defend themselves from the French Army based across the border in Canada.17 The snake image underwent a number of transformations at the hands of early colonial journalists such as John Holt, Isaiah Thomas, and William Bradford. It was in Bradford’s The Pennsylvania Gazette that the snake uncoiled forever with its last appearance on October 18, 1775. However, drawings continued to be included in various publications across the United States and in Great Britain. In 1788, what is probably the first cartoon series appeared under the title The Federal Edifice in Major Benjamin Russell’s Boston Massachusetts Centinel. In Britain, comic artists established the character Yankee Doodle Dandy around 1776, replacing the traditional American image of a female aboriginal. Uncle Sam, thought to be named after Samuel Taylor, a meat-packer who supplied troops in the War of 1812, emerged in the 1830s. By 1846, he had begun to make the transition from the character Brother Jonathan, courtesy of two British cartoonists John Leech and John Tenniel, into the icon that later became the symbol of Americana.18 However, Brother Jonathan as we shall see continued to appear in Canadian journals until almost the turn of the century. Following the Civil War, the cartoon came into its own right in both the United States and Canada as an editorial device. In New York, Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast savaged members of New York’s Tammany Hall

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political club with the consequence that its leader Boss Tweed went to jail on various charges of graft and corruption. In Canada, a young John Wilson Bengough sketched the Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald as he attempted to squeeze out of a scandal in 1873 when he was caught passing out railway construction franchises to political friends in return for electoral contributions. Although Nast effectively ended Tweed’s reign of corruption, Canadians forgave Macdonald and returned him to power in 1878.19 Nonetheless, both Nast and Bengough succeeded in establishing the cartoon as a legitimate force of both spectacle and commentary in late nineteenth century journalism. However newspapers were slow to accept political cartoons, with the consequence that during the nineteenth century most were found in illustrated magazines on both sides of the border such as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, The Canadian Illustrated News/L’Opinion Publique, Grip Magazine, Harper’s Weekly and The Moon, to name just a few. The first American editor to publish cartoons on a regular basis was James Gordon Bennett, who commissioned one C. G. Bush to illustrate an editorial perspective in the Friday edition of Bennett’s New York Telegram. In Canada, the first cartoons appeared in the Toronto News, a newspaper long associated with working-class causes as the voice of the Knights of Labor locals in Ontario.20 The cartoon did not become entrenched as a regular feature in the daily press until after the turn of the twentieth century in either Canada or the United States. As Paul Somers Jr. discovered, the rapid increase in the use of editorial cartoons was so alarming that four states, California, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and New York all seriously considered passing anti-cartoon legislation. Two, California and Pennsylvania, did, but by 1907 all these laws had disappeared from the books.21 There is no evidence that Canadian law makers, in spite of the country’s lack of democratic traditions, attempted to dissuade journals from publishing political cartoons. So, what can cartoons tell us about the time and place in which they appeared? This is a study of how Canadians in the past grasped their realities, real or imagined, in particular as they peered across the border to the growing industrial and commercial giant to their south. It was their consciousness that was on display in the various magazines and journals which rose and fell during the Victorian period. Through the pens of John H. Walker, Edward Jump, Henri Julien, John Wilson Bengough, C. W. Jeffreys, Alonzo Ryan, and Sam Hunter among others we will take a look at one of the dominant political and cultural values of Victorian Canada, namely anti-Americanism. There is no pretense



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that these views were shared by all the people all the time. But as Karl Marx reminds us, the ideas of the ruling class, literate individuals who bought and read the illustrated magazines of the age, more often than not become the prevailing ideas of that age. In a young, artificial nation with a severe identity crisis, those ideas were, as we shall see, largely of a defensive and negative nature. The significant consequence of this liability was noticeable. Canada was not well-equipped to make the transition to a secular, technological society in the Victorian age. Unlike the United States, it had been hampered by the dominance of two orthodox Christian sects, the Church of England and the Church of Rome, both of whom regarded church and state as one and the same thing. But, like all western nations, it found itself in the midst of a religious crisis which had been provoked when Charles Darwin published his On The Origin of Species. When, at last, Canadian theology merged, albeit somewhat uncomfortably with secular sociology early in the twentieth century, Canada produced, out of the Social Gospel, an activist, interventionist, and organic political movement of the left which continues to exist to this day. In many ways, the relationship to the United States dominated Canadian development in the Victorian Age in many of the same ways it does today. The contemporary issues, those of political and economic union, free trade, customs, and commercial union have returned to taunt citizens on both sides of the border. Yet, there is nothing new here as the reader will soon see. We are just re-living the events that taunted our ancestors over a century ago. In every respect, this is a history of how Canadians saw (literally) their nearest and largest neighbour in the years leading to Canadian nationhood and those few decades thereafter until the turn of the century. As Thomas Milton Kemnitz has noted The cartoon has much to offer the historian concerned with public opinion and popular attitudes. It provides little insight into the intellectual bases of opinion—for which the historian usually has better sources—but it can illuminate underlying attitudes. Not only can cartoons provide insight into the depth of emotion surrounding attitudes, but also into the assumptions and illusions on which opinions are formed.22

This historian will be turning to some of those “better sources” in an attempt to analyze the illustrations and their comments. As a consequence no cartoon will stand alone beyond the context in which it was published.

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The next chapter will provide an overview of the major cartoonists and the journals in which their works were published. The issues which dominated their attention will be introduced here, but the reader will have to wait for subsequent chapters to delve into the complexities of nineteenth century Canadian–American issues such as annexation, free trade, fish wars, and any one of a number of other irritations such as the Alabama claims issue, the Fenian Raids, copyright problems, and concerns about the extradition of criminals. This list of issues is by no means comprehensive. Meanwhile, American approaches to the same issues by cartoonists south of the border will have to wait for another volume.

Notes 1 E. T. D. Chambers and Raoul Renault (eds), North American Notes and Queries (Toronto, Ontario), Vol. 1. No. 1, June 1900, 29. 2 Chambers and Renault, Vol. 1, No. 7, January 1901, 202. 3 Gay Wilson Allen and Sculley Bradley, The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman: The Journalism Volume 1: 1834–1846. (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 380. 4 J. A. H. Leeds, “An Old U.E. Loyalist—A Story of the Early Settlement of Canada,” The New Dominion Monthly, Vol. II, (April, 1868), 27. 5 Goldwin Smith, The Political Destiny of Canada, (Toronto, ON: Willing and Williamson, 1878), 29–30. 6 Gad Horowitz, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada, An Interpretation,” Hugh Thorburn (ed.), Party Politics In Canada, (Toronto, ON: Prentice Hall, 1985), 48. 7 Mary Agnes Fitzgibbon, “The Study of Canadian History,” Raoul Renault, North American Notes and Queries, Montreal, Vol. 1, No. 7, (January 1901), 203. 8 Quebec City, P.Q, The Sprite, Volume 1, No. 1, (June 7), 1865. 9 Renault, Vol. 1, No. 2, (July 1900), 53. 10 Seymour Martin Lipset, “Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada,” (Toronto and Washington: C.D. Howe Institute and National Planning Association, 1990), 212. 11 Philip Resnick, The Masks of Proteus (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 39. 12 Lipset, 2. 13 Lipset, 43. 14 Philip S. Foner, American Labor Songs Of The Nineteenth Century (Urbana, Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press, 1975), xv.



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15 Thomas Milton Kemnitz, “The Cartoon As A Historical Source,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History IV:1 (Summer 1973), 81. 16 Paul Somers Jr., Editorial Cartooning and Caricature: A Reference Guide (Westport, Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1998), 1. 17 James Melvin Lee, History Of American Journalism (New York: The Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1917), 78–85. 18 Somers, 2–3. 19 David R. Spencer, “Bringing Down Giants: Thomas Nast, John Wilson Bengough and the Maturing of Political Cartooning,” American Journalism 15 (3), (Summer 1998), 61–88. 20 Somers, 12–13. 21 Somers, 13. 22 Kemnitz, 86.

3

Laughing At Ourselves: The Introduction

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. Hazlitt, The English Comic Writers In every respect, the study of editorial cartooning focuses on the differences between the way things are and the way one wishes they might be. Nothing has changed in this regard since the word “cartoon” was first used in the English humor magazine Punch in 1843. When the first editorial cartoons appeared in Canada before the mid-point of the nineteenth century, they were dominated by images of the first painful steps towards nationhood. Uncertainty about Canada’s role in North America was dominated by her fear of just about everything American. After all, the Canadian colonies had experienced direct conflict with the United States both as a consequence of the American Revolution and the War of 1812–14. As Hardt reminds us, one must recall history in order to set an agenda for the future. Canada’s earliest cartoonists did just that. It is interesting to note that there is little variation in the themes expressed by the cartoonists who shared what they thought ought to be in Victoria’s century. Although Uncle Sam does not appear in this cartoon first published in Holiwell’s The Sprite on July 5, 1865, the message is more than representative of the warnings about American intentions towards the lands north of the country that Seymour Martin Lipset called “The First New Nation.” In this early sketch, a generous John Bull representing the British crown warns a couple of young Canadian roosters that There’s a big old fox—they call him Jonathan—who has long had his eyes fixed on you, and if it was not for me he’d gobble both you and your hobbies up before you had time to say, Nap. You’re very small fish, to be sure, but that chap’s net will take anything; and as the sailors say of the sea and the gallows, nothing comes amiss to him. (See Figure 3.1)1

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Figure 3.1  The Sprite, July 25, 1865

With few exceptions, Victorian cartoonists focused on what would prove to be a fairly common interpretation of American designs on Canada through their portrayal of Uncle Sam, also known as Brother Jonathan and sometimes as Cousin Jonathan. One need not read any of the accompanying text in most of the cartoons drawn by the nineteenth-century’s major artists to get the intended message. In many ways, the cartoon of the period was a picture puzzle which challenged those who read it to unravel its secrets. While being an entertaining approach to political issues, the political cartoon also attempted set an agenda for the creation and advancement of a new nation called Canada. The demeaning of the Uncle Sam character was a necessity in Canadian illustrated journalism. He was frequently drawn as quite slender in contrast to the rotund figure of John Bull the British icon. More often than not, he was



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portrayed smoking in public, a “sin” commonly associated with bottom of the barrel low-lifes who spent their time loafing and drinking. In caricature, he became a sinister, crafty conspirator with imperial designs not only on Canada but the world. In the mind of the cartoonist who drew this set, Uncle Sam awakens from his imperialistic dreams to realize that he has become the laughing stock of the international community. This set of drawings which appeared in humor journal The Moon on October 4, 1902 is unusual in two respects. (Figure 3.2) First, the artist has signed the work with a pen name “Chic”, a procedure that was fairly common with newspaper columnists but not as prevalent amongst editorial cartoonists who seemed to have no reluctance to reveal their respective identities. Those who did prefer to remain anonymous were often employed in more than one situation, a fact they wished to hide from all their bosses. The panels signed by “Chic” have an unusual artistic resemblance to the later works of Arthur George Racey, an early twentieth century cartoonist for the Montreal Star.2 Second, the work

Figure 3.2  The Moon, Volume 19, October 4, 1902

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addresses several subjects through the use of eight panels. This was not at all common in editorial cartooning as Leroy M. Carl observed above but was more likely to be found in comic strips which had begun to appear just before the turn of the century thanks to artists such as Richard Outcault who introduced the Yellow Kid into the volatile world of New York City journalism in 1895. Of all the innuendo which appears in the eight panels, the first by far is the most damaging. Both Canada and the United States were involved during the century in an acrimonious debate about Chinese labor. Not only were the Chinese accused of robbing jobs from strong, young white males which earned them the enmity of organized labor, they faced accusations of turning their restaurants, laundries and social clubs into dens of iniquity in which a morally debased Caucasian population could partake of pleasures of the flesh and consume intoxicating opiates as Uncle Sam does in this panel. As it did with The Sprite, the morality issue once again comes into play. In the 1880s, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor included Chinese exclusion clauses in its platform in Canada.3 In the United States, the issue was no less furiously debated. Organized labor campaigned against the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 by which China and the United States agreed to recognize the right of citizens of both nations to emigrate to the other.4 As a consequence, any association that Uncle Sam may or may not have had with the Chinese, even in pictures, would have been treated as an act of extreme hostility by Americans. As a result, the eight panels of Pipe Dreams have a double meaning for the immoral Uncle Sam who is featured in this set. Uncle Sam’s purported treachery provided Canadian cartoonists with seemingly endless themes to explore in the many weekly and monthly journals that dotted the country’s newsstands following 1849, a phenomenon described by Frederic Hudson in 1873 as the art gallery of the world.5 They came with names such as Nonsense, The Grumbler, The Jester, The Wasp, Diogenes, Stadacona, The Gridiron, The Sprite, The Free Lance, The Bee, The Dagger, Paul Pry, The Poker, Grinchuckle, and Punch in Canada.6 Although not all of these journals published editorial cartoons, many did, although their appearances were often sporadic. However they did point to the political issues that were relevant at their time of their respective publications. They still provide us with one of the few visual insights into nineteenth century political life in this country in an age before the invention of the portable camera. It was an event in 1849 when Canada had yet to achieve nationhood that gave a political cartoonist his first major issue.



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J. H. Walker And The American Nightmare When a group of prominent Montreal English-speaking citizens decided to advocate Canadian–American political and economic union, it gave John Henry Walker the opportunity to become the country’s first resident political cartoonist. At the tender age of eighteen, he combined his skills as a designer and engraver to launch the satirical political journal Punch in Canada on New Year’s Day 1849. Walker shamelessly copied the successful format of the British journal Punch. However, he explored primarily Canadian themes, the most dominant being the vision that British colonials in what was to become Canada in 1867 had created about their neighbors to the south. Throughout the short life of Punch In Canada, Walker could never be depicted as a strident Canadian nationalist.7 Notwithstanding, his work was replete with strong, anti-American overtones, a strong defense of the status quo, and a respect for history, a situation that Walker shared with many a good Canadian Tory of the day. Walker’s vision of Canadian–American relations usually appeared in images in which the innocent and defenseless were challenged by those who wielded power along with lacking any sense of righteous behavior. Most of Walker’s

Figure 3.3  Punch In Canada, October 1849

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drawings were pieces of a complex morality drama playing itself out on the intellectual stages of mid-century Canada. Such an example is The Eagle and the Fawn. (Figure 3.3) The choice of an eagle and a fawn as the combatants carries with it the knowledge that one, namely the eagle, is a natural predator and the fawn is a natural victim. It is interesting to note that in this cartoon the fawn is not yet fully grown, thus making the attack upon it that much more morally reprehensible than it would normally be if the victim were an adult. On a second level, although Punch appears to be doing rather well in his attempt to corner the voracious eagle, let us not lose sight of the fact that John Bull in all his imperial presence is also rushing to the rescue in the background.

Figure 3.4  Punch In Canada, March 1850



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Fearing the American juggernaut, a debate had emerged in the colonies regarding its political future. In fact, its prospects for nationhood dimmed when an English-speaking mob attacked the Houses of Parliament in Montreal on the night of the April 25, 1849. The rioters were objecting to a law which would compensate French-speaking settlers for losses incurred in 1837 when William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau led ill-fated and poorly planned uprisings against the colonial regimes in what are now Ontario and Quebec. Independence was not the solution that Walker envisaged for Britain’s North American colonies. John Prince, a member of the Tory Party (Conservative), made a speech in the spring of 1850 advocating Canadian independence.8 It would remain one of three different options for Canada’s future. Even in this event, Walker saw the hand of America at play. He believed that Prince had caused legions of grief for his Tory colleagues with his rejection of party discipline by allegedly seeking personal, political rewards by cuddling up to the Americans, something his fellow Conservatives would never entertain. Relationships in the age of Victoria between the United States and Great Britain were strained to the point that to the United States an independent Canada would be preferable to a British presence north of the fourth-ninth parallel. He would not be the last Canadian politician to receive this treatment at the hands of Walker and those who followed him. (Figure 3.4) The Montreal riot and ensuing arson pointed to the deep divisions between Britain’s North American inhabitants that occurred along linguistic and cultural lines, cleavages which exist to some degree to this day. The inability of the English and French to develop a common approach to nation building left the colonies vulnerable to American ambitions at the mid-point of Victoria’s long reign. In reality, the colonists were faced with concrete choices. They felt that they could remain a colonial dependency of Great Britain, campaign for independence, or join the United States. There was no national consensus on any of the options. By 1852, Punch In Canada no longer existed and Walker temporarily left journalism. It had never been his full-time profession. Instead, he preferred to peddle his artistic abilities to anyone with money. In 1850 he had established himself in Montreal as a landscape artist and portrait painter. He also offered his services as a card and seal engraver, a craft he performed on both wood and copper.9 His first professional listing appeared in the Montreal City Directory in 1852. In 1859 he placed an advertisement which continued regularly until his death in 1899. (Figure 3.5)

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Figure 3.5  Montreal City Directory, 1859

Walker captured on canvas one of the most destructive events in mid-Victorian Montreal. (Figure 3.6) In July 1854, a fire raced through the city’s French quarter taking with it the Cathedral of St. James and the palace of Monsignor Ignace Bourget, the Bishop of Montreal. The palace, which had been designed by an English architect named John Ostell, was only two years old when it burned to the ground. Bourget, distraught by the loss of his church and his residence, refused to re-construct the buildings, opting instead for new edifices in downtown Montreal. His new cathedral, Reine Marie du Monde (Queen Mary of the World), built as a replica of St. Peter’s in Rome, still stands in the city center. It contains a sarcophagus containing the mortal remains of its founder. Walker’s painting of the disaster hangs in the McCord Museum in Montreal to this day. In 1864, Walker married a fellow Irish transplant, one Sarah Lawlor. The unfortunate bride suffered a number of miscarriages and died in 1878 at the age of forty. There is no evidence to suggest that Walker remarried.10 That same year he was contracted to illustrate school texts published under the title of Lovell’s Series of School Books. This 1864 geography text contains a series of Walker’s illustrations, one of which was a sketch of the skyline of Montreal from the St. Lawrence River. (Figure 3.7)



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Figure 3.6  Bishop’s Palace Painting, McCord Museum Montreal

Throughout the 1850s anti-American sentiment waxed and waned in the colonies. It was about to rise again at a fever pitch with the outbreak of the American Civil War. Great Britain found herself on the wrong side of the hostilities. When Captain Charles Wilkes of the U.S.S. San Jacinto boarded the British mail ship Trent and removed two officials of the Confederacy by force, Britain realized that she could be dragged unwillingly into an armed conflict with the United States.11

Figure 3.7  Lovell’s School Books, 1864

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Relations with the United States were further aggravated when, near the end of the conflict, a group of Confederate soldiers who had been hiding out in Quebec crossed the border and raided banks in the Vermont town of St. Albans. Their actions and that of the Canadian judicial system only further convinced the United States that Great Britain and as a consequence her colony north of the forty-ninth parallel were Confederate sympathizers. When the United States requested that the perpetrators be extradited to face the music, the judge hearing the case ruled that he had no jurisdiction in the matter and freed the raiders. The Americans were furious. They announced that they would not renew the Rush–Bagot Treaty of 1817, which restricted combat vessels on the Great Lakes. They tightened border crossings between Canada and the United States. The tension in the air was so high that Britain deployed troops along the border to thwart any attempts at an invasion from the south. In spite of the huffing and puffing coming out of official Washington, the Americans did not retaliate militarily.12 Neither side wanted to fight the other but the ensuing diplomatic fallout revealed that the British had lost their enthusiasm for colonial activities in North America. As Sir Richard Cartwright recalls But in 1865, and before that date, I have excellent reason for believing that the leaders on both sides, Gladstone and Disraeli included, would have been still more pleased if we had asked for our independence at once, as indeed the Times suggested we should do in so many words.13

Britain was determined to disengage itself from North America. The message was heard loud and clear in the colonies. Politicians put aside their partisan political agendas to sit down and create a new state. On the first of September 1864, they met in Charlottetown, Prince Edward’s Island, to set into motion the process that would eventually lead to the quasi-independent nation in the northern half of the American continent. Although the Charlottetown conference was not a success the second of two meetings, this time in Quebec City on October 10, successfully produced a manifesto for nationhood. Canada was to be a constitutional monarchy in the British image. In some respects, history was repeating itself. Any hope of a liberal–democratic, American-like congressional system, the dream of those who rose up against Toryism in 1837, was permanently put to rest.14 It is somewhat ironic that Walker missed, at least in a journalistic sense, the greatest event in Canadian American relations, the creation of Canada in 1867



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which was in every respect the consequence of both anti-American sentiment and fear of American intentions in North America. However, that is not to suggest that others were not trying their best to set political agendas through the use of illustrated journalism. As we have seen, Quebec City’s The Sprite went out of its way in the mid 1860s to demean those things American to British soldiers stationed in the colonies. Walker returned to illustrated journalism with the launching of Diogenes in 1868 with his friend George Murray. The partners were convinced that the new federal regime was the antidote which would counter American ambitions in North America. Walker, like many others concerned about the future of the nation, finally accepted the idea that maintaining colonial status was not an achievable objective. It was the combined efforts of Walker and Murray which produced a stable cast of characters which continued to appear in cartoons speaking to Canadian–American relations well past the turn of the twentieth century. In Walker’s agenda setting, it was the villainous Uncle Sam a.k.a

Figure 3.8  Diogenes, June 18, 1869

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Brother Jonathan a.k.a Cousin Jonathan who flirted with a virginal, white clad Miss Canada while a matronly Mrs. Britannia looked on in this cartoon which appeared on June 18th, 1869. (Figure 3.8) By the mid point of the nineteenth century, both Canada and the United States were involved in westward expansion. Conflict was almost inevitable. The Americans faced both hostile natives and Spanish colonists in their attempts to build a nation from Atlantic to Pacific. In Canada, the obstacle was just as formidable. It was the Hudson’s Bay Company. The company which had been chartered by the British crown in 1670 held exclusive rights to fur and other natural resources in the largest tract of land in North America. Its holdings stretched from what is now the border between the United States and Canada, from Lake Superior to the Rocky Mountains, northward to the North Pole including all the Arctic islands as well as what is now the northern half of both present day Ontario and Quebec. By the late 1860s, the company announced its intention to surrender the territory it called Rupert’s Land. The beaver had been severely depleted causing a serious shortage of fur with consequentially inflated prices in the continental market. Europeans chose not to pay the higher prices opting instead for silk bonnets to cover their heads. There was no incentive, other than obtaining a good sale price, to keep the territory. And, in the transactions which followed, Canada’s worst nightmares were about to come true. As The Canadian Illustrated News reported “Indeed it has been no secret that many of the stockholders of the Company have looked forward for years to the day when the United States would step in and buy them out.”15 It was the Canadian Government which stepped in. The new nation sent a delegation to Britain to argue that the rights to Rupert’s Land should be transferred to the Dominion of Canada. As The Canadian Illustrated News reported “although it is utterly preposterous to believe that the Imperial Government would permit the transaction, (sale to the United States) yet, there was a time when the prevalence of anti-colonial ideas gave room for trusting to the adoption of a different policy.”16 The Imperial Government at Westminster approved the sale of the lands to the Dominion for a price of £300,000. Although this cartoon is not signed, (Figure 3.9) considering that it appeared in Diogenes on April 16, 1869, it is either Walker’s work or he commissioned it. It is somewhat unusual in the Walker vein in that the drawing does not anchor itself in conflict but does predict that the Territories could become troublesome. Walker’s premonition proved accurate. Métis, under the leadership of Louis



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Figure 3.9  Diogenes, April 16, 1869

Riel, a member of the Canadian Parliament, took up arms in late 1869 and again in 1885. The rebellions ended when Riel was convicted of treason and hanged. It is not accidental that the Territories are symbolized by a bear, a beast whose temperament is unpredictable. It is also surprising, considering that the United States made serious overtures to the British Government to obtain Rupert’s Land, that Walker missed the opportunity to gore his old opponents. In this drawing, one of the delegation who participated in the negotiations in Britain, Sir John A. Macdonald’s Quebec lieutenant Sir Georges Etienne Cartier, delivers the bear and its pedigree to a cautious Miss Canada. Walker took his sketching talents to yet another Montreal based journal Grinchuckle later that same year. Here he added two more characters, Young Canada and John Bull to act as a symbolic forum where one could air grievances about the political process. Although Young Canada, in all his virility and purity did not become a fixture in Canadian political cartooning, the images of the bulbous, over-fed and rotund John Bull remained a fixture well into the twentieth century.

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Figure 3.10  Grinchuckle, September 23, 1869

In this cartoon, (Figure 3.10) once again there is a morality play underway. Walker’s pen reveals that the question of American influence in Canada is still a serious concern. The removal of the unkempt Sam dressed from head to toe in his stars and stripes “finery” from the Dominion of Canada by a straightlaced protector of the realm is the only righteous outcome when faced with the potential damage that the foreigner can inflict on Canadian national ambitions. The following year, Diogenes turned its attention to one of the more serious conflicts that emerged between the United States and Great Britain which threatened to involve Canada. The 900-ton battleship Alabama, a Confederate man-o-war built at Birkenhead, England, had avoided a detention order issued by the British Government in 1862 by slipping out to sea before it could be enforced. Before the U.S. warship Kearsarge sank the Alabama off the coast of France on June 19, 1864, it had captured and/or sank more than sixty Union vessels. The American government accused the British of complicity in the affair. As a consequence, the United States asked for damages in the neighborhood of



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$15.5 million. A tribunal at Geneva, Switzerland, meeting in 1871–2 agreed, although final payment did not come until 1885.17 The cartoon which appeared in Diogenes on February 3, 1870 followed what was initially reported to be a successful set of negotiations between American and British representatives which took place in 1869. Unfortunately for both parties, the American Senate rejected the settlement which had been negotiated by a close friend of President Andrew Johnson, one Mr. Reverdy Johnson of Baltimore, Maryland. On Tuesday April 13, 1869, the Honorable Charles Sumner rose in the Senate chamber to speak to the treaty. He was in no mood for compromise. “Three times is this liability fixed: first by the concession of ocean belligerency, opening to the rebels ship-yards, foundries and manufactories, and giving to them a flag on the ocean; secondly by the organization of hostile expeditions, which, by admissions in Parliament, were nothing less than piratical war on the United States with England as the naval base; and thirdly, by welcome, hospitality and supplies extended to these pirates ships in ports of the British Empire. Show either of these and the liability of England is complete. Show the three and this power is found by a triple cord.”18

The final vote was 54 to 1 in favor of Sumner’s position. In the cartoon, it is interesting to note that the United States and Britain are both represented by two characters. The innocent bystanders, Mother Britannia

Figure 3.11  Diogenes, February 3, 1870

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and Mrs. Columbia are consoling each other over the failure of the Alabama negotiations in the Senate while John Bull and Brother Jonathan keep staring at each other. The caption reads “Come Now, This Mess Will Never Get Settled As Long As You Allow That Boy Jonathan To Keep Stirring It Up.” (Figure 3.11) The character bears a striking resemblance to the strident Sumner. In the end analysis, 1870 marked the end of the public presence of Walker in Montreal’s journalistic world. Walker continued to work and prosper throughout the late Victorian period. But in 1885, he undoubtedly made one of his most significant contributions as an illustrator. In January of that year, a railway porter arrived in Montreal suffering what he thought was a bad cold or influenza. The failure to recognize the seriousness of his situation would result in 3,000 deaths over the next year. He had contracted small pox. As the epidemic took its toll, devout Christians began attending church services in increasing numbers, praying for an end to the curse. However, close human contact at Sunday services only succeeded in spreading the malady. The city became a battle ground between those advocating a mass vaccination program and isolation for the afflicted and those who fought what they considered to be dubious science. Health officials retaliated against the anti-vaccination forces by delivering masses of literature to residents, one of which was L’Ami du Peuple (Friend of the People).19 The broadsheet’s cover page carried a Walker

Figure 3.12  L’Ami Du Peuple, Montreal, 1885



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illustration, showing how vaccine could ward off the deadly designs of La Picotte (small pox). (Figure 3.12) Walker’s Diogenes and Grinchuckle were about to be replaced by a new form of journal, The Canadian Illustrated News/L’Opinion Publique which made its first appearance just before Christmas 1869. Its pages would be the home for two of Canada’s most prominent Victorian artists, Edward Jump and the first cartoonist born in Canada, Henri Julien.

Georges Edouard Desbarats and The Quest for Nationhood In late 1869, Georges Edouard Desbarats introduced Montreal and the rest of the country to his new publication The Canadian Illustrated News. Shortly thereafter on January 1, 1870, he added a French language version L’Opinion Publique. Other than the change in language, there was very little to distinguish the new Desbarats’ creations from any number of publications based on the visual which had emerged in Britain, France, and the United States. The mid- to late-Victorian period would prove to be a most hospitable environment for the new addition of images to a previously word-driven journalistic culture made possible by new technical advances, namely the introduction of lithography in the late 1820s. Desbarats benefited from being in the right place at the right time and by having a partner in William Leggo who was also an inventor of sorts. While other journals lagged behind in the development of technical reproduction of images, Leggo created the process that led to half-tone reproduction in the mid 1860s. The Desbarats printing house would become synonymous with the rise of illustrated journalism in Canada, although in fairness it must be noted that Desbarats and Leggo published journals primarily aimed at readers interested in entertainment and travel features. Yet each issue of the Canadian Illustrated News and L’Opinion Publique reserved space for reports on “serious” events in the country, most of which were accompanied by an editorial cartoon drawn by artists affiliated with the journals often published on the face page of the weekly editions. These two publications did not ignore economies of scale. The two journals regularly shared both stories and editorial cartoons. Yet editors Alexander Robinson and Joseph-Alfred Mousseau regularly proclaimed their independence from each other. But the fact remains that neither was independent of the

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founder and publisher Georges Edouard Desbarats who was deeply involved in the day-to-day business. Desbarats was a man with a mission. In 1870 L’Opinion Publique absorbed a French language newspaper L’Étendard National based in Worcester, Massachusetts, home to numerous French-speaking mill workers who had moved to New England from Quebec. He also created a new arts and literary journal called Hearthstone in 1870, followed by the emergence of the Canadian Medical and Surgical Journal in 1872. For all intent and purposes, the company was on its way to greatness. The unraveling of the Desbarats empire began in March 1873, when he decided to move south to New York City and take on the highly influential and productive publishing house of Frank Leslie. The new entry was to be called the New York Daily Graphic and it would be a trend setter. It was the first daily newspaper in all of North America primarily to use pictures as a narrative vehicle. Leggo had designed a reproduction process he called photolithographic processing which allowed for quick placement in the daily although the images lacked the detail and refinement seen in graphics based in wood engravings. However, sometimes ambitions and the need for capital collide tragically. Although the New York Daily Graphic continued to publish until 1883, by that time Desbarats had long retreated to Montreal to focus on his business there. By the time he had returned, Leggo had left his employ. As well, Desbarats’ massive spending routines finally forced him into bankruptcy. The publisher was saved at the last minute only by a family inheritance. Between 1869 and 1883, which marked the end for both the Canadian Illustrated News and L’Opinion Publique, the publications had carried some 15,000 pictures of life in Victorian Canada and elsewhere. As his biographer Claude R. Galarneau noted, Desbarats brought the world to his readers through the camera but one must not forget the artists who contributed another view of the world with the many single-page editorial cartoons in the Desbarats journal along with those in the New York Daily Graphic, beginning in 1873.20 Both the Canadian Illustrated News and L’Opinion Publique were 11 by 17 inch, weekly publications. They were also one of the first journals to include successful half-tone photographic reproductions, publishing a picture of the Montreal Customs House as early as 1871.21 Although these magazines consisted primarily of pictures of buildings, landscapes, and appealing town and city venues, there was no absence of the written word to explain the various



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political and social aspects of Desbarats’ view of the world which he was seldom reluctant to reveal. Like most French-speaking Canadians, Desbarats was concerned with both the possibility that Canada would gain independence from Britain and that it would not. This seemingly contradictory vision of the world was deeply rooted in Canadian history. Few French-speaking Canadians could forget the recommendation of British civil servant Lord Durham in 1839 that Britain make assimilation of the French in Canada a matter of national policy. The British did not officially pursue the concept, but encouraged English-speaking, not French-speaking, settlers to seek fortunes in the plains of Western Canada. Durham believed, and the British Crown agreed, that forced assimilation would not work. They also were convinced that populating the empty western lands with English-speaking immigrants could produce the same results, a factor Durham called the Louisiana example where massive movement to the southern state soon reduced the local Cajuns to a linguistic minority. Durham’s vision would restrict French speakers to remain confined in what is now modern day Quebec, Eastern and Northern Ontario, and Northern New Brunswick. As well, les habitants could not forget the forceful expulsion of their linguistic counterparts from the Atlantic provinces in 1755, a tragedy vividly captured in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1847 classic of two tragic lovers in Evangeline.22 On the other hand, they suspected that independence would accentuate the risk of possible assimilation by the predominantly Englishspeaking Americans. There was also the belief that as long as French Canada remained part of the Empire, it could remind the British of old alliances when the French stood with them to fight off American military aggression in both 1776 and 1812. As a consequence, both of the Desbarats’ journals reflected a somewhat confusing editorial outlook to the world. Desbarats often supported the concept of independence but was just as quick to condemn the British when they failed to support Canadian ambitions. On Canadian–American relations, Desbarats was less confused. To him, Uncle Sam and Brother Jonathan “were usually caricatured as cunning, not entirely trustworthy creatures.”23 The editor’s loyalties were hardly in doubt when he asked Henri Julien to convey his beliefs about independence and empire on December 1, 1877. Under the title Empire First, the sub-heading read “A Song Dedicated to all Canadians who are opposed to annexation and premature independence.” (Figure 3.13, Figure 3.14) A decade later he re-printed the song on December 29, 1887 under the title Empire First.

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Figure 3.13  Canadian Illustrated News, December 1, 1877

Figure 3.14  Canadian Illustrated News, December 29, 1877



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Shall we break the plight of youth, and pledge us to an alien love? No! We’ll hold our faith and truth, trusting in God’s love. (Chorus) Stand, Canadians! Firmly stand round the flag of Fatherland! Stand, Canadians! Firmly stand round the flag of Fatherland.24

However, not all Americans were subjected to Desbarats’ satire. On the odd occasion, the editor demonstrated a fondness for several American politicians. His journals never hesitated to laud Canadians when they won competitions against the United States either on the games field or in some scientific and/ or artistic undertaking. Desbarats was also one of the leaders who attempted to create a favorable impression of Canadians in the centennial celebrations in Philadelphia in 1876. His journalists and illustrators covered the events there extensively in the editor’s estimation, the epitome of both journalistic and technical excellence. It was within this climate that Georges Edouard Desbarats decided to include editorial cartoons in his journals. Many of the cartoons he chose to publish reflected the deeply lingering suspicions of the intentions of Canada’s neighbor to the south that had plagued Walker. Although his journals were published before data were collected on readership, it is apparent that the magazines were intended to appeal to a literate, self-sufficient class of people, obviously within reach of the top scale on the class ladder and with a clear stake in the country’s future, one which excluded the United States of America. There was little doubt that in this environment, with pressure coming from all sides, the respect for history as a critical resource for both English and French Canadians played a major role in determining content in many of the illustrations in this study. Desbarats, always conscious it would seem of the role he was to play as a journalist in these tempestuous times, enjoyed editorial success which continued uninterrupted until his death in 1893, although there were times when financial security was something he could only dream about. Until 1871, the cartoons in the Canadian Illustrated News/L’Opinion Publique were anonymous. The arrival of Edward Jump would change that. Jump’s foremost asset was his ability to draw caricatures, although numerous art critics felt that his ensemble work was weak. Although his name would indicate otherwise, Edward Jump was a Frenchman. Born in 1831, he emigrated to the United States in 1856. He lived for a while in San Francisco where he designed labels for whisky bottles. There, Jump worked for an expatriate easterner Benjamin F. Butler, who had left New York in 1851 and moved to San Francisco to establish a lithography business. Like Jump, who was undoubtedly influenced

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by him, Butler’s strength was in sketching caricature. While in the west coast city, Jump drew a sketch of a devastating earthquake, entitled “Earth Quakey Times,” which was indicative of his unique ability to combine humor with tragedy. The sketch is dated in Harry T. Peter’s anthology California On Stone as October 8, 1865. In 1868, he worked in Washington, D.C. where he shared a rooming house with Mark Twain. It was in Washington that he met and married a touring opera star, although Peters argues that the match took place in St. Louis. Following his marriage, he became an established and well known portrait painter in the American capital, regularly earning up to 500 dollars a week for his efforts. For

Figure 3.15  Canadian Illustrated News, April 12, 1873



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reasons unknown, but perhaps at the urging of his French-speaking wife, he moved to Montreal in 1871. For the next two years, he worked for Desbarats, drawing cartoons for both his publications in English and in French. He left Montreal in 1873, eventually turning up in New York where he drew for Frank Leslie’s The Budget of Fun and Wild Oats. He died in St. Louis some years later, a rumored suicide.25

Figure 3.16  Canadian Illustrated News, July 23, 1870

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While in the employ of the Desbarats company, Jump perfected the art of ridiculing politicians in sketch. The majority of his work shows a healthy skepticism about the political process and those in control of it. In one of the most popular series which ran in the journals, Jump dressed Canadian political leaders in costumes sported by characters in the classics. (Figure 3.15) Here we see Canada’s founding Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald clothed like Ulysses. The sketch also contains a quote from Pope’s translation of Homer’s Illiad, reading “Ulysses, first in public care, she found, for prudent counsels like the Gods renowned.” The use of the rhyme from the epic showed that the artist and satirist was also quite familiar with significant literary works.26 Although this cartoon is not signed, it was drawn in the period in which Jump found himself in Montreal. (Figure 3.16) The caricature of Britannia and Uncle Sam in the cartoon above are identical to later Jump cartoons featuring the same characters so it is relatively safe to assume that Jump drew it. The cartoon comments on the Treaty of Washington of 1871. There were two main thrusts to the agreement, one to settle the previously mentioned Alabama claims and the other to resolve a dispute that lingered from the Treaty of Paris, namely who had fishing rights on waters bordering both Canada and the United States.27 As noted previously, the Alabama claims were turned over to an international arbitration panel at Geneva in Switzerland. On the question of fishing rights, the Americans were granted nearly everything that they demanded in return for limited compensation for the right to work in Canadian waters.28 In this battle, Canada’s Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald stood alone. Although Canada was supposedly then an independent nation, Britain retained power over the foreign affairs of all its Dominions, a power that it did not surrender to Canada until 1931. Macdonald had the dubious chore of attempting to explain why his three fellow British negotiators wilted under American pressure. In spite of the complexity of the issue, Jump reduced it to one basic theme. In the cartoon, Britannia, acting on behalf of the infant Canada who is in tears over the issue, gives Uncle Sam the Treaty of Washington in return for an olive branch signifying peace between the two nations. It is somewhat unclear if the surrender is meant to maintain peace between Britain and the United States, or Canada and the United States, or both, since it was Canadian water space which was at stake in the negotiations. However, the threat of war is real, as shown in Uncle Sam’s left hand which carries a rather ominous cat-o-nine tails. It is also interesting to note that in the accompanying dialogue Uncle Sam speaks in an American slang



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which he does often in Canadian cartoons, while Britannia is perfectly literate. The vision of a crude, underdeveloped and unpolished Uncle Sam which began with Walker had not changed by the time Edward Jump came to Montreal, and as we shall see it was reinforced in the drawings of Henri Julien. Unlike most young Canadians of that period, Henri Julien saw a significant portion of Canada in a series of travels that were to influence his drawings in later life. At mid century, the Desbarats printing company drew up grand expansion plans which in turn impacted on young Henri. From Montreal, they sent the senior Julien to Toronto, the capital of Upper Canada and the bastion of English-speaking culture, to manage their interests. He arrived in 1854 when young Henri was only two years old. They stayed until 1860, but by that time the younger Julien had been exposed to enough of the English language that he could claim a degree of bilingualism. The return to Quebec meant another seven years in Quebec City. When Canada’s original four colonies joined to form a nation, the Juliens were in Ottawa, the new federal capital. His travels would shape his world view and emerge in his cartoons. Ottawa was an isolated lumber outpost that straddled the new provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Although the city was situated on the English-speaking south side of the Ottawa River, the city of Hull, now Gatineau, on the north side, was primarily French-speaking. It was here that anyone who wished to do so could choose to immerse oneself in both of the country’s founding cultures. It was ideally suited for Henri Julien. However, his Ottawa stay was brief. In 1868, he moved back to Montreal where he remained for the rest of his life.29 Montreal in those days was not unlike Ottawa–Hull. It was a bilingual, bi-cultural city but seldom did the two solitudes meet. French speakers lived for the most part in the east end. The English enclaves dominated the west end, where from mansions high atop Westmount Mountain they controlled the political and economic destiny of the city, the province, and to a significant degree the country. There is some confusion as to the exact age when Henri Julien Jr. entered into the service of the Desbarats publishing company. His obituary in La Patrie claims he was 21,30 but Marius Barbeau, one of his biographers, argues that he was only 16.31 The Barbeau version appears to have more validity. Young Julien was only 16 when the family returned from Ottawa and it is highly likely that his father pressured Desbarats into giving his son a position. Whichever version one accepts one factor is fairly clear. The young Julien’s life until 1874 was largely eventful in ways young men his age would never experience.

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Early that year, the Government of Canada decided to send a contingent of the North West Mounted Police to western Canada, ostensibly to clamp down on a flourishing liquor trade in what was a vast landmass scantily populated by natives and Métis, the latter descendants of French fur traders and aboriginal women. Although at one time claimed by France, the land officially became English in 1713 through the Treaty of Utrecht.32 Annexation of the North West territories by Canada did not put a smile on everyone’s face. In particular, the Métis population, who had been commissioned to hunt for the Hudson’s Bay Company, felt that the establishment of a French-speaking state between Canada and British Columbia would thwart the English-speaking internal emigration mainly from Ontario which began to head west in large numbers following Confederation. In their view of the world, that would not be a bad thing. The west was aptly described by a leading western Catholic cleric as “fourteen civilized nations and twenty-two Indian tribes, with Half-breeds (Métis)—the offspring of intermarriage between those of different races—have scattered over the immense territory about which I am writing, the extremely small population inhabiting it.”33 The Métis had a charismatic leader, one Louis Riel, who had succeeded in gaining the support of many English-speaking settlers in the territory. In 1869, he convinced them to form a provisional, republican government in which he assumed the presidency. He promised to bring peace and good government to the territory which had been plagued by infighting among various groups and a general breakdown in administrative services. However, that same year, Riel kidnapped the newly appointed territorial governor William McDougall as he crossed over the border from Pembina, North Dakota. Later, under the ruse of protecting French-speaking workers, he invaded the military headquarters at Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) and seized control. In 1870, the Canadian Government, concerned that the Riel uprising would demonstrate fatal weaknesses to its southern neighbors, sent a military contingent to the Red River settlements to enforce federal law and order.34 Riel and his closest followers fled for their lives and the Government of Canada founded the North West Mounted Police to bring order to the lands west of Ontario. Henri Julien was to play a significant role in the taming of the west. In June 1874, the Commissioner of the North West Mounted Police, Colonel G. A. French, wrote a note to Georges Edouard Desbarats inviting him to send a correspondent with the force on its next trip to the hinterlands. The colonel was specific that he wanted someone capable of sketching the life and



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land of the west, most of which was totally unknown east of the Manitoba border. He was also aware that the territory was filled with a variety of characters who would certainly resent the presence of his police force. As a consequence, the astute commander felt that if he were to reap all the benefits of a public relations coup, he needed someone young enough to be impressionable and old enough to do some first rate reporting. Julien fit the bill on both accounts. On June 3, 1874, Julien arrived in Toronto by train. He waited there for two days while officers packed two special trains with supplies and animals. The expedition arrived in Chicago at 6 p.m. on June 7. On the next day the travelers departed for St. Paul, Minnesota, where they arrived on the 10th. On June 13, the men found themselves standing on a plank railway platform in what would later become Fargo, North Dakota. The rest of the journey required a convoy —consisting of 22 officers, 287 constables and sub-constables, 310 horses, 67 wagons, 114 ox-carts, 18 yoke of oxen, 50 cows, and 40 calves—and was to be on foot. The young Julien did not see Fort Garry until November 5, after which he retreated to the headquarters of the North West Mounted Police at Fort Dufferin before returning to Montreal.

Figure 3.17  www.ourheritage.net/julien_pages/julien1.html

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Julien kept an extensive diary complete with 40 drawings of the west and its people. The sketch of a Métis with his supplies returning to his home on an ox-cart was one of them. (Figure 3.17) The west had captured the young artist’s imagination. Looking at Devil’s Creek he wrote “The scenery of the vicinity is wild and romantic, and sufficient of itself to suggest the odd name given to the water course. There is doubtless some Indian legend attached to the spot, but no one could tell me anything about it.”35 Publication of the sketches in the Canadian Illustrated News brought Julien fame if not limited fortune. They also accomplished the political agenda set out by Colonel French. Canadians began to see almost firsthand what they had inherited from the Hudson’s Bay Company. It did not take a giant leap of the imagination to realize what problems in governance and expanded settlement lay ahead. Upon his return, Henri Julien took up his new post as cartoonist with the Desbarats’ publications, the Canadian Illustrated News and L’Opinion Publique. He dutifully followed the political line laid down by his editors. For the most part, Julien brought the Tory view of the state to his cartoons and that view included a nation which was to extend itself from its base on the St. Lawrence River to the Pacific Ocean based on solidly British principles. It was to be democratic to a certain degree but not in the American way. Americans were not to be included in what was to become the largest public works project ever undertaken by Canada, the construction of a national railway from Montreal in the east to Vancouver in the west as well as a line from Montreal to the Maritimes. In fact, British Columbia only agreed to join the Confederation project after Canada’s founding Prime Minister promised the new province that it would be tied to the rest of the country by a highway of steel. Macdonald’s misguided zeal in promoting the railway deal was directly responsible for the birth of another Canadian satire journal named Grip in 1873 in Toronto. But more on that later. Macdonald’s Tories had lost the 1873 federal election amidst criminal charges of official corruption. It was up to his successor Alexander Mackenzie, a stone mason from southwestern Ontario, to assume responsibility for the railway project. Julien commented on the project and Mackenzie’s approach to it with this cartoon spread over two pages in the center folds of both the Canadian Illustrated News in English and L’Opinion Publique in French on December 13, 1873. (Figure 3.18) In the drawing, Mackenzie, with the pointer in his hand, takes issue with Sandford Fleming, one of the creators of the world’s standard



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Figure 3.18  L’Opinion Publique, Décembre 13, 1873

time zones and a respected and well-known railway planner and a member of the consortium appointed by Macdonald to construct the line. In 1865, Fleming had been retained to study potential routes from Montreal to Halifax. Three possible alternatives had been surveyed, but Fleming chose a route around the Gaspé Peninsula which he claimed would give the railway access to the vast lumber resources of Eastern Quebec. His opponents, noting that his choice also came with the highest cost, accused him of pandering to fear of American intrusion into Canadian affairs. His route so it happened was the farthest of the three from the international border. Fleming did not debate with his detractors. The route, he argued, was also designed to ferry British troops to Central Canada in the event of war with the United States.36 Mackenzie sarcastically called Fleming the Professor of Financiering, Political Economy, Logic and Engineering, adding insult to injury by referring to him by the colloquial name of Sandy. Fleming responds, noting that Mackenzie is pointing to the halfway mark on the potential western route in the Province of Manitoba by telling the Prime Minister that he had always been taught to start at the beginning by his old master. Mackenzie curtly reminds Fleming that he

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now has a new master. Mackenzie then turns to George McMullen, a Chicago financier who was accused of attempting to bribe the previous administration to receive favorable construction contracts. McMullen, facing financial disaster should Mackenzie turf him out of the railway project, quickly agrees that construction of the transcontinental line should begin in the middle and stretch simultaneously east and west. Dissatisfaction with the Mackenzie government and its economic policies grew as the 1870s moved on. By 1877, the government had to concede that it had not managed to come to grips with the nation’s economic woes. As with most governments facing this kind of situation, the search for new revenues remained unabated while sources of income continued to dry up. In his budget speech of February 20, 1877, the Liberal Finance Minister Richard Cartwright told the Canadian Parliament that the nation was facing a deficit of $1,901,000 due to a drop in trade revenues and unexpected expenditures in the public works area. His solutions were met with cries of derision from the opposition benches after he announced a reduction in tariffs on imported lamp oil but increases of five cents per pound on tea. Tory member T. N. Gibbs rose from the opposition benches to admonish the government for such policies which he claimed had killed the sugar trade with Brazil and the tea trade with China and Japan. The Liberals, well known for their support for free trade, seemed to be in a very contradictory position. The “humor” of the situation did not escape the eye of Julien. In the Frenchlanguage weekly L’Opinion Publique, Julien offered his look at the controversy over a taxation policy which was, in effect, a revenue-producing tariff, one which would impact on the health and welfare of every Canadian. Entitled “Le Combat de la lampe à petrole et de la théière” (The fight between the coal oil lamp and the teapot), (Figure 3.19) Julien shows a sad looking sugar jar, wondering if there will be any real winner between these two victims of Cartwright’s budget. As his caption noted La gravure s’explique par elle-même, ete n’a pas besoin de commentaires. (The picture is self explanatory and does not need discussion.)37

Throughout the 1870s, drawing political cartoons was hardly a full time profession. Julien made his living as a freelance artist and caricaturist. Before joining the Montreal Star in 1888, Julien sketched for a number of journals, drawing the face page for L’Almanac du Peuple (The People’s Almanac), Le Canard (The Duck), Le Vrai Canard (The True Duck), Le Violin, Le Monde Illustré



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Figure 3.19  L’Opinion Publique, Mars 5, 1877

(Illustrated World), Le Franc Parleur (The Plain Speaker), and Le Farceur (The Joker). Julien’s primary source of income came from the founder of sixteen illustrated journals, one Hector Berthelot. A man with an eclectic lifestyle, Berthelot was well known in Montreal in his numerous guises as a translator, professor, reviewer and photographer. When he died in 1895, he left ten dollars in a will in order that his friends and colleagues could throw a party in his honour.38 Although little else is known about Le Farceur, it was founded by Henri Beaugrand, a longtime friend of Julien. Julien sketched its masthead. It first appeared on the streets of Montreal on Saturday October 26, 1878. (Figure 3.20) Le Farceur gave Julien a special place in the journal, sketching what the editor referred to as “Binette Politiques” or the “mug” or face of politics. The

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Figure 3.20  Le Farceur, Octobre 26, 1878

journal attracted attention amongst the political elite in both Ottawa and Quebec City, placing the young artist in the forefront of political commentary in the country. Beaugrand promised that the cartoons, to be drawn by “un jeune artiste canadien (a young Canadian artist) Henri Julien”, would never take sides in any partisan battle. Beaugrand clearly did not understand his protégée very well as his sketches drawn in Parliament at a later date would demonstrate. His drawings also appeared in Toronto’s Grip magazine, Harper’s Weekly, New York’s Century Magazine, as well as Paris-based L’Illustration and The Graphic of London, England.39 On May 10, 1878, Parliament was dissolved and Mackenzie called a general election. He was no match for the invigorated leader of the opposition whose follies during the railway scandal of 1873 had been conveniently set aside by Canadian voters. The old Scottish warrior was returned to power with a promise to develop tariff policies which would protect Canadian industry from what he determined was unfair competition from U.S. industry. Macdonald was disturbed by the anti-protectionist rhetoric that appeared in the Torontobased humor journal Grip, which he often suspected was funded by Mackenzie and the federal Liberal Party. Failing to buy the magazine from its editor and publisher John Wilson Bengough, Macdonald turned to a trusted ally, the



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Figure 3.21  The Jester, November 8, 1878

Desbarats publishing company of Montreal. In 1878, the company founded the English-language journal The Jester to promote the cause of protectionism. Its cartoonist was none other than Henri Julien.40 The journal only lasted for a few issues during 1878 and 1879, but it is here that we see much of the partisanship that characterized Henri Julien’s political perspective. On November 8, 1878, he drew the cartoon (Figure 3.21) which was to set the tone for much of his work before he left the Desbarats publishing company for the Montreal Star. In the sketch, Uncle Sam does not appear but is there in spirit. Macdonald sends political ally and future finance minister Samuel Tilley to Britain to promote the protectionist and anti-American National Policy, since at this point in Canadian history all initiatives that had a hint of foreign involvement had to be approved by Westminster. Macdonald could never be accused of being a free trader like Alexander Mackenzie, but until he unraveled his package of punitive tariffs aimed directly at the United States, the Prime Minister kept his feeling close to his vest. With The Jester, his views were no longer secret. Macdonald and his government were to prove to be no friends of the nation south of the border. During the period that Julien was sketching what he thought were the most important national issues, the country was facing a serious population problem.

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Figure 3.22  Canadian Illustrated News, August 14, 1880

Seven years before Confederation in 1867, 250,000 Canadian men moved south to the United States. The pace increased to the point that a decade later, the number had doubled. By the mid 1870s the figure had increased to nearly 750,000.41 Toronto journalist and historian Goldwin Smith, writing in 1874,



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noted “we are doing our utmost to draw emigration into Canada. But among friends, it may be whispered that our first business is to stop emigration out of Canada.”42 The crisis did not escape Julien’s easel. (Figure 3.22) On August 14, 1880, Julien paid homage to those immigrants who came to Canada to settle, to stay and prosper rather than using the country as a jumping off point to the U.S. His caption begins with “Canada Welcomes” as he returns to a more familiar caricature of a Victorian Miss Canada. She is in every respect the symbol of a young, beautiful, almost virginal nation, one with great opportunity and open doors. Of course, the underlying theme in the cartoon is no surprise. There is a balance between good and evil. If Miss Canada represents good, then the choice of evil is simple. It is very difficult to view “Exposition Universelle du Farceur,” an undated drawing by Henri Julien, (Figure 3.23) in any other light other than partisan. In the drawing, Sir John A. Macdonald is contentedly feeding hapless victims

Figure 3.23  Le Farceur, Février 1, 1879

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into a guillotine-like apparatus powered by a large elephant with the word “Protection” embossed on its skin. Although the machine has four different functions— creating national syndicates of manufacturers, lopping the heads of Liberal civil servants, rescuing the nation from bankruptcy—its most important function is its fourth and final one, “Pour utiliser les services de la Protection.” (for utilizing the services of protection) Inherent in all of Julien’s political cartoons was a strident and nearly naked anti-Americanism. During his long and productive career, various political leaders on both sides of the border supplied him with enough ammunition to fuel the flames of anti-republicanism and incite suspicion of the threat of liberal democracy. By the mid 1880s, Julien was coming to the end of his second career. He was about to abandon editorial cartooning. This drawing (Figure 3.24) was devoted to an annual ritual in the city of Montreal. May 1 is the date upon which all leases expired and the streets become jammed with residents moving to new accommodations to which he referred to in both of Montreal’s languages as

Figure 3.24  Le Monde Illustré, Mai 7, 1887



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“Déménagement—Removal.” By this time, Julien was aware that the Desbarats publishing company, which had printed the world’s first successful halftone photograph in its New York Daily Graphic on December 2, 1873,43 was slowly abandoning engraving for its new emphasis on photography. The company had changed its name to the Burland Lithographic Company to emphasize its move from journalism to contract printing and design.44 As well, the Canadian Illustrated News and L’Opinion Publique were leaving political commentary to the growing daily newspaper industry. On April 18, 1888, Henri Julien’s life changed forever. He became the first artist to occupy a full-time position at a Canadian daily newspaper. His contract with Hugh Graham, owner and publisher of the Montreal Star, stated “We will give you forty dollars a week to work for us exclusively, and will provide an office and keep you busy from 9 to 5 less an hour for luncheon.” The agreement also gave the thirty-six year old artist two weeks vacation with pay for the four-year length of the contract. In 1892, his agreement was renewed and he received a raise in salary to 45 dollars a week.45 At the Star, Julien seemed content to work as an administrator. Few of his sketches were signed during his early years at the newspaper. He judiciously avoided any form of political commentary until he began drawing the “By Town Coons” in 1897, although he had drawn a sketch of a number of federal Liberals in black face for the March 6, 1891 edition of the newspaper. The majority of his identifiable works was street scenes of his beloved Montreal. He sketched criminal trials, road accidents, and natural disasters, including a collapsing bridge catastrophe near the provincial capital at Quebec City. (Figure 3.25)

Figure 3.25  Montreal Star, August 29–30, 1907

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Figure 3.26  By town Coons Portfolio Montreal Star, n.d.

This is not to suggest that the Montreal Star did not carry political cartoons. Julien turned to John Wilson Bengough when Bengough’s Liberal (Party) and liberal (ideology) journal Grip closed in Toronto in 1894. The Toronto-based artist had appeared on a semi-regular basis throughout 1892. Julien also hired Arthur Racey in 1899. Racey, who succeeded Julien as the Star’s chief artist on Julien’s passing, became an institution in Canadian political cartooning for close to four decades.46 With the “By Town Coons,” Julien returned to political satire after an absence of nearly a decade.47 The series, which would certainly be condemned in modern times as racist, lasted three years and featured federal and provincial political figures drawn with black faces. This cartoon, like many other Julien drawings, plays on Canadian-American relations, which at the time the drawing appeared were still mired in trade and annexation questions. (Figure 3.27) Although the specific topic is not included in the sketch, it is apparent that something very bad took place in Washington when the Coon Quartette appeared there, and of course the suggestion is made that retribution for failure will be swift in Ottawa. Not only were the politicians expected to pay homage to their more powerful neighbor to the south, they were subjected to the humiliation of being forced to walk home in inclement weather. Eventually, Sir Hugh Graham issued a complete collection of the “By Town Coons” to a ready and waiting Canadian audience.



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Figure 3.27  By town Coons Portfolio Montreal Star, n.d.

On the afternoon of September 18, 1908, Henri Julien, in the company of his only son, left his place of employment in the offices of the Montreal Star. He had promised his wife who was summering at their retreat at Ste. Rose just north of Montreal, that he would take some vacation time and spend it with her, his eight daughters, and his son. At 5.45 p.m. he crossed the intersection of St. James and St. Francis Xavier streets in the downtown section of the city, making his way toward the offices of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Suddenly he stopped, threw his hands in the air and collapsed on the road. By the time that medical help arrived, the man who had become Canada’s first full-time artist in residence at a daily newspaper was dead at the age of 56.48 In death, as in life, his contemporaries recognized his extraordinary talents. Notices of his passing were accompanied by lengthy and glowing obituaries in all of the city’s English and French-language dailies. The Montreal Star declared “Indeed there are few if any men, who possess the craftsmanship of this Canadian.” The French language accolades in La Patrie and La Presse were no less glowing.49

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Figure 3.28  Le Patriote, 1904

Henri Julien was a key actor in bringing editorial comment on the issues of the day in the form of editorial cartoons. When Henri Julien died, his memory was kept alive for a number of years through exhibitions and publications. A number of scholars have published articles about him in books dealing mainly with his art as opposed to his cartooning. However, by the beginning of the Second World War, the Julien legacy had begun to fade from the public view. It was to return with a vengeance in the early 1960s when armed insurrectionists advocating independence for the French-speaking province of Quebec launched a program of kidnapping and murder. The terrorists who called themselves Le Front pour la liberation du Quebec (The Front for the Liberation of Quebec) chose as their symbol “Le Patriote,” (Figure 3.28) drawn by Henri Julien to honor French Canadian patriots who rebelled against authoritarian rule in the 1830s. It is doubtful he would have approved of their choice.

John Wilson Bengough and The Politics of Scandal In every respect, when Canadians think of the rise of editorial cartooning in Canada, they more often than not think of John Wilson Bengough. His life-long love affair with journalism and in particular sketching and cartooning evolved as an influence in his family as it did in the Desbarats clan. He attributed his



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interest to a series of events that took place in the United States during this youth. He had become fascinated with influence that Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast was exercising in New York politics. My interest in cartooning was first awakened by the work of Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly. I was amongst the devoted admirers of his elaborate and slashing full page attacks in that “journal of civilization” on Boss Tweed and the Tammany Ring, as the paper reached our town each week through the local bookstore. Nast had the field of political cartooning practically to himself for years, and must have inspired thousands of boys as he did me.50

This devotion combined with an activist political household was all he needed to develop the career he wanted. His father was deeply involved in politics prior to the formation of Canada in the Confederation articles of 1867. The senior Bengough chose to shape the fortunes of one Oliver Mowat, a leading intellectual in the Reform movement of journalist George Brown, a movement which gave birth to the modern Canadian Liberal Party. Captain John helped launch Mowat’s career hoping that his friend, a rising political star in the mid-Victorian period, would adopt the single tax principles of Henry George to which he and his son were both devoted.51 Sometime in the early 1870s Bengough tired of working as a reporter for The Globe and it was at this time he decided to launch the satirical magazine Grip the first edition of which appeared in Toronto on May 24, 1873. Grip was named in honor of the raven in the Charles Dickens’ novel “Barnaby Rudge.” Dickens was Bengough’s second literary passion. In the first issue, Bengough noted Dickens had not amongst his various and inimitable literary progeny a more original or entertaining creation than “Barnaby Rudge’s protégée, the wellknown and beloved raven GRIP. Though the raven race have no enviable reputation, being traditionally stigmatized as bearers of ill-omen only, there is no reader but likes GRIP’s company, for he is in all points an exceptional bird: there is for instance, such a wholesome contrast between his glad and frequent “Never Say Die!” and the croaker that perched upon Mr. Edgar Poe’s bust of PALLAS, and according to the latest account, “still is sitting, still is sitting there.” Well, having assumed his name, we will emulate GRIP’s virtue, and look for the same respect abroad.52

From that point to the end of the journal in 1894, Bengough never spoke in the magazine unless it was through the character Grip. In the first issue, he stated the journal’s editorial perspective.

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Drawing Borders GRIP will be entirely independent and impartial, always and on all subjects. Nothing unworthy of good breeding will be admitted to his columns, though it will be his to offer timely admonitions to all who may need them; and lastly, his literary character will be jealously guarded by all the clever people in the land. And now, as GRIP’s prologue is spoke, he bows and backs to his post, and the curtain, rolling gracefully down, shuts out for a little his generous patrons-he knows they’ll be so—the grave but sympathetic public.53

Almost as a side issue, Bengough announced that “a cartoon on a popular subject will occupy the third page of each issue. Political and Social Affairs will always be treated with independence.”54 It was not long before the cartoon moved to the face page. The success of a journal based on political commentary must have some political controversy upon which to comment. Nast had his Tweed and the Tammany Ring to gore in the pages of Harper’s Weekly. Although we do not know whether or not Bengough was gifted with great insight or happened to be in the right place at the right time, he launched Grip at the height of rumors that something was rotten in the government of Sir John A. Macdonald.55 In spite of the frailties of the flesh, Macdonald had a vision of a great new nation stretching from coast to coast based on British Imperial principles which he believed would help curtail what he regarded as the excesses of American liberal democracy in North America. And, like many of his contemporaries in Canada, he feared the possibility that the small nation forming north of the forty-ninth parallel would be swallowed up by the giant to the south. Annexationist sentiment was alive and growing in the Canada of the second half of the nineteenth century. It was supported by some of the country’s leading intellectual lights such as the psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke who yearned for a reunification of North American Anglo Saxonism with his idol Walt Whitman as “the prophet of world empire and imperialism.”56 The question came to a head, at least in intellectual circles, when Toronto academic Goldwin Smith published his treatise “Canada and The Canadian Question” in 1891 when he urged Canadians to abandon the dream of nationhood and submit to the pull of the south to create a strong North American economic and political union.57 The next chapter will deal with this subject in more detail. In 1871, the federal government signed the accord of union with the territorial government of British Columbia. It came with an extremely high price. Macdonald promised that his vision of the railway stretching from ocean to ocean was to be the steel spine upon which the nation was to be built. It would



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act as a barrier to any thought of American intrusion into Canadian affairs. As a man of his word, the Prime Minister introduced the Canadian Pacific Railway Act into the House of Commons in 1872. Following passage, construction was to begin immediately to take place over a ten year period.58 The government decreed that the railway should be built only on Canadian territory. A line through Michigan and the U.S. Midwest would have been much shorter and as a consequence much cheaper. As well, construction workers would not have had to face the unforgiving landscape of the Laurentian shield north of Lake Superior, which would prove to be both treacherous to workers and expensive to government. Future governments would prove to be not so nationalistically inclined. Faced with the history of the construction of the westward links, they decided that eastern links could pass through Maine and terminate in Halifax. Following passage of the legislation, the government set out to award contracts. The incentives were massive. The government set aside a fund of $30,000,000 and 50,000,000 acres of land as its contribution to the scheme. As Edward Blake, a Liberal member from Ontario noted “it is difficult for the mind to apprehend the magnitude of these figures. $30,000,000 is a national treasure; from 50,000,000 acres you can carve several independent states.”59 Rumors persisted in Ottawa that Macdonald’s government was prepared to award the contract to a Montreal consortium headed by Sir Hugh Allan. Like Macdonald and Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie, Allan was Scottish, hailing from a poor area of Glasgow. Determined to escape the poverty of the old country, he speculated what little income he earned in marine stocks. By the time that he contended for the Canadian Pacific contract, Allan had made a vast fortune in transatlantic shipping. His entrepreneurial spirit had attracted two influential Canadian investors George Stephen and Donald Smith. Smith eventually assumed the noble title Lord Strathcona. He was the man who drove the last spike for the Canadian Pacific at Craigellachie, British Columbia. Allan and his partners had been advocating the construction of a transcontinental railway since 1870 when the British government ceded the Hudson’s Bay Company lands to Canada thus making a transcontinental line feasible. In spite of the nationalist fervor that colored Macdonald’s rhetoric in the campaign to sell the project to Canadian voters, Allan lined up a consortium of backers who did not share in the enthusiasm unless the venture could prove to be highly profitable. In fact, most of the major players were Americans. Allan’s backers included George McMullen who had been born in Canada but had

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since emigrated to the United States where he set up a number of businesses in Chicago. McMullen persuaded other American investors to join the scheme including William Butler Ogden and General George Cass, both major figures in the Northern Pacific Railway. The most controversial acquisition was a Philadelphia banker named Jay Cooke. Cooke had been most vocal about his support for annexationists in Canada. He joined the scheme with the primary mission to ensure that the Canadian Pacific would become part of the U.S. rail system in the northwest.60 On the second of April 1873, Lucius Huntington, a Liberal member of the House of Commons rose in the chamber and made the following motion. “That Mr. Huntington, a member of this House, having stated in his place, that he is credibly informed and believes that he can establish by satisfactory evidence,- That in anticipation of the Legislation of last Session, as to the Pacific Railway, an agreement was made between Sir Hugh Allan, acting for himself, and certain other Canadian promoters, and G. W. McMullen, acting for certain United States capitalists, whereby the latter agreed to furnish all the funds necessary for the construction of the contemplated railway, and to give the former a certain percentage of interest in consideration of their interest and position, the scheme agreed on being ostensibly that of a Canadian Company with Sir Hugh Allan at its head.-That the Government were aware that negotiations were pending between these parties,-That subsequently, an understanding was come to between the Government and Sir Hugh Allan and Mr. Abott, M.P.,that Sir Hugh Allan and his friends should advance a large sum of money for the purpose of aiding the Elections of Ministers and their supporters at the ensuring General Election,- and that he and his friends should receive the contract for the construction of the Railway, – That accordingly Sir Hugh Allan did advance a large sum of money for the purpose mentioned, and at the solicitation and under the pressing instances of Ministers.”61

Huntington fueled the fire of corruption by further announcing that the money came from American sources, specifically from McMullen and his cronies. Parliament came to a halt. Finally, by the end of May, it was apparent that the nation’s business could no longer be conducted in the legislature and Macdonald prorogued the session which inspired the following poem and cartoon from Bengough. PROROGATION by a conscientious M.P. The boys are all dismissed again;



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The sweep has locked the doors and gone; Mid pastures green now rusticate In peace, brave ALECK and Sir JOHN What have we done, constituents dear? What have I of results to show? Let’s see; – you mean by way of work? I’ve got -why-hang me if I know!62

Bengough’s sketch of May 31 shows the Prime Minister with his hand on the shoulders of Alexander MacKenzie, leader of the Liberal Party, while trying to convince the opposition leader that the closing of Parliament was in effect “his turn to treat.” (Figure 3.29) It would not be the last time that the two Scots immigrants, the pillars of Canadian politics, would be sketched as a team by Bengough.

Figure 3.29  Grip, May 31, 1873

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At the center of Huntington’s accusation was concrete evidence. He had acquired a letter written from Montreal by Sir Hugh Allan to his partner in Chicago complaining about the tardiness of the negotiations which would award him the Canadian Pacific contract. As always, Sir Hugh remained optimistic about the final outcome which was being delayed by Macdonald’s concerns about the upcoming federal elections due in 1873. Allan advised the Prime Minister that his backers had to be assured that Sir Hugh was satisfied with any agreement. Macdonald conceded and Allan reported to his partners that an agreement had been finally reached. As his words demonstrate, this in itself was not particularly damaging. Yesterday we entered into an agreement by which the Government bound itself to form a company of Canadians only, according to my wishes, that this Company will make me President, and that I and my friends will get a majority of the stock, and that the contract for building the road will be given to this Company in terms of the Act of Parliament.

Then Sir Hugh began to drift into some more controversial aspects of his deal. Americans are to be carefully excluded in the fear that they will sell it to the Northern Pacific. But I fancy we can get over that some way or other.

He continued with the most damaging confession in the correspondence. This position has not been attained without large payments of money. I have already paid over $200,000, and I will have at least $100,000 more to pay. I must now soon know what our New York friends are going to do. They did not answer my last letter.63

Allan revealed that he had funded, almost single handedly, Macdonald’s bid for re-election. And, in spite of loose laws concerning the behavior of political parties in Canada, that was illegal. With the Houses of Parliament closed indefinitely, Macdonald felt that he could diffuse the growing storm surrounding the scandal. Although opposition members of the House of Commons did not have direct access to the Prime Minister in the daily debates, they did have access to sympathetic newspapers. On July 4 and on July 18 respectively, the Montreal Herald and the Toronto Globe published additional letters from Sir Hugh Allan which confirmed Huntington’s position that the contract was awarded in exchange for financial assistance for the ruling Conservative Party. The intricate knot



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Figure 3.30  Grip, July 19, 1873

that tied Macdonald (seen on the left below) and his finance minister Sir Francis Hincks (seen on the right) to Sir Hugh Allan (seen here in the center) was the subject of Bengough’s view of the matter in the July 19 issue of Grip. (Figure 3.30) The artist was inspired by the story of Laocoon and his war with serpents which Bengough adapted for his own purposes. Bengough also toyed with

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developing a new language to describe the major players in the Pacific Scandal. For Macdonald, he created the new word “Jonatiate” which he announced meant “to wriggle-prevaricate-recriminate-procrastinate.” For Sir Hugh, the word “Allanise” meant “to scheme-to subsidize-to affidavitise. George Brown did not escape the wrath of the cartoonist. He was pilloried for his coverage of the Pacific Scandal which Bengough felt was far too politically driven. Brown’s new word was “Brownoric” meaning “ambiguous-muddy-in fact brown.” The ocean to which the railway was to stretch was “boisterous-ill-omened-suggestive of sinking.” The politician who broke the Pacific Scandal, Lucius Huntington was one of the few who received favorable treatment. His word “Huntingtonic” meant “inquisitive-prying-impertinent.” However, Sir Francis Hincks word “Hinksize” was used to describe “a stick in the mud; that’s the size of that” said Benough. For his readers who were getting nightmares thinking about the Pacific Scandal, Bengough advised them that the situation could be resolved by staying awake. As July rolled into August, even Macdonald realized that the accusations of corruption and bribery would have to be aired in the House. He announced that Parliament would re-convene on August 13. Bengough was certain that the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party would not be able to survive the session. In his August 9 issue, he mused on Macdonald’s fate. Looking a decade into the future in the town of Kingston, Ontario he saw “a melancholy individual clothed in sackcloth seated on a fragment of granite. We were told his name was Macdonald, and that he had been a minister of something. He was singing a mournful ditty, the words of which we had the curiosity to preserve.” Harken to me, Christian people; while my sorrows I disclose, While I sing in doleful numbers, all the story of my woes; I, who once so gaily rolled up every large majorityI alas! am now no longer, leader Parliamentary. Carelessly, ah! Sir Hugh Allan! didst thou both of us betray; Why concealed’st thou not those letters from the fatal eye of day? Happy were those dark-age statesmen, who did never use to write, Thou hads’t roads built-I still governed-had we kept from black and white All the country to the canines, now in rapid progress goes, Brown has grabbed his final dollar and in Scotland seeks repose; I in grief all unavailing, sing my sorrows far and near, Give one obolus of pity to old Belisarius here.64



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In what eventually proved to be Bengough’s most memorable cartoon, he sketched what he felt would be the dominant theme to be laid before the members. In the cartoon, Bengough takes liberty with the old nursery rhyme “Four and Twenty Blackbirds.” (Figure 3.31) Presenting the dainty dish to the Speaker of the House, are Alexander Mackenzie, leader of the Liberal Party, on the right,

Figure 3.31  Grip, August 9, 1873

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who is accompanied by Edward Blake, who joined the Mackenzie cabinet after the fall of Macdonald. Macdonald is just below the speaker’s scepter. To his right is Uncle Sam representing the American involvement in the scandal. Just below Uncle Sam is Sir Francis Hincks. To his right is T. C. Patterson, owner of the Toronto Mail, one of Macdonald’s staunchest supporters. Immediately to the left of Hincks is James Beaty, owner of the Toronto Leader, another Toronto journalist and Macdonald supporter, To his left is Sir Hugh Allan, and finally just across from Blake’s elbow is the Honorable M. Langevin who was accused by the Liberal Party of stealing over two million dollars in graft money.65 The two journalists were included because both had what one observer noted as a “natural instinct to protect the government.”66 The Parliament of Canada began sitting once again on August 13 . Members had only one thing on their minds, the Pacific Scandal. The government was totally unable to conduct any business as accusations blew across the floor faster than a hurricane traveling up the Caribbean Sea. Once again, Macdonald pulled the plug before the day was out. Bengough was deeply disturbed by the events. In his August 16 issue he commented on the ways of politics with both verse and sketch. The Clear Grit, an old term for Reform Liberals, is a reference to opposition leader Alexander MacKenzie. The Clear Grit Chief, and ninety of his men, To Ottawa went, and then back again.

He recalled a humorous, at least for the time, children’s hymn which went as follows. If I were a cassowary, On the Plains of Timbuctoo, I’d devour the missionary, Hat and boots, and hymn-book too.

The Macdonald version read as follows. If I were a cuss-so-wary, On the Plains of Ottawa, I’d appoint Commission nary Till I’d papers got away67

His cartoon was not nearly as humorous as his verse. The anxiety that Bengough demonstrated throughout his life for what he felt was the decaying state of democracy is clearly stated in this drawing of Macdonald stomping on the



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Figure 3.32  Grip, August 16, 1873

prostrate form of Miss Canada. Note the liquor bottle protruding from his jacket pocket. (Figure 3.32) Macdonald made one major concession to the opposition. He appointed a three-person Royal Commission to investigate the charges. The three investigators, James Cowan, Antoine Polette, and Charles Day were all members of the judiciary and known supporters of the Government. The commissioners stated

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Drawing Borders …coinciding with Your Excellency (Macdonald) in the view that the terms of the Commission do not require them to pronounce judicially on the evidence, consider that their duty will have been fully discharged when they shall have forwarded to the Secretary of State the accompanying depositions and documents with this Report, in triplicate, as required by their instructionsunless a report of their opinion on the result of the evidence should be specially required.68

In essence, the Commission was only empowered to call witnesses and transcribe their testimonies. It had no powers to subpoena or punish those who refused to testify. One of the reluctant witnesses was none other than Lucius Huntington who felt that the Commission was nothing more than a process through which the Government could cover up all its sins. He had a point. The Commission sat from September 4 to the October 1, taking depositions from thirty-six witnesses. All were known Government supporters or hangers-on. The Commission, in keeping with its mandate, refused to lay blame. In fact, the entire report consists of no more than a few introductory pages followed by transcripts of the evidence and copies of correspondence between the principle players.69 In the August 23 issue of Grip, Bengough showed his disgust for the procedure by drawing a picture of Macdonald standing in the witness box in front of his appointees. (Figure 3.33) A closer look reveals that judge, witness, and attorney are all Macdonald in the cartoon in which Bengough accuses the Prime Minister of trying himself. Also note that the two prominent Toronto journalists who supported Macdonald without question are enshrined under the titles of the Mail and Leader, to the left and right of the bench. However, not all journalists were fooled by the antics of the government. In Macdonald’s home town of Kingston, Ontario, the British Whig declared that Public Opinion has for years been demoralized by the corrupt rule of Sir John A. Macdonald, a man whose abilities fitted him to play a distinguished part in the government of the country, but whose insatiable lust of office and unconquerable love of corruption have not only ruined any enviable reputation he might otherwise have earned, but have, to a lamentable extent, saturated the public mind with his noxious influence and lowered standard of public morals.70

While the Commission sat, the House of Commons did not. However, opposition members took the road and returned to their respective home territories to pillory the Government at every chance they had. Speaking in London,



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Figure 3.33  Grip, August 23, 1873

Ontario, just before the first Royal Commission hearings, Edward Blake charged that the Government was well aware of the implications of Sir Hugh Allan’s correspondence. He charged a faithful Conservative had been told to keep the letters secret until the next federal election had been completed. Blake pointed his finger directly at Macdonald and announced to his audience that he knew the Prime Minister was guilty of immoral acts of the highest order.71

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The Honorable David Mills, an Ontario Liberal M.P. speaking to an audience in Aylmer, Ontario, noted that it was impossible for any member of the House of Commons to vote on legislation in which that member stood to gain financially. But, as Mills pointed out, the legislation which granted the Canadian Pacific franchise not only condoned such behavior, but promoted it. He concluded his address by accusing Macdonald of accepting $45,000 from Sir Hugh Allan to influence the outcome of elections in Ontario. This, noted Mills, was a direct contravention of electoral law.72 Bengough came to the defense of Huntington whose refusal to testify in front of the Royal Commission resulted in several vicious attacks in the Tory press. Macdonald’s journalistic friends declared that Huntington was afraid to face the Prime Minister, lest his accusations be exposed for the lies they were. Editorial writers at Kingston’s British Whig were particularly incensed, but not because Macdonald was a native of the city. For them, the question of Canada’s British purity and morality had been severely undermined by the Government’s behavior. To the disgust of the editorial staff, Canadians were starting to behave like Americans where corruption and immorality typified by the Tweed scandals in New York were characteristic and thought to be normal in U. S. political life. In a reference to Canadians, the journal on July 22, 1873 noted that People have long thought that they were exempt from the corruption with which they were fond of taunting their American neighbors but they were furnished with proofs of greater political rascality in their public men than the other country was ever cursed with.73

Meanwhile back in Toronto, home of Grip, business matters involved some major changes. When the journal was founded, its first editor was Charles P. Hall whom some believe was a pseudonym for Bengough who was still employed on a full-time basis by the The Globe. “Hall” was succeeded on July 26 by Jimuel Briggs, D.B. (Dead Beat), a.k.a. Phillips Thompson, a lawyer who had become a journalist associated with dozens of radical and esoteric ideologies through the Victorian period. Thompson made the mistake of printing an editorial sympathetic to liquor interests, forgetting, or ignoring, the fact that his boss was a dedicated teetotaler and prohibitionist. He departed after the September 6 issue, at the height of interest in the Pacific Scandal. It was at this point that “Barnaby Rudge” and “Demos Mudge” a.k.a. R. H. Larminie of the The Globe became joint editors of the paper. It wasn’t until the March 29, 1879 that it was published for the first time that Rudge was in effect Bengough.74



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Under the Demos and Rudge mandate, Macdonald and his government came under close scrutiny in both verse and sketch. Free of Thompson and his flirtation with anti-capitalist attitudes and pro-socialist commentaries, Bengough brought a Victorian liberal and moral approach to his pillory of Macdonald. Although closely allied with the federal Liberal Party, Bengough refused to allow partisanship to influence his disgust at the Government’s

Figure 3.34  Grip, October 23, 1873

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behavior in the Pacific affair. He was an editor and a humorist driven by a need for morality in politics, a morality governed by the firm belief that there were right and wrong approaches to public decision-making.75 Bengough was encouraged when the Mail, one of Macdonald’s most fervent supporters, wrote in its September 26 issue that “We in Canada seem To Have Lost All Idea Of Justice, Honor and Integrity.” The defection of the Mail did more than inspire the accompanying cartoon by Bengough, it signaled the beginning of a number of defections by prominent Conservatives which would bring about the end of Macdonald’s government before the year was out. (Figure 3.34) Here Macdonald is seen confessing to his old adversary and eventual successor, Alexander Mackenzie that he did indeed accept money to award a railway contract to Sir Hugh Allan. But in typical Bengough fashion, it becomes not a question of expediency and fool hardiness, but one of morals and politics. Macdonald called Parliament back into session on October 23, 1873. He was facing a divided House with many of his own loyal members questioning whether or not the Government should be allowed to continue. The Report of the Royal Commission was presented to the members along with several dispatches by the Governor-General. The battling went on for over a week. Alexander MacKenzie presented a motion of no-confidence in the Government, a motion which had it succeeded would have forced the Government to resign. The Conservatives retaliated with motions of confidence. Although no vote was taken, Macdonald became convinced that he could not survive. The Prime Minister offered his resignation and that of his Government to Lord Dufferin the Governor-General on November 5. It was accepted and Mackenzie was asked to form a new administration. He did, and immediately called for new elections.76 On November 29 Bengough took what he must have felt at the time was his final salvo against Macdonald. He could not have predicted that the old warrior would once again be Prime Minister after defeating Mackenzie in 1878. It was a midnight dreary. A spare-built Knight Companion of the Bath, with kinky hair, one lock of which fell over his pale brow, reclined dreamily upon a rich couch in his chamber, gazing at the ghosts wrought upon the floor by the flames dying in the fireplace, and reading in their mystic movements the story of a political chieftain’s career. While he was still looking, he beheld a brave spirit driven to earth, and as he fell the light danced readily o’er the battle-field a moment, and then the embers expired. Suddenly, there was a silken and sad rustling at the window curtain, and when the Knight rose and opened the window a lordly Raven strutted in and perched himself over the



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door, upon a marble bust whose features closely resembled one ALEXANDER MACKENZIE. There he continued to sit in solemn silence (not deeming it polite to be the first to speak) The Knight on his part, was lost in awe at the strange visitor, and it was quite a long time before he demanded, in a frenzy of fear, “Whence Comest thou?” To this the Raven replied, “Don’t be afraid, Sir John, I’m only your friend GRIP. I just dropped in to pay you my respects, and to present you with my FIRST VOLUME, whose extraordinary success has been due in no small measure to yourself.77

At the height of the Pacific Scandal, the journal sold more than 2,000 copies a week to subscribers and more on news stands. Bengough’s brother Thomas who was also involved in the Grip Publishing Company reported that weekly bundles of the magazine were shipped to the national capital in Ottawa to an awaiting market of members of the House of Commons. To keep up with demand, Bengough redrew many of his memorable cartoons of Macdonald which were lithographed and sold in book form. By 1886, Bengough boasted that Grip was read by 50,000 persons weekly.78 Bengough continued to edit copy and draw for Grip until he was removed as editor and cartoonist by Frank Wilson who had taken over management of the printing side of the business in 1883. The journal remained in existence with a number of freelance cartoonists who were unable to attract the loyal following of Bengough. In October 1892, Bengough joined the Montreal Star as a cartoonist at the invitation of Henri Julien, but by January 1894 he was once again running Grip. But the man who made the magazine, Sir John A. Macdonald, had been dead since 1891. Bengough, who confessed to meeting Macdonald only once in his long career,79 had lost the “raison d’etre” for his journal. In December 1894, Grip closed its doors forever.80 Although his magazine was gone, the cartoonist did not suffer for lack of demand for his talents. He traveled across Canada and throughout the world, in particular to the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, giving humorous talks in which he would sketch characters while chatting with his audience. With the death of Grip, he sketched for the The Globe, the aforementioned Montreal Star, the British based Morning Chronicle (London), the Single Tax Review, the labor newspaper The Industrial Banner, the Canadian Graphic, the Christian Endeavor World, the Toronto Evening Telegram, and eventually from 1906 to 1907 for the Chicago based liberal political journal, The Public, predecessor to the modern day New Republic.81 Bengough ran for and was elected to Toronto City Council in 1907. On October 23, 1923 while sketching a cartoon

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on the evils of tobacco, he died of a heart attack at his easel. At his death he left a modest but hardly extravagant estate to his second wife.

A Passing Age The first few decades of the twentieth century were to be the golden age of the daily newspaper. In New York, it was Hearst and Pulitzer who squared off. In Canada bitter rivalries broke out between John Ross Robertson and Joseph Atkinson in Toronto. In Montreal, Hugh Graham developed the Montreal Star into the country’s leading daily. George Rowell, publisher of the American Newspaper Directory, reported in 1872 that Canadian publications enjoyed a circulation of 670,000 or an average of one per family. At the turn of the century, Ontario’s capital at Toronto had no less than 150 separate publications. The great Victorian dailies became the leaders in a newly emerging communications and information world. The day of the political, satirical illustrated journal was coming to an end.82 No longer would the magazine be the sole source of political commentary, both written and sketched. By 1895, the Desbarats company of Montreal, Toronto, and New York was no longer in the business of publishing journals. The Canadian Illustrated News had given way to a lesser endeavour, the Dominion Illustrated News, which by 1895 had been reduced to a monthly. Three years later it was gone. Always flirting with financial turmoil, the Desbarats family decided to abandon the innovative and creative New York Daily Graphic to American investors. They too gave up on the journal in 1889 when they discovered they could no longer compete with the number and quality of dailies popping up in America’s largest metropolis.83 And, 1894 of course also marked the end of John Wilson Bengough’s involvement with his sassy Toronto journal Grip, a creative schism which led to its death. By the turn of the century the illustrated journal was not quite dead, just going through the remission phase of its final illness. However, there was always a courageous soul who thought of reviving the genre. One such individual was Charles Jeffreys. He was the son of two residents of the British county of Kent, who lived next door to Charles Dickens. Unhappy with what appeared to be constant political and economic instability in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Jeffreys left Rochester, England, for Philadelphia in the mid 1870s. Attracted by an economic boom in Canada, their stay in



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Pennsylvania was brief. In 1881, the family was in Toronto and Charles William was in school. Young Jeffreys did not excel at academics but kept his classmates entranced with his sketches of war scenes in which he predicted that the Boers and British would eventually confront each other in South Africa.84 Upon graduation, Jeffreys went to work for the Stone Lithographing Company of Toronto where he earned a reputation for great technical skills and exceptional visual power. His fame soon spread and he found himself in New York in 1892, where after two entry level positions he joined the New York Herald. However, tragedy struck the family in New York when both his wife and their child died in childbirth. Heartbroken, Jeffreys returned to Toronto in 1901, never to leave. He was soon to establish a national reputation as a chronicler of Canadian history in his numerous illustrations on the topic; and in 1902, he was to turn his attention, however briefly, to editorial cartoons.85 That year he teamed up with a Winnipeg journalist named Knox Magee to found The Moon. The two journalists made the mistake of basing the magazine in Toronto, a city renowned for its lack of humor and its overpowering Protestant rigidity. Although the journal attracted contributions by some of the country’s most notable sketch artists, it lasted only a couple of years. Forced to earn a living, Jeffreys finally graduated to the newspaper industry in Toronto at the Daily Star, where, much like his contemporary Henri Julien in Montreal, he provided a daily dose of pictures of life, both positive and negative, in the Ontario capital. However, the adventure with The Moon had one permanent consequence. In June 1907, he married for the second time, choosing for his bride, Miss Clara West, Knox Magee‘s niece whom he met in the journal‘s editorial offices four years earlier.86 In 1911 he joined the University of Toronto’s School of Architecture where he remained until 1939. He also toiled for the Toronto Star and its Saturday insert, the Star Weekly. His illustrated volumes of Canadian history brought him an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University in John A’s old home town in 1931.87 Like many cartoonists who lampooned the United States in the Victorian period, Jeffreys demonstrated his discontent with the American republic in the sketches he both drew and chose for publication in The Moon. (See Figure 1) However, his primary concern was the promotion of Canadian nationalism, specifically through the country’s history which he felt would sufficiently curb American intentions in Canada through the creation of a national set of values in which all Canadians could share. In 1930 he issued an illustrated volume of history entitled Dramatic Episodes in Canada’s Story. It was followed four years later by Canada’s Past In Pictures from which this sketch is taken. (Figure 3.35)88

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Figure 3.35  C. W. Jeffreys, Canada’s Past In Pictures

Although decried as Tories in the War of Independence by American republican forces under George Washington, the Loyalists were treated as heroes in the British colonies which later became Canada. They were the defenders of the Crown, protectors of the faith, and apostles of elite rule. As pictured by Jeffreys, they often arrived in Canada with only the clothes on their backs and a wagon dragged along by two hungry oxen. They had been deprived of their lands and their livelihoods, forced to contemplate a new beginning in a strange and hostile land. They were to become the very soul within which the second new nation in North American was to be constructed. On the surface, there is little apparent and direct anti-Americanism, but it is most certainly implied in the visual tragedy depicted by Jeffreys. He died in 1951. Alonzo Ryan did not share Jeffreys’ sense of modesty nor was his view of Americans as subtle. Born in Montreal in 1868, he came equipped with an Irish surname which immediately announced that he belonged exclusively to neither of the two linguistic and religious groups in Quebec, the English and the French. Linguistically, the Irish were at home with the English. When it came to



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religious matters, they allied with the Roman Catholic French. The relationship was strong enough that many unilingual French-speaking Canadians today still have Irish surnames. Ryan had been selling his sketches to any number of Montreal newspapers, both English and French and both Liberal and Conservative in the 1890s, when it became apparent that the reign of the federal Conservative Party was coming to an end. Canada was on the verge of electing the Liberal Party for the first

Figure 3.36  Alonzo Ryan, Caricature Politique au Canada, Montreal, 1904 University of Western Ontario

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time since 1873. This moment would be different however. The Liberals were led by Wilfrid Laurier, the first French-speaking leader of a major political party. Laurier would defeat the Conservatives in 1896 and Ryan was there to document this historic event. Ryan was probably the first cartoonist to sketch Baptiste, the symbol of the average Quebecker which continues to appear in modern cartoons in French Canada. Here we see Baptiste (Figure 3.36) running away from apparent opportunity in the United States returning across the Canadian border while taunting Uncle Sam in both English and French to forget annexing Canada but to consider having Canada annex the United States. The cartoon comes from a collection of Ryan cartoons published in 1904 in which the artist gives his thanks to the Montreal press for allowing the reproductions. He is particularly pleased with the response of one journal, Hector Berthelot’s Le Canard In particular thanks are due for the majority of the cartoons contained in this collection; the independent nature of this paper making its cartoons peculiarly adapted to a collection of this kind.89

The last of the grand old Tories to populate the pages of Canada’s satirical press was Sam Hunter. He was an Ontarian, born in 1858. He worked for a number of publications in a career that spanned six decades. His first works were commissioned by Bengough and a limited collection can be seen in Grip, although he was hardly in tune with the political mind of his employer. In 1897 he joined the daily newspaper the Toronto World where he remained for twenty years. He used his platform in the city where the Orange Parade outdistanced any other social event to take on Laurier, Roman Catholics, and French speakers in general. He also took on Uncle Sam as we see in this cartoon published in July 1897 in Century Magazine. (Figure 3.37) Here Hunter returns to a theme first introduced by Walker a half century earlier, the courting of Miss Canada by Uncle Sam. And of course, the icon of American republicanism and liberal democracy is once again rebuffed although this time the reasons are far more apparent although they seem to escape Uncle Sam. Thinking that his rejection is due to his insulting description of Miss Canada as the Lady of the Snows, he conveniently ignores the number of antiCanadian actions such as punitive tariffs, restrictions on Canadian workers in the United States, and export duties on logs which are really upsetting his neighbors to the north. Hunter eventually moved to the The Globe where he commented on French Canada’s lack of enthusiasm for the First World War. He finished his career at the Toronto Star. He died in Toronto in 1939.



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Figure 3.37  Century Magazine, July 1897

In the Victorian period, editorial cartooning came of age. It is easy to speculate that someone, somewhere would have taken up the mantle of satire that the artists and commentators perfected and that may be very well true. At the root of the angst about Uncle Sam and American visions of a great north stretching from the Rio Grande to the North Pole, was a genuine search for

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Figure 3.38  Grip, November 17, 1886

national values in Canada. The conspiracies attributed to Uncle Sam provided much of the common bonding so necessary in such a mission as portrayed here when the “brave” chief police officer of the City of Toronto Colonel Denison threatens to dispatch Uncle Sam into another world. (Figure 3.38) The cartoonists reduced many of the complexities that plagued successful communication of such issues to cute pictures and punctuated language. But we must recognize in the end run that the Walkers, Jumps, Juliens, Benoughs and the rest were at the right place at the right time, proving, perhaps that once and for all, without a good scandal and a devastating issue to caricature,



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the craft and art in editorial cartooning would be missing one of its core ingredients. And it will be those core ingredients that will attract our attention from this point onward.

Notes 1 Quebec City, QC, The Sprite, July 5, 1865. 2 Peter Desbarats and Terry Mosher, The Hecklers: A History of Canadian Political Cartooning and a Cartoonists’ History of Canada, (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart, 1979), 78. 3 Brian D. Palmer, “Working Class Experience,” (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart, 1992), 124–5. 4 Philip S. Foner, “The Labor Movement In The United States (Volume 1),” New York, International Publishers, 1947), 488–9. 5 Joshua Brown, “Beyond The Lines,” (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002), 7. 6 Desbarats and Mosher, 42. 7 Desbarats and Mosher, 40. 8 J. M. S. Careless, “Brown Of The Globe Volume One,” (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1959), 111. 9 J. Russell Harper, “Early Painters and Engravers In Canada,” (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1970), 320. 10 E. Z, Massicotte, “L’Artiste Walker”, Bulletin Recherche Historique, (Levis, P.Q., December 1943), 363–365. 11 Donald Creighton, “The 1860s,” J. M. S. Careless and R. Craig Brown (eds), The Canadians 1867–1967, (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1968), 10–11. 12 J.M.S. Careless, “Brown Of The Globe: Volume Two,” (Toronto, Ontario: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1963), 174–81. 13 Richard J. Cartwright, “Reminiscences,” (Toronto, Ontario: William Briggs, 1912), 55. 14 Donald Creighton, “The Story of Canada,” (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), 152–3. 15 Montreal, QC, “The Canadian Illustrated News,” Vol. 1, No. 29, 194. 16 Montreal, QC, “The Canadian Illustrated News,” Vol. 1, No. 29, 194. 17 George Bemis., “The Alabama Negotiations And Their Just Repudiation By the Senate of The United States,” (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1869), 7 and The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (New York, 1995).

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18 CIHM 49103, Sumner, Charles, The Alabama Claims…speech of the Honourable Charles Sumner, London, England, 1869. 19 Michael Bliss, “Plague: A Story Of Small Pox In Montreal,” (Toronto, ON: HarperCollins Ltd., 1991), 222. 20 W. Stewart Wallace (ed.), The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 3rd edn, (Toronto and London: Macmillan of Canada, 1963), 357. 21 David R. Spencer, “Canada and the War to End All Wars,” Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt, Picturing the Past, (Urbana and Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 186. 22 Cameron Nish, “The 1760s” J. M. S. Careless (ed.), Colonists and Canadiens 1760–1867, (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company, 1971), 8–9. 23 Peter Desbarats, “The Canadian Illustrated News: A Commemorative Portfolio,” (Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970), 6. 24 Montreal, QC, “The Canadian Illustrated News,” December 29, 1887 25 Harry T. Peters, “California On Stone,” (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1935), 92–3 and Desbarats and Mosher, 44. 26 Desbarats and Mosher, 44. 27 Goldwin Smith, “The Treaty of Washington 1871,” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941), 88–9. 28 CIHM 10010, Documents and Proceedings of the Halifax Commission, 1877, Volume 1, under the Treaty of Washington, May 8, 1871, 1. 29 Marius Barbeau, “Henri Julien,” (Toronto, ON: The Ryerson Press, 1941), 37–8. 30 Montreal, P.Q, “La Patrie,” September 18, 1908. 31 Barbeau, 37–8. 32 Charles R. Tuttle, “An Illustrated History Of The Dominion of Canada” v.2. (Montreal and Boston: D. Downie and Co. and Tuttle and Downie Publishers 1877), 55. 33 The Memoirs of Archbishop Taché quoted in Tuttle, Vol. 2, 93. 34 Tuttle, Vol. 2, 107–25; Donald Creighton, “The Story of Canada,” (London, Faber and Faber, 1959), 161. 35 Henri Julien, “Diary, 1874,” 5. The complete diary and the sketches in GIF format are located on the web site http://www.ourheritage.net/Julien_pages/Julien1.html. 36 George F. G. Stanley, “The 1870s,” J. M. S. Careless (ed.), The Canadians 1867–1967 (Toronto, ON: Macmillan of Canada, 1968), 54–5. 37 Montreal, QC, “L’Opinion Publique,” March 8, 1877, 114. 38 Desbarats and Mosher, 229. 39 Barbeau, 39–40. 40 Carmen Cumming, “Sketches From A Young Country: The Images of Grip Magazine,” (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1997), 41.



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41 CIHM 00725, “Reciprocity with the United States,” Speech by the Honourable Sir Richard Cartwright, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, March 14, 1888. 42 Toronto, ON, “The Nation,” Vol. 1, No. 4, April 23, 1874. 43 Douglas Fetherling, “The Rise of The Canadian Newspaper,” (Toronto, ON: The Oxford University Press, 1990), 66. 44 Barbeau, 11–12. 45 Barbeau, 12. 46 Peter Desbarats and Terry Mosher, 248. 47 Montreal, QC, “The By Town Coons,” (Montreal Star, 1892). 48 Tuttle, Vol. 2, 501–4. 49 Montreal, P.Q., “La Patrie,” September 18, 1908 and La Presse, September 18, 1908. 50 J. W. Bengough, “Bengough’s Chalk-Talks,” (Toronto, ON: The Musson Book Company Limited, 1922), 5. 51 Whitby, Ontario “The Whitby Chronicle,” November 3, 1899 (copied from clippings on the J.E. Farewell Scrapbooks, McLaughlin Public Library, Oshawa, Ontario. 52 Toronto, ON, “Grip,” Vol. 1, No. 1, May 24, 1873. 53 Toronto, ON, “Grip,” Vol. 1, No. 1, May 24, 1873. 54 Toronto, ON, “Grip,” Vol. 1, No. 1, May 24, 1873. 55 CIHM 23820 Address by Edward Blake, federal Liberal member at Bowmanville, Ontario, May 26, 1873. 56 Ramsay Cook, “The Regenerators: Social Criticism In Victorian English Canada,” (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1985), 28. 57 Cook, 101. 58 James Beaty, “The History of the Lake Superior Ring,” (Toronto, ON: The Leader and The Patriot, 1874), 1. It should be noted here that Beaty was an active Conservative. This pamphlet was composed in defense of Macdonald and the actions of his Government following the collapse of the Conservative administration. It was directed at Alexander Mackenzie and the Browns of Toronto (i.e. George Brown) whom Beaty charged sold their interests in the railway construction to a well known American annexationist Jay Cooke of Philadelphia. Ironically, Cooke had been included in the original consortium. 59 Blake, May 26, 1873. 60 Donna McDonald, “Lord Strathcona: A Biography of Donald Alexander Smith,” (Toronto, ON: The Dundurn Press, 1996), 211–12. 61 CIHM 23823, Comments on the Proceedings and Evidence of Charges Preferred by Mr. Huntington, M.P. Against the Government of Canada. 62 Toronto, ON, “Grip,” Vol. 1, No. 2, May 31, 1873 63 Toronto, ON, “Grip, Vol. 1, No. 7, July 12, 1873 64 Toronto, ON, “Grip,” Vol. 1, No. 11, August 9, 1873

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65 CIHM. 09047, “Liberal Party Canada: Wholesale plunder: The McGreevy-Langevin Scandal at Quebec. Nearly Two Million Stolen.” 66 David Hugh Russell, “The Ontario Press And The Pacific Scandal of 1873,” Kingston, ON: Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Queen’s University, 1970, 10. 67 Toronto, Ontario, “Grip,” Vol. 1, No. 12, August 16, 1873 68 CIHM. No. 15566, Report of the Royal Commissioners, Appointed by the Government, addressed to them, under the Great Seal of Canada, bearing the date fourteenth of August A.D., 1873 69 Russell, 6–7. 70 Russell, 39–40. 71 CIHM 23822, Edward Blake Speaking at London on Thursday August 28, 1873. 72 CIHM 15648,Condensed Report of An Address by Mr. Mills, M.P., at Aylmer, Ontario 73 Russell, 48. 74 Carl Spadoni, “Grip and the Bengoughs as Publishers and Printers,” Papers Of The Bibliographic Society of Canada, XXXVII, 16. 75 Stanley Paul Kutcher, “John Wilson Bengough: Artist of Righteousness,” (Hamilton, ON: Unpublished Master’s Thesis, McMaster University, 1975), 16. 76 Russell, 7. 77 Spadoni, 17–20. 78 Spadoni, 17–20. 79 J. W. Bengough, “Bengough’s Chalk-Talks,” (Toronto, ON: The Musson Book Company, 1922), 31. 80 Spadoni, 12, 24–5. 81 “The William Ready Division,”Archives and Research Collections, the J. W. Bengough Papers, Box 2, File 8. 82 Paul Rutherford, “A Victorian Authority: The Daily Press in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada,” (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1982), 3–4. 83 Desbarats and Mosher, 30. 84 William Colgate, “C.W. Jeffreys,” (Toronto, ON: The Ryerson Press, n.d.), 1–2. 85 Robert W. Stacey, “C.W. Jeffreys,” (Ottawa, ON: National Gallery of Canada, 1985), 18. 86 Stacey, 19. 87 Stacey, 19. 88 Alonzo Ryan, “Caricature Politique Au Canada,” (Montreal, QC: Compagnie de Publication Dominion, 1904), front page.

4

What God Hath Joined Together

There were any number of people involved in agenda setting in Victorian Canada, including politicians, industrialists, academics, skilled professionals, and of course journalists. Toronto publisher and editor George Brown was devoted to creating in Canada the equivalent of a liberal, free enterprise state such as that emerging in the British Isles as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. Hamilton industrialist Isaac Buchanan wanted to create a state that would build a tariff wall around its borders to protect itself from intrusion from the states to the south of the forty-ninth parallel. Georges Etienne Cartier allied himself with the ruling Liberal Democrats in order to protect and encourage Gallic life in Quebec. And the United Empire Loyalists who lost their property and influence in the American Revolution, now had a vested interest in creating a new state devoid of any sympathy for republicanism and liberal democracy. Yes, there were many agendas and editorial cartoonists joined the fray. Although direct evidence of their collective influence remains evasive in Canada, prominent editorial cartoonists had set a successful agenda of political reform in the United States, which inspired similar models in Canada. Thomas Nast’s destruction of New York Tammany Hall leader William Magear (Boss) Tweed inspired much the same kind of agenda in Canada when Prime Minister Macdonald attempted to pass off a questionable donation to his political party in return for railway construction contracts. As well as being savaged in the daily press, the Prime Minister suddenly found himself at the center of attention in the illustrated press. He remained one of the central figures in editorial cartoons until his death in 1891 and he wasn’t alone. In pre‑Confederation Canada, consensus on an agenda on how one should deal with the United States was difficult if not impossible to achieve. French‑speaking Canadians were split on the issue, some favoring the end of British rule and annexation to the United States, others opting to maintain the Imperial connection within a union of the existing four Canadian colonies. As

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in contemporary times, the concept of creating a French-speaking independent state on both sides of the St. Lawrence River was never totally rejected. Influential industrialists in Quebec’s sizeable English‑speaking community, based primarily in Montreal and Quebec City, came out in favor of annexation in 1849. However, the majority of Ontario’s English-speaking community actively resisted the pull of American liberalism and republicanism. As the Hamilton, Ontario entrepreneur Isaac Buchanan wrote in the British American Magazine just prior to Confederation in 1867 Union on English, that is, on monarchial principles, as opposed to the democratic principles of the States, is the only basis on which they (Canadians) can expect

Figure 4.1  Punch In Canada, September 28, 1849



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to raise the structure of national independence and commercial prosperity. A monarchy for the provinces; monarchial institutions for the people; these give promise of freedom for themselves and of influence among the nations of the world; while that wretched sham, and trumperty (sic) make‑believe, Democratic Republicanism, if established among them on the model of the States would lead them as it has hitherto led all states that have tried it, and is now leading their neighbours, to anarchy and bankruptcy, to military despotism and subjection to a master.1

As much as the country was divided intellectually, Victorian Canadian editorial cartoonists were consistent in their view of Americans. Trade and commercial alliances were quite acceptable. Anything bordering on political union was not. In response to what he saw in the rising tide of annexationist sentiment in Montreal, John Henry Walker responded with a series of cartoons for his Punch In Canada. (See Figure 4.1) In spite of his distaste for his French-speaking Catholic neighbors, Walker chose to bring his agenda about American influence in the colonies directly to the colony’s largest linguistic and religious minority. At the center of the accompanying drawing is a train, dubbed “American Eagle.” Driven by Walker’s unique interpretation of Brother Jonathan, the smoke-belching locomotive is running over Louis‑Joseph Papineau. Papineau had been involved in the ill‑fated rebellions against British rule which took place in 1837 in both Ontario and Quebec, and which eventually led to the Rebellion Losses Bill and the riots which followed. To many French-speaking Canadians, Papineau was the symbol of their struggle to survive as a linguistic, religious and legal minority in a sea of Englishlanguage communities in North America. Not only is the train destroying the heart and soul of French–Canada, it is mocking its laws (nos lois), its institutions (nos institutions) and its language (la langue). Walker warns that if Brother Jonathan’s appetite remains unchecked, the liberty to enjoy these unique institutions will go up in smoke. To add insult to injury, Brother Jonathan has his eyes on lands owned and managed by the British crown, lands which exceeded private property in both size and value. For Canada’s French-speaking citizens, the devil had two horns, and Uncle Sam occupied only one of them. On December 7, 1849, a group of Montreal merchants, brewers, and bankers issued the “Circular Of The Committee of the Annexation Association of Montreal” in both English and French, although French names were conspicuous by their absence on the signing list at the end of the document. The creation of

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the organization was a direct result of British economic policies towards its trading partners that extended back to the consequences of the War of 1812. Two years following the end of hostilities, the Canadian colonial governments of Upper Canada (Ontario), Lower Canada (Quebec), New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward’s Island urged Britain to approach the United States with a number of ideas for closer economic relations between the North American neighbors. All appeals fell on deaf ears.2 The annexationists painted a serious and disturbing picture of economic life in Canada which they claimed could not help but result in some form of political outburst. They declared—in typical Victorian hyperbole—that the country was bankrupt proposing that the nation was …crippled therefore and checked in the full career of private and public enterprise, this possession of the British Crown—our country—stands before the world in humiliating contrast with its immediate neighbours, exhibiting every symptom of a nation fast sinking to decay.3

The authors offered six solutions for the colony’s depraved condition. These included a strict protectionist policy by Britain for imperial goods entering the European market, protection of home manufacturers, the possibility of joining the North American colonies into a federation, the transformation of the colonies into a federal republic, and free trade with the United States in products of the farm, forest, and mine. The sixth and recommended solution read Of all the remedies that have been suggested for the acknowledged and insufferable ills with which our country is afflicted, there remains but one to be considered. It propounds a sweeping and important change in our political and social condition involving considerations which demand our most serious examination. THIS REMEDY CONSISTS IN A FRIENDLY AND PEACEFUL SEPARATION FROM BRITISH CONNECTION AND A UNION UPON EQUITABLE TERMS WITH THE GREAT NORTH AMERICAN CONFEDERACY OF SOVEREIGN STATES.4

The Montreal merchant-class who designed and composed the Manifesto were the descendants of people who made and lost fortunes in the fur trade. Some had become bankers, others exporters. Their number also included a prominent brewer. The remainder had abandoned the dying fur trade to harvest and export lumber. In all, they had a vested interest in securing access to American markets in any way that they could. No matter what form of enterprise these people



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embraced, they all understood that Montreal’s future was dependent on free and open markets. In essence, the manifesto focused on two unrelated claims. First, the authors appealed for support from the working class claiming that union with the United States could only result in”…mechanics getting higher wages and plenty of employment, and they saw the people peaceful, and happy, and contented with their government, which they not only thought a good, but the best government on the face of the earth.”5 Furthermore, citing the uneasy relationship between Great Britain and the United States since the War of Independence, the authors believed that as long as the country remained a British colony Canada could become embroiled in future conflicts. They believed, however, that “disagreements between the United States and her chief, if not the only rival among nations, would not make the soil of Canada the sanguinary arena of their disputes, as, under existing relations, must necessarily be the case.”6 The idea was not without some support in the French-speaking circles in Montreal and Quebec City, despite the fact that very few signed the original document. In 1851, l’Institut-Canadien sponsored six lectures entitled “Six Lectures sur l’annexation du Canada aux Etats-Unis (Six Lectures on the subject of annexation of Canada to the United States)”7 Not surprisingly, it was the last meeting the organization held. The concept of annexing the British colonies to the American Republic did not go unnoticed in official Britain. A dispatch from 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister’s residence in London, from Earl Grey his foreign secretary to Lord Elgin, Governor of the British colonies, declared that the Montreal annexationists’ document “is scarcely short of treasonable in its character.” The foreign secretary continued Your Lordship will therefore understand that you are commanded by Her Majesty to resist, to the utmost of your power, any attempt which may be made to bring about the separation of Canada from the British Dominions, and to mark in the strongest manner Her Majesty’s displeasure with all those who may directly or indirectly encourage such a design.8

And, just what was Walker’s response to the annexation question? (See Figure 4.2) In the cartoon, the artist takes aim at Benjamin Holmes, a member of the Canadian Parliament for a Montreal electoral district and a vice‑president of the Annexationist Association. In Walker’s parody, Holmes is seen donating his

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Figure 4.2  Punch In Canada, October 20, 1849

British heritage, the Union Jack, to a sinister and unsavory Brother Jonathan. Of course, Walker, in the person of Punch is observing the scene and finally comes to the rescue by arresting the disloyal Holmes. As well, the activities of pro‑annexationist forces did not escape the attention of the Vermont Legislature, which that same year passed resolutions relating the possible annexation of Canada to the United States. The law makers declared that …the government of the State of Vermont is earnestly desirous to see such a reunion effected without a violation on the part of the United States of the amicable relations existing with the British Government or of the law of nations. Resolved: The peaceful annexation of Canada to the United States with the consent of the British Government and of the people of Canada and upon just



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and honorable terms, is an object in the highest degree desirable to the people of the United States.9

To promote its cause, the Canadian annexationist movement tied itself to American abolitionists, arguing in essence that union between Canada and the United States would have moral consequences, the most notable of which would be the abolition of slavery. It failed to impress a letter writer in Hamilton, Ontario, who used morality as a platform to fight annexation. The writer simply said No! Annexation to the Republican Union, as a Canadian, I repudiate, morally I would never consent to it, however, I might be obliged to submit to the evil passions of the day and every true Canadian ought to possess sufficient feelings of Nationality to despise the exchange from a higher to a lower state of dependency. The day we throw off our present connection and seek the hand of Republican America, we become slaves to the wishes and desires of the Federal Union.10

Walker himself wrote a two verse poem predicting what would happen to the country two years following annexation. In the story, an auctioneer named Johnson enters a hall filled with worn furniture and discarded musical instruments. He spies a piano and sits down to compose and sing the following song. “Songs, neighbours, songs, old songs I have to sell, A wagon‑load of loyalty, for less than I can tell, And the ballads of Old England go, well, boys, well, ‑Sing a song of sixpence, ding, dong bell! Here’s a rare old anthem, called ‘God Save The Queen.’ Sung once by a Britisher, ‑ I guess we ain’t so green! Bid for a ballad boys, going out of print, ‑A bushel for the smallest coin that tumbles from the mint!”11

The annexationist movement did not go unnoticed in Tory Ontario either. In Toronto that same year, the British American League was founded with branches in most Ontario towns and cities and some in the annexationists’ backyard in Quebec. Its sole agenda was to fight the annexationist movement. John William Gamble, the organization’s chief spokesperson, urged audiences throughout the area to make their views known to their elected representatives and “thereby cut the very ground from under the feet of this party, and you may aid in preserving a territory of greater area than the whole United States as a field for British industry and British enterprise.”12

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Not content with speaking to the converted, Gamble and his colleagues took their message directly to Montreal, home of the annexationist movement. We devoutly hope that no measure of injustice may ever be inflicted—no power may ever be abused—to the extent of provoking reflecting men to the contemplation of an alliance with a foreign power; and if there be, as some have said, a time when all colonies must, in the course of human events, throw off their dependence on the Parent State, and if in our generation that time should be destined to arrive, we predict that, if true to ourselves, it will not come until no British hands remain able to hoist the flag of England on the rock of Quebec and no British voices survive able to shout “God Save The Queen!”13

Figure 4.3  Grinchuckle, November 18, 1869



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The Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 between Britain and the United States tempered the annexationist movement for over a decade.14 But events such as the U.S. Civil War, the cancellation of the Treaty in 1865, and Canadian Confederation would renew the debate one more time. As the comic magazine Grinchuckle observed, clearly the country was at a crossroads in the middle years of the Victorian period. In the accompanying cartoon which carries Walker’s signature sketch of a man walking in the lower left-hand corner, Montreal business man and politician Luther Holton, drawn as the symbolic Canadian wood cutter who is forced to make an unpalatable decision regarding the country’s future. He can choose between annexation, colonial dependence, or independence, forming a “le pays” or nation. Carefully observing his meditation is a circling eagle. The theme was repeated in 1884 when Toronto cartoonist John Wilson Bengough, founder and editor of Grip magazine, redrew the Holton cartoon in 1884. The issue still remained. Only the eagle is missing. (See Figures 3 and 4) In the final analysis, Walker had a piece of advice for everyone opposed to the annexation movement: keep a long and deadly spear in the house for you may never know when the dragon will appear. (Figure 4.5) The war between the states proved disastrous for Canadian–American relations. In many ways, the United States regarded the Canadian colonies and Great Britain as one and the same political entity. This lack of a separate national

Figure 4.4  Grip, June 7, 1884

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image in the eyes of Americans made Canada vulnerable each and every time Britain and the United States clashed. And clash they did. When the war between the states broke out, Britain, and consequently Canada, found themselves leaning toward the Confederate cause. The tension that was mounting early in the conflict was exacerbated by the seizure of two Confederate officials Mason and Sidell on their way to France on the high seas by a Union frigate. Britain regarded the intervention as an act of piracy, but the complaints fell on deaf ears in Washington. As a consequence of the American action known as the Trent Affair, George Brown, founder and editor of Toronto’s Globe newspaper, argued, as early as December 1861, for a Canadian military fleet on the Great Lakes.

Figure 4.5  Punch In Canada, February 23, 1850



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The Trent Affair was only one of a number of irritations that took place between the two world powers during the War Between the States. The Union accused Great Britain of deliberately encouraging piracy by refusing to detain the southern battleship Alabama which was being built in an English shipyard. The well-armed vessel slipped out of her British port and rained havoc on Union shipping, a series of events which led to compensation claims by the American government against Britain. These were eventually settled by an arbitration panel in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1885. Near the end of the war, a small raiding party of Southerners based in Quebec crossed the Vermont border. They descended on the village of St. Albans, proceeding to hold up banks midst a gun fight. They slipped back into Canada where a Canadian judge ruled that he did not have the power to extradite the men to the United States. The decision to revoke the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 was a direct result of Canada’s failure to concur with American desires to punish the St. Albans raiders.15 As the war ground to an inevitable victory for the North, Canadian journalists were speculating on just how severe the U.S. reaction to Canadian and British support for the South would be. The British American Magazine argued that when the United States returned to the power it possessed prior to the War, it would do everything to stop the British from forging a federal union of its holdings north of the Great Lakes.16 Late in 1865, the editor of the The Globe wrote that “The Americans are now a warlike people.” He strongly advised Canadians to take defensive measures to ward off American ambitions.17 Of course C. Henri Moreau, ex-citizen of France, American convert and Montreal based publisher of the pro annexation journal Le Perroquet disagreed with Brown’s assessment. To him there was only one question on the nation building agenda, namely whether or not to join the United States in a North American federation. In the cartoon entitled La Question (See Figure 4.6) the “cuisinier en chef ” (the chief cook) stands in Luther Holton’s kitchen asking his subordinates which sauce they prefer for their turkey dinner, confederation or annexation? Needless to say, the turkeys Haut-Canada (Ontario) and Bas-Canada (Quebec) are not interested in either solution. The neighbor peering through the windows here—designated by the French word Le Voisin, referring to the United States—threatens to eat both the turkeys and the cooks if they cannot come to a conclusion. To defend themselves against American intentions, real or imagined, the four original colonies joined together on July 1, 1867 to form the Dominion

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Figure 4.6  Le Perroquet, February 25, 1865

of Canada. The idea of joining the British colonies into a single federation had been around since 1839. That year, the Earl of Durham, John George Lambton, had written an extensive report on reforming government structures in the colonies. His year-long investigation of Canadian affairs had been prompted by the rebellions of 1837 in both Upper and Lower Canada. Although his Report On the Affairs Of British North America—which recommended elected, responsible government for the colonies—was cheered in Upper Canada, it was greeted with great mistrust in Lower Canada as a consequence of Durham’s Louisiana solution. Faced with a very fertile French-speaking population, the British peer observed that the United States, which faced a similar situation amongst the French-speaking Cajuns in Louisiana, resolved the situation by flooding the state with English-speaking settlers. He proposed the same process for Canada. Although Georges Etienne Cartier was one of their own and was to become a founder of the Canadian Confederation, the concept of joining with the scheming United Empire Loyalist Tories in a federation did not sit well in certain francophone circles. In fact, a fair number launched organizations with



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the expressed desire to develop an agenda to make Quebec a French-speaking, Catholic state within the American union in spite of Louisiana. On December 4, 1866, a group calling themselves the Franco–Canadian Annexationists of Elmira, N.Y, declared that “the liberty-loving Canadians of whatever nationality, but especially the French–Canadians are using all possible means to advance their peaceable annexation scheme which must succeed now or never.”18 To Canadian political leaders such as Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the union of the four British provinces was the only possible solution to continuing American hostility. McGee, like many other Canadian Tories, was appalled by the American experiment with liberalism and republicanism. Shortly before the end of the Civil War, McGee, soon to be one of the founders of the Canadian Confederation, warned that “we are advancing towards an unrecognized Americanism, which must have its perils and risks as well as its attractions.”19 Diogenes could not resist the temptation to take a pictorial shot at the United States following the successful Confederation negotiations in Canada. In this cartoon, the image of Brother Jonathan has been replaced by an angry and distressed Miss Columbia. She is clearly intending to intimidate the more fragile, cowering dog named Canada with an arsenal made up of the Monroe Doctrine and a cat-o-nine tails called Reconstruction in reference to U.S. policy in the defeated Confederacy. Also included is the threat that Canada may be forced to help pay some of the U.S. national debt incurred during the war between the states as a consequence of British support for the South. (See Figure 4.7) American hostility towards political events north of the border was visible to anyone to see.20 On July 2, 1866 the American administration had presented a draft bill to the House of Representatives calling for the annexation of all British territories from the Atlantic to the Pacific.21 Many American political leaders in all parties were incensed by British behavior during the conflict, none more so than the Republican Senator from Michigan Zachariah Chandler. Chandler had decided that one of his main political missions was to create as much serious tension as possible between Britain and the United States. He was convinced that Britain owed the United States punitive compensation for damages resulting from British support for Jefferson Davis. The annexation of Canada in Chandler’s mind would be a justifiable consequence which would lead in part to the alleviation of American grievances. Chandler was among a community of Americans who believed that the annexation of Canada was what he called “geographical predestination” and “political gravitation.” Since in Chandler’s mind, the American government had

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Figure 4.7  Diogenes, April 30, 1869

used this convenient excuse to annex a host of Caribbean islands, there was no reason why it should not apply to Canada.22 In April 1869, Chandler rose in the U.S. Senate and once again challenged President Ulysses S. Grant and the FortyFirst Congress to annex its neighbor to the north. That same month, Walker responded in Diogenes with a most unflattering look at the Michigan politician. (See Figure 4.8) Chandler was determined to make the British eat humble pie and Canada would be the prize. He argued that Britain needed to recognize what he termed



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Figure 4.8  Diogenes, November 5, 1969

as “an irreparable wrong.” Canada would provide the compensation because, in Chandler’s mind, it would eliminate what he called “an enemy base” next door to the American republic. Chandler told the assembled representatives that if Britain refused to meet his demands, “he would send a regiment of Michigan veterans into Canada for a short, sharp and decisive war.”23 In Walker’s cartoon, the image of Chandler is also that of Brother Jonathan. He is suitably robed in an undershirt and tight trousers adorned with the stars and stripes as he would be throughout much of the nineteenth century. Chandler/Jonathan is puffing on a huge cigar producing billowing clouds of smoke with the words “brag” and “bluster” written predominantly on them. The rope he is tugging over the falling wall-stand is marked “bunkum.” The cartoon also plays on gender sensitivities in the Victorian age. There is clearly a relationship of the violent behavior characterized by Chandler and the obvious “weaker sex” femininity of Miss Canada who is slumped in a chair contemplating her fate with this dastardly character while warning him that he had better “keep at a respectful distance or lookout for squalls”. She is prepared to defend her virtue with the coal scuttle clutched firmly in her left hand. Chandler/Jonathan, described by Walker as being on the rampage, appears to

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be paying no attention to pleas of Miss Canada. This theme would reappear with great frequency during the second half of the nineteenth century. The founders of the federation had no intention of ceasing nation-building until the new country reached the Pacific Ocean. In 1870 Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald had lured the colony of British Columbia into the Canadian Confederation with the promise of a transcontinental railway. In this cartoon which appeared in Diogenes on November 5, 1869, Miss Canada reveals the real reasons behind the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway to a doubting Uncle Sam. (See Figure 4.9) As much as Miss Canada attempts to convince Brother Jonathan of the need for the project, the American icon cannot help but express his skepticism which he does in the “down home” slang attributed to him by most Victorian satirists in Canada. As he was aware, the Canadian Pacific was more of an anti-annexation exercise than it was a quick and efficient means to transport goods and people from one end of the country to the other. Begun in 1871, the great project was finally completed in 1881.24

Figure 4.9  Diogenes, November 5, 1869



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What one gets, the other expects. Macdonald had also promised that the new eastern provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would be joined to the Canadian Pacific in Montreal with the construction of the Inter Colonial Railway. The political situation in Nova Scotia was far more sensitive than in the rest of the country. Journalist and politician Joseph Howe, who had often proposed a nation stretching from sea to sea, became a loud and effective opponent of the British North America Act, the legislation which created the Canadian federal union. Howe and his allies in New Brunswick knew that popular sentiment favored a Maritime union, independent of Canada. It was not to be. It is ironic that Canadian political leaders began discussing the very idea of uniting Britain’s North American colonies the same day of the St. Albans raid. During the negotiations, Prince Edward’s Island and Newfoundland withdrew, but the others came to a tentative agreement pending ratification by their respective legislatures. The message was not lost on the Prime Minister of New Brunswick who immediately called an election on the issue and was soundly defeated.25 In 1866, Britain was faced with the prospect that her colonies would be ever dependent on the parent state. The Imperial Government decided to dictate the terms of union. The colonial legislatures favoring the Canadian union postponed elections until after the British Parliament passed the Confederation articles. Some months later, Howe played an instrumental role in reducing interCanadian tensions when he joined Macdonald’s government. The Inter Colonial was completed in 1876.26 In this Diogenes cartoon, a young and seemingly innocent Miss Maritimes is being beckoned by one of the Atlantic regions’ most fervent Confederationists Dr. Charles Tupper. (See Figure 4.10) The young woman, who bears the name Acadia, the French language denomination for the area, is given a choice to move to Ottawa, the Canadian capital, or turn around and go to Washington. Of course, since this is a Walker cartoon, the choice is clear. As with all Walker cartoons, there is a moral agenda at play. Not only is it prudent to reject any overtures from Washington, it is the right thing to do. The road, as the cartoon demonstrates, is paved with traps. The United States, if you accept the artist’s analysis, does have money—much of it gained through questionable taxation, and it is also a nation of radical adventurers and scallywags. On the other hand, Tupper holds a tempting horn of plenty, replete with low taxes and the promise of a railway along with maintenance of the strong, and of course moral, British connection.

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Figure 4.10  Diogenes, November 20, 1868

The seemingly fragile condition of the Canadian union continued to taunt cartoonists during the Victorian period. Of course, the single and most dangerous threat to the new state was a new nation itself, the United States of America. In the July 23, 1870 edition of the Canadian Illustrated News, the baby country, with gun and bayonet in hand, looks warmly to Mother Britannia for love and security while the ever-diligent Uncle Sam assures Mother Britannia that if the young nation were ever to fall, he would be pleased to catch her and take care of her. (See Figure 4.11) Mother Britannia had serious cause for concern. It was a theme which Georges Edouard Desbarats and his cartoonists would address until the magazine ceased publication in 1894 under its second name the Dominion Illustrated News. In the accompanying cartoon by Henri Julien, who sketched for both of Desbarats’ journals, once again the question of annexation was addressed when an evil looking Uncle Sam approaches the male symbol of Canada, Johnny Canuck. (See Figure 4.12) Canada had just emerged from a decade long depression which Uncle Sam is attempting to exploit. Johnny Canuck has been working diligently to cut down the diseased tree labeled hard times. Uncle Sam promises to take good care of young Johnny Canuck Young Canada politely refuses his advances.



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Figure 4.11  Canadian Illustrated News, January 24, 1880

The threat to the very existence of the Canadian state was real and Uncle Sam was playing a major role in the potential fragmentation of Britain’s former colonies. On October 12, 1870 a group calling themselves Le Club Unionist Canadien met in New York City with the sole purpose of working toward Canadian-American political union. The group met in conference the following 21st of April at a Masonic Hall on 13th street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues. Their resolution was simple and to the point “Resolution: En faveur de l’Union du Canada aux Etats-Unis. (In favour of Union between Canada and the United States)”27 The confederation cause was not helped by a person who was to become the central figure in the annexation debate. Speaking to the Manchester Union in his native Britain in 1866, Professor of History and Regis Professor Goldwin Smith told his audience that “the British North American colonies will in time and probably at no very distant time, unite themselves politically to the group of states, of which they are already by race, position, commercial ties and the characteristic of their institutions a part.”28

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Figure 4.12  Canadian Illustrated News, January 24, 1880



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Two years following his address to the Manchester Union, Smith was waxing poetically infront of his new found historical colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where he continued to trump the race and ethnic issue. On the evening of May 19, 1868, he once again turned his attention to what he would later call “The Canadian Question.” Smith warned his audience that Canadians did not like being threatened with annexation, especially in Upper Canada which he noted was populated by “rather stiff Anglo-Saxons.”29 Within two years, the tireless Smith would take up residence in Toronto, marry a wealthy widow, and launch a journalistic career in the Toronto press under the byline “A Bystander” while living on his wife’s largesse at a magnificent Toronto estate called The Grange. But Smith was no bystander, especially when Canadian-American relations were on the table. “He was an intellectual partisan, a coldly furious intellectual partisan, but a partisan all the same, like everybody else.”30 In 1871, Toronto lawyer and journalist William A. Foster wrote a pamphlet which bore the title Canada First. Foster, a strong Canadian federalist and co-founder of the journal The Monetary Times wanted to inspire a nationalist spirit in Canada which would lead to some form of consensus on what Canadian nationhood should be. For three years, the organization attracted a variety of Canadians interested in influencing the young country’s future. Some wanted outright independence from Britain, others promoted the concept of self-government within an Imperial Union with Great Britain. Whatever their views, they shared in common a distaste for liberalism and republicanism American style.31 On Thursday April 2, 1874, the first issue of the organization’s newspaper The Nation hit the streets of Toronto. Reflecting the interest of its patrons and readers, it was as one observer noted “sedate and respectable.”32 Its pages contained few surprises, an agenda that pointed in clear directions. Dominating the coverage of course, were the usual questions about Canadian nationalism and relationships with the United States. The newspaper referred to the Canada First movement as “the natural offspring of Confederation.” It sought to take up the fight against partyism. The January 29, 1875 issue noted that the objective of the Canada First society was to “modify the political character and course of the most patriotic of our existing public men, detach them gradually from their allegiance to anything less worthy than the country and at the same time teach them to look for the highest objects of their ambition here, not on the other side of the water.”33 A frequent contributor was “A Bystander.”

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Why Smith, with his pan-American attitude about joining the Englishspeaking Protestant Anglo-Saxons under one North American government was ever attracted to Foster’s organization, remains puzzling, unless, of course, it was to act as a fifth columnist. Nevertheless, Smith tapped his wife’s bank account, cleaned up on the lecture circuit, and became the society’s major patron. He was generous enough that Foster and his colleagues chose to build a home for the movement in Toronto to be known as The National Club. Smith was elected its first president, and in his inaugural address gave no indication of what was to come. “If anyone denies that Canada is now a nation and not the meanest of nations, we shall be ready to defend the accuracy of the appellation. But if the Canadian nationality is an undeniable fact, why not avow it? Why mutter it with downcast look and bated breath, as though there were treason in the sound?”34

That same month, the cerebral Edward Blake, convinced liberal and Liberal Party minister, strode to a platform in the small town of Aurora just north of Toronto where he gave a speech to the thundering applause of 3,000 assembled persons. Although the speech touched on many of the less desirable aspects of Canadian politics, Blake argued fervently for a Canadian national spirit that would eventually lead to full independence from the British Empire. True to his liberal heritage, the minister also flirted with a number of other options including membership in an imperial federation under the British flag. Blake had seen a Canada that in his view was adrift. It had no strong agenda for nationhood. In particular, Blake was vexed that Canadians had little or no say in foreign policy-making that affected them, in particular the provisions of the 1871 Treaty of Washington which Blake regarded as a sell-out to American commercial interests. He reiterated that “the time will come when that national spirit which has been spoken of will be truly felt among us, when we shall realize that we are four millions of Britons who are not free, when we shall be ready to take up that freedom.”35 Blake was to become the intellectual hero of the Canada First movement whether he wanted the mantle or not. However, he was not a hero to his Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie who was reported to have lost a fair amount of sleep over his minister’s public musings. Mackenzie, like many a Victorian Canadian politician, courted favor with the Queen’s representative in Canada, the Governor-General who in law was acting for the Queen, the legal head of the Canadian state. It was these people who constantly reminded Canadians of



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their colonial-dependent status. The remarks of the Marquis of Lorne, when he referred to the North American colony as Larger Britain, were not uncommon at official functions and in the Canadian press.36 In many ways, it was George Brown, publisher of The Globe, who remained the symbol of Canadian nationalist feelings following Confederation in 1867. He had been a founder of the Canadian state and avidly and sometimes feverishly defended the choice to employ a federal model. He too was distressed by the many tensions existent in the country before the first decade of union had been completed. As Toronto trades unionists were to discover in the printer’s strike of 1873, Brown was not a man who tolerated dissent easily. The stress that consumed Brown in the mid 1870s can be seen in this cartoon drawn by John Wilson Bengough which appeared in Grip on June 12, 1875. There are three parties subject to the wrath of the publisher who barks at them, “begone and leave my sight. I believe you are all rebels in disguise.” (See Figure 4.13) In many ways, the cartoon holds numerous surprises. Not one of Brown’s perceived enemies at the time could be regarded as a traitor to the Canadian state. As we have seen, Blake, the figure in the drawing carrying the banner marked “Aurora”, was calling for a rise in nationalist sentiment. Goldwin Smith, the character in the far left-hand corner of the drawing had yet to reveal

Figure 4.13  Grip, June 12, 1875

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his continentalist feelings while actively promoting Canadian nationhood at the National Club. Alexander Mackenzie, the third Figure in the sketch, is holding a copy of a speech made by Brown in his electoral district of South Oxford in 1865 outlining the views that were soon to form the infrastructure of the new nation. The cartoon appeared just three months after Brown returned from a fruitless and humiliating meeting with American President Ulysses S. Grant in a futile attempt to convince Americans one more time of the benefits of North American free trade. He blamed the failure on Mackenzie for not preparing him adequately for the beating he would receive in Washington. The two old Liberal Party warriors were to become estranged over the issue. Blake’s flirtation with the idea of Imperial Federation must have provoked the hot-tempered Brown to the point that he would reject one of the most influential parliamentarians of his time. And perhaps, just perhaps, George Brown was the first to see through the illusions being manifested by the devious Smith. In 1878, Smith split from Canada First, left the National Club, and wrote his first full-length view of Canadian statehood. He was convinced that the American government would greet a willing Canada with open arms should she propose to join the Union. In The Political Destiny of Canada he stated without reservation that Canadian nationality being a lost cause, the ultimate union of Canada with the United States appears now to be morally certain; so that nothing is left for Canadian patriotism but to provide that it shall be a union indeed, and not an annexation; an equal and honourable alliance like that of Scotland and England, not a submission of the weaker to the stronger; and at the same time that the political change shall involve no change of any other kind in the relations of Canada with her mother country.37

Smith became the target of editorial cartoonists beginning with John Wilson Bengough, founder and editor of Grip magazine. Bengough took strong exception to Smith’s agenda for North American politics. In this cartoon which appeared on the May 10, 1879, Smith takes the form of Satan, the snake in the Garden of Eden. He has his murderous eye on a small bird marked Canada trapped in a tree named the British Connection. Not far away, a gentleman with a club named The Globe is on his way to batter the snake to death. It is of course, George Brown. (See Figure 4.14)



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Figure 4.14  Grip, May 10, 1879

Without Smith’s rigorous intellectual leadership, it is doubtful that talk of annexation would have continued as long as it did in Canada. In spite of its numerous political gyrations, the movement continued to grab attention long after Smith’s departure from the National Club. Observing the Canadian scene in 1883, American writer Louis Prosper Bender observed “To those in the

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Dominion who assert that annexation is dead, I reply that its ghost is far from laid, that it will keep flitting through the political atmosphere, and assume more vigorous and aggressive life than has yet shown.”38 By the early 1880s, Smith had decided to make his message more palatable. Instead of proposing outright annexation, the British-born historian decided to advocate commercial union between Canada and the United States. In this

Figure 4.15  Grip, June 19, 1880



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cartoon he is seen on the streets of Toronto peddling “Zollverein,” which just happens to be the German word for commercial union. (See Figure 4.15) The local denizens are not fooled. The unidentified man with the trumpet is holding a journal warning of annexationist tendencies which he sees as the natural outcome of any form of relationship with the Americans. The man atop the staircase equates Smith’s cargo with rotten fish. The debate over Canada’s future raged back and forth. In Toronto, essayist Watson Griffin was concerned when a number of both British and American magazines began to publish tracts recommending that Canada surrender its independence for annexation. Griffin responded Canada has nothing to gain by annexation. I will not deny that the material progress of the provinces would have been far greater had they joined the great republic one hundred years ago, but it does not follow that they would be benefited by the adoption of such a course today, for while obtaining none of the advantages which an early union would have assured they would become subject to many evils resulting from the past mistakes of the American people.39

Smith, like George Brown, was a determined person. As was his custom, the traveling intellectual once again took to the lecture circuit. On November 20, 1888, Smith found himself speaking to the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York at their annual banquet in New York City. He told his audience that the future of the nation was on the minds of most people in the country. The sadness he exclaimed was a diversity of opinion that was unlikely to yield any consensus on the future of the nation, at least in the foreseeable future. He noted that some Canadians, in particular those in power, wanted to maintain the status quo, dependence on Great Britain. Others wanted complete independence—a move he felt was destined to failure because of what he called the French wedge in the heart of the country. Still others wanted to join some form of Imperial Federation, an agenda floated by Blake at Aurora over a decade earlier. Then, to use the vernacular, he delivered the punch line. He predicted that at last, North America’s two English-speaking nations would come together and would do so with the blessing of Great Britain.40 It didn’t take long for John Wilson Bengough to respond in the pages of Grip. This cartoon was carried on the front cover of the magazine on December 8, 1888. (See Figure 4.16) The work is relatively simple. President-elect Harrison tells young Canada in the presence of his colleague Mr. Morton and John Bull that he intends to adopt the youngster and pay off all his bills. The child rejects

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Figure 4.16  Grip, December 8, 1888

the overture by returning a prospectus which announces “The Great Canadian Republic” which it describes as the true home of liberty. The idea that Canada could become a republic was one of the options offered by those advocating complete independence from Great Britain. Although a number of republican clubs surfaced, in particular in Toronto, they had little



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Figure 4.17  Canadian Illustrated News, January 31, 1880

influence and soon passed on. However, their meetings did not escape the attention of Bengough. (See Figure 4.17) As opposed to his other drawings on the matter of Canadian–American relations, this is a surprisingly mild offering. However, it does not deal directly with the American concept of republicanism which many Canadians regarded as a unique political concept. Bengough never

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revealed whether or not his brand of liberalism has the possibility of carrying a “Made in Canada” republican tag. Smith’s ideas continued to be the subject of parody in the 1880s and 1890s. In this cartoon which appeared on April 7, 1888 in Saturday Night magazine, Colonel G. T. Denison, a vocal member of Canada First and an advocate of an Imperial Federation, is seen tilting at the windmill of American union pictured as a water tank containing jurisdictions such as Texas and California which may have been unwilling partners in the republican federation. Watching are John Bull and Sir John A. Macdonald, who seem to be able to offer little

Figure 4.18  Saturday Night Magazine, April 7, 1888



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protection against American ambitions in Canada. The basic message is that Canada must choose between a liaison with the United States through a commercial union and eventually annexation, or remain in the security of the Empire. (See Figure 4.18) Denison was a favorite of late Victorian cartoonists. Like Macdonald and Smith, he was a slender man with pronounced features which were immediately identifiable. He sported a bushy moustache and was regularly seen in public wearing a long sabre, military boots, and a uniform which spoke to his standing as a colonel in the military. He was also a rabid political partisan and anti-annexationist. In this cartoon, (see Figure 4.19), Denison is encouraging Oliver Mowat, Premier of the Province of Ontario, to refine his horn removal techniques by moving the saw back beyond the bull’s head. To Denison, the evil of annexation could only be cured by decapitation. In 1891, Goldwin Smith was back in Toronto and up to his old tricks, namely talking to people in exchange for money. The irrepressible Smith was hired by the Young Men’s Liberal Club of Toronto to deliver a series of lectures on political issues. Smith was only too willing to comply and composed three long works entitled Loyalty, Aristocracy, and Jingoism which he delivered to the members in February, May, and November of 1891. Smith repeated his lectures to a new crowd of Young Liberals in 1896. In the last lecture on jingoism, Smith returned to his favorite theme of annexation. He pointed an accusing finger at Canada’s old Tories whom he derided as jingoists. Then he asked “What do our jingos want? Do they really wish to provoke a war with the United States? For their language and that of the leaders of their party at elections, we might think they did. Have they measured the chances of such a war, even supposing each of them to be a Paladin? Have they counted its cost? Their thoughts are full of the glories of 1812.”41

That year, Smith published what has now become his best known work of Canadian history. Canada and the Canadian Question was an in-depth and one-sided analysis of the state of nationhood in Canada. Smith explored six options for Canada’s future, including dependence, independence, imperial federation, commercial union, and what he termed political union. The term was another word for annexation. So why didn’t this long time advocate of union with the United States use the most familiar term for the event? Smith wrote….

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Figure 4.19  Grip, October 15, 1892 Annexation is an ugly word: it seems to convey the idea of force or pressure applied to the smaller state, not of free, equal honourable union, like that between England and Scotland. Yet there is no reason why the union of the two sections of the English-speaking people on this Continent should not be as free, as equal, and as honourable as the union of England and Scotland.42

On September 23, 1892, an ex-councilor from the City of Toronto, one Ernest Albert Macdonald, strode to the platform in Faneuil Hall in Boston to address a meeting of the North American Union League. Macdonald told his audience that he did not represent the people of Canada in any official sense, but he was there to promote the cause of what he called the re-union of the continent lying north of the Rio Grande. And why should we not he asked? “You are already



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Figure 4.20  Canadian Illustrated News, April 29, 1876

bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood. Why keep apart any longer? But the paramount practical question is what are you and I going to do to bring this scheme to a full fruition, for it lies with the people itself.”43 The subject of Canadian-American relations never really disappeared from the editorial pages of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Canadian

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Figure 4.21  Grip, January 19, 1889

media. During the late Victorian period, it continued to attract the attention of numerous cartoonists whose caricatures seldom varied in the agendas they presented. Whether in love or in war, Americans were not to be trusted. Uncle Sam as pictured in these two cartoons, the one from the Canadian Illustrated



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Figure 4.22  Caricature Politique, 1904

News from April 29, 1876 in which the Canadian messenger Perrault brags to Uncle Sam about Canadian expertise and as Miss Canada, the other from Grip on January 19, 1889, picturing one more time Uncle Sam as the suitor about to be rejected for all the right reasons. In both cases, from two different journals, from two different decades, the sexual confrontation appears to be one-sided until Miss Canada speaks up and rejects her suitors overtures. (See Figures 20 and 21) Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s first French-speaking prime minister was elected in 1896. His Liberal Party, in opposition since 1878, was faced with a nation divided along both linguistic and religious lines. His predecessor Sir John A. Macdonald had refused to intervene when the Métis leader in Rupert’s Land Louis Riel was tried, convicted, and eventually hanged on a charge of treason for organizing two rebellions in the west. In the year of his election, Laurier faced a hostile Province of Manitoba who had outlawed the French language in the province’s Schools. In spite of the national malaise that was plaguing the nation, Laurier proudly declared “the twentieth century belongs to Canada.”44 This is certainly the theme of Alonzo Ryan’s 1904 bilingual cartoon celebrating ten solid years of economic growth, all but two of it under Laurier’s administration. (See Figure 4.22) In Ryan’s view, that decade demonstrated once and for all to

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Figure 4.23  Grip, May 20, 1893

any American with designs on the north country that Canadians were quite able to prosper and take care of themselves. In the final analysis, the cartoon by Arthur Racey which appeared in Grip on May 20, 1893, No. 20, points to the dilemma of the annexation question. His two characters on the right-hand side of the drawing come to the right conclusion as the woman in question, Miss Canada, states “I Can Only Be A Sister to you.” (See Figure 4.23) Nonetheless, the rejection did not still the ambitions of Uncle Sam, seen in this 1902 cartoon from The Moon once again pursuing Miss Canada. (See Figure 4.24) There have been many debates on whether Laurier’s vision was right or



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Figure 4.24  The Moon, February 14, 1903

wrong. But if nothing else, his exercise of power from 1896 until 1911 put the annexation question, as least as far as political union was concerned, to rest once and for all, at least in Canada. Laurier fought Robert Borden leader of the federal Conservative Party in the 1911 election on the subject of closer economic relations with the United States. Laurier, like many of his predecessors, had opened free trade negotiations with the Americans, a policy fiercely resisted by Borden. As a St. Thomas, Ontario journalist Peter McArthur observed in 1910 The discussion that has been provoked has enabled the Liberals to pose as the benefactors of the plain people, anxious to redeem ancient pledges and to open the way to a glorious future. It has also enabled the Conservatives to reveal themselves as the guardians of Canadian prosperity, the upholders of the British connection, the patriotic opponents of annexation and the custodians of all the public virtues.45

Within the twentieth century, Canadian-American relationships grew much warmer. In 1988, the two nations finally negotiated what Britain, Brown, Laurier

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and a host of others had failed to do a century and a half earlier, a free trade agreement which eventually included all of North America. Nonetheless, there is still the elephant and there is still the mouse, a mouse which still insists that its cultural policy should remain beyond the reach of politicians and bureaucrats in the United States of America. Though all the twists and turns that the North American neighbors have followed, one fact remains. Indeed, what human activity split asunder in 1776, no one has yet to put back together. Not even the Montreal Star with its humorous look at a post annexation map could accomplish such as feat. (See Figure 4.25)

Figure 4.25  The Montreal Star, December 8, 1888



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Note 1 There are two Goldwin Smith’s noted in the study. The first and most notable was the English university professor who became prominent in the annexation movement of the Victorian period. The second Goldwin Smith was a professor at Iowa State University during the Second World War. The author has not attempted to establish a connection between them, but it is highly likely they were related.

Notes 1 CIHM 50194 A.A.B., The Reciprocity Treaty, 1864, 13. 2 CIHM 00013, Continental Union Association of Ontario. Continental Union: A Short Study of its Economic Side, Toronto, 1893, 29–30. 3 CIHM 02403, Circular Of The Committee Of The Annexation Association of Montreal, December 7, 1849, 3. 4 CIHM 02403, 5–6. 5 CIHM 02403, 16. 6 CIHM 02403, 8. 7 CIHM 35066. Dessaulles, L.A., Six Lectures Sur l’Annexation du Canada Aux Etats-Unis. 8 Despatch (sic), From Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Right Honorable Earl of Elgin, dated Downing Street, January 9, 1850. It was signed Earl Grey. 9 CIHM 22185, Circular Of The Committee Of The Annexation Association of Montreal, 1850, 6–9. 10 The letter was reprinted in Halifax, NS, “The British Colonist,” Vol. II, December 6, 1849. 11 Montreal, P.Q.. “Punch In Canada,” Vol. 1, 154. 12 CIHM 68166. To The Members Of The Yorkville Branch of the British–American League, 1850. 13 CIHM 63124. British American League, Montreal Branch, To the Inhabitants of Canada, Montreal, 1849, 5. 14 CIHM 00725. Current Objections To Commercial Union Considered, 1888, 115. 15 J. M. S. Careless. “Brown Of The Globe Volume One,” (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1959). 174–81. 16 Toronto, ON, “The British American Magazine,” Vol. II, December 1863, 114. 17 CIHM 33839, Monro, Alexander: Annexation or Union with the United States is the manifest destiny of British North America, St. John N.B., 1868.

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18 CIHM 44399–44444, The Franco-Canadian Annexationists of Elmira, N.Y. to General Benjamin F. Butler on Canada-American Annexation, 1. 19 Toronto, Ontario, “The British American Magazine,” Vol. II, August 1863. 339–40. 20 Goldwin Smith, “The Treaty of Washington 1871,” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941). xi. 21 CIHM 63690, A Bill For the Admission Of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West for the organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, 1–2. 22 Mary K. George, “Zachariah Chandler: A Political Biography,” (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1969), 180. 23 George, 178–9. 24 The story of the railway and all the politics involved in building it are well documented in Pierre Berton, “The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871–1881,” (Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart Ltd.), 1970. 25 Donald Creighton, “The Story of Canada,” (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), 155–6. 26 P. B. Waite, “The 1860s” J. M. S. Careless (ed.) Colonists And Canadians 1760–1867, (Toronto, ON: Macmillan of Canada, 1971), 269. 27 CIHM 08690, Appel Aux Gens De Langue Et de Coeur Français en Faveur de L’Union Du Canada Aux Etats-Unis. 28 CIHM 36298, The Civil War In America: An Address Read At the Last Meeting of the Manchester Union, Manchester, U.K., 1866. 29 CIHM 33528, Goldwin Smith, The Relations Between America and England: A Reply to the Late Speech of Mr. Sumner, London, 1869. 30 Donald Creighton, “Towards A Discovery of Canada,” (Toronto, ON: Macmillan and Company, 1972), 203. 31 Canada First: A Memorial Of The Late William A. Foster, Q.C., with Introduction by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L., (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose and Company, 1890). Reprint 32 Ramsay Cook, “The Regenerators: Social Criticism In Late Victorian Canada,” (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 157. 33 Toronto, ON “The Nation,” Vol. II, No. 4, January 29, 1875 34 Toronto, ON “The Nation,” Vol. 1, No. 29, October 15, 1874 35 Joseph Schull, “Edward Blake: The Man of The Other Way,” (Toronto, ON: Macmillan and Company, 1975), 134–7. 36 Montreal and Toronto, “The Dominion Illustrated,” Vol. VI, No. 130, 419. 37 Goldwin Smith, “The Political Destiny of Canada,” (Toronto, ON: Willing and Williamson, 1878), 71. 38 CIHM 07991. Louis Prosper Bender, “A Canadian View of Annexation.” (Boston, New York, 1883), 326.



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39 Watson Griffin, “The Provinces And The States: Why Canada Does Not Want Annexation,” (Toronto, ON: J. Moore Publisher, 1884), 5. 40 CIHM 33565, Goldwin Smith, At The Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 20, 1888, New York City. 41 CIHM 13737, Goldwin Smith, Loyalty, Aristocracy and Jingoism: Three lectures delivered before the Young Men’s Liberal Club, Toronto, 1891, 71–2. The 1896 version can be found on CIHM. 33247. 42 Goldwin Smith, “Canada And The Canadian Question,” (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose and Company: Macmillan and Company, 1891), 267. 43 CIHM 09330, “Address Delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts” by Ex-Alderman Ernest Albert Macdonald on September 23, 1892 under the auspices of the North American Union League. 44 Creighton, Towards The Discovery of Canada, 221. 45 “Ourselves: A Magazine For Cheerful Canadians”, St. Thomas, ON: Vol. 1, No. 6, (March–April 1911), 257–8.

5

The Trojan Horse

On June 25, 1846, the beleaguered British administration of Sir Robert Peel gathered together a coalition of Whig and Irish members of the House of Commons and repealed the Corn Laws.1 The age of global incentives for free trade among nations had begun. Although Peel lost his government by a single vote later that same evening due to his inability to quell dissent in Ireland, his actions were to have an immediate impact across the Atlantic in both Washington D.C. and in the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada and in the Atlantic Maritimes. The success of the battle against protection was attributed directly to Richard Cobden, founder of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839. Cobden, a calico manufacturer in Manchester and a Member of the British Parliament in 1841, was no stranger to John Henry Walker. (Figure 5.1) The cartoonist as seen in the accompanying sketch was intellectually in tune with those citizens of Upper and Lower Canada who saw free trade as the first step in a process which would result in the annexing of Canada to the United States. Specifically, Walker targeted one of his favorite villains, the Montreal Member of Parliament Benjamin Holmes. The decision to abandon protection was treated by British North American colonists as a sellout of Imperial interests in North America when Britain canceled preferences given to colonial grain and timber.2 As delegates to the July 26, 1849 meeting of the British American League in Kingston Ontario heard In her promulgation of Free Trade Principles, she (Great Britain) has lost sight of the interests of her colonies, with the view of obtaining from all nations reciprocal Free Trade and thereby inundating the world with her manufactures.3

The British American League, although it attracted some of George Brown’s supporters, was a thoroughly Tory operation designed solely to fight those promoting annexation with the United States. Fearing that abandonment by the

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Figure 5.1  Punch In Canada, February 16, 1850

British would only compel Canadian producers to look south and thus make the annexationists’ messages more attractive, the organization was forced to address the free trade issue.4 Allegiances were up for grabs in all parts of the country. It was, as Walker’s cartoon in Punch In Canada demonstrated, loyalty for sale. (Figure 5.2) In the sketch, the always perceptive Punch newsboy accuses Henry John Boulton, a member of one of Upper Canada’s most prestigious and most Tory of families, of exchanging his loyalty for a few shekels from Uncle Sam while purporting to support Canadian independence. Duplicity was a



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Figure 5.2  Punch In Canada, January 26, 1850

common theme in pre-Confederation Canada, an accusation that echoed well with Walker’s virulent anti-Americanism. The strict party discipline that was to arise during the second half of the nineteenth century was still in its infancy when Walker sketched his political foes. In nearly every respect the thoughts that went through the minds of Walker and his intellectual soul mates were based as much on envy as reality. As the editor of Toronto’s early literary journal The Poker observed “Solomon said there was nothing new under the sun; but even Solomon, with all his wisdom, never dreamed of such a nation as Yankeedom, where they produce something new every day.”5

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In pre-Confederation Canada, it was generally conceded that national survival depended on choosing between the equally distasteful choices of total protection or open free trade with the Americans. In attempt to heal the wounds of conflict, British politicians and Canadian colonists had wasted little time following the War of 1812 to address the question of free trade with the United States. From 1816 onward until Britain and the United States finally signed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854, virtually every American president from James Monroe to Zachary Taylor hosted delegations seeking to eliminate tariff barriers between the two nations and their overseas holdings. With the repeal of the Corn Laws, the situation suddenly became more urgent.6 Negotiations began in earnest in 1847 with the British, acting both for themselves and their colonists in Upper and Lower Canada and the Maritimes, meeting American representatives face-to-face. However, the talks bogged down over the thorny question of fishing rights. The British however refused to terminate the talks. On November 1, 1849 they sent Sir H. Bulwer, the ambassador to Washington, to head the discussions. Bulwer was given the unenviable task to untangle the question of fishing rights from those of free trade.7 The negotiations came to a halt when Zachary Taylor who had declared his support for free trade died unexpectedly. The turn of events and the fragility of the situation was not lost on the Montreal annexationists who placed free trade as the front and center issue in any future relationships with the republic south of the Great Lakes. To them, the issue was simple. Canadians either had to develop a well protected home market which would also benefit from Imperial tariffs against American goods or join the United States. The repeal of the Corn Laws made the first option far less likely to succeed. In essence, the entire annexationists’ platform dealt with free trade which they believed could only be achieved through political and economic union in order to create one huge and powerful North American trading block. As one of their number, Jacob de Witt a member of the national legislature observed If we are united with the United States, we shall have free trade, from Gaspe through all the States and Territories of the United States to the Pacific Ocean. We shall have free navigation with all the nations of the earth. We shall have a trade so large, that we can send promptly, and at the lowest freight, any part of our produce, fish &c. To any part of the world, where it may command the best price.8

Canada, they argued, operating on its own and impaired by a wild and hostile geography with a scattered population was in no position of strength when it



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came to economic matters.9 When the state of Vermont spelled out its conditions for annexing British North America, free trade was actually the foremost consideration. There are few countries in the world whose free trade with each other would be of more benefit than a reciprocal trade would be between British North America and the United States. The provinces have the products in abundance the States really require; and the latter have hundreds of articles needed by these provinces. So that a free trade between these conterminous countries could not fail to be of mutual benefit.10

Figure 5.3  Punch In Canada, November 15, 1849

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For one, John Henry Walker in Punch in Canada kept up a relentless counterattack against those who would question the Imperial connection. For the cartoonist, free trade and eventual annexation were inseparable. In this sketch, he once again bares his sentiments through the character of Benjamin Holmes. (Figure 5.3) Walker not only argued that annexation would be a bust two years after the political marriage of Canada and the United States, but that Canadians represented here by Holmes would be reduced to selling shoddy and unwanted goods while their neighbors, in this case, symbolized by the root beer vendor prospered. On the political front, the countervailing position was delivered by the true, blue Ontario Tory, John Gamble, founder of the British American League. Throughout 1849 and 1850, Gamble toured the colonies speaking to various sympathetic audiences in Toronto, Hamilton, Kingston and in the annexationists’ own back yard of Montreal. He refused to accept the argument that protection could not act as an impetus for the development of a new state in North America. Speaking in Toronto in late 1849, Gamble declared “…protection will produce a state of affairs which will soon result in prosperity; because when people find that their labour is profitably and literally rewarded, they will be induced to turn their capital into those channels from which the greatest returns are obtained.”11

Listening attentively to Gamble’s argument was a young lawyer of Scottish descent from the limestone city of Kingston, Ontario. He had been present at the founding convention of Gamble’s organization in July 1849. His name was John A. Macdonald. In 1867, he would become Canada’s first Prime Minister and throughout the Victorian Age, the master architect of its economic and political policies. In September of 1852, The Anglo-American Magazine of Toronto reported that a meeting of Boards of Trade from a number of Quebec towns and cities had met in the colonial capital at Quebec City to urge the government to reimpose tariffs on any goods moving up and down the St. Lawrence River. The journal cheerfully reported that the government responded favorably to the resolutions passed at the meeting. Notable by its absence was any mention of conflict at the gathering.12 The sentiment did not go unnoticed in the United States. In 1854, the Honourable A. Tuck, member of the House of Representatives from New Hampshire, supported free trade activists in Britain and Canada. Noting the continuing conflict over the fishery, Tuck argued that an all embracing free trade



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agreement would not only serve American economic initiatives, but protect the disputed and dwindling Atlantic fishery as well.13 It was not the first time that controversy over the fishery played a major role in the quest for continental free trade. The breakthrough finally came on June 5, 1854 when pro-free trade forces finally put the protectionists into retreat. Great Britain, acting on behalf of the nations in the British Empire including Upper and Lower Canada and the Maritimes, signed the Reciprocity Treaty in Washington D.C.. Not only did the treaty have to be ratified by Congress, it had to pass in the Imperial Parliament in London and the assemblies of all the British North American Colonies. The conditions were to take effect immediately following legislative approval as outlined in Article V. Such assent having been given, the treaty shall remain in force for ten years from the date at which it may come into operation, and further until the expiration of twelve months after either of the High Contracting Parties shall give notice to the other of its wish to terminate the same; each of the High Contracting Parties being at liberty to give such notice to the other at the end of the said term of ten years, or at any time afterwards.14

In reality, it was hardly a groundbreaking agreement. Other than the continuing and thorny issue of the fishery market, the treaty restricted much of its free trade clauses to perishable goods. Article Three contained a schedule of twentyeight product categories which were to flow freely across the border. Even those limited non-perishable goods such as slate, coal, stone, and marble could not enter foreign markets as any form of finished product. As well, tobacco exports from Virginia and the Carolinas to the British colonies could not be cut or exported as cigars or pipe tobaccos.15 The short, half-page list of duty free goods paled in comparison to those contained in the eleven-page appendix with its threatening premise that “duties apply to all imports, irrespective of where imported, unless specially mentioned.”16 However, the treaty proved to be somewhat flexible. Some items such as binnacle lamps which were taxed at 12.5 per cent in 1854 became duty free by 1863, one year before notice of the termination of the agreement. Others however, such as beer, ale and porter were subjected to large increases over the ten years of the agreement, in this case, from 12.5 per cent in 1854 to 30 per cent in 1863. As much as Canadians had agreed to the letter of the 1854 agreement, there was a serious question as to whether or not they had accepted the spirit

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of the pact. After all, the driving force behind the agreement was the British government. Sentiment against free trade remained strong in the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada which had been amalgamated in 1841 and in the Maritimes which were not part of the union. The colonial government in Central Canada had passed a protectionist agricultural tariff in 1843.17 It was only rescinded when agricultural products gained free access to the American market. Many Canadian business people wanted to jump on the tariff bandwagon. Influential protectionists refused to go away. They had a strong ally in Alexander Galt, a young and ambitious Canadian politician who had been drafted into government as the Minister of Finance after sitting for some time as an Independent. In his budgets in both 1858 and 1859, Galt imposed a series of strict tariffs on American manufacturers doing business in Canada. The Galt budgets not only awakened anti-free trade sentiment in Canada, they reinforced the idea in the pro-protectionist regions of the central United States that Canada was violating the clauses of the 1854 agreement.18 Galt, more than any other political figure on either side of the border, set in motion the recipe for the destruction of the treaty. Galt’s actions should have come as no surprise to political observers in the mid 1850s. He had long been an advocate for reshaping the British colonies in North America into a federal union which would also include British Columbia and the lands controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Galt’s concept gave Upper Canadians expansion potential. As well its federalist framework responded to French-speaking Canadians’ concerns that westward expansion of English-speaking settlers could succeed in diluting the French culture solidly entrenched in Lower Canada, eastern, and northern Ontario as well as the Maritimes. In Galt’s view, the union of 1841 was an impediment to growth that should be dismantled with both Upper and Lower Canada regaining their respective, individual identities. A sense that a new nation could be created within North America was starting to take hold in the British colonies, a new state which would counter the aggressive, republican tendencies of the nation to the south.19 As the Civil War drew to a close, the United States was showing greater and greater impatience with its neighbor to the north. Not only were the Americans convinced that Galt and his partners had launched a fatal attack on the reciprocity agreement, they were equally convinced that Great Britain and Canada had supported the Confederacy in more than just spirit. However, as



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much as the Americans could deflect the blame for the ineffectiveness of the treaty at Canada, Canadians were equally adroit at pointing fingers southward. Writing in the British American Magazine in 1864, Isaac Buchanan lamented What then, have the Americans to complain of, that they are desirous, some of annulling it altogether, others only of modifying it? The one intelligible cause of complaint they appear to have on commercial grounds is that the Reciprocity Treaty is reciprocal; that they have not a preponderance of advantages; and that the British government has done them the grievous wrong of having secured to the colonies the same advantages it gave to the States.20

The article contained Buchanan’s signature. As 1864 came to a close, so did the subsequent attempt at reciprocity between the two North American neighbors. On March 17, 1865, Charles Francis Adams of the American Legation in London notified Earl Russell of the British government that the United States was no longer interested in continuing the treaty. The letter was delivered exactly one day after the tenth anniversary of the day the provisions of the pact came into effect.21 Buchanan was a central player in the drama. Buchanan was one of a number of Scots immigrants who came to Canada prior to Canadian Confederation. The Hamilton, Ontario businessman along with fellow Scots George Brown, Alexander Mackenzie, and John A. Macdonald drew the masterplan for Canadian nationhood. All shared a deep suspicion of American republicanism and all were frightened at the prospect that the United States had the potential as far back as the early nineteenth century to become the most dominant power in the world, both militarily and economically. As much as Brown argued that the safest way to deal with the United States was through bi-lateral free trade, Buchanan wanted to build a solid protection wall around Canada. Buchanan clearly had the advantage. He had Macdonald’s ear and he took advantage of the fact that Brown and Macdonald were bitter political rivals. To enforce his views, Buchanan had offered his candidacy for a legislative seat for the City of Toronto in 1841 when Upper and Lower Canada merged into a single political entity. Constituency loyalty meant little in the mid nineteenth century and Buchanan was duly elected as an Independent member of the legislature. It was while serving in this assembly that he met Macdonald, the man whom he was to influence nearly four decades later. Buchanan’s political creed was simple and to the point. The truest, as the most practical loyalty in a Canadian is to do all he can to prevent Canadians having anything to envy in the Americans, and, if possible,

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to secure for the labor of Canada advantages superior to those enjoyed by the farmers and mechanics of the United States. A home market for our farmers, the best Reciprocity.22

Buchanan did not escape the gaze of early political cartoonists. He became the front page poster boy in this drawing which appeared in the Hamilton, Ontario version of The Canadian Illustrated News on Saturday May 30, 1863. In this unsigned portrait, the legislator and businessman peers down on his audience with nary a smile or a sign of joy. (Figure 5.4) The Reciprocity Agreement, although under attack, was still in effect, a factor that Buchanan was determined to change. Buchanan followed the pathway taken by many of his influential predecessors with a political axe to grind. He founded a newspaper, The Peoples’ Journal which appeared on the streets of Hamilton on the 13th of November, 1869. One year later, he moved the journal to Toronto. Buchanan appointed John MacLean, a known protectionist and anti-free trader to the post of publisher and editor. MacLean waited until the ninth edition appeared on New Year’s Day, 1870 to declare the journal’s mandate. It was clear and to the point. The growing importance of manufacturing interests of Canada calls for the establishment of a journal specially devoted to the promotion of the same-to the advocacy of their claims before the High Court of Public Opinion. This is the more necessary, as- whatever may be thought of the comparative merits of Protection and Free Trade-the fact is before us, that (leaving out the French papers) all the professedly commercial and financial journals in Canada, and all the daily papers published in the cities and towns, with but one, or perhaps two or three exceptions, are pronounced on the Free Trade side of the question, and are either hostile or indifferent to the policy of Protection to Home Manufactures.23

The words were Maclean’s. The spirit belonged to Buchanan. As Canadian economist Maxwell Cohen observed In essence this was the time when British North America and the United States were feeling their way towards answering the question as to “who gets what” on this continent and how to determine the minimal conditions for the living together of a burgeoning sovereign and a dawdling colony.24

There is little agreement in Canadian historical circles as to the origins of the Canadian Confederation which took place on July 1, 1867. Some have argued



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Figure 5.4  Canadian Illustrated News, May 30, 1863

that the union of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia was a defensive action designed to ward off any American designs on the northern half of the continent. Others have proposed that the British were tired of holding on to sparsely settled lands in North America while other more desirable jewels could be placed in the Imperial Crown. But as Philip Resnick has observed “…in the end, commercial interests and imperial sentiment, fear of the United States and the lure of a continent wide economy, the spirit

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of the British constitution and a pinch of American values combined to give us the institutions of 1867.”25 Regardless of who may be supporting whatever argument, one fact looms clearly: Canada’s economic, political and social cultures have been strongly influenced by actions south of the border. In that respect, the nineteenth century would prove to differ little from the twentieth. When the United States backed out of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 in 1865, the provisions of a previous bi-lateral agreement signed in 1818 were once again in effect. The Canadas returned to a protectionist policy by slapping 20 per cent duty on all imports. The Maritime colonies of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, while claiming adherence to free trade, set tariffs in a range from 10 to 12 per cent. Neither party was pleased with this turn of events, as both the United States and Great Britain felt that the restrictive clauses of the agreement, in particular as they applied to American based fishermen, would inevitably lead to increased tensions in North America. In particular, American fishermen were prohibited from fishing any closer than three miles from the Canadian coast. The limited access Americans enjoyed to use Canadian ports for activities connected to the fishery would be subject to increasing limitations as populations in the regions covered by the treaty expanded. As well, throughout the life of the Treaty of 1818, there had been numerous disputes over the location of the international boundary lines in the seas between Canada and the United States. More often than not, American fishing boats would find themselves restricted or removed from waters they once fished without interference. Matters became more aggravated as both Canadian and British officials attempted to use the various clubs in the Treaty of 1818 to negotiate a new free trade deal with the Americans following the collapse of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854.26 Both parties recognized that continuing enforcement of the clauses of the Treaty of 1818 had the potential to lead to armed conflict. Cooler heads prevailed. Nonetheless Canada remained a protectionist state following Confederation. In 1868 a tariff on imports was set at 15 per cent. The agreement, long after its collapse in 1864, continued to invoke fond memories amongst free trade advocates. Their sentiments did not escape Canada’s political cartoonists. When pro free trade sentiment arose again in the early 1870s, a short story appeared under the name of R. Urtica entitled John and Jonathan. It heralded the agreement of 1854 in both caricature and prose. The cover of the twenty-eight-page tale was adorned with this cartoon of Jonathan a.k.a Uncle Sam boldly shaking the hand of his old rival John Bull. (Figure 5.5)



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Figure 5.5  R. Urtica, Ottawa 1871

The two national flags flutter in some form of artificial breeze adorned on the top by the American eagle and guarded carefully by the British bulldog. The spirit, captured in the prose, is one of longing for the good old days when two equals could meet and iron out their differences in peace and harmony. Urtica drew precise descriptions of his characters in prose as well as sketch. John Bull, the symbol of British power and prestige was A plain spoken man, … powerful and strong as his namesake, very blunt in his manner, and in appearance, stout and broad shouldered; very much like the

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pictures you may see in Punch of a jolly English farmer, and which will give a very good idea of him generally. However, like everybody else, he had his good and bad points,—he was as stubborn as a mule, easily led but uncommonly hard to drive, had a strong will of his own that wouldn’t brook dictation, and had most of the failings common to obstinate people.27

And how did the symbol of America make out when scrutinized by our sage? In appearance Jonathan was tall and slender, but tough as an oak sapling; in manner quaint and off handed—hard to get the better of in a bargain, and keenly alive where his interests were at stake, but with all good natured and generous. His favorite amusement was whittling a stick; and it had always been remarked that when indulging in this luxurious propensity, it was harder to deal with him then than at any other time.28

Of course, our artist and composer would have been remiss if he hadn’t placed the virginal and innocent Miss Canada in some form of contradiction to these two world leaders. Now Canadia (sic) was a fine, handsome girl, and in every respect, a dutiful daughter, and gave promise of a future blooming and graceful womanhood. John was very proud of her, and had educated her well in the duties that would devolve upon her in the management of her estates while she was fond of him, —consequently when she was considered old enough to manage them he placed her in possession of the estates above mentioned, which bordered on those of Jonathan, and from which they were separated by means of a small creek. Here she made herself quite contented and happy, and conducted herself in such a manner towards her tenantry, by administering to their wants and requirements, as to gain their esteem and respect.29

Symbolically the portrayal of Canada as a young, desirable and undoubtedly celibate female did not change to any significant degree during the many debates which took place over free trade. Canadian cartoonists were consistent in their characterization of both Britain as the large, overweight and pompous John Bull with his nasty dog and sometimes lion and the United States by the slender, conniving, and undoubtedly sinister Uncle Sam. At stake of course was a game of power, and in Victorian Canada it was just assumed that in spite of a few rumblings that were starting to emerge for equality, Canadian women were vulnerable to forces they could not control and thus needed the protection of a strong, forceful male. The eventual compromise out of the free trade straight jacket was the Treaty



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of Washington of 1871, which gave the United States limited fishing access to Canadian waters and Canadian harbors in return for financial compensation.30 Canada’s first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald had returned from the U.S. capital with what many in Parliament felt was a one sided agreement defining mainly fishing rights while ignoring the more critical trade problems. More importantly, he returned without a free trade agreement in hand to offset some of the more serious concerns about the provisions of the fishing agreement. The Prime Minister was facing increasing pressure to erect a larger tariff wall around the country in lieu of obtaining a free trade agreement with the Americans. Protectionist agitation was centered in Toronto and in particular in William A. Foster’s Canada First Society. Although the organization claimed to be politically neutral, many of its members were quite partisan. Tariff protection for Canadian industry was on the organization’s agenda.31 With Foster’s death, the organization re-tooled itself as The Canadian National Association. Point seven in its program read “the imposition of duties for revenue, so adjusted as to afford every possible encouragement to Native Industry.”32 Macdonald was soon to have more problems than trying to sell the treaty to both the Canadian public and Canada’s vested commercial interests. In the federal election of 1874, Macdonald’s party went down to defeat as a direct consequence of the 1873 corruption which became widely known in the country as the Pacific Scandal. The voters replaced him with the Liberal Party of Canada, headed by a stone mason from Southwestern Ontario, Alexander Mackenzie. Mackenzie was determined to succeed where Macdonald had failed. Number one on his political agenda was the successful negotiation of a free trade agreement with the United States. His chief negotiator was to be Senator George Brown. The events of the following four years were also to pit Canada’s two major political cartoonists against each other. John Wilson Bengough and Henri Julien could not have been more different in culture and political perspective had they been born and brought up in two different nations. In fact, in many ways they had been. Bengough was the product of the English-speaking culture of Ontario while Julien, although fluently bi-lingual and to a degree bi-cultural, was very much a product of his Quebec roots. Bengough, founder and editor of the satirical Toronto-based political weekly Grip, was both a Liberal and a liberal. His journal, founded to take advantage of Macdonald’s troubles during the Pacific Scandal of 1873, was witness to the birth of protectionism in Canada which became law in 1879. Although his journal did not survive beyond 1894, Bengough was still sketching political cartoons for

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a number of publications in both the United States and Canada when Liberal Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier went to the people in 1911 on a free trade platform and was soundly defeated. During the late 1870s, Bengough became such a thorn in the side of Macdonald that the Prime Minister’s followers took steps to counter the damage being inflicted by the young cartoonist. A Tory

Figure 5.6  Grip, April 25, 1891



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attempt to buy into Grip failed as did an effort to establish a political journal favorable to Macdonald in Toronto.33 A cartoon which appeared in Grip on April 25, 1891 reveals the core political beliefs that Bengough promoted during his twenty years at the helm of the journal. (Figure 5.6) Grip, the namesake of the magazine and the raven in Dicken’s Barnaby Rudge stands atop what appears to be a collection of boxes containing materials on Bengough’s agenda. His flag promotes the basic liberal ideal of human peace, justice, and progress. Around the collection of boxes stand five of Canada’s political major leaders including on the immediate right Sir John A. Macdonald, then the Prime Minister and second from the left, the leader of the opposition Liberal Party, Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Watching with Macdonald are Sir Charles Tupper, the man with the spectacles, and George Foster. The person on the extreme left is probably Richard Cartwright Mackenzie’s Finance Minister who would return to government to become one of Laurier’s brain trusts when the Liberals returned to power in the federal government in 1896. Although the cartoon plays to many of Bengough’s favorite topics, in particular his devotion to the ideas of the American Single Taxer Henry George and his obsessive passion to bring Canada into the age of Prohibition, his adherence to basic liberal values as espoused by John Stuart Mill and Thomas Henry Green are unmistakable. Bengough argues for extension of the franchise to include all citizens regardless of financial status or gender, control of monopolies by government, and of course free trade with all nations of the world. Henri Julien on the other hand was more protective of his political feelings, although those for whom he worked were less reticent. Julien was the major cartoonist for the Montreal based, pro-Tory satirical journal The Jester in 1878. The Jester34 ceased publication when Macdonald succeeded in getting his protectionist bill known as the National Policy through Parliament in 1879. Julien had offered his services primarily to the journals in the Desbarats publishing empire from 1873 until he joined the daily newspaper The Montreal Star in 1888. The Desbarats firms had a vested interest in the fortunes of Macdonald and his Liberal-Conservative party having once held the lucrative King’s Printer contract. While Julien retreated from political issues at The Montreal Star, his employer, the mercurial Hugh Graham, the first Baron of Atholstan, used his newspaper to pillory Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberal Party’s economic policies which included free trade.35 If Julien held any liberal tendencies, they did not surface in his work. He appeared to have few difficulties appeasing the Tory approach to life espoused by his publishers.

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Figure 5.7  The Jester, September 27, 1878

This cartoon which appeared in The Jester on September 27, 1878, reveals much about its artist. (Figure 5.7) Uncle Sam remains the woodcarver, who first appeared in Walker’s work some three decades earlier, although, in this sketch, his knife and his wood have yet to meet. He is of course quite slender with a chin goatee and a mouth slanted downward, all of which give him a fairly untrustworthy appearance. His adversary is none other than Macdonald himself who is building a wooden fence in order to keep Uncle Sam and his goodies strictly on Sam’s side of the line. Uncle Sam is pleading with Macdonald to stop constructing the barrier, arguing of course that Canadian agricultural products are welcomed on his side of the fence. Macdonald agrees, but points to those other factors which he claims more than counter the positive effects of being able to sell Canadian products in the United States. He tells Uncle Sam that all of Canada’s troubles are coming from the other side, a.k.a the United States and that he has an obligation to correct the situation. With the defeat of Macdonald’s first administration, Grip sounded the bell for the next phase of the free trade debate. With tongue firmly implanted in his cheek, Bengough made his case, using his magazine as a worthy candidate for protection from competition.



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Why, by all that is reasonable, should Punch be permitted to show his detestable phiz in Canada? And those nasty cartoons in the American pictorials, why should they be suffered to come in? Grip says they should all be excluded by a moderate protective duty of about 100 per cent; and he, on his part, in consideration of such duty, will solemnly promise not to extract more than 25 cents per copy from the public. Can any patriotic Canadian have any objection to that? True, the farmers may complain, and may urge that they desire to get their fancies tickled and to buy their guffaws as cheaply as possible. But who cares a copper for the farmers or for anybody else? Grip must be protected.36

In spite of Bengough’s sarcasm, there was serious concern in Canada that the nation was losing its best and its brightest to the United States, a not too unfamiliar theme in modern parlance. In 1860, some 249,000 men had moved to take up residence in the United States. By 1870, this had increased to nearly 500,000. By the time that the free trade debate re-surfaced again in 1874, the country was well on its way to losing nearly 700,000 young Canadians to emigration.37 Goldwin Smith, writing in the Canada First journal The Nation noted that “we are doing our utmost to draw emigration into Canada. But among friends, it may be whispered that our first business is to stop emigration out of Canada.”38 Responses to the problem were many, but Alexander Mackenzie felt he had the answer, a free trade agreement with the Americans. Mackenzie’s trusted ally George Brown was convinced that he was in the twilight of an unsatisfactory political career. Brown had first been elected to the combined Parliament of the Canadas in 1851. In 1857, he ran in two constituencies and was elected in both but finally chose to represent a district in his home city of Toronto. In 1858, he found himself at the head of the Reform Party later to become the Liberal Party of Canada. He was instrumental in defeating a pre-Confederation coalition headed by Macdonald, a factor which led to a life-long political estrangement between the two. His administration was shortlived. But at the time, politics was in his blood. He returned to active political life in 1864 to begin work on the Confederation documents. He left the administration in 1865 and was defeated for a seat in Canada’s first post Confederation government in 1867. The journalist/political warrior remained aloof from public life until 1873 when he accepted a seat in the appointed upper chamber, the Canadian Senate. However, he took little interest in the work of the Senate and seldom attended sessions.39 In spite of his seeming lack of interest in political affairs, Mackenzie convinced Brown to accept a position as head of a delegation to Washington to

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open talks on free trade. Brown was well known as a political reformer and an advocate of liberal trade rules. His Manchesterian views greatly influenced the federal Liberal Party in which the publisher was a dominant force throughout his life. On February 9, 1874, the Senator traveled to the American capital where he was lavishly hosted by President Ulysses S. Grant and Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. Brown reported back to Ottawa on February 19 claiming that “matters at Washington continue as favorably as could possibly be desired.”40 Since foreign affairs were still under the jurisdiction of the Parliament at Westminster, Mackenzie was forced to ask the British Government to convene a commission to negotiate a deal with Washington. He insisted that Brown be included in the delegation and the British agreed. The official appointment was announced on March 17 and Brown set off for the United States. He took his time getting his affairs in the American capital settled and did not make contact with the administration until March 28, 1874. Brown quickly discovered that Grant had other matters on his mind not the least of which was urging Congress to pass a bill to print more money. Nonetheless Brown was determined to forcefully present the Canadian position. On April 27, Brown presented the Canadian wish list. In essence, the Mackenzie administration argued that the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 be revived for a period of twenty-one years with some significantly different clauses. The Canadians wanted some manufacturing items to be included in the deal along with the perishable goods that were contained in the previous agreement. In turn, they offered the United States free access to Canadian fisheries if the Americans would agree to eliminate the compensation clauses in the Treaty of Washington of 1871. They also offered free navigation on Canadian canals and agreed to deepen the waterways to allow for heavier traffic, mainly from the United States. Journalistic leaks were as common in the late years of the nineteenth century as much as they are today. As early as April, 1874, The Nation had reported that the talks were in trouble. It has been whispered at Ottawa, for some days, that the mission has failed, and this, we fancy is substantially true. Unless there was reasonable prospect of success, the negotiations ought never to have been opened. We shall probably soon have a definite statement of a prospect of success or actual failure.41

And failure it was, an event that eventually led to the slippery slope that produced Macdonald’s National Policy of 1879.



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Canadian historian J. M. S. Careless has argued that the Achilles heel of the proposed treaty was American reluctance to give any concessions whatsoever. Nonetheless, a draft treaty was presented to Congress on June 18. It was doomed from the beginning. The Grant administration refused to endorse it. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee refused to report its conclusions back to the Senate. This was the subject of this cartoon which appeared in the Canadian Illustrated News on January 30, 1875. (Figure 5.8) Although the characters are not identified, the message is clear. American financial interests with their allies in the Senate are chasing away the dog named Reciprocity. His collar contains the name Brown. In Careless’ view, the United States was beginning to turn inward, a move which finally produced westward expansion and wholesale industrial growth in the northeastern corridors.42 Attempts to revive the treaty continued into early 1875, all for naught. Just a week prior to the end of the negotiations, The Canadian Illustrated News published the first in a series of articles on free trade which continued until the end of the year. The article appeared under the headline “Fallacies of Free Trade.”43 Brown’s dilemma is the subject of this three-panel drawing in the Canadian Illustrated News by cartoonist James G. MacKay. MacKay was a native of

Figure 5.8  Canadian Illustrated News, January 30, 1875

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Figure 5.9  Canadian Illustrated News, April 10, 1875

Hamilton, who contributed cartoons and sketches to the journal in the 1870s and 1880s (Figure 5.9) but never received the recognition of his two more illustrious colleagues, Jump and Julien. In the first panel, Brown is sent on his way by the Prime Minister and his chief lieutenant Edward Blake. The publisher’s optimism is painted across his face. However, in the second panel, he is less than thrilled having confronted American President Ulysses S. Grant and a Brother Jonathan who looks like a nymph out of a performance of A Mid Summer Night’s Dream or any one of a number of Greek tragedies. In the final panel, a beaten, tattered and dejected Brown returns home to a mocking Opposition Leader John A. Macdonald vowing as he knocks on Mackenzie’s door that he will never perform the role of a diplomat again. He didn’t. When it became apparent in early 1875 that the treaty was never going to be voted on in Washington, Brown’s initiatives took a journalistic beating for the next two years at both the hands of John Wilson Bengough and Henri Julien but for entirely different reasons. Bengough, who strongly believed that free trade would not lead to political and economic union with the United States, but would in turn produce a strong, independent and viable economy in Canada, was thunderstruck at Brown’s failure.44 On Saturday February 27, 1875, he portrayed the hapless Brown as the tragic Venetian figure of Othello attempting to explain his failure to the Canadian Senate. (Figure 5.10) Brown attempted to coddle the senators by arguing that the real reason for his failure lay in the fact that Uncle Sam incorrectly perceived that the agreement would lead to a wholesale expropriation of American business profits into Canada. Of course, Uncle Sam looking on from the floor of the chamber is smirking at



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Figure 5.10  Grip, February 27, 1875

the feebleness of the Canadian senator’s explanation while holding the doomed treaty under his arm. The choice of the Shakespearean character Othello is both savage and puzzling in the respect to the way it is used here. For those familiar with the tragedy, Othello, a Moor in the army of Venice, is eventually destroyed by an evil colleague who lures the unsuspecting general into a plot which involves an unsupportable jealousy of his wife Desdamona which of course leads to the

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Figure 5.11  Canadian Illustrated News, February 18, 1875

destruction of both parties. In that regard, Brown’s days as a major Canadian political figure were over. He left active political life to return to Toronto and his work as a journalist where he met his death at the hands of a crazed assassin named Bennett in the spring of 1880. Henri Julien was somewhat kinder but not by much. (Figure 5.11) In his cartoon which appeared in The Canadian Illustrated News on Saturday February 13, 1875, Julien portrays the hapless Brown as a tinker attempting to explain why he cannot repair holes in his customer’s frying pan. The customer of course is Miss Canada, once again appearing as the young female, only this time with a bit of a temper. She tells him in no uncertain terms that her pan appropriately called Reciprocity Treaty cannot hold water and that no attempt to repair



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it would likely be successful. It only takes a minor leap of the imagination to realize what alternative Julien had in mind. A sense of gloom settled over the journalistic world regarding Brown’s inability to convince the Americans of the justice of his cause. On Saturday April 10, 1875 Julien predicted in The Canadian Illustrated News that the Canadian economy would eventually gravitate south of the border unless the country either negotiated a successful free trade deal or opted for protection. Since the free trade question had been settled, at least for the time being, the implications of these two merchants moving to New York to carry on their tea and coffee trade had only one message in mind. (Figure 5.12)

Figure 5.12  Canadian Illustrated News, April 10, 1875

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Figure 5.13  Grip, September 4, 1875

Brown had a more determined and potentially dangerous adversary in the person of Goldwin Smith. The former Oxford University history professor was a political chameleon who, as the nation was to discover, shed skins faster than most people change underwear. As the first president of the National Club and a regular contributor to The Nation, Smith was regarded primarily as a nation builder. There is little doubt that he commanded considerable respect in the newsrooms of the organization’s journal. However, in late 1875 Smith was beginning to have doubts about the viability of Canadian nationhood, doubts which would eventually lead him to become the country’s leading spokesperson for annexation with the United States. Smith turned the tables on the protectionists and their bankrupt policy in a pointed editorial in The Nation on August 6, 1875. A policy of national defence against the system of the United States which deny us entrance to their market while they agree to aggress on ours, will evidently command the sympathy of our people. In assenting to such a policy we have only one qualifying remark to make. Geography is an invincible and inexorable power. Canada is part of the American continent; and whatever her political destinies must ultimately be bound up with the continent of which she is a part.



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Political union is a totally different thing from free commercial intercourse, as abundance of examples might be cited to prove; but free commercial intercourse with our neighbours Canada must ultimately have, if she means her prosperity to equal theirs; and in any measures of severance which we may seem it wise to take for the purpose of immediate protection we ought not to lose sight of the consideration that the reverse of severance must be our ultimate aim.45

So what did Smith mean by a “reversal of severance?” In essence, the philosopher-king was suggesting that the birth of two new nations in North America which resulted from the American Revolution was an aberration which should no longer be tolerated. His views fell into line with many American political figures who treated the continuing existence of the British influence in North America as an unwanted by-product of the American Revolution. While Smith decried the growing sentiment for protection, he promoted the creation of a commercial union between Canada and the United States. His adversaries were convinced that this was the first step to eventual political union, which in the American view would also be the final step in resolving the artificial divisions of 1776. His soothing words were not lost on veteran free traders George Brown and John Wilson Bengough. In the pages of his newspaper The Globe Brown challenged the erratic Smith to take his views before the bar of public opinion. Shortly after the editorial in The Nation appeared and Brown’s response was published in The Globe, Bengough jumped into the fray with this cartoon which appeared in Grip on Saturday September 4, 1875. (Figure 5.13) The furious Brown is calling into question Smith’s journalistic qualifications to write on such subjects as free trade, referring to the academic as a quack. Only the Senator and The Globe, according to the document in Brown’s left hand, are qualified to undertake the onerous task of healing a broken nation whose wounds were directly connected to the Pacific Scandal and absence of a free trade deal with Washington. In the modern world, Smith would have been accused of not being objective in his views. Undoubtedly, Brown suffered from much of the same journalistic malady. There is a sense of national indecisiveness in the cartoons which appeared in both Grip and The Canadian Illustrated News for the year following Brown’s failure. In fact, there is almost a sense of helplessness when Bengough and Julien addressed the relationship of Canada to the United States. In this Julien cartoon which appeared on February 12, 1876, Uncle Sam is pictured dumping American goods over the border. (Figure 5.14) It is interesting to note that while the two nations are separated by a border designated in the caption as “Line 45:

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Figure 5.14  Canadian Illustrated News, February 12, 1876

or Our Wall of China”, the American side is physically significantly higher than the Canadian side. The choice of the forty-fifth parallel is interesting in that it represents the border between Canada and the United States that in effect separates New England from Quebec. Yet, at the time, the majority of the country’s population lived in Ontario, well south of this line. The implication that Julien suggests is that it is easier for the United States to dump goods over a 17.5 per cent border line than it would be to hoist Canadian goods over a barrier with a 50 per cent margin. It is also important to note that the American side of the tariff wall appears to be well developed with multistorey buildings rising above the landscape, implying of course that the United States is well on the road



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to industrial development and eventually industrial supremacy. Julien kept the knife and whittling stick which can be seen atop a box of hardware but he reverted to one of his other symbols of Canada which appear frequently when he addressed primarily Quebec issues. The “Canadien” in this case is the habitant who processes maple syrup and makes boots and shoes, a primarily French Canadian endeavor. The Liberal Finance Minister Richard Cartwright drew the attention of both Bengough and Julien after he presented his federal budget in the winter of 1876. Cartwright had to deal with a devastating economic depression which had gripped the new nation since the beginning of the 1870s. As his memoirs indicate, the minister felt he was caught between two irreversible forces, …there was a sharp division of opinion as to the action we ought to pursue, and they were quite aware that I, in my capacity as Minister of Finance, was pressing strongly for the imposition of sufficient additional taxation to prevent further deficit. In this case, the secret of the decision arrived at was well kept, and I do not think Sir Charles Tupper was aware what it was till I made my budget speech. As I proceeded it was pretty clear both to myself and several of my colleagues that he was somewhat surprised, and when I closed a little after

Figure 5.15  Grip, March 4, 1876

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five o’clock he suggested that we should call it six o’clock which meant that he would have three hours or more to consider his reply. Then he assailed me for refusing to recognize the needs of the manufacturing community.46

In the end, Cartwright left the tariff on American imported goods at 17.5 per cent. In spite of the retention of the tariff, Cartwright maintained his essential free trade beliefs. As the Minister stated some years later, “My own hostility to the protective system goes far beyond the question of its economic wastefulness. As Sumner said of slavery that it was not only a villainy, but the sum of all villainies, so would I say of protection.”47 In some ways, John Wilson Bengough had sympathy for the Minister. Others felt the minister was waffling. Under the headline “A National Tariff ” in The Nation on February 4, 1876, the lead editorial noted that Cartwright refused to bend to the wishes of Canadian manufacturers regarding the tariff as yet one more way to raise government revenues. However, the journal refused to provide a prescription for further action. Across the city at Grip, there was little doubt that Bengough was quite concerned about the state of the national health, or lack thereof. (Figure 5.15) Of course, the primary evil is the personification of Uncle Sam, who through his protective tariffs and trade policies is beating up on Canadian industry. The consequences are quite predictable: mass unemployment, factory closings, and lots of part-time work in place of full-time labor. Located on the front lawn of the emptying factory is a grave marker mourning the death of the previous year’s free trade talks. Looking on are Cartwright with the budget document in his hand, indicating no change in Canadian tariff policy and the Prime Minister, Alexander Mackenzie. Mackenzie, who was facing strong opposition in the Maritimes, home to the Conservative finance critic Sir Charles Tupper, to federal fiscal policy, is advised by Cartwright to ride out the storm. Bengough sees this advice as just so much “crowing” as the caption “Macawber at Ottawa” suggests. The reference of course is a play on the spelling of Charles Dickens’ most unfortunate Mr. Macawber, a central character in David Copperfield. While Bengough refused to outline any solid policy to deal with what eventually turned into the depression of the 1870s and American intransigence, Henri Julien was less reluctant. (Figure 5.16) Shortly after Bengough’s cartoon appeared in Grip, Julien offered his recipe for fiscal health in The Canadian Illustrated News on Saturday March 18, 1876. On the right of an ailing Miss Canada with an industry labeled headband, stands Sir Charles Tupper. On the left is Sir Richard Cartwright. While Cartwright attempts to persuade Tupper



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Figure 5.16  Canadian Illustrated News, March 18, 1876

that caution is the best medicine for the patient, Tupper urges the Finance Minister to replace her Revenue tariff blanket with a protectionist covering which, when combined with a 25 per cent tonic, will return the victim to full flower. Cartwright refused to budge. Not surprisingly, Julien saw the Cartwright budget as a sell-out to pacify the free trade gang in the Liberal Party and in particular in the Mackenzie cabinet. In this cartoon which appeared in The Canadian Illustrated News on March 25, 1876, big coal interests are being amused by three fiddlers all of whom are free traders. (Figure 5.17)

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Figure 5.17  Canadian Illustrated News, March 25, 1876

Cartwright is on the left and Mackenzie on the right. Although the face of the third party is not visible, it is highly likely that of George Brown. On the ground is a paper torn in half entitled “Proposed Amendment to Tariff.” So, a number of vital questions remain, but in reality one must explore the essential relationship between coal and Canadian manufacturers to get the gist of Julien’s cartoon. Although the depression was at its peak in Canada in 1876, a different scenario was taking place south of the border. The United States, on the cusp of



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the Progressive Age, was undergoing a massive growth spurt based mainly in railroad construction. As the railways pushed up demand for steel rails, locomotives, and bridges, the demand for pig iron grew as well. From the end of the civil war to the beginning of 1873, the production of pig iron tripled. The iron industry, not to mention the railways, was fueled by coal. It remained for the major coal fields in Pennsylvania and West Virginia to feed this ever increasing industrial appetite.48 There is little doubt that Canadian coal would have been

Figure 5.18  Canadian Illustrated News, December 9, 1876

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welcomed in the United States to supplement the American supply. Yet tariff walls prevented just such an enterprise. Thus, Julien argues that refusing to protect the Canadian coal industry while seeking a free trade agreement which was not likely to be successful, was in effect a sell-out of the national interest. There was a strong sense in manufacturing circles in Canada that the tariff wall set at 17.5 per cent was in effect an invitation to American business to participate in de facto free trade. The tariff wasn’t high enough to discourage American enterprise in Canada. When sugar prices went soaring to the sky in November, 1876, Julien was quick to blame anti-protectionist attitudes in Canada. (Figure 5.18) Here, he stepped out of his usual role of using political figures to address the grief caused by what he felt was unfair, one-way traffic of goods from the United States into Canada. In a rare moment, Julien brings in the common folk, in this case a female customer of limited means and her distraught child tugging on her clothing. Yet, the message is pure Julien. The customer declares that if the prices being charged for sugar are the consequence of free trade (or in this case the likely product of some future free trade agreement), then in her mind it is imperative to enact some form of protection for home manufacturers, and unquestionably for the customer herself. In Toronto that same autumn, John Wilson Bengough saw a ray of hope for Canadian free traders as a consequence of the U.S. presidential election. However, the cartoonist was premature in his optimism. Both leading political parties were exhausted by the scandals which perpetually plagued the Grant administration, and they nominated reformers to carry their respective banners. Rutherford B. Hayes was to lead the Republicans to victory while Samuel J. Tilden carried the Democratic standard. When the dust had settled after the ballots had been cast, Tilden, the Governor of New York, took a quarter of a million more votes that Hayes. However, confusion reigned in the South where two sets of electors had been sent to the electoral college proceedings, one representing Hayes, the other Tilden. An electoral commission was established with a Republican majority. When they voted to make Hayes president, there were few, excepting Democratic voters, who where surprised by the outcome.49 In many respects, Bengough’s cartoon of November 18, 1876, which once again takes the free trade line, is quite self-explanatory. (Figure 5.19) Of course lurking in the background was the defeated Sir John A. Macdonald. Unlike many other Canadian political leaders who suffered defeat, the old warrior did not surrender the leadership of the Liberal–Conservative Party.



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Figure 5.19  Grip, November 18, 1876

Although tainted with scandal, Macdonald saw an opportunity when Mackenzie and Cartwright failed to bring economic order to the nation. It worried John Wilson Bengough who was always sensitive to Macdonald’s many plots and ploys. He feared that the man who lead the nation to Confederation and then nearly ruined it could once again be its Prime Minister. Near the end of 1876, which marked the mid-point of the Mackenzie government, Bengough warned his readers about Macdonald (Figure 5.20)

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Figure 5.20  Grip, December 2, 1876

In Bengough’s mind, Macdonald lacked principle. He was according to the cartoonist nothing more than a pragmatic, power hungry politico who would bend at a moment’s notice to the winds of public opinion especially that orchestrated in the country’s board rooms. In the drawing, Macdonald



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is perched on a post, carrying in one hand the electoral information for a candidate favoring free trade, while sporting in the other the literature of a protectionist. Of course, what remains to be revealed is which way will he himself choose to go. On December 2, 1876, the Prime Minister had yet to make public his intentions. By 1878, it was apparent that Goldwin Smith’s position on Canadian nationhood was undergoing some fundamental changes. As well as being an ardent economic liberal, Smith also had a bit of Rudyard Kipling flowing in his aristocratic veins. Smith was deeply concerned that by accepting a Frenchspeaking entity into the Confederation bargain, the country’s English-speaking majority was sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Writing in 1878, one year before the passing of the National Policy, Smith observed Confederation so far has done nothing to fuse the races, and very little to unite the provinces. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia besides being cut off from Ontario by French Canada, have interests of their own, separate and in some degree, divergent from those of Ontario, New Brunswick especially being drawn by her commercial interests towards New England.50

When the fourth and final session of Parliament opened in February 1877, the governing Liberals seemed to be unable to find solutions for the country’s most pressing problems. The depression had now become part of the national landscape. Taxes designed to keep the country afloat during these difficult times kept rising but the available pool of payers continued to diminish. Nationalist sentiment was on the rampage in Quebec, threatening to pull apart the fragile union. And, last but certainly not least, the halls of Parliament were rife with rumors that Sir John A. Macdonald’s Liberal–Conservative Party had successfully re-invigorated itself with an electoral platform based on protection for Canadian industry.51 On May 10, 1878, the session ended and the parties prepared for an election that fall. When all was over, Mackenzie was the leader of a weakened Liberal opposition. Although he remained in Parliament until 1891, he would never again occupy the seats of power. Miraculously recycled from the political dead, Macdonald assumed the role for which he felt he had been created, the Prime Minister of Canada. Macdonald too had noticed the cleavages that Smith had outlined. He was determined to use what ever means he could to swing the economic pendulum from north and south to east and west. The National Policy was just such a weapon.

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The possibility that a Macdonald government would implement a restrictive tariff policy did not sit well with Bengough. He warned his readers to beware of Macdonald’s convincing arguments, comparing the impetus toward such a policy as reminiscent of the Greek myth of the Trojan Horse. (Figure 5.21) Writing in Grip on Saturday July 6, 1878, Bengough supported his cartoon with the written word. Troy, the city of free traders, was ably being defended by the Liberals led by Mackenzie and Cartwright. The danger lay in the fact that the quartet pictured here would be deceived by the clever and conniving Macdonald in a fashion similar to those in the ancient tale. He (Macdonald) determined to gain entrance to the city by strategy. The peculiar strategy he hit upon was to build a large wooden horse, put all his warriors on the inside of it, and then induce the Trojans to let it go in, by representing that it was only part of a harmless little circus. This wooden horse he accordingly built and called The National Policy.52

Macdonald was not only addicted to thwarting American interests in the country, he was an avid student of some of the highland’s better elixirs. He celebrated the Liberal–Conservative electoral victory with what one observer called a Homeric drinking bout. The Prime Minister’s binge almost resulted in

Figure 5.21  Grip, July 6, 1878



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his missing the Marquess of Lorne, recently appointed Canada’s new GovernorGeneral, when he docked in Halifax, Nova Scotia to begin his tour of duty.53 When Macdonald returned to the Prime Minister’s office in 1878, he did not attempt to revive discussions about a free trade pact with the United States. He was staring at over a century of failure to arrive at political and economic agreements with the Americans, beginning with the inability to negotiate fishing rights in the Treaty of Paris and the collapse of the Brown talks in Washington in 1875. According to Sir Richard Cartwright, the Minister of Finance in the Mackenzie Government of 1873 to 1878, Macdonald gave strong hints in the parliamentary sessions of 1876 that he was about to adopt a protectionist course for his Conservative Party. In 1877, he confirmed it.54 When Parliament reconvened on February 13, 1879, both free traders and protectionists speculated about the road that the Macdonald government would travel. Bengough had correctly predicted the Tory economic policy. (Figure 5.22) On March 14, Macdonald’s Finance Minister Leonard Tilley rose in the House of Commons to present his budget. He warned the members of the chamber that prosperity was still a distant prospect and that deficit financing would continue for at least three more years. Then he announced that the 17.5 per cent Liberal revenue tariff would rise to 20 per cent. Then Tilley hit

Figure 5.22  Grip, February 1, 1879

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Figure 5.23  Grip, March 8, 1879

American interests in the solar plexus. He announced that Canadian factories, shops, mines, new industry, and oil refineries would enjoy protection with the imposition of a tariff up to 40 per cent on similar products imported from the United States. The National Policy was in force.55 The state of the nation met with ringing approval in The Canadian Illustrated News. (Figure 5.23) The Saturday March 8, 1879 edition carried a cartoon picturing Sir John A. Macdonald as a policemen standing before the tariff wall. Behind the wall are



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Figure 5.24  Canadian Illustrated News, March 29, 1879

the smokestacks symbolizing what Georges Edouard Desbarats felt would be the vindication of the National Policy. The artist could not resist the temptation to punish John Bull for abandoning Canada to free trade in 1846, and of course, point out the consequences of Uncle Sam’s reluctance to give Canadians a fair shake in trade policy. The Canadian Illustrated News did not treat the National Policy in any way as a punitive measure. As Desbarats wrote, “not in any aggressive, retaliatory,

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Figure 5.25  Grip, March 22, 1879

or otherwise hostile spirit, but in pure self-defence, our American friends will henceforth be required to pay important duties on their importations into Canada.”56 Perhaps Uncle Sam did not accept the friendly, non-aggressive spirit of the tariff. (Figure 5.24) Yes, the dedicated Macdonald was still forced to guard the border to prevent the ever- persistent Brother Jonathan from sneaking into Canada with a bag full of goodies. In the Saturday March 22, 1879 issue of Grip, Bengough gave his pictorial response to Macdonald’s legislation. (Figure 5.25)



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The National Policy, represented by a large circus elephant, is crushing the life out of Uncle Sam who is holding a package marked Yankee Goods. The very use of the elephant which Nast used to characterize the American Republican Party shows the influence that the American commentator had on Bengough. Bengough however, was far less successful in his attempt to use animals as political party mascots in Canada. In this cartoon, Bengough lays to rest the notion that the policy is designed to protect only manufacturers. Prominent in large letters on the elephant’s skin are the tariffs on coal, sugar, cotton, barley, and wheat flour. True to his liberal heritage, Bengough notes that the real loser is not Uncle Sam, but the Canadian

Figure 5.26  Grip, April 26, 1879

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consumer, seen here with his head firmly under the elephant’s large foot on the block marked taxation. It would not be the last time that a cartoonist demonstrated sympathy for the trials and tribulations of working-class Canadians. In the mid 1960s and 1970s the Toronto Star’s Duncan MacPherson continued the tradition of the common man, more often than not dressed in rags, facing insurmountable obstacles erected by both business and government. A month after Bengough drew what was to become one of his best known illustrations, he responded with another attack on the United States. (Figure 5.26) Bengough revived the oft-repeated view that emerged out of the Annexation debates of 1849; that somehow, once one traded with the terrible Yankees, some assimilation in the social and political realm was certain to follow. There are three major characters in the dialogue, Miss Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald, and of course Uncle Sam. However, the caricature of the Rag Baby and that of Dennis Kearney represent the true tone of the parody. Kearney, a west coast labor leader, was born in Ireland before settling in San Francisco in 1868. He was caught in the turmoil of the economic depression that took its toll on life across North America in the 1870s. And like Canadian labor and political leaders, such as the mercurial British Columbia politician Amor de Cosmos (a.k.a. William Smith) he took out his spite on immigrant Chinese workers. To achieve his goals, he founded the Workingman’s Party of California but failed to attract any following beyond its borders. By 1884, Kearney was no longer in politics.57 He is, however, in this cartoon which appeared on April 26, 1879. It is also here that Bengough’s liberal views on race begin to conflict with reality. In spite of the fact that the graffiti on the wall behind Miss Canada and Macdonald declare without reservation that Canada offered equal rights to all regardless of color, in practice attitudes were more in keeping with those of Kearney. In this respect, Bengough was directly challenging U.S. ideas on the treatment of African Americans during Reconstruction and thereafter. At this time, Chinese workers, especially in British Columbia, were being used to break unions in the province’s mining country, an action which alienated them from organized labor and led to calls for their expulsion from Canada.58 It is more than likely that Bengough was quite isolated in his condemnation of Kearney’s ideas. On this issue he would have no support from the so-called little man in organized labor. Bengough was on more solid ground in his concerns about the printing of excess paper money to break the depression, an action he notes here was



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promoted in the Canadian Parliament as the implementation of rag money. The concept had been tried in the United States prior to the Civil War with the consequence that the federal debt ballooned and the federal bureaucracy became the nation’s largest employer, a point Bengough addresses in the document in Uncle Sam’s right hand. Although the error of their ways was

Figure 5.27  Grip, August 14, 1880

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apparent, monetary reformers appeared on the scene once again during the depression years of the 1870s. The movement known as the Greenbackers demanded, among other reforms, that the federal treasury print paper money not tied to the gold standard in order to break the back of the depression.59 Although these activists did not succeed in obtaining power, in Bengough’s 1879 it represented a serious threat to his non-interventionist, liberal economic beliefs, a concern duly noted in this drawing. The implementation of the National Policy did not end the debate on the question of free trade or protection. Bengough, although he continued a relentless attack on the National Policy, changed his outlook on the issue. Rather than his usual global approach to the evils of the tariff, he decided to concentrate on the impact that the tariff would have on Canadian consumers. In many respects, this was a modification and thus reversal of Julien’s position which focused on the hidden costs of not implementing free trade. In this cartoon (Figure 5.27), the National Policy’s architect Macdonald sketched as a shoemaker explains why John Bull’s footwear marked Canadian Import Duties is pinching his feet. Of course, the answer is simple. The pain of the ill-fitting footwear designed to bring discomfort to the Americans has a secondary consequence denial to the Canadian market of many British products. Bengough points directly to Macdonald’s duplicity on the issue when the Prime Minister informs Bull that the pain (a.k.a. the National Policy) can be amended to alleviate British discomfort but not that of the United States of America. The Liberal–Conservative Party never swayed from its protectionist position although Macdonald continued to tease Americans with offers of limited reciprocity. Inside the Liberal Party, the debate became furious and divisive. With Mackenzie’s crushing defeat in 1878, the Liberal Party was well aware that it needed new leadership. It turned to a protégé of George Brown, the unpredictable and often difficult Edward Blake. Blake had come to public attention when he became leader of the Ontario provincial Liberal Party in 1868. In 1871, he defeated the province’s first premier John Sandfield Macdonald, no relation to the federal Prime Minister. For reasons that were never fully disclosed, Blake tired of the premier’s office and left a year after winning the election. He turned his attention to federal politics instantly grabbing the spotlight with his nationalist, blood stirring address on the state of the nation in Aurora, Ontario in 1872. He served in Mackenzie’s cabinet, only to resign after brief tenures claiming ill health. While traveling to Europe on a number of occasions, Blake retained his seat



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in the federal Parliament. When Mackenzie, faced with a caucus revolt, left the leadership in the spring of 1880, Edward Blake, “ill health” not withstanding, stood up to replace him.60 On May 17, 1882 the fourth session of the federal parliament came to an end and a day later the chamber was dissolved to make way for a federal election. Blake had appointed Sir Wilfrid Laurier to head the Liberal Party’s fortunes in Quebec. He was to concentrate on his old backyard in Ontario which he felt would be the region in which the election would be decided. Other than focusing on the vast sums required to build the national railway, Blake was determined to make free trade an election issue. He was skating on thin ice. After struggling through the depression of the 1870s, the National Policy was widely accepted as the vehicle by which the economy had received a needed boost. However, growth had been selective. While farmers and producers of raw materials continued to complain about the tariff structure, Macdonald had forged an alliance with the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association through a number of meetings of mutual back-slapping and scotch-guzzling in the Queen’s Hotel’s Billiard Room in Toronto. By the early 1880s, the number of manufacturing plants in the country had increased by 52 per cent. Capital investment topped 114 per cent and wages experienced a phenomenal increase of 68 per cent.61 In spite of the seemingly positive results that the National Policy brought to Canadians, not all manufacturing constituencies were spouting the company line. An editorial in Trip Hammer, the employee newspaper of the Massey Manufacturing Company of Toronto which made agricultural implements, worried about American reaction to Canadian protectionist policy. There is again talk of reciprocity at Washington. The United States are so much the greater power, that without loss of dignity they may move first. It has always been the conviction of the present writer that the one thing necessary to secure Canada to her full measure of prosperity and enable her people fairly to reap the fruits of their industry was the abolition of the customs line which cuts her off commercially from the rest of the continent.62

The Massey Company’s workers may have been sympathetic to Blake’s message. Others were not. With the election over, Blake remained leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The Liberals had gained nine seats in Ontario, two in Manitoba and one in Prince Edward’s Island. But they had lost five in New Brunswick and one in Nova Scotia. Laurier had failed to deliver the goods in

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Quebec. Faced with the flames of nationalist discontent which were fanned by the province’s premier Honoré Mercier, the party lost three seats.63 When Canadians returned to the polls on February 22, 1887 Blake had spent four years honing his argument against restrictive tariffs. He declared that Our adversaries wish to present to you an issue as between the present tariff and absolute free trade. That is not the true issue. Free trade is, as I have repeatedly explained, for us impossible; and the issue is whether the present tariff is perfect, or defective and unjust…I maintain that we should look…to the lightening of sectional taxes, to the lightening of taxes upon the prime necessaries of life and upon the raw materials of manufacture, to a more equitable arrangement of the taxes which now bear unfairly upon the poor…to a taxation of luxuries…to the curbing of monopolies of production…and to the effort-a most important point-to promote reciprocal trade with our neighbors to the south.64

Like any good politician, Blake’s words have to be taken for what they are. Although he rejected free trade as an issue, he put it once again on the agenda as far as the United States was concerned. His soothing words did not deceive the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association. When all the ballots had been counted, Sir John A. Macdonald was still Prime Minister and Blake was about to cede the leadership of the Liberal Party to Wilfrid Laurier. He would have the distinction of being the only leader of the federal Liberal Party who never became Prime Minister until the unsuccessful bid by Stéphane Dion following the turn of the twenty-first century. Commenting on the outcome of the election and its aftermath, one writing under the pseudonym P. N. Factz, who described himself as an Anglo–American who has lived on both sides of the border, made the following observation Is there one Canadian base enough to enter into a vile conspiracy of this character with aliens and enemies for the wholesale robbery of those Canadians who, in good faith, invested their all in industries which have done so much to promote the prosperity of Canada and raised her from humble dependence upon other countries to the proud position of an independent and selfsustaining nation? If so, rely on it, capital so betrayed would never again risk a dollar on the faith of the Canadian people.65

Although free trade was first and foremost on the minds of the political elite, for most of the journalists and cartoonists in Canada it became a page-filler when little else of importance was being reported. This is not to suggest that the press did not treat the issue with the respect it deserved. But there existed a sense of



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Figure 5.28  Le Canard, November 16, 1878

resignation that Macdonald and the Liberal–Conservative Party had managed to get its way and little could be done to unravel the maze of import duties in the National Policy. This did not stop Sir Richard Cartwright from rising in the House of Common on March 14, 1888 to deliver an impassioned speech urging “full and unrestricted reciprocity of trade therein.”66 A few cartoonists did poke fun at Macdonald and the protection issue. Hector Berthelot, who never revealed his true feelings about too many issues, took issue with the Prime Minister in this 1886 cartoon in the French-language humor journal Le Canard. (Figure 5.28) Although the cartoon is unsigned, it does not take a leap of the imagination to see that the caricature of Macdonald bears a significant resemblance to that of Punch. It is highly likely that the

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drawing is the work of John Henry Walker who by this time in his career was a successful freelance artist in Montreal. In the cartoon, the Prime Minister lays across a large, soft object marked Protection. The balloon is being inflated by two of Macdonald’s Conservative Members of Parliament, Sir Charles Tupper and Guillaume Boivin. Macdonald tells his two supporters not to puff so hard. He fears that they might burst the balloon and he would fall, breaking his nose. Uncle Sam responds over the fence that if the balloon is filled to capacity, it might take only a touch of his finger to cause an explosion. Clearly there is a compromise on the tariff issue which could be made. But both sides seemed determined to stick to their original positions, the Canadians supporting protection while remaining wary of the Americans and Uncle Sam preparing to deflate the Protection balloon. If one pulls a cat’s tail too often, the cat is likely to retaliate. By the dawn of the final decade of the nineteenth century, protectionist sentiment was growing in the United States. The chief proponent was James Blaine, twice a Republican candidate for the presidency and Secretary of State in Benjamin Harrison’s cabinet. Blaine carried out a crusade to increase protection of American commercial interests to ease expansion in the Pacific and in Latin America. Bengough for one was prepared to warn all parties of the dangers of such a policy in particular as it pertained to Canada. (Figure 5.29) Using the analogy of darkest Africa where, in the common mythology of the day, civilization did not exist, Bengough equated protectionists on both sides of the border as uncivilized mini-warriors brewing up a pot of protectionist poison in which they could dip their blow darts and destroy both Canada and the United States. In the drawing, Blaine is aiming his spear directly at Canadian exporters trying to cross the dangerous trails in the trading jungle. Although Macdonald had few legitimate reasons to fear Dennis Kearney and anything associated with the Irishman’s zeal to rid North America of Chinese labor, he needed only to look over his shoulder to see that other American influences were finding favor in a hospitable Canada in the early 1890s. The farm reform organization The Grange set up chapters in 1872, leading to the formation of the Dominion Grange in 1874. A second and more powerful agricultural reform group The Patrons of Industry came to Canada in 1887. The Knights of Labor had been in the country since the late 1870s, and when they slipped into decline at the opening of the final decade of the nineteenth century they were replaced by a growing and influential craft union movement called the American Federation of Labor. Americans in general, especially those in the



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Figure 5.29  Grip, August 23, 1890

high offices of government, did not treat the “invasion” of Canada as a method by which American ideas and ideals could be exported. To them, this form of emigration reduced the number of economic players in the United States which led to fierce, internal struggles between competitors. The Americans blamed Canada and made the first in a series of moves to prevent Canadian goods from crossing the border with any amount of ease.67 The chief architect of America’s protectionist policy after Blaine left office was a Republican congressman from Ohio, William McKinley. First elected to the House of Representatives in 1877, his influence in the Republican Party grew to the point that he was elected Governor of Ohio in 1892 and in 1896 he successfully faced off William Jennings Bryan for the U.S. presidency. McKinley regarded himself as an economic expert, one with his feet firmly planted in the boardrooms of the nation and one totally absent from its union halls. He was in every respect the voice of big business, and big business wanted to thwart competition from both internal and external sources.68 McKinley’s proposals struck fear in the hearts of his Democratic opponents in Congress and absolute panic north of the border in Canada. The principle target was Canadian agricultural products, in particular butter, eggs, barley, hay, and livestock which were to be barred from the American market. As well,

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Canadian industry was to suffer in varying degrees depending on both product and service.69 The tariff precipitated a serious economic downturn in Canada. Desperate for new markets, Canada turned to Great Britain. But, it was not the United States in either size or proximity. As a consequence, the Province of

Figure 5.30  Grip, October 18, 1890



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Ontario placed an embargo on lumber cut on government owned and operated properties. When Nova Scotia coal was restricted from entering the American market, Canada responded by placing a restrictive tariff on U.S. imports of coal. Bengough for one was bitter about the American attitude towards Canada. He drew a series of sarcastic cartoons about McKinley, none more pointed than the one which appeared on October 18, 1890 in Grip. (Figure 5.30) Here Uncle Sam is showing the distaste for the liquid he has just consumed. Bengough informs us that it is an emetic, a form of late Victorian liquid laxative. The artist predicts that Uncle Sam will begin to suffer considerably once the laxative takes effect and that the McKinley tariff which he just drank will be purged from an unmentionable part of the body, causing him great relief from his distress. The issue of free trade had split the nation between the pro forces located in agriculture and the anti forces who were traditionally based in manufacturing. The Liberal–Conservatives were normally identified with the protectionist forces while the Liberals under their new leader Wilfrid Laurier were usually thought to be free traders. But they too were hardly unaware of the fact that Macdonald’s tariff policies had created a powerful, growing force in Canadian industry, one which overshadowed the diminishing agricultural communities in Central and Western Canada. Clearly the Liberal Party of Canada had to make peace with the tariff policy if they had any hopes of becoming the government.70 1896 was a pivotal year in both Canadian and American politics. The “enemy” had succeeded in capturing the White House when McKinley became president. The Conservative Party was in disarray in Canada. Macdonald had died in office in 1891. In the years between his death and the party’s defeat in 1896, it had no less than four leaders, finally finishing with Sir Charles Tupper who took the reins at the age of seventy-five. He lasted all of ten weeks before facing the electorate. The country’s new Prime Minister, the first Liberal to hold that office since Alexander Mackenzie in 1873, had succeeded in convincing the Americans to negotiate a limited tariff reduction treaty to appease a growing base of farmers who were beginning to show some economic power in the newly settled lands of the Canadian west. As well, they were listening to radical economic messages delivered by the Canadian version of the British Fabian socialists. As always, economic recession led to recovery. By 1900 the economy had begun to turn around. Manufacturing interests in central Canada had begun to complain about high electricity prices which resulted in the nationalization of

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Figure 5.31  Caricature Politique, Montreal, 1904

hydro electricity in 1906 in Ontario. As well, bounties were placed on iron and steel which gave birth to new industries in both Ontario and Nova Scotia.71 But the tariff policy also had a side effect, one that Macdonald and Laurier could not foresee. American interests decided that if they could not trade with Canadians, they would become Canadians. As Alonzo Ryan noted (Figure 5.31), American capital began to flow across the border, laying the foundations for what later became Canada’s branch-plant economy. What the United States could not achieve by gunboat diplomacy, it could find success in economic imperialism. Free trade sentiment remained strong in both the agricultural communities and in influential circles in the Liberal Party itself. However, Laurier did not openly advocate a free trade agreement just the reduction of duties which he wanted packaged in a limited reciprocity treaty. However one of his cabinet ministers, Joseph-Israel Tarte, opposed any extension of the agreement. Tarte had been a thorn in the side of two parties, having begun his career in the Liberal–Conservative Party as a member for the Montreal district of Two Mountains. In 1896, after having exposed corruption in the Conservative Party, he jumped ship to the Liberals where he was largely responsible for the Laurier victory in Quebec that same year. This Sam Hunter cartoon which appeared in The Moon in 1903 took a swipe at Tarte who by the time this was published had been fired by Laurier for his



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Figure 5.32  The Moon, February 14, 1903

protectionist agenda. Safely in his constituency, the erratic Tarte takes aim at the government’s tariff policy from his sanctuary outside Montreal. (Figure 5.32) Tarte made his living as a journalist throughout several incarnations. By the time that Hunter took aim at the rebel, he was the owner and editor of the influential Quebec newspaper La Patrie which he used to go after Laurier on the government’s tariff policy. Tarte never returned to politics after his downfall and in some ways, contributed to the end of the Laurier regime in 1911. When Laurier announced that the Liberal Party would go to the polls in 1911 on a policy of extending the reciprocity agreement with the Americans, eighteen of his members defected to the Conservative Party. Based mainly in Toronto, they rallied the forces of the Canadian Manufacturers Association against the government using the slogan “No Truck or Trade With The Yankees.” Once again, the old arguments that surfaced during the annexation crisis of 1849 were dragged into the public forum. Yes, free trade which they argued was the key platform for the Liberal Party would jeopardize Canadian independence and thrust undefended Canadians into the arms of the waiting Americans. They emphasized that in order to build a nation, the government needed to prohibit free competition in the market place. The message was heard and Laurier lost the election to Sir Robert Borden. However, citizens who farmed on the

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prairies were not convinced that it was a victory for nationhood. To them it was the same old gang of 2,500 who had been running things since the days of Macdonald.72 The alienation of the west which continues to plague Canadians to this day has its roots in debates about Canadian–American relations. It led to the rise and acceptance of left-wing politics and right-wing radicalism both of which still find political homes from the prairies to the Pacific coast. The National Policy remained in force until Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney negotiated a successful free trade deal with the United States in 1984, followed by NAFTA in 1988. By the time that the government disposed of the policy, it had been gutted by numerous side deals which enhanced the free flow of people and goods across the forty-ninth parallel during the early years of the twentieth century. In fact, it can be argued that the policy finally lacked its teeth due to the turmoil of the Great Depression years of the 1930s. Yet, when the federal government announced it would seek a free trade deal with the United States in the mid 1980s, all the old passion that arose during previous national debates on the subject surfaced once more. It remains today.

Figure 5.33  Montreal Star, 1920



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Notes 1 Sir Winston Churchill, “A History Of The English Speaking Peoples: Volume Four: The Great Democracies,” (New York, NY, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1966), 61. 2 J. M. S. Careless, “Brown Of The Globe Volume One, (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, 1959), 91. 3 CIHM 01890-1849-01, Minutes Of The Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates of the British American League, July 1849 at Kingston, Ontario, 20. 4 J. M. S. Careless, Brown Of The Globe, Volume Two, 91–2. 5 Toronto, Ontario, “The Poker, Vol. 1, No. 48, (June 11), 1859. 6 CIHM 00013, Continental Union Association of Ontario: Continental Union: A short study of its economic Side, Toronto, Ontario, 1893, 30. 7 CIHM 10010, Documents And Proceedings of the Halifax Commission, 1877, under the Treaty of Washington of May 8, 1871, 80. 8 CIHM 02403, The Annexation Manifesto of 1849, 19. 9 Despatch (sic) From Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Right Honorable Earl of Elgin, dated Downing Street, January 9, 1850. It was signed Earl Grey 10 CIHM 02403, Proceedings of the Vermont Legislature, 1849, No. 29—Resolutions relating to the Annexation of Canada to the United States, 18. 11 CIHM 63123, British American League, Speech by John William Gamble Esq., delivered at a convention of delegates, Toronto, 1849, 2. 12 Toronto, Ontario, The Anglo-American Magazine,” Vol. 1, No. 4, October 1852. 13 Arthur Harvey, “The American Mackerel Fishery In The Gulf Of St. Lawrence,” The New Dominion Monthly, Vol. ll, (April 1868), 19–20. 14 Reciprocity Treaty Between Great Britain and the United States Together With Canadian Tariffs for 1854 and 1863, Montreal, QC, J. Starke and Company Printers, 1864, 7. 15 Reciprocity Treaty, 6. 16 Reciprocity Treaty, Appendix. 17 Jacques Monet S.J., “The 1840s” J. M.S. Careless (ed.), Colonists and Canadians 1760–1867, (Toronto, ON: Macmillan of Canada, 1971), 211. 18 J. M. S. Careless, “Brown Of The Globe Volume Two,” (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1963), 105. 19 J. M. S. Careless, “The 1850s,” J. M.S. Careless (ed.), Colonists and Canadians 1760–1867, 246. 20 CIHM 50194, A.A.B., The Reciprocity Treaty, 1864. 21 CIHM 45279, Papers Respecting The Termination of the Reciprocity Treaty of June 5, 1854 Between Great Britain and the United States of America, London, 1865, 1.

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22 Hamilton, Ontario, “The Canadian Illustrated News,” Vol. ll, No. 3, May 30, 1863. 23 Hamilton, Ontario, “The Peoples’ Journal,”, Vol. 1, No. 9, January 1, 1870. 24 Maxwell Cohen, “Friends and Future Problems,” David R. Deener (ed.), Canada– United States Treaty Relations, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), 187. 25 Philip Resnick, “The Masks of Proteus.” (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990,” 52. 26 Goldwin Smith, “The Treaty of Washington 1871,” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941), 4. 27 R. J. Urtica, The Story of John and Jonathan, (Ottawa, ON, 1871), 3. 28 R. J. Urtica, 5. 29 R. J. Urtica, 7–8. 30 CIHM 10010, Documents And Proceedings of the Halifax Commission, 1877, under the Treaty of Washington of May 8, 1871, viii. 31 Canada First: A Memorial of the Late William A. Foster, Q.C., with an Introduction by Goldwin Smith (Toronto, ON: Hunter Rose and Company, 1890), 2–3. 32 Canada First, 8–9. 33 Carman Cumming, “Sketches From A Young Country: The Images of Grip Magazine,” (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1997), 21. 34 Carman Cumming, 41. 35 Douglas Fetherling, “The Rise Of The Canadian Newspaper,” (Toronto, ON: The Oxford University Press, 1990),” 94. 36 Toronto, Ontario, “Grip,” Vol. 2, No. 16, March 1974. 37 CIHM 00725, Reciprocity With The United States, Speech by the Honourable Sir Richard Cartwright, House of Commons, Ottawa, March 14, 1888. 38 Toronto, Ontario, “The Nation,” Vol. 1, No. 4, April 23, 1874. 39 Montreal, P.Q, “The Canadian Illustrated News,” May 15, 1880, 306. 40 J. M. S. Careless, “Brown Of The Globe, Volume Two,” 312–14. 41 Toronto, ON, “The Nation,” Vol. 1, No. 1, April 2, 1874. 42 J. M. S. Careless. “Brown Of The Globe, Volume Two,” 312–24. 43 Montreal, P.Q. “The Canadian Illustrated News,” Vol. IX, No. 24, June 13, 1874, 374. 44 Stanley Paul Kutcher. “John Wilson Bengough: Artist of Righteousness,” (Hamilton, ON: Unpublished Master’s Thesis, McMaster University, 1975), 101, 104. 45 Toronto, ON. “The Nation,” Vol. 2, No. 31, August 6, 1875. 46 Sir Richard J. Cartwright,” Reminiscences,” (Toronto, ON: William Briggs, 1912), 156. 47 Cartwright, 161. 48 Herbert G. Gutman, “Who Built America,” (New York, NY, Pantheon Books, 1989), 525. 49 Maxim E. Armbruster, “The Presidents of the United States,” 5th edn, (New York: Horizon Press, 1973), 210.



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50 Goldwin Smith, “The Political Destiny of Canada,” (Toronto, Ontario: Willing and Williamson, London: Chapman and Hall, 1878), 16. 51 Joseph Schull, “Edward Blake:The Man Of The Other Way,” Volume 1 (Toronto, ON: Macmillan of Canada, 1975), 177. 52 Toronto, Ontario,“Grip,” Vol. 11, No. 7, July 6, 1878. 53 Schull, Vol. 1, 188. 54 Cartwright, 153. 55 Schull, Vol. 1, 191. 56 Montreal, QC, “The Canadian Illustrated News,” Vol. XIX, No. 13, March 29, 1879, 194. 57 Philip S. Foner, “History of the Labor Movement In The United States,” (Vol. 1), (New York: International Publishers, 1982), 490–92. 58 Bryan D. Palmer, “Working Class Experience,” 1nd edn, (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Inc., 1992), 124–5. 59 Herbert G. Gutman, “Who Built America,” (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1989),442, 552–3 60 Schull, Vol. 1, p. 209 61 Michael Bliss, “Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business,” (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1987), 300. 62 Toronto, Ontario, “Trip Hammer,” Vol. 1, No. 3, (December 20, 1885), 34. 63 Schull, Vol. 2, 21–4. 64 Schull, Vol. 2, 81–2. 65 P. N. Factz, Canada And The United States Compared (with Practical Notes) on Commercial Union, Unrestricted Reciprocity and Annexation, (Toronto, ON: The Toronto News Company, 1889), 17. 66 CIHM 00725, Reciprocity With The United States, Speech by the Honourable Sir Richard Cartwright, delivered in the House of Commons, Ottawa, March 14, 1888, 1 67 Harold A. Innis (Mary Q. Innis, ed.), “Introduction To Canadian Economic Studies” Essays In Canadian Economic History, (Toronto and Buffalo: The University of Toronto Press, 1956), 166. 68 Foner, Vol. 2, 336. 69 Schull, Vol. 2, 136–7. 70 Bliss, Northern Enterprise, 372. 71 Innis, 166. 72 Bliss, 372–3.

6

What’s a Fish Amongst Friends?

Throughout the course of human evolution, historians have been continually challenged to explain why seemingly simple disputes can end up erupting into open hostilities. Wars have been precipitated by insults, real or perceived, by sporting events, not to mention differences of opinion over seemingly worthless pieces of real estate in remote corners of the globe. Although Canadian– American relationships have been generally peaceful in the twentieth century, one major area of disagreement remains unsettled as it has since the American War of Independence. The story of the seemingly unresolvable conflicts over fishing rights has impacted on all other forms of interaction between Canadians and Americans for over two centuries. In 1993, eight years after the two nations failed to reach an agreement to renew salmon fishing rights on the west coast, the collapse of the talks plummeted both nations, and in particular the U.S. states of Alaska and Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia, into a state of near warfare. In July of 1997, the Alaskan ferry Malaspina was prevented from leaving Prince Rupert harbor in North British Columbia for three days by angry Canadian salmon fishermen. It was only one in a string of incidents in which ships were seized, crews arrested, and cargoes confiscated.1 Unfortunately, these incidents are only the latest in a long string of confrontations which began literally centuries ago. The American War of Independence officially ended on September 3, 1783 when the Treaty of Paris was signed. It recognized the birth of one new nation and the colonial dependency of another. The two old adversaries Britain and the United States faced each other across a continent stretching from one ocean to another consisting primarily of unspoiled wilderness populated by scattered and often small aboriginal societies. Recognizing the futility of continuing conflict, they finally agreed that co-operation was a superior form of political intercourse far more constructive than warfare and violence. They also accepted the fact that the American War of Independence and the treaty which ended it

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Figure 6.1  Map, Maritime Fishing Grounds

did not address all outstanding issues. And, one of the major areas that needed to be settled was “who had the right to fish where?” When Britain controlled the entire Atlantic coast line prior to 1776, there was no need to define anything beyond territorial limits. With a new independent state on the continent, that changed dramatically.



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Article III of the Treaty of Paris spoke directly to the fishing issue. American fishermen were given the right to access the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, a large water system in the Atlantic Ocean off the eastern coast of the island. (See Figure 6.1) The Grand Banks had attracted fishing vessels from as far away as Spain and Portugal for two centuries before the Treaty of Paris was signed. Numerous Europeans came in search of the bountiful cod schools known to populate the area. Since the Grand Banks were well beyond the three mile limit, there was little Britain could do to stop Americans in search of fish. U.S. vessels were also given the right to work the Gulf of St. Lawrence and any other territory where the colonists as one nation had previously fished prior to 1783. However, there were restrictions. American fishermen could not use Newfoundland as a base to dry or cure their catch. However, they acquired the right to use Any of the unsettled bays, harbors, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands (west of Newfoundland in the Gulf of St. Lawrence) and Labrador (North of Newfoundland bordering on Quebec) so long as the same shall remain unsettled; but so soon as the same, or either of them, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such a settlement without a previous agreement for that purpose with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessor of the ground.2

In legal terms, the Treaty of Paris was not an agreement between Canada and the United States. It was an agreement with Great Britain, whose holdings consisted of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward’s Island, New Brunswick, Lower Canada and Upper Canada. The vast region known as the North West Territories was chartered by Royal Decree to the Hudson’s Bay Company, who enjoyed exclusive hunting and fishing rights. All these colonies were administered through various branches of the British Colonial Office. In fact Canada did not free herself from the British yoke until the Statute of Westminster of 1931 finally conferred full independence on the country. With the Treaty of Paris, Canada was bound with the first of 28 treaties negotiated by Great Britain that directly impacted on the yet-to-be formed Canadian state. Ironically, it was another treaty dealing with fish, the 1923 Halibut Treaty, that finally gave Canada the power to negotiate contracts without British interference. As one Irish editor noted, Canada could finally “sign her own cheques.”3 Nonetheless, the Treaty of Paris marked what law Professor Maxwell Cohen has described as the first of “five periods of development in

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the relations of Canada to the United States which reflect themselves in the particular character of the treaties found in this period.” Cohen has referred to the years between 1783 and 1870 as a “Period of Adjustment” in which the newly emerging United States of America had to come to grips with the fact that a British presence remained in North America and was determined to stay there. Cohen argues that the American adjustment to this reality was “psychological, military, territorial, and economic…” It was a period when both stakeholders were demanding an answer to the question “who gets what?” Cohen also notes that when the issues surrounding the sale of the battleship Alabama to the Confederacy by Britain and the subsequent claims for damage by the United States were settled in the 1870s, Canada and the United States entered its second phase which he calls the “Period of Continental Stabilization.” In Cohen’s analysis, the two nations took the final steps in the slow of often torturous road to a mature and civilized association.4 In many ways in the beginning years, the relationship had more in common with a typical parent–teen scenario than that of two equals. Throughout the nineteenth century, Canadian cartoonists regularly portrayed Uncle Sam as an unrepentant bully attempting to force his way of life and ideas on his reluctant neighbors to the north. In 1884, John Wilson Bengough created this cartoon, typical of the genre, in which he offers Uncle Sam a serious dressing-down about his haughty attitude. (Figure 6.2) The cartoon, A Timely Presentation, has a caption which reads “Jack Canuck: Neighbor, what chiefly ails you is ignorance. Accept this little work, which, if duly studied, will save you in the future from making yourself quite so ridiculous.” The approach is extremely condescending and insulting. The document in question is “The ABC of Knowledge of Canada: its resources, its institutions; and the aims and ideals of its people.” The bookmark contains the words “Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly Digest.” The brawny woodsman representing Canada is objecting to what he refers to as “ignorance spread abroad by the New York Sun.” Specifically he is objecting to a proposal by Maine Republican representative Nelson Dingley, a former journalist, to institute a strict and unyielding regime of import tariffs. It would not be the last time that an American newspaper figure would come under fire in the Canadian press. In the cartoon, Bengough, like some of his predecessors and contemporaries, abandons the image of the innocent, virginal Miss Canada which first appeared in the imagination and art of John Henry Walker. Throughout the period, confrontation in cartooning was never turned over to a female figure. A clear



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Figure 6.2  The Hecklers on Grip, 1884

point of gender division existed in which Uncle Sam, while attempting to take advantage of a helpless female, would consistently be confronted by a threatening and physically strong male demanding retribution. Obviously, civility was not always the hallmark of north–south dialogues. The British–American compact broke down in 1812. For the second time in history, American military personnel entered what was to become Canadian

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territory. Canadian cities, in particular the capital of Upper Canada at York (now Toronto) were sacked by American regulars. They left behind reminders of their visit, mainly pillaged stores and burnt out buildings. However, with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Britain turned her attention to her colonies. Hostilities were ceased and the Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24, 1814.5 For the first time in the long history of Canada, the United States, and Great Britain, fish proved to be a substantial obstacle to peace at the treaty table. The Americans argued that the original agreement of 1783 was still in force. The British argued that the declaration of war on the United Kingdom in 1812 abrogated the clauses of the Treaty of Paris. When it became apparent to the American negotiators that hostile behavior can produce some unforeseen and unacceptable results, they requested that the British re-incorporate the clauses of 1783 in the new treaty. The British refused, a stalemate resulted, broken only when both parties agreed that disputes over fishing were unlikely to be resolved with any amount of ease.6 The resolution of issues beyond the bounds of the fishery impasse became problematic. As noted in the previous chapter, it was not so easy to separate differences in the conduct of the fishery from those focusing on free trade. From 1816 onward, following the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, the British legation in Washington approached American presidents from Monroe to Fillmore to try to cut a trade deal. The pleas fell on deaf ears. Canadian officials retaliated by placing heavy taxes on U.S. imports into Canada while admitting British goods tariff free. To further irk America, Britain agreed to admit Canadian staples such as wheat and lumber into the United Kingdom as preferential goods. The question of how to resolve fishing rights became an increasingly important bludgeoning tool in the ever increasing trade tension between the two states.7 With renewed hostilities a potential threat, the President of the United States called upon the Prince Regent of Britain and asked for a convention to discuss the fishing issue. The result was the Convention of 1818 (Figure 6.3), which established the ground rules for fishing relationships until 1888. When complications arose in 1887 regarding renewal of the treaty, Bengough drew this cartoon for Grip on March 12, 1887. Here, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, with a copy of the treaty in his back pocket, passes American President Grover Cleveland who also has a document in his back pocket, one which reads “retaliation”. Both are being observed by John Bull and Uncle Sam. It is apparent that neither party wishes to discuss the matter with the other.



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Figure 6.3  Grip, March 12, 1887

Under the caption “Strained Relation,” a sub-caption reads “We never speak as we pass by.” The 1818 treaty restricted American activity to the western perimeters of the Island of Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador along with a small strip on the southern coast and rights on the Magdalen Islands. To add insult to injury, British vessels could also travel and fish these waters as well as any others in British North America. However, the Americans could not travel any waters in the North West Territories, which also at this point included significant portions the Arctic Ocean, without the permission of the Hudson’s Bay Company. For the first time, the treaty established a three mile coastal limit which American fishermen were forbidden to enter. There were some exceptions dealing mainly with the acquisition of supplies or escaping bad weather. However, the old rights to dry and cure fish in uninhabited parts of Newfoundland and the Maritime Provinces was restored on the understanding that should those places be inhabited in the future the activity would have to cease.8 When the United States continued to ignore Canadian and British pleas for some form of reciprocity, the British began to use the clauses of the 1818 agreement as a hammer against the Americans. The British followed a “zero tolerance” interpretation of the clauses of the agreement. Complaints from Canadian sources continued to reiterate that American fishermen were ignoring the provisions of the Convention of 1818. In many cases, the issues evolved

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around conflicting interpretations of the three mile limit. The Americans argued that the limit line should follow the contour of the land while Canadian officials reiterated their stand that it should run along a line drawn from headland to headland. As historian Arthur Harvey noted in 1868 Urged by self-interest or cupidity, and egged on by their political chiefs, the New England fishermen persisted, not withstanding, in poaching in our waters. The British Government, therefore maintained war vessels on the coast to warn them off, and the Colonial Government fitted out six swift armed cruisers to maintain their rights.9

Figure 6.4  Grip, September 8, 1888



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Harvey’s best estimate placed somewhere upwards of 1,200 American vessels involved in the east coast fishery with an aggregate total of around 75,000 tons. He believed that the industry employed around 10,000 men, catching about $9,000,000 worth of fish per year. The fishery was far from a secondary pursuit for many families up and down the Atlantic seaboard.10 As the State of Vermont reported in 1849, only Canada bordered on enough open water to support the American fishery which made access not only an economic issue but a political one as well.11 Although this cartoon appeared in Toronto’s Grip magazine in 1888 at the height of yet one more Canadian–American fishing dispute, the documents at President Grover Cleveland’s feet as he argues with Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s founding Prime Minister, point to the fact that little had changed since 1818. (Figure 6.4) The ever-patient observers are of course Uncle Sam and Grip, the raven mascot of Bengough’s journal. Both politicians are holding a long list of grievances against one another over a basket of fish, while the agreement of 1818 and the provisions for its renewal in 1888 are being trampled underfoot. This is one of the first cartoons to present the two leading political figures in Canada and the United States at the forefront of the satire. Previously, it had been the habit of most Victorian cartoonists to symbolize international disputes by the symbols which were clearly identified with the country. In the case of Canadian–American relations, it was usually Miss Canada or Johnny Canuck who represented Canada, and in the case of the United States it was normally Uncle Sam a.k.a Brother and/or Cousin Jonathan and sometimes Miss Columbia. Bengough is being most cheeky in this case by using Grip’s mascot, the raven Barnaby Rudge, as the symbol of Canadian nationhood. The Convention of 1818 did little to solve the outstanding issues in CanadianAmerican relations. Yes, there were protocols in place, but both sides began to enforce their own specific interpretations of the clauses. Canada’s imperial master Great Britain complained throughout the ensuring thirty-six years that the United States continued to violate the spirit as well as letter of the agreement. The Americans continued to refuse to recognize British/Canadian positions on the three-mile limit. Finally, in 1845, the colony of Nova Scotia closed all bays with the exception of the large Bay of Fundy which separates New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Reaction in the United States was predictable. Fearing a military response, the Colonial Government asked Britain to send armed naval vessels to the fishing grounds. The Colonial Secretary hedged for a further seven years before dispatching a small but symbolic fleet to the north Atlantic.12

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Both sides were troubled by the impasse and they attempted to come to a free trade agreement which would also define fishing rights. Talks started in 1847 just after Richard Cobden convinced the British government to abolish the protectionist tariff structures known as the Corn Laws. The negotiations dragged on for two years before the British Government authorized their chief negotiator Sir H. Bulwer to offer the United States access to the fisheries of British North America except those in Newfoundland whose colonial government had refused to accept any compromise. In return, the Americans offered Canada and Britain access to the American market for all natural products including fish, agricultural products, and timber. The United States needed an agreement. In 1854, just before both parties came to a successful conclusion, the Honorable representative from New Hampshire A. Tuck stood up in the House and stated …there are no mackerel left on the shores of the United States; and that fishery cannot be successfully prosecuted without going within three miles of the shore, so that unless we have this privilege the American mackerel fishery will be broken up; and that important nursery for American seamen will be destroyed.13

The member of the House was not alone. He and a number of others realized that when it came to the fishing dispute the Americans were negotiating from a position of weakness. The fisheries of the American States are limited, while those of the Maritime colonies are unparalleled in extent and variety. The States send from six hundred to eight hundred vessels, or an aggregate of about two hundred thousand tons annually into Provincial waters to fish. .. They return to the States with about ten millions of dollars worth of fish; which is nearly half the value of the fish annually caught in these waters.14

The author Alexander Monro was not exaggerating. However, Monro had little interest in fishing disputes. He was citing the intransigence of Canadian and British positions on the issue to argue for the forcible annexation of the northern country. The lack of a profitable catch available in U.S. waters forced American fishermen to poach along the Canadian border within the three-mile limit. The intrusion did not go unnoticed in Westminster. As the Anglo-American Magazine reported The Home Government have come to the resolution of sending some of H.M. ships to protect our Colonial Fisheries in the North Eastern waters. This is



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a most judicious determination. Though hitherto the encroachments of the United States fishermen have not been manifested in any very glaring act of aggression, still an evil of this description is most easily checked in the bud. “A stitch in time, saves nine,} says the sage old adage, and most applicable is the dictum to the case in question.”15

Maxwell Cohen has referred to the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 as “a great experiment.”16 It might more appropriately have been called a great miracle. The Americans insisted that the fisheries question had to be included. The British and Canadians stiffly resisted.17 Its major American supporter President Zachary Taylor had died suddenly in 1850. His successor felt that any agreement should take the form of legislation as opposed to a treaty, thus placing the clauses at risk in Congress. It was strongly opposed by influential factions on both sides of the border. The stakes were high. As we have seen, a group of influential Montreal financiers and traders openly advocated that Canada join the United States and forget treaties with escape clauses. In the United States, Horace Greeley headed a pressure group that believed that if Canada were denied access to the U.S. market it would eventually have to negotiate some form of annexation which would not only allow Canadian goods to flow freely south of the border, but would in turn open the fishing grounds to American vessels.18 Although far more comprehensive than any previous agreement between the United States and Great Britain and her Canadian colonies, the first article paid homage to the role that fishing disputes had played in the success of the treaty negotiations. Recognizing the role of the Convention of 1818, the first Article went on to state …the inhabitants of the United States shall have in common with the subjects of Her Britannic Majesty, the liberty to take fish of every kind, except shell-fish on the sea-coasts and shores, and in the bays, harbors and creeks of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward’s Island, and of the several Islands there unto adjacent, without being restricted to any distance from the shore; with permission to land upon the coasts and shores of those Colonies and the Islands thereof and also upon the Magdalen Islands for the purpose of drying their nets and curing their fish: provided that in so doing, they do not interfere with the rights of private property or British fishermen in the peaceable use of any part of the said coast in their occupancy for the same purpose.19

Americans could ship fish into Canada tariff free. The 12.5 per cent tariff on fish oil which existed in 1854 was removed by 1863.

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A decade of relative calm came over the Atlantic fishing grounds. Canadians involved in the production of lumber, livestock, and farm produce became wealthy under the agreement. A number of American entrepreneurs entered the Canadian market, and of course as a consequence obtained limited preference to trade in the Imperial market. However in 1858 and 1859, Sir Alexander Galt, finance minister in the Colonial Government, delivered budgets which placed stringent protectionist tariffs on American manufactured goods entering Canada. Powerful industrial interests in the north east corridor fought the tariffs, arguing with some force at home that the action violated the spirit of the Reciprocity Agreement and limited the benefit of the agreement to Canada alone.20 When the United States in 1865 announced it would honor its right to back out of the agreement on a notice of one year, both nations were thrown back to the Convention of 1818 regarding fishing rights. However, American fishermen had become accustomed to free and unfettered access to Canadian waters. Not anxious to open a new round of hostilities over fishing rights, the Canadian Colonial Government agreed to a system of licensing. When the fee rose from fifty cents to two dollars a ton, many American fishermen refused to pay the price and took their chances with the law. There were convincing arguments that the Colonial Government was losing somewhere between $7,200,000 and $9,000,000 per year in revenues as a result.21 Following the passing of the British North America Act which created Canada in 1867, the new country banned all American fleets from entering the three-mile limit. In January 1870, the Governor-General banned the licensing system.22 A wave of anti-American feeling became prevalent in the land whipped up by the likes of Walker’s Grinchuckle whose comic and political pages were filled with an Uncle Sam exclusively depicted as a scrawny, evil-looking ne’er do well with an unkempt beard. He was always dressed in his super-patriotic garb of the stars and stripes which those of Tory extraction found highly offensive—a fact that Walker, as an Irish Protestant, knew well. And, as we have seen, few of Walker’s successors changed the Uncle Sam character to any significant degree. It quickly became apparent in both the new Dominion of Canada and the United States that continued reliance on the Convention of 1818 was unlikely to provide a productive and friendly framework for a positive dialogue between the two nations. The New York Times commented that “the fishery question cannot remain in its present state another year without bloodshed.”23 When the United States canceled the Reciprocity Treaty, its relations with Great Britain



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were in tatters. The Americans did not help matters by presenting a bill to the House of Representatives in 1866 to admit to the union not only the existing four British colonies but the North West Territories and British Columbia as well.24 The west was drawn into the dispute over ambiguities in the 1846 Treaty of Oregon which defined borders between Canada and the United States on the Pacific Rim. At issue was the dividing line between British Columbia and the State of Washington. Although the treaty defined the border “as the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver’s Island,” there were in effect two channels. They were separated by San Juan Island which had to be passed to gain entry to the shipping lanes used by both states. This small piece of land had little attraction for potential settlers, but plenty for ambitious military leaders.25 All parties concerned including Canada knew that approaches had to be made to reduce tensions to forestall any impetus to open hostilities. The Treaty of Washington of 1871 would become the result. The two major actors in the successful attempt to negotiate the treaty were the Briton Sir John Rose and American Caleb Cushing. Sensitive to the fact that Britain still had control over Canadian foreign policy and was negotiating a treaty which would impact on the new nation, Rose invited the country’s founding Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald to join the negotiations commission. He was well aware of the fact that should the negotiations result in an agreement unpopular in Canada, the blame could be deflected to himself. Rose was well known to the Americans. He had met Cushing when both were parties to an 1863 agreement over payments to The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company to resolve a land dispute. Following the successful conclusion of those talks, Rose and Cushing had tried without success to get the United States and Britain to settle the Alabama claims. When Rose journeyed to Washington to discuss the situation with Ulysses S. Grant, the American President bluntly informed him that the question of the Alabama claims and fishing rights in Canadian waters could not be separated. Rose returned to Britain to advise his government of the situation. On January 8, 1871, he was back in Washington with a mandate to negotiate the whole package.26 The treaty produced two significant results. First, the United States and Britain came to the conclusion that they could not settle the Alabama issue by themselves. They agreed to turn the dispute over to an International Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva, Switzerland and live by the results. The British were

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required to mount a defense against American claims after which the tribunal was to award damages if it saw fit. The second result was more serious. The British sold Macdonald down the river for the express purpose of gaining peace with the Americans. Macdonald watched as his three fellow British negotiators wilted in the face of intense U.S. pressure. In short the treaty which was really an amendment extracted from the Reciprocity Treaty stated …the inhabitants of the United States shall have, in common with the subjects of Her Britannic Majesty, the liberty, for the term of years mentioned in Article XXXIII of this Treaty, to take fish of every kind, except shell-fish, on the sea-coasts and shores, and in the bays, harbours, and creeks of the Provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and the Colony of Prince Edward’s Island and of the several islands thereto adjacent without being restricted to any distance from the shore with permission to land upon the said coasts and shores and islands and also upon the Magdalen Islands for the purpose of drying their nets and curing their fish. …27

The agreement excluded salmon and shad. Rivers and river mouths were excluded. The agreement was to last for ten years after which either party could give two years notice of cancellation as outlined in Article XXXIII. In return for what amounted to total surrender, the government of Canada was to receive compensation for these rights, a decision which would have a profound impact and one which would produce yet another nasty confrontation just six years later.28 The agreement did not escape the attention of either of the Desbarats’ illustrated publications, the Canadian Illustrated News and its French-language edition L’Opinion Publique. Edward Jump’s initial look at the events surrounding the negotiations which would bring about the Treaty of Washington was one of sympathy. (Figure 6.5) Although the young, virginal image of Canada remained in the picture, the evil Uncle Sam/Brother Jonathan was replaced by the more palatable Miss Columbia. Obviously, Jump favored a successful conclusion. As the caption notes, it was “the right kind of valentine.” As well, the concept of freedom and fisheries are synonymous. In a very small way, Jump captures the spirit of the debate in his drawing. The dispute was not just a matter of industry, economics, and commerce. It was about the right to choose, to determine one’s activities, and retain the ability to determine one’s future. This cartoon, which appeared just after Valentine’s Day 1871, preceded the successful conclusion of the negotiations by slightly under three months. In



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Figure 6.5  Canadian Illustrated News, February 18, 1871

his initial examination of the events surrounding the Treaty of Washington, Jump was not prepared to risk offending American sensitivities in a manner reminiscent of his Montreal predecessor John Henry Walker. Edward Jump may have been enthusiastic about the prospects for success at Washington, but when the actual document was released on the May 1, 1872, there were howls of contempt from numerous segments of Canadian society.

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Free traders such as the The Globe’s George Brown declared that Macdonald and the British had failed in their mission by not using the negotiations to get a renewal of reciprocity. Senator Brown was an articulate and effective foe of the Prime Minister. The publisher was more interested in the political ramifications of the treaty than he was the economic ones, although he did not hesitate to forge a temporary coalition with its supporters. On the surface, it appeared that Canada gained nothing other than this undefined compensation package. Not only had the Prime Minister failed to get reciprocity on the table, he had been unable to convince the United States to pay

Figure 6.6  Canadian Illustrated News, May 4, 1872



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for damages inflicted on Canadians when Irish rebels based in the United States began to attack Canadian bases in the 1860s. A number of critics also noted that Macdonald had failed to stop the United States from opening the issue of free navigation on Alaskan rivers pouring into Canada.29 The outcry failed to die down. One year after Macdonald returned home from Washington, Edward Jump celebrated the first anniversary of the Treaty of Washington with this cartoon. (Figure 6.6) No longer is Miss Columbia at the front and center of Jump’s analysis. Our old friend Uncle Sam looks on with glee as politicians fight it out over the agreement. In the election of 1872, only one of Macdonald’s ministers was re-elected in the Maritimes in the federal election which followed closely on the heels of the agreement. This region of the new country, almost totally dependent on the fishery for its economic well-being, once again rebelled against the authority of Central Canada as it had in the Confederation debates less than a decade earlier. To satisfy the conditions of the Treaty of Washington, the question of financial compensation for American acquisition of virtually unlimited fishing rights had to be resolved. The treaty had provided for a commission to adjudicate issues such as these. In fact, both the British and the Americans had realized the wisdom of placing contentious items into the hands of parties with no pecuniary or political interest in them as far back as the Treaty of Paris which established the first of many of these joint commissions. Heading this commission was the Belgian ambassador to the United States, Mr. Maurice Delfosse. The United States selected Ensign H. Kellogg as its representative. Canada countered with Sir Alexander T. Galt, the protectionist who had made the successful transition from pre- to post-Confederation Canadian politics. The first meeting was held in Halifax, Nova Scotia on June 15, 1877. By the twenty-second meeting, on November 21, 1877, both sides had presented their cases. On November 23, the Commission announced its decision. The commissioners chose to award the sum of five millions, five hundred thousand dollars in gold, to be paid by the Government of the United States to the Government of Her Brittanic Majesty in accordance with the provisions of the said Treaty.30

American reaction to the award, which was over five times what was expected in the U.S. capital, was predictable. Kellogg disagreed with the sum citing the belief that Great Britain already had more advantages under the Treaty of Washington than the United States. Kellogg also argued that he believed that no decision

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Figure 6.7  Canadian Illustrated News, December 8, 1877

should be taken without the unanimous consent of the commissioners. In spite of Kellogg’s objection, the award stood.31 The decision caught the eye of the Canadian Illustrated News’ Henri Julien as well. Like his predecessors, he had less than a flattering view of Uncle Sam. (Figure 6.7) Here, the symbol of Americana agrees to pay Johnny Canuck the sum of US$5.5 million dollars noting that it is only a minor inconvenience when considering the award the United States collected from the Geneva tribunal in the Alabama affair. It is interesting to note as well, that Julien abandons some



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time-worn Canadian icons such as Miss Canada. Instead, the job of tormenting Uncle Sam goes once again to Johnny Canuck who in this drawing becomes a decidedly French–Canadian character who appears much more of the habitant than any of symbols which had appeared in these cartoons earlier. Henri Julien may have downplayed America’s role in what became known as the Halifax Award, but journalists and politicians south of the border were not so generous. An article in the New York Herald on October 21, 1878 under the byline of one Alexander Bliss stated If the revered relative, who with prudent thrift watches over our youthful welfare, shall wince somewhat at being called upon to put his initials to so large a check, he will, let us hope, be consoled by the reflection that he has at least provided for his numerous family, for the unexpired term of six years yet to come, “a necessary and healthful article of food, plentiful, (if they shall consent to be caught,) and (according to the latest theory of prices), cheap.”32

John Wilson Bengough, editor and cartoonist for his Toronto-based magazine Grip was also following the Halifax Award along with Julien. On Saturday November 2, 1878, he penned a short, satirical but demeaning letter ostensibly to John Bull from Brother Jonathan. If we were to give ourselves away on this occasion, it would be departin’ from sound American doctrine, and wouldn’t go down with our people. In the meantime we hev ben furragin around amongst our dockymints and find to our surprise that we have a small account agin you, amountin to $6,000,000; for damages done to American fishermen by your folks in Newfoundland. I enclose sed account. Please remit by return of mail and oblige. Your affectionate cousin, Jonathan Executive Mansion, Washington33

The resulting dissatisfaction with the treaty and the subsequent award led the United States to initiate any number of actions under it. One of the most prominent was a statement of claim for damages real or imagined as seen in the letter above. It was a theme that Bengough returned to in 1888 when a confrontation between American fishing vessels and British officials in Newfoundland’s Fortune Bay resulted in this comment. Uncle Sam has submitted a damage claim for $103,000 which Alexander Galt is advising John Bull to ignore. (Figure 6.8)

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Once again, the cartoon establishes that the fishing wars, in spite of Canada’s nearly-independent status, is really a dispute that must be resolved by more powerful parties—in this case, the United States and Great Britain. It is interesting to note that the character of John Bull has changed little since he was first drawn back in the 1860s. Then again, neither has Uncle Sam. In this cartoon,

Figure 6.8  Grip, May 29, 1880



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Sam is not smoking like he usually does, but as with many of the cartoons which appeared in Desbarats’ Canadian Illustrated News/L’Opinion Publique, Bengough draws him whittling a stick, a habit regularly practiced by Victorian idlers. In the spring of 1885, the U.S. Congress notified Canada and Great Britain that when the clauses governing fisheries expired on July 1, 1886, the American government had no interest in renewing them. The American position disturbed Sir Richard Cartwright, now a member of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. On March 14, 1888 he rose in the federal chamber to give the Liberal Party’s assessment of the case. He told the assembled members that he had been party to a correspondence between Thomas Francis Bayard, the American Secretary of State and Sir Charles Tupper. Bayard told his Canadian counterpart that returning to the Treaty of 1818 would only serve to complicate already complicated trading relationships between the two nations which included the thorny question of fishing rights. Cartwright responded by saying I am confident we both seek to attain a just and permanent settlement – and there is but one way to procure it, and that is by a straightforward treatment on a liberal and statesman-like plan of the entire commercial relations of the two countries. I say commercial because I do not propose to include, however indirectly, or by any intendment, however partial or oblique, the political relations of Canada and the United States, nor to affect the legislation independent of either country.34

Cartwright had attempted to re-open the free trade question by playing on Bayard’s fears. The Secretary of State did not flinch. The result was a return to the provisions of the Convention of 1818 and, of course, charges and countercharges of bad behavior flew across the border. In a letter to Senator William M. Evarts, John Jay accused Britain of violating Article I of the Convention of 1818 by seizing American vessels in Canadian waters. Jay felt that this action would abrogate the Convention and force Britain to recognize the clauses of the Treaty of Paris one more time.35 The issue did not escape the attention of American cartoonists. John Wilson Bengough chose one of those rare moments when he decided to include a cartoon in Grip which he did not draw himself to bring attention to the fishery dispute. (Figure 6.9) This drawing originally was published in New York Life magazine.

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Figure 6.9  Re-Print, Grip, March 5, 1887

In many ways, the content is typical of the times and quite predictable. All the belligerence is on the right-hand side of the sketch with John Bull, the British lion, the cannon and the stereotyped habitant in a pose of defiance. The childlike paper hat and wooden sword sported by one of the Americans just cannot match the firepower on the other side of the river. And, of course, gone is the scraggly, unkempt look of Uncle Sam, so prevalent in Canadian cartoons. With the cancellation of the fisheries clauses in the Treaty of Washington in 1886, once again both sides realized that living without a working agreement could only result in deteriorating relationships on the North American continent. American President Grover Cleveland went to Congress asking that the legislature approve the founding of a joint commission consisting of representatives from Canada, the United States, and Great Britain to resolve the differences one more time. Congress refused to act on Cleveland’s request by a vote of 38 to 10 when nine Democrats joined 29 Republicans. The impasse did not stop Canadian cartoonists from presenting the case however. (Figure 6.10) In The Fishery Tangle, Bengough one more time pits an ornery and deceitful Uncle Sam against an overfed and impatient John Bull, who seems to trample under his feet the Convention of 1818 while Uncle Sam appears to have stomped on the Halifax Award. Saving the day with a large pair of scissors advocating Canada–U.S. commercial union, is a new but somewhat familiar, young, virile and handsome Mr. Canada.



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Figure 6.10  Grip, September 17, 1887

It did not take long for the never-silent Goldwin Smith to enter the fray. On November 20, 1888 he was the guest of honor at a gala banquet in New York City sponsored by the city’s Chamber of Commerce. Of course, he had a comment on the current phase of the fishing dispute.

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“As to the fisheries question, I believe that you will agree with me, that if diplomacy cannot settle it soon and amicably, the pay of the diplomats ought to be stopped. It is political party that breeds all the trouble. Let two members of the Chamber of Commerce of New York meet two members of the Board of Trade of Toronto and the question would be settled in a few hours.”36

Figure 6.11  Grip, May 19, 1883



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In spite of Congressional reluctance, a joint Anglo–American high commission was appointed to review the problems with the fishery. By the fall of 1887, it became apparent to all who could see and/or hear that negotiations to renew the treaty were in serious trouble. Sir John A. Macdonald turned to one of his most reliable allies to break the log jam. Sir Charles Tupper, a founder of the Canadian Federation, had left active politics at the urging of his wife and took up the post of Canadian High Commissioner to Great Britain in 1883.37 Although a Maritimer, Tupper had shown no interest in the world of fish. Nonetheless, he chose to attend the International Fisheries Exhibition in London to represent Canada. The otherwise obscure visit came to the attention of Bengough who noted that “he is undoubtedly the best specimen in our national collection.”38 Bengough was referring to any of Tupper’s human qualities which he reputedly lacked when the cartoonist drew this parody of the Canadian diplomat. (Figure 6.11) Tupper was dispatched by Macdonald to join the deliberations during the winter of 1887–8 in the District of Columbia. (Figure 6.12). In this cartoon,

Figure 6.12  Grip, October 29, 1887

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Miss Canada wears a very serious face as she contemplates the outcome of the talks. Macdonald, whose arm she is avidly clutching, says to Tupper “you’ll do my bidding eh? Well, Sir Charles, my bidding is to fight for this young lady’s rights to the last trench!”39 Once again the issue of free trade was placed on the table. The Americans refused to discuss the topic. Tupper and his

Figure 6.13  Grip, March 3, 1888



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British allies came away with only a small set of concessions on the rights of American fishermen in Canadian waters.40 Even though the Americans lost virtually nothing in the agreement, it still created controversy in Washington. Condemning the agreement in the Senate on Tuesday July 10, 1888, George Hoar of Massachusetts asked

Figure 6.14  Dominion Illustrated News, July 7, 1888

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“Yet, is it not a little remarkable that there is not to be found throughout the length and breadth of the land, so far as I can hear, a single fisherman who does not deem its provisions an outrage?”41

Canadians did not accept Hoar’s vision of the agreement. Bengough was enraged at what he thought was a sell-out which prompted him to sketch this vitriolic response. (Figure 6.13) In the cartoon, Thomas Francis Bayard is dragging a rather large fish on his back. His adversary is the much maligned Tupper. While Bayard struggles to move his fish which is nearly his size, Tupper holds a small, inconsequential catch ironically marked “bait.” One can get the feeling that Bengough’s real beef is not with either Tupper or Bayard, but with the diplomat in the background who carries a document praising the triumph of diplomacy. Hoar’s hostility against even the most small, tinkering with regulations forced Cleveland to backtrack on his promise to move the agreements quickly to the U.S. Senate. In this cartoon by Henri Julien, (Figure 6.14) Tupper asks the President why he has not signed the articles. The President notes that the final decision rests with the Senate which has a small Republican majority, characterized here by Julien as a vicious dog locked up in a manger. The caption quotes Tupper as asking “Why don’t you sign the Treaty, Mr. President and have done with the vexation?” Cleveland responds “I am quite ready to do so, but can’t get it away from that surly obstructionist there,” in reference to the Republican Party. The Dominion Illustrated News published this summary of Julien’s view of the situation on July 7, 1888. The drawing of our artist is spirited and true. The expression on Sir Charles Tupper’s face is the proper one of eagerness, slightly blended with annoyance. Mr.. Cleveland’s attitude shows the situation exactly. He is quite prepared to sign the treaty, as it is an act of his administration, but he is helpless in the last resort for the reason that the ultimate decision rests solely with the Senate, not the House of Representatives and the Senate is Republican by a majority of one.42

In the final analysis, Julien was most displeased by U.S. attitudes towards Canadian interests, in particular its refusal to negotiate a free trade agreement. In a savage condemnation of the United States in the 18 August, 1888 issue of The Dominion Illustrated, Julien pictures Uncle Sam as a bloated, overweight junior version of Brother Jonathan. The spoiled child is appealing to Britain to take “Johnny” in this case, Johnny Canuck into hand. (Figure 6.15) Crying Boo Hoo, he declares Little Brother Johnny is taking all my toys away. He’s got the



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Figure 6.15  Dominion Illustrated News, August 18, 1888

fish and he taking all my tea-things, and-and my Pacific Trade, and, and pulling all my canal boats, and…and, now, he wants my Western Railway Traffic! Boo Hoo…..! Ma-a-a-a! Tell Him To Stop.43 Eventually, the three parties agreed to a set of conditions regarding the North American fishery although no treaty as yet has resolved the differences on this issue between Canada and the United States. Nonetheless, other and more

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Figure 6.16  The Moon, November 15, 1902

important issues regarding Canadian–American relations came to dominate the headlines such as defense matters, cultural issues, and monetary exchanges. Finally, in 1988, Canada and the United States signed their first free trade agreement since the Reciprocity Treaty was canceled in 1866. Yet the image of fish wars continue to haunt the Canadian imagination. In 1902, this anonymous cartoonist publishing in the Toronto satirical journal The Moon reached back into nearly 120 years of history when making a visual comment on who had the best access to the British market place. The symbol of a traded commodity was a fish. (Figure 6.16) In many respects, the treatment accorded the American position in the numerous fisheries disputes throughout the nineteenth century resembled a morality play. However, the issues at stake went well beyond the question of whether or not Canadian Toryism was just being difficult in its attempt to come to grips with the great republican and liberal experiment taking place on its doorstep. There was little doubt that Canada not only wanted but needed the protection of an imperial power such as Great Britain. There were scattered attempts by some Canadian business people to throw off the British yoke and join the United States either as a new state or as a commercial partner. Part of



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the initiatives were clearly based in an ever increasing jealousy of U.S. wealth and power. Canadians were rapidly coming to grips with the realization that they would have to move quickly to become an independent power or face a future of dependency as an underdeveloped backwater connected economically and politically to either Great Britain or the United States. However the attitude of the daily press did little to encourage friendly relations with the United States. Both major political parties, the Conservatives

Figure 6.17  Montreal Star, 1920

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and the Liberals, had the major dailies in their respective back pockets. It took the humorists such as Walker, Bengough, Jump, Julien, and others to bring the reality of the issues to the foreground. Until the late nineteenth century, the only outlets for their satire were the numerous illustrated and humor magazines that began to appear with increasing regularity on the street corner newsstands of the nation prior to Confederation in 1867. Eventually, as the new century crept closer, the dailies freed themselves from political inference and began commenting on the news as well as reporting it. As Canada resolved its relationships with its North American neighbor, cartooning turned inward to political and social stress in Canada itself. And the fish? Whether Arthur Racey was familiar with the battles that have been unleashed over fishing rights or not, twenty–some-odd years after the last The Moon drawing commented on Canada–U.S. relations, Racey used a fish to express his view of Canadian– American relations.

Notes 1 Calgary, AB, The Herald, 22 July, 1997. London, ON, The Free Press, February 24, 1999. Toronto, ON, The Globe and Mail, February 24, 1999. 2 CIHM 10010, Documents and Proceedings of the Halifax Commission, 1877, Volume 1, under the Treaty of Washington, (May 8, 1871), 78 3 Robert R. Wilson, “Canada-United States Treaty Relations and International Law,” David R. Deener (ed.), Canada-United States Treaty Relations, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), 4–5, 12. 4 Maxwell Cohen, Trends and Future Problems, Deener, 187. 5 Donald Creighton, The Story of Canada, (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), 108–9. 6 CIHM 10010, 79. 7 CIHM 00013, Continental Union Association of Ontario: A Short Study of its economic side, Toronto 1893, 29–30. 8 CIHM, 10010, 80. 9 Arthur Harvey, “The American Mackerel Fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” The New Dominion Monthly, Vol. II, (April 1868), 19. 10 Harvey, 21. 11 CIHM 02403, Proceedings of the Vermont Legislature, No. 29, (1849), 17. 12 Goldwin Smith. “The Treaty of Washington 1871,” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941), 2. 13 Harvey, 19–20. 14 CIHM 33839, Alexander Monro, Annexation or Union with the United States is the



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manifest destiny of British North America, St. John, New Brunswick, Barnes and Company, 1868, 17. 15 Toronto, Ontario, “The Anglo-American Magazine,” Vol. 1, No. 1, (July 1852), 177. 16 Cohen, 187. 17 CIHM 10010, 81. 18 Toronto, Ontario “The Nation,” Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1874. 19 Reciprocity Treaty Between Great Britain and the United States together With Canadian Tariffs for 1854 and 1863, (Montreal, QC: J. Starke and Company Printers, 1864), 3–4. 20 J. M. S. Careless, “Brown Of The Globe Volume Two,” (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1963), 105. 21 “New Dominion Monthly,” Vol. II, (April 1868), 21. 22 Goldwin Smith, The Treaty of Washington, 3–4. 23 Goldwin Smith, The Treaty of Washington, 7. 24 CIHM 63690, A Bill For The Admission of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West and for the Organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan and Columbia, July 2, 1866, Section 1, 1–2 25 Goldwin Smith, The Treaty of Washington, 9–10. 26 Goldwin Smith, The Treaty of Washington, 88–9. 27 CIHM 10010, 1. 28 Careless, 284. 29 Goldwin Smith, The Treaty of Washington, 91. 30 CIHM 10010, IX. 31 CIHM 10010, X. 32 CIHM 16914, Alexander Bliss: A Review of the Halifax Fishery Award, Washington, 1878. 33 Toronto, ON Grip, November 2, 1878. 34 CIHM 00725, Reciprocity With The United States: Speech by the Honourable Sir Richard Cartwright delivered to the House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario March 14, 1888. 35 CIHM 07530, The Fisheries Dispute: A Suggestion For its adjustment by Abrogating the Convention of 1818 and Resting On the Rights and Liberties Defined In the Treaty of 1783, by John Jay, Late Minister to Vienna, 1887. 36 CIHM, 33565, Goldwin Smith at the banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 20, 1888. 37 W. S. MacNutt, “The 1880s” in The Canadians Part One 1867–1967, J. M. S. Careless (ed.), (Toronto, ON: Macmillan of Canada, 1970), 90. 38 Toronto, ON Grip, May 19, 1883. 39 Toronto, ON Grip, October 29, 1887. 40 Creighton, 185.

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41 CIHM 07227, Hoar, George Frisbie (Massachusetts), The Fisheries Treaty, Tuesday July 10, 1888. 42 Montreal and Toronto, “The Dominion Illustrated News,” July 7, 1888. 43 Montreal and Toronto, “The Dominion Illustrated News,” August 18, 1888.

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Looking Through the One Way Mirror

In many ways, Canada became a nation reluctantly always conscious of living in the shadow of her more powerful and important neighbor to the south. As we have seen, her vulnerability to American influence became more acute when Britain repealed the Corn Laws in the mid 1840s and embarked on a road to free trade. To a significant degree, it was this particular event that gave Canadians a serious inferiority complex; one which drove many occupants of the northern half of the continent to seek formal ties with the United States from the extreme of annexation in 1849 on one hand, to the looser ties of limited reciprocity or commercial union on the other. By the early 1870s, the annexationist movement appeared to have run its course. South of the border, Ulysses S. Grant and Hamilton Fish showed little enthusiasm for an extensive free trade deal with Canada. However other dependency models soon emerged. Seemingly afraid of complete independence, Canadians continued to debate the issue of ties to more powerful and influential metropolitan centers throughout the closing decades of the Victorian age. As the nation’s political elite soon learned, if at first you don’t succeed, you try again. By the time that the country was a mere half-decade old a new set of slogans appeared on the national horizon. Defeated free traders and reciprocity boosters became commercial unionists. The concept was not quite annexation, not quite free trade, and not quite reciprocity. With its refusal to recognize that other alternatives to nation-building existed, the debate over commercial union with the United States opened old wounds that had been slowly and sometimes tempestuously closing since the day Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris. In fact the proposal forced Canadians once and for all to choose between the path to national independence or continued economic and political ties with a larger power. Those opposed to dealings with the United States who also feared independence fought for a third option. Their choice was an imperial federation with Great Britain at the core of a confederation of nations

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with enough political and economic clout to determine the fate of the world. For them, imperial federation was the perfect anecdote to American ambitions, real or imagined. The gauntlet over what kind of international relations would emerge was thrown down long before the founders of the nation met at Quebec City and Charlottetown to draft the articles of Confederation. On July 25, 1849 a resolution passed by the British American League at Kingston, Ontario, became a harbinger of things to come. Although not promoting any form of political and/or economic union with the Americans, the delegates recognized Canadian vulnerability with the loss of imperial preference for Canadian goods. Their motives, like those who were to follow, focused in this case primarily on economic as opposed to political considerations. That if the interests of the British people will not admit of protection to colonial products in her market, and if she will not or cannot open the markets of foreign countries, and especially of the United States of America for the admission of colonial products and manufactures, on terms of reciprocity, then it will become the duty of colonists to create at home, or to seek abroad, a market or markets for the products of their own industry; and thus, by following the example of the mother country, seek the welfare of their own people irrespective of British interests or British influences.1

And precisely what was that welfare? Although the resolution declined to list alternatives to the Canadian colonists, the implications are quite clear. The most notable market of any size and power lay to the immediate south, not in the Indian Ocean or the far Pacific of Australia and New Zealand. This geographical rigidity would prove to be a significant impediment to any form of imperial federation. It would also help legitimize the concept of commercial union with the United States as a logical alternative. In 1849, the State of Vermont was quick to point out the natural integration determined primarily by waterways which were enjoyed by both Americans and Canadians. The law makers observed that the highways of commerce indeed pointed for the most part northward and southward. However, their objectives not only dealt with increasing wealth in the mountain state but incorporating Britain’s colonies into a larger metropolitan America.2 The Civil War had impeded closer relationships between the two nations as Louis Prosper Bender author of Old and New Canada in 1881 noted in a speech in 1883. However, he predicted that “events are too strong, and nothing can



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arrest the tide of popular opinion which ceaselessly, though calmly, flows in the direction of a closer connection, if not political union with the republic.”3 Bender was clearly leaving a number of options open although he had said nothing that hadn’t been stated as far back as the late eighteenth century. Such positions did not sit well with the editor of The Sprite in Quebec City. Pointing his finger at James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald and a proponent of Canada–U.S. annexation, C. E. Holiwell told his readers that Bennett should use his subscription income first to pay off American civil war debts and then to save to build a lunatic asylum for his own use which he would occupy until his death at which time the institution could be converted into a hospital for the treatment of Anglophobia.4 Certainly the divide between the two North America states was foremost on the mind of C. Henri Moreau, the French–born annexationist who founded the Montreal publication Le Perroquet in 1865. In this cartoon which appeared on April 15, 1865, (see Figure 7.1) the editor warns a watchful Abraham Lincoln that his administration is about to miss a golden opportunity to expand its

Figure 7.1  Le Perroquet, April 5, 1865

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territory northward as Canadians are busy building a “wall of China” across the 49th parallel and joining the eastern colonies to the metropolitan center of Montreal through the proposed Inter-colonial Railway. Moreau’s message was an invitation for the United States to flex its economic and military muscles before talk of nationhood in Canada could take serious root. A hint of things to come surfaced when Goldwin Smith decided to reply to a speech made by Senator Charles Sumner in London, England in 1869. Sumner had been a central actor in the Alabama drama and was not exactly regarded warmly in Britain. He had made numerous references to the British presence in North America and in particular its Canadian colonies which he saw as an aberration. Smith had always been an opponent of imperial connections for any client state and Canada was no exception.5 He told the American politician that somehow or other Canadians would have to determine their future by themselves and this did not exclude remaining tied to the British Crown or negotiating any one of a number of connections to the Americans. His message to Sumner was clear and to the point. Don’t interfere.6 Enthusiasm for an American connection cooled somewhat but did not entirely disappear after the British Parliament passed the British North America Act which joined four of its colonies into the Dominion of Canada. The new country inherited a customs act passed by the combined legislatures of Ontario and Quebec in 1866. Customs revenues and excise taxes became the largest single source of revenue for the new nation. They would become the critical factor in the soon to come national debate over a Canada–U.S. commercial union. The controversies on how to deal with the Americans awaited a charismatic spokesperson who would have to contend with a suspicion of American intentions which ran deep in the Canadian psyche. Although the British government had transferred the vast lands of the Canadian northwest to the government at Ottawa, it did not stop Georges Edouard Desbarats from warning his readers that American designs on the vulnerable territory should be taken seriously. (See Figure 7.2) His concerns would take on a significant relevance three years after this cartoon was published when John A. Macdonald included several American businessmen including a pro-annexationist Philadelphia lawyer, in his plans to build his railway to the Pacific Ocean. In keeping with all other national arguments over relationships with the Americans, the question of a commercial union was right on course. In fact, the momentum that its supporters had achieved since Confederation worried Edward Blake. Blake, a former premier of the Province of Ontario between



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Figure 7.2  Canadian Illustrated News, January 29, 1879

1871 and 1873 had opted for federal politics when legislation banned political figures from holding more than one public office. When Macdonald went down to defeat during the Pacific Scandal, Blake was invited to join Alexander

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Mackenzie’s cabinet. Never a team player as events would prove, Blake left the administration within a short three months but retained his federal seat under the Liberal Party banner. On October 3, 1874 Blake was in a reflective state of mind as he and literally thousands of other Ontario Liberals gathered in the small town of Aurora just north of Toronto to celebrate Alexander Mackenzie’s victory over Sir John A. Macdonald in the 1873 federal election. In particular, the multitude was honoring the party’s success in the North Riding of York County which included Aurora. It was also the country’s first Liberal government, but it would not be the last. As with most Victorian gatherings of this nature, the focus was on food both for the body and the mind. The Liberal Party supplied the first, Edward Blake was to deliver the second. As he mounted the platform, Blake was determined to put to rest any consideration for commercial union. For him the very salvation of the nation was at stake. Although an ardent freetrader like many of the other Liberals in the country, Blake wanted to negotiate agreements based on partnerships not surrender. He was convinced that any talk of commercial union would eventually lead to an outright union of a more lasting political nature, a de-facto annexation for instance. He felt it was his obligation to present Canadians with an alternative to commercial union with the United States. Journalists of all stripes and convictions would refer to his concept as imperial federation. Blake wanted to focus debate on two basic choices: whether or not to maintain an imperial connection in what would amount to an international federal state which would emerge from the metropolitan-hinterland relations of Britain and her colonies or a complete severing of the imperial connection with a move to developing a sense of nationhood founded in total independence.7 Lurking in the background of course was the question of the viability of a commercial union with a large, powerful nation not in the British Empire. Those proposing imperial federation felt that a Canada safely tucked away in the arms of the mother country could avoid drifting into the American orbit. In spite of his ardent free trade position, Blake had no hesitation adopting an opposing stance to any form of commercial union with the United States. Not only would the speech revive the wounded Liberal-Conservative Party of Sir John A. Macdonald, it would lead to serious questions as to whether or not Blake was a true Liberal. Blake’s speech dealt with a number of issues which were on the table that year including the need to weld French and English together in a common



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national purpose, the urgency for Senate reform,8 the possibility of legislating compulsory voting in federal elections, and determining the place of minorities in the federal union. Lest anyone be mislead, Blake was referring primarily to the English minority in Quebec and the French minorities in Ontario and the Maritimes. However, most of the passion that day was generated by his unswerving support for the concept of an imperial federation. Let me turn to another question which has been adverted to on several occasions, as one looming in the not very distant future. I refer to the relations of Canada to the Empire. Upon this topic I took, three or four years ago, an opportunity of speaking, and ventured to suggest than an effort should be made to reorganize the Empire on a Federal basis.. I repeat what I then said, that the time may be at hand when the people of Canada shall be called upon to discuss the question.9

Blake was dually concerned about the impact of the United States on the ability of Canadians to develop a sense of national purpose as he was about the current state of affairs in which Britain still controlled Canadian foreign policy and defense. He reminded his audience that he shared the criticism of Canadians who felt that Britain had sold out Canadian interests in the Treaty of Washington negotiations in 1871. He noted that “…in your foreign affairs, your relations with other countries, whether peaceful or warlike, commercial or financial or otherwise you may have no more voice than the people of Japan.”10 He accused Britain of denying to her subjects in the colonies those rights considered sacrosanct in the home land. His objectives were to both blunt the impact of the commercial unionists, and to diminish if not eliminate British influence over Canadian affairs. A federal union consisting of equal partners seemed a logical alternative. Blake succeeded in igniting the very reaction he was attempting to temper. Three weeks after the speech Grip carried one of John Wilson Bengough’s trademark parodies on the state of Canadian politics under the headline Political Recipes. To cultivate a Canadian National Spirit—Grow Barley To secure Imperial Union.—Compel men and women alike to grow tufts on the chin. To reconstruct the Senate.—Put a head on everyone of its members. To insure compulsory voting.—Abolish the ballot and return to the old order of things, when the electors were forced to vote as personal influence dictated.

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To provide for a minority representation.—Adopt the aboriginal plan of a general council of the people; the majority will be sure to turn up missing and the minority can run the machine.11

As in contemporary practice, interest groups in the nineteenth century were equally adept at extracting those pronouncements which appeared to support their respective causes. William Foster, founder of the Canada First Society felt that Blake’s words were an endorsement of the organization’s views on Canadian politics. As an editorial in The Nation declared “It is no part of our business to account for the coincidence, but we find a singular unity of views between Mr. Blake and the National or Canada First party.12 After all, the maintenance of a strong connection to the Empire was a key part of the organization’s policies. All of Blake’s agenda was included in the eleven point program of the Canadian National Association Platform which consisted of the activist element in the Canada First Society.13 The organization’s newspaper lauded Blake’s speech in the first edition of the weekly following the events in Aurora. Mr. Blake, as the expositor of national feeling, has met the demand for “a definite state of principles.” And he has done so with courage at once rare and heroic. By his speech in North York, he has distinguished himself from the common herd of politicians by “A new departure.” … The agreement embraces a very respectable program.14

It was Bengough who pointed out that the organization had among its most influential members a person who was on record as a fervent anti-imperialist. It was none other than the organization’s first president and The Nation’s editor Goldwin Smith. As the unpredictable Smith was musing over the prospects of Canadian nationhood, his newspaper maintained the staunch anti-imperial stance of its editor. In Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand and in South Africa, the beginnings of empire have been successfully laid while Imperial Federation has remained in the region of political speculation, and no danger to imperial unity has been threatened. It is well, therefore, to contemplate the possibility of such a federation proving detrimental to the evolution of a new phase of British domination, and to guard against the probability of “looking to England” too much being adverse to the end desired.15

In spite of Smith’s British heritage, Bengough questioned whether or not the professor would be able to maintain any sympathy for the British connection



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Figure 7.3  Grip, March 7, 1875

held dear by a significant portion of the Canadian population, especially English-speaking Tories. (See Figure 7.3) On a play on the name of the doomsayer Nostradamus, Bengough pictures the hapless Smith as a peddler for constitutional recipes for Canadians that they apparently do not want. His collection of goodies contains powders guaranteed to ensure independence along with anti-British remedies for the Canadian condition. Hiding under the umbrella held by William Foster, signifying his newspaper The Nation, Smith realizes that his ideas are unwelcome. As well as being pelted by George Brown and Alexander Mackenzie, Britannia peering over the British connection wall assures the Canadians that she has no intention of sympathizing with any of Smith’s constitutional ideas. Although it was not addressed in this particular cartoon, Smith—perhaps more than any other commentator on the subject of an imperial federation— placed the concept in serious jeopardy when he pointed out that the largest voting block in the federation would be non-white citizens of the Asian sub-continent and parts of east Africa. There was little danger that the idea would take fire anyway. Blake remained its chief spokesperson and he was

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unable to communicate his enthusiasm for the concept to the population at large. Some form of national independence with an economic lifeline to somewhere was far more in keeping with the dominant ideas of the day. In many ways, reaction to Blake’s speech in the Canadian press was predictable. Virtually every newspaper in Ontario and Quebec in both English and French had something to say about the remarks made in Aurora. As one might suspect, the Liberal press was kinder in its assessment than the Tory press, but it was by no means universal in supporting the concept of imperial federation. The Liberal–Conservative Toronto Mail accused Blake of wanting to undermine the very principles that led to the Confederation articles of 1867. The journal pointed out that nowhere even in the Liberal policy manuals could it find support for imperial federation. It is high time to ask what Reform principles are when we find one who the other day was Mr. Mackenzie’s colleague in the Dominion Cabinet declaring himself hostile to Confederation, and avowing himself a believer in the “Canada First” creed to the extent of advocating a Federation of the Empire, of doing away with a Crown-appointed Senate and supporting Hare’s doctrine of the Representation of Minorities.16

George Brown’s The Globe was more gentle. The editor questioned whether or not the British would willingly surrender the supremacy of the Parliament at Westminster to local authorities in what would be a partnership between colony and motherland. He concurred with an editorial in The Nation that claimed that Blake’s ideas were far ahead of their time and would be fortunate to remain living questions for generations to come. Georges Edouard Desbarats was surprisingly non-committal in the Canadian Illustrated News considering the persistent pro-Tory entries in his journal. He refused to place any validity on the idea of imperial federation but felt that Blake’s ideas on Senate and voting reform would reduce the influence of questionably moral hangers-on in all of the country’s political parties.17 The questions that concerned Canadian national identity were to dominate Canadian politics in a bitterly divisive manner right through to the First World War. The relationship to the United States was to be one of the major catalysts in a young nation seeking to define itself. Blake’s words were not forgotten as the 1870s rolled on. Customs barriers to intercontinental travel and trade were set up at key border points between Canada and the United States leaving the St. Lawrence River as one of the few free waterways. Getting to it was another



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Figure 7.4  Canadian Illustrated News, July 29, 1876

matter. The United States was stung by Canadian demands for payment for passage and behaved in kind, as this cartoon by Henri Julien in the Canadian Illustrated News demonstrates. (See Figure 7.4) In the scenario, Uncle Sam has brought a train of horse drawn barges to the Chambly canal system just south of Montreal. The waterways provided connections to the St. Lawrence route and markets in Ontario and Quebec. Alexander Mackenzie is refusing access to American goods in retaliation for American belligerence toward Canadian

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shipping on American canals and rivers, in particular on the Erie Canal in upstate New York. Goldwin Smith in particular was extremely pessimistic about Canada’s future. Throughout the 1870s, the country suffered through a long depression. It would be exacerbated in the 1880s by the failure of the National Policy to produce instant prosperity. The fragile unity pact between French and English would suffer serious tensions when Macdonald failed to commute the death sentence imposed on Métis M.P. Louis Riel who had attempted to found a French-speaking state in Western Canada while leading two violent rebellions. As Smith observed, the problem was the geographical placement of Canada next door to the United States. Never, he argued would Canada ever be able to rival American economic power.18 Smith’s words played directly into the hands of entrepreneurs who saw Canadian economic salvation in a commercial union. Writing as The Bystander, Smith dismissed the argument that commercial union and political union were necessarily one and the same thing. He accused those who promoted such ideas as fearmongers. He pointed out that in cases such of that of Germany, commercial union only became political union by force of arms. He was convinced that the United States of America, in spite of past threats, would never take up arms against Canada.19 Smith had many detractors in Canadian political life but none was more vocal that John Wilson Bengough. To the cartoonist and essayist, the Oxford professor was nothing more than a cheap political hack, changing his clothes and colors to meet any given situation. The Changeable Goldwin In England first, Among Englishmen, He Cobden’s friend, cried “Free Trade!” then: But coming to Canadian shore, Loudly “Protection!” he did roar; And now, at home again, why he, In Cobden’s Club, “Free Trade” we see. That System then, Grip thinks it clear, Is right with them, the other here. And Grip would be delighted still, To let them have of it their fill, But not so here-the way is barred, Protection’s the Canadian card.20



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Figure 7.5  Canadian Illustrated News, April 5, 1879

The developing campaign for commercial union did not sit well at the Canadian Illustrated News. Georges Edouard Desbarats used this cartoon (see Figure 7.5) to remind Canadians where their first loyalties lay and in particular those which dealt with commerce. Sir John A. Macdonald, who was returned to power in 1878, is curtly reminded that Canadian independence is still the prerogative of Westminster, and should he wish to continue to enjoy most aspects of it he should certainly pay heed to the British role in Canadian affairs.

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Following his impact at Aurora, Edward Blake was drawn back in to ministerial service by his friend Alexander Mackenzie in 1875. He lasted two years in the justice portfolio. For reasons he was not anxious to discuss, he left the cabinet in 1877 abandoning Mackenzie to face Macdonald in the 1878 federal election. Blake was a no-show during the campaign leaving some of his critics to muse whether or not he wanted to undermine Mackenzie in a bid for the leadership of the federal party. He returned to active politics in a by-election in 1879, poised to take over the organization. On Monday April 26, Liberal members of Parliament met without Mackenzie present to discuss the question of leadership. At two o’clock the next morning, Mackenzie announced to the legislators after a long and exhausting session that he was no longer leader. One day later Blake’s ascension to the halls of power was announced.21 Two years later Edward Blake and the Liberal Party were on the campaign trail. Paying only lip service to the question of Canadian independence, Blake and the Liberal Party went to the people on a free trade agenda. They lost. Repeating the platform again in 1886, they remained on the opposition benches in the new capital at Ottawa, Ontario. Blake and his contemporaries were not the only persons interested in the future of Canada. South of the border, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune had started to publish small articles on the Canadian condition as early as 1859, eight years before the passing of the British North America Act. Greeley did not just sit back in his New York office content to rely on secondhand reports. He traveled to Toronto in December of 1859 to deliver two lectures at the city’s downtown St. Lawrence Hall. George Brown founder and editor of The Globe chaired the first session. In 1861, the New York journalist visited Isaac Buchanan in Hamilton. He was also reported to have made a banquet address in Montreal in 1868.22 Early in his career, Greeley had advocated annexing the British North American colonies. Although his interest declined following 1867, his annexationist dreams did not easily pass from the minds of Canadian cartoonists. As late as 1882, this drawing which appeared in the Canadian Illustrated News served to remind Georges Edouard Desbarats’ subscribers of Greeley’s 1866 campaign in the New York Tribune to erase the border along the 49th parallel. (See Figure 7.6) The central character, Bull Canadensis, is reading from Greeley’s journal which contains an article deploring Canada’s British connection. The newspaper argues that all the British are interested in accomplishing in Canada is the accumulation of wealth which can be returned to



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Figure 7.6  Canadian Illustrated News, January 14, 1882

England. In fact, the editor claims that the British universally believe that all that Canada consists of are thriftless French Canadians and swarms of cheap, Irish labor. It is Hibernicus, the character on the left of the cartoon, who refutes Greeley’s contentions and it is he who recalls Greeley’s intemperate 1866 declarations on annexation. The French-Canadian habitant declares “Il est l’envie.” (It is the envy) As he continues, he reminds Bull Canadensis who really symbolizes the president of the Canadian Pacific that certainly Greeley’s remarks do not apply to him. The irony and double-entendre in the work is apparent.

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It was British indifference to the fate of Canadians that played heavily on the mind of Bengough during the early years of the debate on commercial union and imperial federation. For one, he argued that To our view Canada humiliates herself when she expresses more devotion and affection than she gets in return, and she gets precious little of either from John

Figure 7.7  Grip, September 8, 1883



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Bull. … they find Americans everywhere in the Old Land preferred before them; and it is notorious that Canada is so little thought of that even the leading editors of England do not think it worth their while to know even the rudiments of Canadian geography.23

Bengough’s indignation resulted in this cartoon on his journal’s front cover. (See Figure 7.7) The British Chief Justice Lord Coleridge is seen being escorted by Uncle Sam while a disappointed Miss Canada observes the transaction. Apparently his Lordship chose to ignore a visit to Canada while in the neighboring republic. As Bengough queried with a sarcastic tongue planted firmly in one cheek “So long as the advanced civilization of New York and Boston may be enjoyed, you could hardly expect a refined and cultured Briton to hanker for the wigwams and beaver dams and frontier shanties of the snow-covered wilderness of Canada.”24 In 1884, the Imperial Federation League was founded in London, England. By 1887 the first branches began to appear in Canada and in particular in Tory Ontario. The organization decried any idea of reciprocity with nations outside the grasp of the Empire. Instead they wanted to create a global economic union with member states who would in turn benefit monetarily from a restrictive set of tariffs against non-members. No longer was the question of a purely Canadian made independent state being debated. Imperial federationists lined up on one side and commercial unionists stood in opposition. Two successive electoral defeats marked the end of Edward Blake but not his idea of an imperial federation. In this 1884 Grip cartoon, Bengough takes aim at the subject. (See Figure 7.8) Seen leaving the scene on the left is Sir Richard Cartwright, an articulate spokesperson for Canadian nationhood who has caught his Liberal colleague off-guard by once again challenging Blake to address the subject of independence, in this case represented by the offspring in Blake’s arms. As the cartoon demonstrates, the choices that Cartwright sees are two fold: either keep the child, that is embrace independence, or give it to the protectionist Sir John A. Macdonald who waits patiently behind Blake for the Liberal leader’s decision. The paper marked Imperial Federation sticking out of Blake’s coat pocket is not a choice in the world of “mother” Cartwright. As Bengough observed, the issue played straight into Macdonald’s hands. Sensing that there might be some political capital to be gained by jumping on the imperial federation bandwagon, the Prime Minister made a series of speeches supporting the concept throughout 1884. Macdonald did not have to concern himself with appeasing the electorate. His mandate had two more years

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Figure 7.8  Grip, May 31, 1884

to run. However, he was anxious that should the concept receive some sympathy in Canada, he was not about to let Blake become its chief spokes person. In this cartoon which appeared on December 6, 1884, Bengough questions the Prime Minster’s sincerity as Macdonald shakes the hand of John Bull while Miss



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Canada looks on. (See Figure 7.9) The wily Macdonald assures his companion that his promises should be taken for what they are worth, no more, no less. The debate over Canada’s destiny was not restricted to the pages of the daily press or to political chambers and oratorical societies. The Trip Hammer, official organ of the workers at the Massey Manufacturing Company of Toronto, makers of farm implements, addressed the question of independence in the late winter of 1885. The journal’s editors recognized the fact that in any family situation there would come a day when the child must leave the parent for the sake of both parties. They drew a parallel to a nation-state attempting to throw off the bonds of colonialism. As much as their words seemed sympathetic for a pro-independence position, in the final analysis they came to the conclusion that the status quo—that is, retaining strong imperial ties to the mother country—was their preferred national choice. They argued that the current situation made Canadians as free as any other citizen in any other country. We confess our inability to see how, on the whole, Canada would be the gainer if tomorrow were appointed as the day when at a given signal, the flag of England should disappear from Canadian flagstaff forever, and in its place should rise the ensign of Canadian independence.25

The flag of England would remain on Canadian flagpoles until a divisive debate in the 1960s finally resolved that Canada should adopt its own national flag, the current red maple leaf emblem. Nonetheless the Union Jack still occupies the upper left-hand corner of the Province of Ontario’s red ensign. The commercial union debate would prove to be disastrous for the federal Liberal Party as would any sort of imperial federation moves. By 1887, Blake’s Quebec lieutenant Wilfrid Laurier was publicly expressing his concern about commercial union. In a letter sent in July of 1887, he advised Blake that the party had to come to grips with the fact that the concept was starting to take hold in some very important and powerful circles. Laurier, who had discussed his correspondence with Sir Richard Cartwright, warned Blake that he would be forced to address the issue in an election expected in 1888. Blake dismissed the viability of commercial union in a return communication to Laurier, the man who would succeed him as leader of the Liberal Party I think the advocates of it have not faced the difficulties or the question involved…the message has tendencies which its promoters deny. The tendencies may be right, or inevitable, but ought they to be denied or ignored? I think not.26

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Figure 7.9  Grip, December 6, 1884

During the summer of 1887, Bengough’s Grip had a clear focus, namely to discuss and present the issues surrounding the question of commercial union with the Americans. His first cartoon which appeared on June 11, 1887 deals with morals as much as it does commerce. (See Figure 7.10) Bengough attributes the subject of the drawing to one Thomas Shaw, Secretary of the Central Farmers’ Institute of Ontario. Shaw had taken the



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Figure 7.10  Grip, June 11, 1879

position that Canadians wanted commercial union. He identifies his own community as one of the leading supporters, citing many of the same arguments that resulted in the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854.27 Yet, as Bengough reveals, Mr. Shaw and his pals are likely to get much more than they bargained for when they trade their oats, fish, eggs, grain, and lumber for American goods. Like many Canadians of the time period, Bengough held the opinion that the American state was a sea of corruption and that is what he drew to represent those goods which Uncle Sam would deliver as his part of the bargain. Once again Bengough addresses his concern as he did in the Kearney cartoon of April 26, 1879 about American values accompanying American goods and services across the border. The following week Bengough once again addressed the issue, this time on the front cover of Grip. (See Figure 7.11) Here we see young Canada joining Uncle Sam in a commercial union supported by the British. John Bull’s response is that this form of integration will prevent once and for all any talk of annexation and provide solutions to the vexing fisheries conflicts. However, there is a strong suggestion that Britain’s real intent is not to save the Canadians from the arms of Uncle Sam but to open trade routes which will be channeled through Canada to the American market. The lack of smiles on any of the faces of the three participants hints at an involuntary submissions to the wishes of Westminster.

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Figure 7.11  Grip, June 25, 1879

If nothing else the debates, in particular those which emerged in the late 1880s, finally defined what its supporters wanted in a commercial union. There were fundamentally two aspects. First, all tariffs between Canada and the United States would be eliminated on all products both perishable and durable. This moved the concept beyond limited reciprocity agreements into the realm of free trade. Advocates argued that a commercial union would allow Canadians and Americans to trade freely amongst themselves but at the same time they could jointly erect tariffs against countries outside the agreement. This moved the concept beyond free trade. There was to be an assimilation of internal



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revenues in both countries followed by a removal of all customs houses on both sides of the border. It was the income prospects which came to Bengough’s attention in the last issue of the month in July 1887.28 (See Figure 7.12) Here we see Uncle Sam pointing out the potential revenues to Mackenzie Bowell, one of Macdonald’s senior ministers. But knowing that Bengough drew the cartoon, the question always arose as to whether or not the Americans could be trusted. The message and definition of commercial union was not lost on the author who called himself/herself P. N. Factz. A 1889 pamphlet published by the Toronto News Company reiterated many of the points expressed by opponents of the concept. What is meant by Commercial Union with the States? It means that Canada shall adopt the American tariff against the Mother Country, and all the outside world, and agree to give to the States unrestricted benefit of the dominion market for her productions. To do this, Canada must practically abandon all right of protection against encroachments of the Republic, and must give up the revenues now derived from duties, for everything from the States would come in free, and the bulk of foreign importations would be filtered through the States after paying duty into the American treasury, and commissions to American merchants.29

To give the cartoonist his due, Bengough never opposed the concept of commercial union on either economic or political grounds. The problem was

Figure 7.12  Grip, July 30, 1887

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simply that the union would be crafted with a nation whose intentions and actions he seriously questioned. This moved the debate into the moral realm. So, what was the solution? Like most liberals and Liberals, Bengough had faith in the power of human nature to arise above the most reprehensible aspects of human behavior and to civilize humanity. In this cartoon, (see Figure 7.13) he expresses his optimism that the peace, friendship, and prosperity that could potentially emerge from a customs union could also serve to export a little civility (represented by the angel) from north to south, to a nation unaccustomed to such matters. It was Bengough at his arrogant best. Of course if the benefits of commercial union were one-sided there would be no incentive for the United States to participate. In this cartoon, (see Figure 7.14) the last of the summer series, Uncle Sam corners Erastus Wiman demanding to know what kind of compensation commercial union could bring to the United States. Wiman was an interesting choice for the Bengough cartoon, being an expatriate Canadian living in New York City where he managed the U.S. office of R. G. Dun’s Mercantile Agency from 1866 onward. Eventually the company, predecessor to the contemporary Dun and Bradstreet, became Dun, Wiman and Company. Wiman made his living pontificating on the state of the economy through a series of lectures on both sides of the border. He was a strong advocate

Figure 7.13  Grip, June 25, 1887



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Figure 7.14  Grip, August 6, 1887

of commercial union. After writing his autobiography in 1893, his world came crashing down when it was discovered that he had helped himself to a considerable sum of his company’s income to which he was not entitled.30 Of course no debate on Canadian destiny would be complete without an intervention from the indestructible Goldwin Smith. Smith had managed to peddle his credentials as a believable pundit on both sides of the border. Nonetheless, not everyone was impressed by the historian from Oxford via Toronto. At a meeting of dentists in Syracuse, New York on October 15, 1888 what would eventually become known as the Canadian question arose amongst

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the delegates. A young Canadian by the name of Dr. William George Beers told his colleagues Just as you have your croakers and cowards, we have ours, but Mr. Chairman, Canada is not for sale! There have been prophets like Goldwin Smith since the days of Elizabeth who have predicted England’s decline within their time, but all the colonial greatness of England has been developed since the time of Elizabeth.31

November 20, 1888 found Smith in New York City where the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York paid him to tell all about that strange land to the north. Of course a question or two on commercial union was inevitable during the evening. Smith was more than willing to give his version of the issue while simultaneously name dropping throughout his response. I had the honor some time ago to receive from your President a letter of inquiry on the subject of Commercial Union. I believe I may say with confidence that the subject is taking a strong hold on the minds of our Canadian people. The eyes of our people have been opened as they have not been for a long time, if they ever were before, to the advantages of unrestricted trade with their own continent. All our great natural industries—those of the farmer, the lumberman, the ship-owner and the fisherman—desire the removal of the tariff wall. Even of our manufacturers, only the weaker class object; the stronger are ready for the open market.32

There were significant incentives on both sides of the border to do something about punitive and often discriminatory customs charges and access tolls. The pressure that emerged from Washington for toll relief on the Welland canal came to the attention of The Dominion Illustrated News, a new journal founded by Georges Edouard Desbarats in 1888 to replace The Canadian Illustrated News. In the anonymous cartoon which appeared on the August 11, 1888 an American ship’s captain with the coincidental name of Jonathan is berating the gatekeeper at the Welland locks, who just happens to be Sir John A Macdonald, about the cost of passage. (See Figure 7.15) Desbarats dismisses the American’s argument for preferential treatment, noting that Canadian vessels pay the same tariffs. The American captain threatens to retaliate by charging extra for Canadian ships going through canals at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Macdonald advises the captain to go by Montreal where the tolls are only 18 cents per ton instead of the customary 20.33 The pressure to support commercial union between Canada and the United States increased considerably in 1888, when, like the imperial federationists,



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Figure 7.15  Dominion Illustrated News, August 11, 1888

advocates of the concept opened clubs across the country, in particular in the richest province, Ontario. The move was hailed by one of the founders, a Toronto academic named S. H. Janes, who, while reminded of some of the more prominent thoughts of British utilitarianism, equated the forthcoming common market with the pursuit of happiness and the avoidance of pain.

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The Commercial Union Club of Toronto has been organized, I venture to affirm, on the principle of the most genuine patriotism. We aim to promote what we conceive to be the best interests of the Dominion. We seek to make Canada a better country to live in by improving our trade relations with our nearest neighbour—not in the interest of any special class or section of the community to the detriment of others, but in order that the greatest good may result to the greatest number.34

The President of the Toronto chapter was of course Goldwin Smith. Smith is a central character in this cartoon by Sam Hunter, which appeared in the Toronto political journal Saturday Night Magazine on June 9, 1888. (See Figure 7.16) He appears on the right-hand side of the sketch with a leaflet in his left pocket entitled Commercial Union Club Pamphlet. Assisting Smith in his attempt to

Figure 7.16  Saturday Night Magazine, June 9, 1888



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push Macdonald’s protectionist policy into the Union Depot are Edward Farrar, editor of the Toronto newspaper The Mail, a rumored annexationist and a known supporter of commercial union, and the free trade Liberal Sir Richard Cartwright. The caption refers to the three as the C. U. (Commercial Union) baggage smashers; the baggage in this case is Macdonald’s National Policy. As a long time Conservative and supporter of Macdonald, it should not be expected that Hunter would be sympathetic to the trio’s stated aims to circumvent if not destroy the government’s policy on protection of Canadian industry. Composing an introduction to a series of position papers on the issue of commercial union, Smith repeated Sir Richard Cartwright’s claim that Canada was losing too many of its young to greater opportunities south of the border. Smith was also convinced that the only opposition to commercial union came from those manufacturers too weak to compete in a more aggressive and demanding market place, an argument he continued to repeat every time he was given a public platform.35 In fact, there were those who believed that the argument had some merit. An Ontario industrialist from the central Ontario city of Galt agreed that the manufacturers were unable to present any form of unified front. Only those unable to compete in wide open markets, Mr. J. Dryden Jr. felt, were solid protectionists.36 The subject intrigued John Wilson Bengough who offered this drawing on October 20, 1888. (See Figure 7.17) The larger of the two individuals represents Canadian manufacturing interests whom the artist accuses of being only interested in his own welfare. The tall, slim American is none other than the senator from Ohio John Sherman, architect of anti-trust legislation. The real issue is hidden by the fact that the manufacturer believes that commercial union will lead to annexation. Sherman counters with the argument that it would not, a position that he was not about to accept. As time marched toward the twentieth century, Smith would become the central actor around which debates on Canadian destiny would take place. But in the late 1880s, he was content to throw his support behind commercial union advocates. In many ways, Smith had a far clearer vision of the impact of commercial union than did Sir Richard Cartwright. In a fashion similar to trade agreements negotiated in recent years, Cartwright was convinced that there could be a clear separation of commercial and political spheres. I am confident we both seek to attain a just and permanent settlement – and there is but one way to procure it, and that is by a straightforward treatment on a liberal and statesman-like plan of the entire commercial relations of

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Figure 7.17  Grip, October 20, 1888 the two countries. I say commercial because I do not propose to include, however indirectly, or by any intendment, however partial or oblique, the political relations of Canada and the United States, nor to affect the legislative independence of either country.37

Cartwright reiterated his position that he had no desire to see Canada absorbed into the United States. He also promoted the belief that Americans were not



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particularly interested in annexing Canada. Near the end of his address before the federal parliament, Cartwright decided to attack imperial federation forces, accusing them of not knowing exactly what they wanted in such a scheme, and furthermore he believed that they had no idea how to achieve their goals. Since they had some experience with selling goods south of the border without tariff impediments, Canada’s farmers assumed a convincing leadership role in the pro-commercial union forces. They gathered around them allies who would not normally be linked economically or politically to their concerns, groups such as Ontario iron miners and lumber merchants. They too wanted access to the American market which they believed would create new demands for untapped sources of Canadian ore. The miners believed that Canada as a small nation could not attract enough search and development capital to operate efficient mining concerns. They argued that a continental marketplace would be more powerful, more attractive, and as a consequence, richer.38 Lumber merchants dismissed arguments that an open market with the Americans would lead to over harvesting of the product. In fact, they argued precisely the opposite would take place as no merchant could afford to cut down more trees than could be replaced efficiently.39 As had been the experience in previous debates on Canadian–American relations, the question of the consequences of becoming somewhat closer to the giant to the south no matter what the form, became the central issue. J. W. Longley, Attorney General for the Province of Nova Scotia, was convinced that First—it will lead to annexation. This must be considered from two standpoints—that of those who are rigidly opposed to political union with the United States and those who are not. Belonging to the latter class, and believing firmly that the interests of the Dominion of Canada are more identified with the continent of America than with any portion of the world, this bugbear has no terrors for me; nor would I, and many others who believe with me, resist Commercial Union.40

Pro-British elements and imperial federationists fought back dragging up once more the question of loyalty to the Crown. However, their arguments were refuted in particular in official circles. A member of the federal parliament John Charlton went to the heart of the matter while addressing farmers in southern Ontario’s Haldimand County not far from the New York State–Ontario border. First of all, it is urged that it is disloyal. Well, sir, to whom is it disloyal? It may be disloyal to Manchester, it may be disloyal to Birmingham, but is it disloyal to Canada? That is the question that concerns us. We are not charged with the

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guardianship of the interests of Manchester, of Birmingham or England; we are charged with the guardianship of the interests of Canada.41

As always, Goldwin Smith refused to be silent on the commercial union issue. Turning Macdonald’s National Policy on its head, Smith argued in a series of letters to The Mail that he fully supported the objectives of the restrictive tariff policy if only because it could force American markets open by restricting American activity in Canada. In a sentence that was difficult to swallow by any knowing person in the late–Victorian period, Smith argued that commercial union was a natural extension of the National Policy. On the subject of imperial federation, the historian was more direct and blunt. About Imperial Federation I confess I am sick of talking. Once more we were told that the principle is unspeakably grand and beneficent; that we who fail to embrace it are abject souls with a lurking tendency to treason; that nothing can really be easier than its application, but that we must not ask for details.42

But Smith was not sick of talking. In fact, talking was central to the academic’s self-image. So, in February of 1891, he mounted the stage at a meeting of the Young Men’s Liberal Club in Toronto to give the first of three lectures under the titles of Loyalty, Aristocracy, and Jingoism. Smith immediately ingratiated himself to his audience by describing his political outlook as “a Liberal of the Old School,” one who believed in small government and self-development. He addressed his usual concerns supporting commercial union and decrying imperial federation. There was little new in Smith’s portfolio that evening. Smith’s second lecture in May aroused no excitement either. That would be left to the final lecture in November called “Jingoism”, a presentation in which Smith finally revealed what everyone long had suspected, namely that he had used a number of political institutions and political causes to support the dissolution of the Canadian state and its swallowing into a large, continental unitary state ruled from Washington. There can be no use in pursuing what is practicable, however noble or however fondly cherished our idea may be. Was there any real hope of blending into a nation these Provinces geographically so disjointed and so destitute of any bond of commercial union among themselves, while each of them separately is so powerfully attracted by commercial interest to the great English-speaking community on the South of it? Was there any real hope of fusing French with British Canada, or if they could not be fused, of bringing about a national union between them? I found myself compelled to answer both of them in the negative.43



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Smith’s lectures did not escape the attention of John Wilson Bengough who decided to make a visual commentary on the final talk on Jingoism. (See Figure 7.18) The professor is seen here pointing out the microbes which he feels can infect and eventually undermine a community’s spirit. All of them deal with some aspect of Canadian nationhood from devotion to manufacturing interests, known in the Victorian age as the Red Parlour Gang, unwarranted devotion to the British connection, as well as a stated overemphasis on the victory of British troops over the Americans at Queenston Heights in the War of 1812. Critical to the argument is Colonel Denison who is at the center of the sketch waving his imperial sword. A month after Bengough drew his cartoon on Jingoism on November 21, 1891, he followed it by taking a second look at the question of imperial federation. The cartoonist was not convinced that any form of imperial federation

Figure 7.18  Grip, November 21, 1891

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could be practical considering the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and racial differences that existed in the British Empire. As a consequence, he had a solution. (See Figure 7.19) Rather than an imperial federation, Bengough suggested that joining all English-speaking states in a federation may be a more workable and certainly more acceptable concept. Bengough, like many other political commentators outside Quebec, ignored Canada’s French factor. It became a side issue however. Goldwin Smith was about to steal everyone’s thunder. With the release of Canada and the Canadian Question Smith finally confirmed what everyone around him had suspected since his days in the Canada First Society, that the professor was in reality an annexationist. He had carefully worked his way through a number of clubs, organizations and one-issue interest groups, rallying support for the idea that Canada was a mutation of a nation that had no right to exist. The annexation question which had been buried in small debating groups throughout the 1870s and 1880s once again burst onto the national scene when Smith released his book. The relationship between Canada and the United States once again became a dominant national issue, one which continued through to the election of 1911.

Figure 7.19  Grip, December 19, 1891



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In fact, there was very little in Canada and the Canadian Question that Smith had not said before the Young Men’s Liberal caucus in Toronto. It was in most respects a collection of his thoughts and conclusions finally gathered together under one cover. True, once and for all to the historians’ craft, Smith took his readers on a journey which began with the arrival of the French in Canada back in the sixteenth century in an effort to convince them that there were legitimate reasons why the country should not exist. Carefully and skillfully, he traced the history of the country through the first 237 pages before delivering the words that really mattered. Smith concluded his book by addressing five issues: dependence, independence, imperial federation, political union, and commercial union. Dependence on another state, in this case either Britain or the United States, would prevent Canadians from developing any sense of nationhood, he argued. As a consequence, the country would be eternally weak, devoid of energy, and lacking in grandeur. The national spirit would be one of jealousy and restlessness which would arise naturally in a dependent relationship with another and certainly a stronger, more confident country. In his discussion on independence, Smith returned to his Canada First days of some two decades earlier. In most respects, he was generous in his praise of William Foster who founded the movement. He agreed that the Canada First organization had noble ideas for nationhood, in particular advocating an early form of affirmative action in which native-born Canadians would have preference to the halls of political power and commercial enterprise. He was impressed when the movement rose above partisanship and scolded both the Liberals and Conservatives for failing to develop a nationalist agenda. However, Smith argued that the spirit of Confederation was never likely be achieved. It had two fatal flaws which would prevent the successful development of an independent state, namely the problems in managing the North West Territories and the need to accommodate the French in Quebec, Eastern Ontario, and the Maritimes. Smith offered very little new in his condemnation of the imperial federation concept. He was convinced that those who supported such silly ideas were really lamenting the potential loss of empire. He believed that the scheme was little more than imperialism in another cloak. He was of the opinion that the days of empire were coming to a close, pointing to the Irish rebellions under Charles Parnell that were taking their toll on Britain. But above all he was vexed with the lack of disclosure argued by imperial federationists who consistently stated

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that they would reveal their ideas when the time was right. For Smith, that was unlikely ever to take place. Although he had actively promoted the cause, Smith was only lukewarm to the concept of commercial union. He pointed out that farmers, lumber merchants, miners, and the shipping interests all wanted access to a more open American market. He agreed that these vital economic sectors would certainly be blessed if a commercial union were ever to be achieved. He returned to his basic argument that unless all factors in society could benefit from such a scheme, it would be doomed to failure. In this respect, he declared, commercial union was just as infeasible as dependence and independence. Canada was economically divided, Smith noted, with free traders and commercial unionists on one side and protected manufacturers on the other. In a struggle, one side would have to lose and in that loss, become an outsider in the new arrangement which would result in an infrastructural weakness which would prove fatal in the long term. For Smith, there was only one solution, eliminate a nation that never should have existed, one which in his mind would be doomed to eternal mediocrity. Once again pointing to the then peaceful union between England and Scotland, Smith argued that a similar success story could be replicated in North America. Ignoring the French factor in Canada, Smith regarded North American union as a re-marriage of two English-speaking cultures. For him the reunion would bring security, peace removing once and for all the possibility that European wars could encroach on North American lands. Smith believed that property values would increase on both sides of the border and that long term prosperity would be guaranteed.44 Smith was not without his advocates. His words received support in a presentation in Fanueil Hall in Boston on the night of September 23, 1892 by an obscure Canadian municipal politician by the name of Ernest Albert Macdonald. He agreed that Smith’s fear of what he referred to as 200,000,000 Hindos (sic) outvoting the rest of the empire as well founded and as a consequence no imperial federation based on the principle of one person one vote had any chance of success. He then used the words of J.C. Hopkins, a known proponent of imperial federation, against him. Macdonald agreed with Hopkins that “independence is a dangerous dream. Independence of Canada means dependence on the United States.” Macdonald continued his speech by pointing out that in reality Canadians and Americans came from the same world, and therefore, of course, the border between them was an artificial and unwelcome barrier.45



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Whenever Smith took to the public platform, there were sure to be ancillary fallouts. The year following release of Canada and the Canadian Question annexation activists once again took their place on the national agenda. Throughout the country, organizations called The Continental Union Clubs surfaced with a common goal. By constitutional means, involving the consent of the Mother Country, to bring about the union, on fair and honorable terms of Canada and the United States. Dated at Toronto, May, 1893.46

The Continental Union Club of Windsor, Ontario across the river from Detroit flexed its annexationist muscles as well. It accused the government press which it said was funded by manufacturers and party hangers-on of spreading the concept that somehow or other advocating annexation was treasonous. A true, free press would never behave in such a manner and thus the club felt that one of its critical responsibilities was to assume the role that the press should be taking.47 By the time that Smith had opened the floodgates for renewed annexationist sentiment, Sir John A. Macdonald had died and John Wilson Bengough no

Figure 7.20  Grip, February 18, 1893

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longer controlled Grip. Their fates had been intertwined since the days of the Pacific Scandal and the death of one resulted in the death of the other. However, in 1893 Ontario, Grip continued to limp along under new editorship but without the wit and thrust that Bengough had brought to the journal. Nonetheless it

Figure 7.21  Grip, February 25, 1893



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continued to publish cartoons, and in the late winter of 1893 it addressed the issue of Smith and the question of what was now known as continental union. The February 18 issue of Grip published this unflattering look at the three nation states which would eventually be involved in negotiations should the idea of continental union catch fire. (See Figure 7.20) The bulbous Grover Cleveland with the body of an eagle is hovering over both the British lion and the Canadian beaver, directing his attention to the potential Canadian prey. The caption reads “dedicated without permission to continental unionists.” In the subsequent issue, Arthur Racey who was contributing cartoons to Grip from his Montreal base, accused the relatively new Liberal leader Wilfrid Laurier of political duplicity. (See Figure 7.21) All of the policies on the signboard had direct implications for Canadian American relations. In the final analysis, it was Goldwin Smith who mattered most. In a cartoon which appeared in Grip on March 4, 1893, (See Figure 7.22)

Figure 7.22  Grip, March 4, 1893

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Figure 7.23  Canadian Magazine, May 1897



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the persistent Smith continues to dream of a continental marriage between Miss Canada and Uncle Sam. The tone of the illustration is set by the document resting in Smith’s hat which reads “bill of excommunication from England.” The bag marked boodle clearly indicates that the artist is convinced that Smith is receiving payoffs from vested interests for his efforts. Smith was very much on the mind of editors at Grip in early 1893. They were not impressed by Smith’s visit to Washington and his consultation with President Cleveland in early February, 1893. The magazine accused Smith of misleading the American president when he told Cleveland that nine-tenths of the Canadian population favored annexation to the United States. Referring to Smith as an “atrabilious treason monger,” they accused the historian of trading his loyalty for a cabinet position in the Cleveland administration. Don’t be surprised, Grip cautioned if some patriotic Canadian takes it upon himself to assassinate Smith. After all, he argued, such things do take place.48 Goldwin Smith not withstanding, irritations continued to influence Canadian– American relations as the century drew to a close. Many Canadians were convinced that U.S. tariff policies and the National Policy were a double economic problem for the country. While American industry grew and developed, Canada was limited to becoming a source for raw materials and unfinished products to fuel the engines of the American economy. The issue was addressed by Sam Hunter in the May 1897 issue of The Canadian Magazine. (See Figure 7.23) The message is to the point, while Uncle Sam continues to prosper he does it on the back of Canadian labor which in this cartoon is pleading with the newly elected Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier to do something about it. It is an opinion that remained with Canadians through to the late twentieth century and was a chief inspiration for the NAFTA. Accommodation with the United States remained on the agenda until the 1911 election when Wilfrid Laurier, who had once again opened the free trade issue, lost to protectionist Robert Borden. Laurier was seen as the guardian of working class rights while Borden was regarded as the defender of Canadian prosperity, the British connection, public virtue, and the barrier to annexation.49 By the time that the twentieth century dawned, conflicts so prevalent in the nineteenth century began to fade, issues such as commercial union and imperial federation. In spite of a lack of sympathy at home and in Canada, Joseph Chamberlain continued to promote the concept of imperial federation which he wanted as the backbone to a new international alignment of powerful economies aimed at the United States.50 The British politician was the subject

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Figure 7.24  Free Lance Caricature, 1904

of this cartoon by Alonzo Ryan in which the pompous Chamberlain asks Canadian protectionists what they want in an imperial federation. (See Figure 7.24) The answer of course is everything. The search for a national identity would eventually take place beyond the confines of trade and political agreements with the United States. Yet, as American author naturalist William Henry Harrison Murray told an 1888 Boston audience in the city’s Music Hall “For we of the Republic believe in the Monroe Doctrine not only as applied to our sea line and the parts of the Continent to the south of us, but we believe in it with equal sincerity and earnestness as applied to the great division of the Continent to the north of us as well.”51

Was Canada about to become another Cuba? Was there once again concern that Americans might pour over the border with malice on their minds? That was certainly the message in this 1906 cartoon which appeared in The Moon on September 30 as William Randolph Hearst started to make noises about wanting the White House. (See Figure 7.25) As a newspaper owner, Hearst had long supported American annexation of the Philippines and Hawaii and the establishment of military bases in the Caribbean. The artist drawing under the pseudonym Chic (Arthur Racey) was convinced that, as he had done in the Spanish American war, the newspaper baron would use his vast influence to target the land to the north. The politics of Manifest Destiny, prevalent in



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Figure 7.25  The Moon, September 20, 1906

American political ideology since expansionists pushed westward, had been a threat to Canada since the War of 1812. There was a consistent feeling in Canada that the twentieth century would bring no relief.52 The attempt to establish some form of Canadian identity that was separate from that of the United States and Great Britain has become part of the national culture. As we have seen, Canadians have rejected experiments with American liberalism and republicanism while slowing untying the overseas knot to London. But as William Murray noted to his Boston audience The attempt to introduce a faded copy of British aristocracy on this Continent is silly of course. Bengough, that rival of our own Nast can ridicule it in the cartoons of his Grip as he does most cleverly, but Bengough knows that however silly the attempt may be, it is, nevertheless seriously made. The Sir Johns, and the Sir Charleses, the Sir Donalds and Georges and Alphonses are getting thicker in Canadian society than gilt stars in a stage firmament.53

As much as the nineteenth century battlegrounds would revolve around economic issues, those which emerged in the twentieth would have a distinctly cultural flavor. Yet in spite of all our differences there is still the belief that we are the best of friends on both sides of the 49th parallel. Are we?

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Notes 1 CIHM 01890–1849–01, Minutes of the Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates Of the British American League, July 1849 at Kingston, Ontario, 5–6. 2 CIHM 012403, Proceedings of the Vermont Legislature, 1849, No. 29: Resolutions Relating To The Annexation of Canada To The United States, 29. 3 CIHM 07991, Louis Prosper Bender, A Canadian View of Annexation, Boston and New York, 1883, 331. 4 Quebec City, QC, “The Sprite,” Vol. 1, No. 3, June 21, 1865. 5 J. M. S. Careless, “Brown Of The Globe: Volume Two,” (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1963), 329. 6 CIHM 33528, Goldwin Smith, The Relations Between America and England: A Reply To the Late Speech of Mr. Sumner, (London 1869), 17. 7 Carl Berger, “Imperialism and Nationalism, 1884–1914: A Conflict in Canadian Thought,” R. Douglas Francis and Donald B. Smith, Readings In Canadian History: Post Confederation, (Toronto, ON: Harcourt Brace Canada, 1994), 102–3. 8 The Canadian Senate was and remains an appointed body. Its purpose is to represent the interests of the provinces at the federal level. Its members are appointed by the Prime Minister and do not require confirmation. The body can initiate legislation, vote down legislation although it seldom does and must approve all bills generated by the elected House of Commons. Blake felt that the Senate should exist but its members should be elected, an issue that returned in the closing years of the twentieth century. 9 CIHM 23496, Edward Blake, A National Sentiment, A Speech At Aurora, Ontario, 9. 10 Blake, 9. 11 Toronto, Ontario “Grip,” Vol. 3, No. 22, October 24, 1874. 12 Toronto, Ontario, “The Nation,” Vol. 1, No. 28, October 8, 1874. 13 Goldwin Smith (Introduction), Canada First: A Memorial Of The Late William A. Foster, Q.C. (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose and Company, 1890), 6. 14 Toronto, Ontario, “The Nation,” Vol. 1, No. 28, October 8, 1874. 15 Toronto, Ontario, “The Nation,” Vol. III, No. 33, August 18, 1876. 16 CHIM 23496, 23. 17 CHIM 23496, 22–46. 18 Goldwin Smith, The Political Destiny of Canada, (Toronto, ON and London: Willing and Williamson, 1878), 68. 19 Goldwin Smith, “Sir Francis Hincks on Commercial Union,” The Bystander (Volume II), (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose and Company, 1881), 311. 20 Toronto, ON,” Grip,” Vol. 9, No. 14, August 25, 1877. 21 Schull, Vol. 1, 209–11.



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22 James Grant Snell, “The New York Tribune and British North America 1861–7 (London, Ontario: Unpublished Master’s Thesis, The University of Western Ontario, 1965), 9–10. 23 Toronto, Ontario “Grip,” Vol. XXL, No. 12, September 8, 1883. 24 Toronto, Ontario “Grip,” Vol. XXL, No. 12, September 8, 1883. 25 Toronto, Ontario “Trip Hammer” Volume 1, No. 4, 1885, 39 26 Schull, Vol. 2, 93 27 CIHM 00725, A Farmer’s View of Commercial Union, 54 28 Schull, Vol. 2, 98. 29 P. N. Factz, Canada and The United States Compared (with practical notes) on Commercial Union, Unrestricted Reciprocity and Annexation, (Toronto, ON: The Toronto News Company, 1889), 14–15. 30 The Canadian Encyclopedia 2000 World Edition, (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Inc., 2000). 31 CIHM 03546, William George Beers, Young Canada’s Reply to Annexation, (Montreal, 1888), 2. 32 CIHM 33565, Goldwin Smith At The Banquet Of The Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, (November 20, 1888), 4. 33 Montreal, P.Q.,” The Dominion Illustrated,” Vol. 1, No. 6, August 11, 1888, 86. 34 CIHM 00725, How Unrestricted Reciprocity With The United States Would Affect The Prosperity of Toronto by S. H. Janes, M.A., 86. 35 CIHM 00725, Commercial Union Club of Toronto: Handbook of Commercial Union: A Collection Of Papers Read Before The Commercial Union Club, Toronto, 1888, xii, xvi–xvii. 36 CIHM 00725, J. Dryden Jr. Galt: The Manufacturing Interests In Relation To Commercial Union, 187. 37 CIHM 00725, Speech by the Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright, delivered in the House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, March 14, 1888, 42. 38 CIHM 00725, Commercial Union and The Mining Interests of Canada by T.D. Ledyard, 82. 39 CIHM 00725, A. H. Campbell, The Effects of Reciprocity With the United States On the Lumber Trade, 271. 40 40 CIHM 00725, Mr. W. H. Lockhart Gordon, The Effect of Commercial Union On Our Relations With Great Britain, 115. 41 41 CIHM 00725, John Charlton. M.P., Address To The Farmers of Haldimand with a reply in the House of Commons to the Disloyalty Cry, 137. 42 CIHM 00725, Mr. Goldwin Smith: Letters On Commercial Union, 193. 43 CIHM 13737, Goldwin Smith: Loyalty, Aristocracy and Jingoism: Three lectures delivered before the Young Men’s Liberal Club, Toronto, 1891, 91–2. Smith repeated

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the lectures in 1896 to the same group. There were slight modifications but the messages were the same. It is available on CIHM 33247, Goldwin Smith: Loyalty, Aristocracy and Jingoism: Three lectures delivered before the Young Men’s Liberal Club, Toronto, 1896. 44 Goldwin Smith, “Canada and The Canadian Question,” (Toronto, ON: Hunter Rose and Company: Macmillan and Company, 1891), 247–93. 45 CIHM 09330, Address delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts by ex-Alderman Ernest Albert Macdonald under the auspices of the North American Union League, 2. 46 CIHM 00013, Continental Union Association of Ontario: Continental Union: A short study of its economic side, Toronto, 1893, 4. 47 CIHM 09330, Manifesto Issued By The Continental Union Club Of The City of Windsor, 1892, 13. 48 Toronto, ON, “Grip,” Vol. XL, No. 7, February 18, 1893. 49 St. Thomas, ON: “Ourselves: A Magazine For Cheerful Canadians,” Volume 1, No. 6, March–April 1911, 257–8. 50 Schull, 226. 51 CIHM 11185, Murray, William Henry Harrison, Continental Unity: An address delivered in Music Hall, Boston, (December 13), 1888, 26–7. 52 Michael Emery and Edwin Emery (eds), “The Press And America,Sixth Edition,” (Englewood Cliffs, 1988), 233–4, 252–4. 53 CIHM 11185, 32–3.

8

Conclusions

The founder of communications studies in Canada, the University of Toronto economist Harold Innis, once mused that the problem of developing a national identity in Canada was not linguistic and religious as many in the country believed. Innis observed in his numerous studies into the emergence of a homegrown economy throughout the nineteenth century that Canadians seemed to be in a continual search for an economic and political lifeline to larger and more mature nation states beyond their borders. Innis argued that the history of the Canadian state was one of a continuing dependency, first on the French, then on the British and, finally, as the twentieth century unfolded, on the United States. Although the National Policy finally produced a significant industrial corridor in Ontario and in Quebec following its passage in 1879, Victorian Canada remained attached to the primary commerce of the St. Lawrence River as the shipping route for raw materials to Europe in exchange for finished goods. The entire Canadian transportation infrastructure from Sir John A. Macdonald’s cherished Canadian Pacific until the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in the mid 1950s was designed to take advantage of this waterway. However the east–west nature of Canadian economic activity began to prove fragile as the United States began to flex its economic muscles in the early years of the twentieth century. The opening of the Panama Canal during the Theodore Roosevelt presidency weakened the St. Lawrence as a conduit for commerce and enhanced Pacific ports such as Vancouver in Canada and Seattle in the United States, who now found themselves competing with Montreal and New York for commercial primacy. As the American economic giant grew so did its appetite for raw materials, in particular precious minerals and pulp and paper. Britain, weakened by colonial wars in Africa, uprisings in the Asian subcontinent, and eventually by the blood letting of World War One, was no longer a steady and viable market for Canadian capitalists. The old east–west corridor, designed to fuel the furnaces

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of a European economy began to shift north and south. As Innis noted in an address at the University of Nottingham in England on May 21, 1948 American imperialism has replaced and exploited British imperialism. It has been accompanied by a complexity of tariffs and exchange controls and a restriction of markets, with the result that Canada has been compelled to concentrate on exports with the most favorable outlets.1

Innis believed that the unfettered marketing of what he called “staples” would eventually undermine the viability of the Canadian state itself. Ontario and Quebec, he noted in his address, were still geared to the European market following the Second World War, while the western provinces, with their heavy resource bases, wanted to trade south of the border. The Maritime provinces joined Confederation in 1867 on the belief that a unified Canada would look southward to the ever growing American marketplace for plentiful supplies of both the forest and the sea. Innis was convinced that regional political parties based on regional concerns would eventually rise and challenge the stability of the nation itself. His words would prove prophetic. Innis’ observations would suggest that Canada would never mature as a nation state, remaining an adolescent among adults. However, his ideas concerning the dependency cycle of staple production would be challenged by others, in particular a distinguished Queen’s University professor W. A. Mackintosh. In 1937, reeling from the savagery of the Great Depression, the Canadian Government set up a commission of inquiry known as a Royal Commission to investigate and recommend new methods by which the country’s provincial and federal authorities could best exercise their jurisdictions. Although a highly charged political agenda was at the forefront of the inquiry, it dealt primarily with seemingly mundane matters such as the division of revenues and expenditures between the various levels of government. In reality, it was drafting a new constitutional arrangement for the country, one which would clearly bring the nation’s identity crisis into public view. Mackintosh was responsible for drafting what came to be known as The Economic Background of Dominion-Provincial Relations which became Appendix lll of the final report of the five commissioners in 1939. He could not have been further intellectually removed from Harold Innis. In the first place, rapid progress in such new countries is dependent upon the discovery and development of cheap supplies of raw materials by the export of which to the markets of the world the new country may purchase the products

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which it cannot produce economically at that state of its development. Such supplies are invariable obtained by the exploitation of natural resources.2

Mackintosh further argued that swift and effective development would depend on the ability of a new nation to borrow large sums of capital abroad and exploit technologies developed by others. Although undoubtedly unintentional, the Mackintosh agenda, which became part of the recipe for post depression recovery, began shifting the old Canadian dependence from London to a new one in Washington. In fact, little had changed in the identity debate, in particular as it affected relationships with the United States since John Henry Walker placed his first cartoon in Punch In Canada in 1849. In reality, as the Victorian cartoonists noted, there are two dimensions to any analysis of Canadian–American relations, one economic, the other ideological. When one applies Kenneth Waltz’s criteria for listing countries in order of importance on the world stage—namely size of population and territory, economic capability, resource endowment, military strength, political stability, and competence—the United States beats Canada in every category excepting land mass and political stability.3 Even the use of political stability is questionable. As American political scientist Kevin V. Mulcahy has observed “Canadians have likened their situation to sleeping with an elephant or coexisting with the U.S. as its fifty-first state.”4 With the free trade agreement of 1988, Canadians finally decided that the elephant was friendly enough to trust in economic relationships but not those in the cultural dimension. And it is precisely the desire to separate the two nations at this level that we find ourselves once again looking at the underside of a very Tory Canadian state—in many ways the same state that Victorian cartoonists depicted in the years preceding and following the Canadian Confederation. The Canadian political landscape has been littered over the years with that most Canadian of institutions the Royal Commission, a rough parallel to an American Senate investigating committee with the notable exception that one need not be an elected official to sit in judgment. In fact, Canadian governments go out of their way to steer clear of political favoritism in order to legitimize intellectual independence of these bodies. Yet, there is a persistent belief in Canada that these investigating committees exist so that reluctant governments do not have to make tough decisions, instead deflecting their concerns to the investigators. Whatever one’s view point, it is here we see the machinery of the interventionist state at work, and in particular in the cultural realm, the vision many Canadians still hold of their southern neighbors.

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Within the short space normally devoted to conclusions, it would be impossible to undertake a detailed discussion of all the Royal Commissions that have dealt with cultural issues since Canada became a nation in 1867. That would comprise a book or two in itself. Nevertheless, there are a number of significant ones which point to Seymour Martin Lipset’s contention in 1990 that Canada “can still be seen as” Tory-mercantilist, group-oriented, statist, deferential to authority…..”“ in spite of the country’s virtual integration into the American economy. 5 So let us begin in 1929 just before the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression where we can clearly assess the legacy of our cartoonists. And it should come as no surprise that one of the major sore points between the two nations once again focused on a cultural issue. With the coming of radio in 1919 in both Canada and the United States, the question of what Canadians could hear on their newly purchased sets became a national issue. Both Canada and the United States were actively experimenting with broadcasting in the 1920s and the private sector was at the forefront. However, while America moved to support radio with commercial advertising as early as 1922, the Canadian government prohibited the infusion of direct advertising, a ban it did not lift until 1928. The restrictions on the ability to make an income let alone a profit discouraged many a would-be radio entrepreneur in the country although a few large companies with deep pockets and a number of dedicated amateurs kept their stations on the air hoping for a relaxation in commercial restrictions from the federal authorities. In the meantime, Canadians were listening to more and more U.S. based radio which came across the undefended border unimpeded. The penetration was so deep into the Canadian cultural psyche that Amos n’ Andy became at one point the most popular radio program in the country. Clearly this kind of American “pollution” was unacceptable to ruling circles in the land. There was a clear risk that NBC and CBS cared little for international boundaries and were prepared to make all of English-speaking North America one single broadcast market. As a consequence, the Canadian government struck back on June 28, 1928 by allocating the sum of US$25,000 to three people with a mandate to recommend a broadcast policy for the country. The Royal Commission was chaired by Sir John Aird, president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce and a life-long member of the Conservative Party. Aird and his colleagues reported in September, 1929. The government which appointed Aird was led by Liberal Mackenzie King. It was defeated by the Conservative Party under R. B. Bennett at the beginning

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of the Great Depression in 1930. Both parties, like their predecessors in the Victorian period, were concerned about American intentions in Canada, but at least at this time it would not be war. King’s 1930 electoral loss would prove to be a blessing in disguise. Letting the fretful Bennett fail to relieve the Great Depression, King would charge back into power in 1935 but in the meantime the question of what to do with radio now lay with Bennett. Bennett was everything a good Canadian Tory should be. Although he lived in Calgary where he practiced law, the Prime Minister was descended from royalist United Empire Loyalists who escaped to New Brunswick during the American Revolution. They instilled in the young Bennett a fear of liberaldemocracy and an outright hatred of American republicanism. It was rumored that pro-public broadcast lobbyists played on these fears to the point that Bennett was convinced that the Marines were just waiting at the gates of Canada to launch an invasion to recover the lands they lost in 1776. The Bennett government responded with the first of many broadcasting acts which would be passed in the Canadian parliament in the twentieth century. Broadcasters were required to be part and parcel of the quest to establish a Canadian identity. Both private and public broadcasters were considered by law to be partners in a single system. Although Bennett’s legislation did not expropriate private stations as some wished, it placed the newly established public authority, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, in charge of all broadcasting enterprises in the country. The Commission was to be a producer, licensee, operator, and regulator. The partnership was far from that of equals. The Commission did not work as well as its supporters wished and was eventually replaced by King with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1936 which assumed both an operational and regulatory role. The corporation kept its dual role until 1960 when the first private television network sought a license to operate.6 However, the Broadcast Act still required all broadcasters, public and private, to promote and encourage something called Canadianism. And the relationship between the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the private sector remained one of master-servant. It was the duty of the Corporation to keep American culture at bay. It would prove to be a difficult struggle. There were few surprises when the United States began to invest heavily in television following the Second World War. The move would impact directly on Canadians. Since nearly nine out of ten citizens lived within ninety miles of the American border, U.S. based television was available to most of the country before the federal bureaucracy in Ottawa finally came to grips with

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the situation. As with radio, Canadians were beginning to identify more with Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, and George Burns than they were with Canadian entertainers. As a consequence, the federal government issued its first television policy in March of 1949. It was as Tory as Tory could possibly be. National programming was to be the exclusive property of the New (1936) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That same year, the Government of Canada launched yet one more investigation on culture. Entitled the Royal Commission on the National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences, the body was chaired by Vincent Massey, a son of one of Toronto’s most wealthy and most prestigious families who had made a fortune manufacturing farm implements under the protection of the National Policy. Massey, who would later become the first Canadian to hold the post of Governor-General as the Queen’s representative in Canada, was the brother of Raymond Massey, the actor whose portrayal of Abraham Lincoln is still fondly remembered in American theatrical circles. If anyone expected revolutionary recommendations from the Massey Commission, they were bound to be disappointed. The commissioners approved of the CBC’s role in both producing programs and regulating the private sector. As in the past, it felt that the CBC should only report to the federal parliament, which provided much of the corporation’s funding as it still does. There were to be no changes in the public–private relationship. Private networks were not to be permitted and no private stations were to be licensed until the CBC had a chance to establish itself in the country’s major centers. Then, all television stations, even those in close proximity to each other, would be obliged to carry all the CBC’s national feed. All CBC television and radio programing were to be reviewed to ensure that the corporation broadcast programs of only the highest standards.7 One of the key recommendations of the Massey Commission was implemented by the government, namely that a second Royal Commission should be constituted three years after the first television broadcast in Canada to review the quality and nature of the kinds of programs produced not only by the CBC but by the private sector as well. It was also charged with the responsibility for developing a financial blueprint for the development and expansion of the country’s broadcasting system, which from the time of the first broadcasting act in 1932 consisted of both the public and private sector. With one exception, the complaints of the private sector and its relationship to the Board of Governors of the CBC, would be ignored. However, the one exception was significant and played a major role in the emergence of private networks in the country. The

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Commission recommended that the regulatory powers of the CBC be transferred to a new body called the Board of Broadcast Governors. In 1958, the Broadcast Act was revised to include the new agency.8 The Conservative Government of John Diefenbaker, elected in 1958, seemed to be sympathetic more to the private sector than the public. Throughout its short parliamentary reign from 1957 to 1963, the old Tory agenda seemed doomed. Private stations were licensed in eight Canadian cities throughout the early 1960s. Within months, they would join each other to launch Canada’s first private, commercially supported television network CTV. Development of the FM spectrum was left primarily to private operators. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation fell on hard times during the early sixties, due in part to a very suspicious government which completely mistrusted its journalists whom it believed were all card-carrying leftists or at worst, anarchists. A truly resilient ideology when under attack never exposes its vulnerability. When Diefenbaker openly attempted to placate the capitalist class along the financial corridors of Toronto’s Bay Street, the old Toryism went underground. It was to emerge with a vengeance when the Liberal Party returned to power in 1963 under the Nobel Prize winner Lester B. Pearson. When Pierre Eliot Trudeau, a gifted Quebec intellectual with both a French and Scottish heritage took the reigns of the Liberal Party in his grasp in 1968, Canada’s cultural policy was to take a turn to a very noticeable, nationalistic and interventionist character. It was to become blatantly anti-American. One of the Liberal government’s first acts when returning to power was to implement legislation to protect what it felt was the country’s vulnerable media presence in North America. The result was a seemingly innocuous amendment to the Income Tax Act known as Bill C-58. It was aimed directly at the corporate jugulars of large, American-based media empires. With the amendment, no longer could Canadian advertisers claim deductions on expenditures in American media. The move was greeted with hostility and disbelief in the United States. However, the Liberal government bowed to pressure from Washington and exempted Time and Reader’s Digest. With a second amendment in 1976 under the Trudeau regime, they were included.9 The Canadian Government instituted the changes because it felt that Time, Reader’s Digest, and American border television in particular were competing unfairly against similar Canadian media. Time and Reader’s Digest were printing so-called Canadian editions which were in effect no more than a few additional pages added to the American edition which had already paid its production costs

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through sales in the United States. The government argued that strict regulations that Canadian stations had to follow would not allow them to compete with U.S. based stations which could offer advertising space at rates unavailable in Canada. Particularly grating was the establishment of television stations in places such as Pembina, North Dakota with the sole purpose of attracting advertising dollars from Canadian markets. However, if American media moguls thought that C-58 was particularly offensive, the worst was yet to come. In 1968, the Trudeau government decided to amend the Broadcasting Act once again. The government was not particular enthralled with the performance of the Board of Broadcast Governors which it felt was too generous to Canada’s emerging class of private broadcasters, a group which it regarded as an extension of the American media culture. Instead of the hoped-for influx of new Canadian television shows, the airwaves were being filled with popular American entertainment programming. The new legislation would replace the Board with a new agency, the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, an organization with a mission and with teeth. The Commission wasted no time in getting its message across to the country’s broadcasters. It implemented minimum Canadian content regulations for AM Radio and television. No specific regulations were drafted for FM Radio, but FM broadcasters were expected to include some content in their applications for licenses. FM was exempted because the Commission wanted to create a fundamentally new medium which would not just copy AM radio in stereo. It created a new category called foreground which was designed to provide enriched commentary to numerous types of broadcasts including those basically centered on music. Foreground programming had to be constructed on a theme which would carry on uninterrupted for a fifteen minute period for no less than twenty per cent of the broadcast day which could not be clustered in off-periods such as nights and weekends. It has to be distributed evenly. Although the CRTC moved to a more deregulated environment in the closing decade of the twentieth century, its regulatory powers remain intact.10 The behavior of the CRTC during the late 60s and early 70s reflects many of the interventionist, nationalistic concerns based in an ideology which firmly rejected the market model of media enterprise that existed south of the border. The CRTC was the new face of Toryism, which both caused discomfort to the private media sector in Canada and anxiety to its colleagues and business partners in the United States. But in reality, as much as Canadian content regulations were designed to promote a Canadianism which was

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definitely not American, they had little impact on the presence of U.S. media in Canada. Canadian broadcasters were never denied permission to purchase and broadcast programs produced in the United States. With the introduction of cable to Canadian cities, that would change dramatically. Early cable pioneers did not regard their technology as anything more than re-transmission systems. Although as noted earlier, most Canadians lived within ninety miles of the American border, that fact alone did not guarantee adequate reception of American television signals originating from American cities. In fact, although both CTV and the CBC broadcast popular American shows, they represented only a minor percentage of those produced and aired in the United States. In many Canadian towns and cities, television sets were regularly tuned to signals from Cleveland, Detroit, Bellingham, Washington, and Poland Spring, Maine in the hope that the transmission did not fade out before finding out if the butler really did it. Cable was engineered to fix that kind of problem. Cable television systems began to pop up all over the country. In large, metropolitan areas such as Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, and they provided consistent and reliable reception for stations whose signals were constantly being degraded by the construction of high-rise office towers and human-made interference from things such as neon signs and exposed electricity wires. They also provided reliable service from U.S. stations in bordering communities. There was little difference in the availability of channels from the pre-cable days but the reception of those channels improved remarkably. However, in the cities which lay a bit inland and in the small towns and villages which lay beyond American television signals, the CRTC sensed a conspiracy. Operators were importing American channels through the use of microwave signals. As a consequence, a cable subscriber in the City of North Bay, some 500 miles from the nearest American city, could now watch CBS, ABC, NBC, and PBS stations as part of his/her subscription fee. In these communities, it was the very ability to provide services not normally available that produced high penetration for cable operators. After all, the local channels were still available off–the-air and no one needed cable to view them. In May 1969, the CRTC issued its first policy statement on cable, this in a universe that was still treating the channel band as two to thirteen. Cable operators were to give Canadian stations first priority, if need be at the expense of American channels. Cable operators were encouraged to provide one channel exclusively for community use where no advertising was permitted. The lowest priority was assigned to distant and therefore weak U.S. based signals, many

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of which were eventually shoved into the channel allocations above thirteen which required a special converter. Then, the CRTC banned the importation of any signal requiring re-transmission by microwave. No longer would the North Bays of Canada get to see U.S. television directly from the United States. In spite of numerous complaints, the Commission refused to change its policy. In 1971, the Commission issued a six-clause policy statement. All but one, basically clarified CRTC thinking on the methods by which it wanted to position itself on cable television. It was aware that eventually, in an increasingly technical world, it would have to relent and allow Canadian cable systems to carry U.S. channels. However, regulation four hit American broadcasters where it hurt the most, in the pocketbook. In a policy entitled ”Restoring the logic of the local license”, the Commission gave Canadian television stations what it referred to as limited alterations of incoming signals. What the seemingly harmless language permitted was the substitution by a Canadian station on the cable system where a U.S. station normally stood if the two were carrying the same program at the same time. The limited alteration of course meant the removal of American commercials from the eyes of Canadian viewers. As well, only the Canadian station would receive rating points which effectively prevented the American station from competing for advertising dollars in Canada. In 1975, the CRTC changed the name of the policy to the clearer “Program Substitution,”11 a policy which it continues to enforce into the twenty-first century. No facet of Canadian life has been examined more than media. It is in media that we find the greatest concerns about the quality and character of Canadian identity emerging. From 1929 onward, the parade has covered first radio, then television and the mass media in general in a Senate of Canada investigation in 1970. It was followed in 1981 by a commission headed by Thomas Kent, an academic who looked at corporate concentration in the Canadian newspaper industry. No matter what the issue, be it importation of weak American television signals, attempts to block American magazines from entering Canada, or concerns that large, U.S. based publishing chains would eventually take over many of the country’s newspapers, one thread that wove its way through all of these issues was that of identity, fear of losing what made this country unique among nations, its Tory heritage. As Canadian left-wing academics and journalists have continued to point out, Canada began to surrender its economic independence when Sir John A. Macdonald’s National Policy had an unforeseen consequence, the wholesale importation of American branch plants seeking Canadian citizenship in order

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to jump over the tariff wall. There is a solid body of opinion in Canada that somehow or other this American presence was damaging to the search for a Canadian identity. But, Canada has an identity if only Canadians themselves would realize it. Based on a subtle and forceful anti-Americanism, it was forged in the alliances and coalitions first created in the Victorian Age by John A. Macdonald and articulated in words and sketches by the likes of John Henry Walker, Georges Eduoard Desbarats, Edward Jump, Henri Julien, Sam Hunter, Arthur Racey and C.W. Jeffreys. Even with the free trade agreements that characterized the 1980s and 1990s, and large numbers of immigrants from the developing world, every so often the old collective spirit, battered and tired, rises again when the occasion demands. In 1996, the United States went to the World Trade Organization, cleverly by-passing tribunals constituted under NAFTA to complain one more time about Canadian protectionist cultural policies, the very essence of the Tory mind. At issue was once again a magazine, this time Sports Illustrated. Its publisher had been issuing what became known in Canada as a split edition. Nearly all of the content was produced in the United States. Sports Illustrated had avoided customs duties by transmitting its publication by satellite where it was reproduced in Canada for the Canadian market. As well, the company took advantage of preferential Canadian postal rates by shipping the magazine to subscribers from inside the country. The federal department of Heritage retaliated with an eighty per cent excise tax. The WTO ruled against the Canadian position while remarking that Canada had a right to protect its cultural heritage within the guidelines provided by its trade agreements. The arbitrators ruled that the 80 per cent tax violated that spirit.12 Many of the old concerns about the all penetrating American presence in Canadian life first articulated by the Victorian age cartoonists continue to plague us today. As one Canadian observer noted, Americans themselves would never allow such a presence of a foreign state on their soil. In many ways, the old Toryism that has guided the Canadian intellectual spirit since 1776 is fading away. The collective energies of public medicare are being exhausted by corporate vultures awaiting its disintegration. The British connection is quietly fading into the background. Although the Crown Attorney, not the Assistant D.A., still prosecutes criminals, the Queen’s face has now disappeared from Canadian paper currency. The mail is no longer The Royal Mail, but Canada Post. However the term “Royal” has now been returned to the military. In 1965, the Union Jack was replaced by the Red Maple Leaf Flag. The outcry

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that emerged at that time no longer creates any anxiety. Small and medium market sports teams have left the country to take up residence in places such as Phoenix and Denver. In fact, Canadians, with more than a little help from some American and Dominican players, made history when they took the World Series pennant north of the border for the first time in history. Will the seemingly never ending search for yet a new identity continue? Will the old Toryism survive? There remain significant differences between Canadians and Americans, differences first noticed in the illustrated press of the nineteenth century. As one Canadian literary figure noted, when faced with disaster, the American hero jumps on his horse, rescues the girl, and rides off into the sunset. The Canadian hero jumps on his horse, rescues the girl, wanders on to an ice floe and drifts off to a certain death in cold, arctic waters. What comes around, goes around.

Notes 1 Harold A. Innis, (Mary Q. Innis, ed.), “Great Britain, The United States and Canada,” Essays In Canadian Economic History, (Toronto and Buffalo: The University of Toronto Press, 1956), 395–6. 2 W. A. Mackintosh, “The Economic Background of Dominion Provincial Relations,” (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1964), 13. 3 Stephane Rousell, “Canadian-American Relations: Time For Cassandra,” The American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer 2000), 137. 4 Kevin V. Mulcahy, “Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Sovereignty,” The American Review of Canadian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer 2000), 183. 5 Seymour Martin Lipset, “Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada” (Toronto and Washington: C.D. Howe Institute and National Planning Association, 1990), 212. 6 David R. Spencer. “The Social Origins of Canadian Broadcasting 1919–45,” American Journalism Vol. IX, Nos. 3–4, Summer-Fall 1992, 96–107. 7 Patricia Hindley et al., “The Tangled Net,” (Vancouver, BC: J. J. Douglas Limited, 1977), 51–3 8 Patricia Hindley et al., 54–6. 9 Peter Desbarats, “The Special Role of Magazines,” in Benjamin D. Singer (ed.), Communications In Canadian Society, (Toronto, ON: Nelson Canada, 1991), 60–1. 10 Patricia Hindley et al., 84–8. 11 Patricia Hindley et al., 62–78. 12 Mulcahy, 193.

Bibliography Books/Monographs Allen, Gay Wilson and Sculley Bradley. The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman: The Journalism Volume 1: 1834–46 (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1998). Armbruster, Maxim E.. The Presidents of the United States (5th Edition) (New York, Horizon Press, 1973). Barbeau, Marius. Henri Julien (Toronto, ON: The Ryerson Press, 1941). Beaty, James. The History of the Lake Superior Ring (Toronto, ON: The Leader and The Patriot, 1874). Bemis, George. The Alabama Negotiations And Their Just Repudiation By the Senate of The United States (New York: Baker and Godwin, 1869). Bengough, J. W. Bengough’s Chalk-Talks (Toronto, ON: The Musson Book Company Limited, 1922). Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871–81 (Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1970). Bliss, Michael. Northern Enterprise: Five Centuries of Canadian Business (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1987). —Plague: A Story Of Small Pox In Montreal (Toronto, ON: HarperCollins Ltd., 1991). Brennen, Bonnie and Hanno, Hardt. Picturing the Past (Urbana and Champagne: University of Illinois Press, 1999). Careless, J. M. S.. Brown Of The Globe Volume 1 and 2 (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1959, 1963). —(ed.). Colonists and Canadiens 1760–1867 (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company, 1971). Careless, J. M. S. and R. Craig Brown (eds). The Canadians 1867–1967 (Toronto, ON: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1968). Cartwright, Richard J.. Reminiscences (Toronto, ON: William Briggs, 1912). Churchill, Sir Winston. A History Of The English Speaking Peoples: Volume Four: The Great Democracies (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1966). Colgate, William. C.W. Jeffreys (Toronto, ON: The Ryerson Press, n.d.). Cook, Ramsay. The Regenerators: Social Criticism In Victorian English Canada (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1985). Creighton, Donald. The Story of Canada (London: Faber & Faber, 1959). —Towards A Discovery of Canada (Toronto, ON: Macmillan and Company, 1972).

284 Bibliography Cumming, Carmen. Sketches From A Young Country: The Images of Grip Magazine (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1997). Deener, David R. (ed.). Canada–United States Treaty Relations (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1963). Desbarats, Peter and Terry Mosher. The Hecklers: A History of Canadian Political Cartooning and a Cartoonists’ History of Canada (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1979). Desbarats, Peter. The Canadian Illustrated News: A Commemorative Portfolio (Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1970). Emery, Michael and Edwin Emery (eds). The Press And America, Sixth Edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988). Fetherling, Douglas. The Rise of The Canadian Newspaper (Toronto, ON: The Oxford University Press, 1990). Foner, Philip S. American Labor Songs Of The Nineteenth Century (Urbana, Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press, 1975). —The Labor Movement In The United States (Volume 1) (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1947). Francis, R. Douglas and Donald B. Smith. Readings In Canadian History: Post Confederation (Toronto, ON: Harcourt Brace Canada, 1994). Gutman, Herbert G.. Who Built America (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1989). George, Mary K. Zachariah Chandler: A Political Biography (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1969). Griffin, Watson. The Provinces And The States: Why Canada Does Not Want Annexation (Toronto, ON: J. Moore Publisher, 1884). Harper, J. Russell. Early Painters and Engravers In Canada (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1970). Hindley, Patricia et al.. The Tangled Net (Vancouver, BC: J.J. Douglas Limited, 1977). Innis, Harold A. (Mary Q. Innis, ed.), Essays In Canadian Economic History, (Toronto and Buffalo: The University of Toronto Press, 1956). Lee, James Melvin. History Of American Journalism (New York: The Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1917). Lipset, Seymour Martin. Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (Toronto and Washington: C.D. Howe Institute and National Planning Association, 1990). McDonald, Donna. Lord Strathcona: A Biography of Donald Alexander Smith (Toronto, ON: The Dundurn Press, 1996). Mackintosh, W.A. The Economic Background of Dominion Provincial Relations (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1964). Palmer, Brian D. Working Class Experience (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart, 1992).

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Peters, Harry T. California On Stone (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran and Company, 1935). Resnick, Philip. The Masks of Proteus (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990). Robson, Albert H. Canadian Lanscape Painters (Toronto, ON: The Ryerson Press, 1932). Rutherford, Paul. A Victorian Authority: The Daily Press in Late Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1982). Schull, Joseph. Edward Blake: The Man of The Other Way (Vols 1 and 2) (Toronto, ON: Macmillan and Company, 1975). Smith, Goldwin. Canada And The Canadian Question (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose and Company: Macmillan and Company, 1891). —The Political Destiny of Canada (Toronto, ON: Willing and Williamson, 1878). —The Treaty of Washington 1871 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1941). Somers, Paul Jr.. Editorial Cartooning and Caricature: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1998). Stacey, Robert W. C.W. Jeffreys (Ottawa, ON: National Gallery of Canada, 1985). Thorburn, Hugh (ed.). Party Politics In Canada (Toronto, ON: Prentice Hall, 1985). Tuttle, Charles R. An Illustrated History Of The Dominion of Canada V.1 and 2. (Montreal and Boston: D. Downie and Co. And Tuttle and Downie Publishers 1877). Urtica, R. J. The Story of John and Jonathan (Ottawa, ON, 1871). Wallace, W. Stewart (ed.). The Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography 3rd Edition (Toronto and London: Macmillan of Canada, 1963).

Articles Carey, James, “The Problem of Journalism History,” Journalism History, 1, 1974. Desbarats, Peter, “The Special Role of Magazines,” Benjamin D. Singer (ed.), Communications In Canadian Society (Toronto, ON: Nelson Canada, 1991). Fitzgibbon, Mary Agnes., “The Study of Canadian History,” Raoul Renault, North American Notes and Queries, Montreal, Vol. 1, No. 7, January 1901. Harvey, Arthur “The American Mackerel Fishery In The Gulf Of St. Lawrence,” The New Dominion Monthly, Vol. 11, April 1868. Kemnitz Thomas Milton, “The Cartoon As A Historical Source,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History IV:1 (Summer 1973). Leeds, J. A. H., An Old U.E. Loyalist—A Story of the Early Settlement of Canada, in The New Dominion Monthly, Vol. II, April, 1868. Massicotte, E. Z. “L’Artiste Walker,” Bulletin Recherche Historique Levis, QC, December 1943.

286 Bibliography Mulcahy, Kevin V., “Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Sovereignty,” The American Review of Canadian Studies, Volume 30, No. 2 (Summer 2000). Rousell, Stephane, “Canadian-American Relations: Time For Cassandra,” The American Review of Canadian Studies, Volume 30, No. 2 (Summer 2000). Smith, Goldwin, “Sir Francis Hincks on Commercial Union,” The Bystander (Volume II), 1881 (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose and Company, 1881). Spadoni, Carl, “Grip and the Bengoughs as Publishers and Printers,” Papers Of The Bibliographic Society of Canada, XXXVII. Spencer, David R., “The Social Origins of Canadian Broadcasting 1919–45,” American Journalism, Volume IX, Nos. 3–4, Summer-Fall 1992. Spencer, David R., “Bringing Down Giants: Thomas Nast, John Wilson Bengough and the Maturing of Political Cartooning,” American Journalism 15 (3), Summer 1998.

Illustrated Magazines, Magazines and Newspapers Halifax, NS, The British Colonist Hamilton, ON, The Canadian Illustrated News Hamilton, ON, The Peoples Journal Montreal, QC, L’Almanac du Peuple Montreal, QC, The Canadian Illustrated News Montreal, QC, Le Canard Montreal, QC, The Dominion Illustrated News Montreal, QC, Le Farceur Montreal, QC, Le Monde Illustré Montreal, QC, The Montreal Star Montreal, QC, L’Opinion Publique Montreal, QC, La Patrie Montreal, QC, La Presse Montreal, QC, Le Perroquet Montreal, QC, Punch In Canada Montreal, QC, Le Violin Montreal, QC, Le Vrai Canard New York City, Century Magazine Quebec City, QC, The Sprite St. Thomas, ON, Ourselves: A Magazine For Cheerful Canadians Toronto, ON, The Anglo–American Magazine Toronto, ON, The British American Magazine Toronto, ON, The Canadian Magazine Toronto, ON, Grip Toronto, ON, The Nation Toronto, ON, North American Notes and Queries

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Toronto, ON, The Poker Toronto, ON, Saturday Night Magazine Toronto, ON, Trip Hammer Whitby, ON, The Whitby Chronicle

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Miscellaneous Primary Sources Despatch (sic) From Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Right Honorable Earl of Elgin, dated Downing Street, January 9, 1850. It was signed Earl Grey. Henri Julien, Album (Montreal, QC, Librairie Beauchemin Limitée, 1916). —Diary, 1874. The complete diary and the sketches in GIF format are located on the web site http://www.ourheritage.net/Julien_pages/Julien1.html. Montreal, QC, The By Town Coons (Montreal Star, 1890). The William Ready Division, Archives and Research Collections, the J. W. Bengough Papers, Box 2, File 8. Alonzo Ryan, Caricature Politique Au Canada (Montreal, QC, Compagnie de Publication Dominion, 1904). Despatch (sic) From Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Right Honorable Earl of Elgin, dated Downing street, January 9, 1850. Reciprocity Treaty Between Great Britain and the United States Together With Canadian Tariffs for 1854 and 1863 (Montreal, QC: J. Starke and Company Printers, 1864). Canada First: A Memorial Of The Late William A. Foster, Q.C., with Introduction by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L. (Toronto, ON: Hunter, Rose and Company, 1890). Reprint. P. N. Factz, Canada And The United States Compared (with Practical Notes) on Commercial Union, Unrestricted Reciprocity and Annexation, (Toronto, ON: The Toronto News Company, 1889). The Canadian Encyclopedia 2000 World Edition (Toronto, ON: McClelland and Stewart Inc., 2000). The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia (New York, NY, 1995).

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Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions CIHM Note to researchers in Canadian history. CIHM is an ever expanding collection of bits and pieces of Canadian history that do not have comfortable fits with other more familiar forms such as documents that have been catalogued, articles in scholarly journals, and books, to name a few. The list is a significant source for primary source research. The Institute began collecting these items with a view to making them available to libraries and similar depositories. More of the overall collection is now being shifted to the Internet, making access to the collection that much more easily. The list was founded by the National Library of Canada and at the time of this writing contained 110,000 titles in both English and French extending back to the sevententh century. CIHM 00013, Continental Union Association of Ontario. Continental Union: A Short Study of its Economic Side, Toronto, 1893. CIHM 00725, Commercial Union Club of Toronto: Handbook of Commercial Union: A Collection Of Papers Read Before The Commercial Union Club, Toronto, 1888. CIHM 00725, A Farmer’s View of Commercial Union. CIHM 00725, Campbell, A. H., The Effects of Reciprocity With the United States On the Lumber Trade. CIHM 00725, Commercial Union and The Mining Interests of Canada by T. D. Ledyard. CIHM 00725, Charlton, John, M.P., Address To The Farmers of Haldimand with a reply in the House of Commons to the Disloyalty Cry. CIHM 00725, Current Objections To Commercial Union Considered, 1888. CIHM 00725, Dryden Jr., J., Galt: The Manufacturing Interests In Relation To Commercial Union. CIHM 00725, How Unrestricted Reciprocity With The United States Would Affect The Prosperity of Toronto by S. H. Janes, M.A.. CIHM 00725, Mr. Goldwin Smith: Letters On Commercial Union. CIHM 00725, Mr. W. H. Lockhart Gordon, The Effect of Commercial Union On Our Relations With Great Britain. CIHM 00725, Reciprocity with the United States, Speech by the Honourable Sir Richard Cartwright, House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, March 14, 1888. CIHM 03546, William George Beers, Young Canada’s Reply to Annexation: Montreal, 1888. CIHM, 07530 The Fisheries Dispute: A Suggestion For its adjustment by Abrogating the Convention of 1818 and Resting On the Rights and Liberties Defined In the Treaty of 1783, by John Jay, Late Minister to Vienna, 1887.

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CIHM 07991, Louis Prosper Bender, A Canadian View of Annexation, Boston and New York, 1883. CIHM 012403, Proceedings of the Vermont Legislature, 1849, No. 29: Resolutions Relating To The Annexation of Canada To The United States. CIHM 01890-1849-01, Minutes Of The Proceedings of a Convention of Delegates of the British American League, July 1849 at Kingston, Ontario. CIHM 02403, Circular Of The Committee Of The Annexation Association of Montreal, December 7, 1849. CIHM 07227, Hoar, George Frisbie (Massachusetts) The Fisheries Treaty, Tuesday July 10, 1888. CIHM 07991, Louis Prosper Bender, A Canadian View of Annexation (Boston, New York, 1883). CIHM 08690, Appel Aux Gens De Langue Et de Coeur Français en Faveur de L’Union Du Canada Aux Etats-Unis. CIHM09047, “Liberal Party Canada: Wholesale plunder: The McGreevy-Langevin Scandal at Quebec. Nearly Two Million Stolen.” CIHM 09330, Address Delivered in Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts by Ex-Alderman Ernest Albert Macdonald on September 23, 1892 under the auspices of the North American Union League. CIHM 09330, Manifesto Issued By The Continental Union Club Of The City of Windsor, 1892. CIHM 10010, Documents and Proceedings of the Halifax Commission, 1877, Volume 1, under the Treaty of Washington. CIHM 11185, Murray, William Henry Harrison, Continental Unity: An address delivered in Music Hall, Boston, December 13, 1888. CIHM 13737, Goldwin Smith, Loyalty, Aristocracy and Jingoism: Three lectures delivered before the Young Men’s Liberal Club, Toronto, 1891, pp. 71–2 Smith delivered a slightly revised version to the same group in 1896. That version can be found on CIHM 33247. CIHM 15566, Report of the Royal Commissioners, Appointed by the Government, addressed to them, under the Great Seal of Canada, bearing the date August 14,1873. CIHM 15648, Condensed Report of An Address by Mr. Mills, M.P., at Aylmer, Ontario. CIHM 16914, Alexander Bliss: A Review of the Halifax Fishery Award, Washington, 1878. CIHM 16495, Edmund Burke Wood, Speech of the Hon. E. B. Wood in the House of Commons on the Pacific Scandal. Reading of letter from Sir Hugh Allan. CIHM 22185, Circular Of The Committee Of The Annexation Association of Montreal, 1850. CIHM 23496, Edward Blake. A National Sentiment. A Speech At Aurora, Ontario.

290 Bibliography CIHM 23820, Address by Edward Blake, federal Liberal member at Bowmanville, Ontario, May 26, 1873. CIHM 23822, Edward Blake Speaking at London on Thursday August 28, 1873. CIHM No. 23823, Comments on the Proceedings and Evidence of Charges Preferred by Mr. Huntington, M.P. Against the Government of Canada. CIHM 33528, Goldwin Smith, The Relations Between America and England: A Reply to the Late Speech of Mr. Sumner, London, 1869. CIHM 33565, Goldwin Smith, At The Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 20, 1888, New York City. CIHM 33839, Monro, Alexander: Annexation or Union with the United States is the manifest destiny of British North America, St. John N.B., 1868. CIHM 35066, Dessaulles, L. A., Six Lectures Sur l’Annexation du Canada Aux Etats-Unis. CIHM 36298, The Civil War In America: An Address Read At the Last Meeting of the Manchester Union, Manchester, U.K., 1866. CIHM 44399-44444 The Franco-Canadian Annexationists of Elmira, N.Y. to General Benjamin F. Butler on Canada-American Annexation. CIHM 45279, Papers Respecting The Termination of the Reciprocity Treaty of June 5, 1854 Between Great Britain and the United States of America. CIHM 49103, Sumner, Charles, The Alabama Claims… Speech of the Honourable Charles Sumner, London, England, 1869. CIHM 50194, A.A.B., The Reciprocity Treaty, 1864. CIHM 63123, British American League, Speech by John William Gamble Esq., delivered at a convention of delegates, Toronto, 1849. CIHM 63124, British American League, Montreal Branch, To the Inhabitants of Canada, Montreal. CIHM 63690, A Bill For the Admission Of the States of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West for the Organization of the Territories of Selkirk, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. CIHM 68166, To The Members Of The Yorkville Branch of the British–American League, 1850.

Index “A Bystander” 109, 236 Abraham, Linus 4, 6 Acadia 105 Adams, Charles Francis 139 Aird, Sir John 274 Alabama (Ship) 34, 36, 44, 99, 194, 203, 208, 228 Alaska 191, 207 Allan, Sir Hugh 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76 American Federation of Labor 180 American Newspaper Directory 78 American Republican Party 164, 173, 181, 218 Anti Corn Law League 131 Atkinson, Joseph 78 Aurora, Ontario 110, 111, 115, 176, 230, 232, 238 Australia 77, 226, 232 Barbeau, Marius 45 Barnaby Rudge 61, 74, 147, 199 Barnhurst, Kevin 4, 5, 6 Bay of Fundy 199 Bayard, Thomas Francis 211, 218 Beaty, James 70 Beers, Dr. William George 249 Bender, Louis Prosper 113, 226, 227 Bengough, John Wilson 6, 16, 52, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82, 97, 111, 112, 115, 117, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 152, 157, 159, 160, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 180, 183, 194, 196, 199, 209, 211, 212, 215, 218, 222, 231, 232, 233, 236, 240, 241, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 253, 256, 257, 261, 262, 267 Bennett, James Gordon 16, 154, 227 Bennett, R. B. 154, 274, 275 Berthelot, Hector 51, 82, 179

Birmingham, U.K. 255 Blaine, James 180, 181 Blake, Edward 63, 70, 73, 110, 111, 112, 115, 152, 176, 177, 178, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 238, 241, 242, 243 Bliss, Alexander 209 Board of Broadcast Governors 277, 278 Borden, Robert 125, 185, 265 Boulton, Henry John 132 Bourget, Monsignor Ignace 28 Bowell, Mackenzie 246 Bradford, William 15 Broadcast Act 275, 277 Brother Jonathan 15, 22, 32, 36, 39, 91, 94, 101, 103, 104, 152, 172, 199, 204, 209, 218 Brown, Joshua 3 Britain 2, 10, 15, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 44, 53, 92, 93, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 115, 116, 125, 131, 134, 136, 137, 138, 142, 144, 182, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 207, 210, 211, 212, 215, 218, 220, 221, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 245, 259, 267, 271 British American League 95, 131, 136, 226 British American Magazine 90, 99, 139 British Colonial Office 193 British North America Act 105, 202, 228, 238 British Whig 72, 74 Bryan, William Jennings 181 Buchanan, Isaac 89, 90, 139, 140, 238 Bucke, Richard Maurice 62 Bull, John 21, 22, 26, 33, 36, 115, 118, 142, 143, 144, 171, 176, 196, 209, 210, 212, 238, 239, 240, 242, 245 Bulwer, Sir H. 134, 200 Burland Lithograph Company 57

292 Index Burlingame Treaty 24 Butler, Benjamin F. 41, 42 By-Town Coons 57, 58 Cable Television Systems 279 Calgary, Alberta 275 California On Stone 42 Canada and the Canadian Question 62, 109, 119, 248, 257, 258, 260 Canada First 109, 110, 112, 118, 145, 149, 232, 234, 258, 259 Canada’s Past In Pictures 79 Canadian Bank of Commerce 274 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) 275, 276, 277 Canadian Graphic 77 Canadian Magazine, The 265 Canadian Manufactures Association 177, 178, 185 Canadian Medical and Surgical Journal 38 Canadian National Association, The 145, 232 Canadian Pacific Railway 59, 63, 64, 66, 74, 104, 105, 239, 271 Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) 275 Canadian Radio and Television and Telecommunications Commission 278 Canadian Television (CTV) 277 Canuck, Jack 106, 194, 199, 208, 209, 218 Careless, J. M. S. 151 Carey, James 6 Carl, LeRoy 2, 24 Cartier, Sir Georges Etienne 33, 89, 100 Cartwright, Sir Richard 30, 50, 147, 159, 160, 161, 162, 165, 168, 169, 179, 211, 241, 243, 252, 253 Cass, General George 64 Central Farmer’s Institute of Ontario 244 Century Magazine 52, 82 Chamber of Commerce of The State of New York 115, 213, 214, 249 Chamberlain, Joseph 265, 266 Chambly Canal 235 Chandler, Zacharia 101, 102, 103 Charlottetown, Prince Edward’s Island 226

Charlton, John 255 Chicago, Illinois 47, 50, 64, 66, 77 Christian Endeavor World 77 Circular of the Committee of the Annex Association of Montreal 91 Cleveland, Grover 196, 199, 212, 218, 263, 265 Cobden, Richard 131, 200, 236 Cohen, Maxwell 140, 193, 194, 201 Commercial Union 17, 114, 115, 119, 157, 212, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 236, 237, 240, 241, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 259, 260, 265 Commercial Union Club Pamphlet 252 Continental Union Clubs 260, 261 Convention of 1818 196, 197, 199, 201, 202, 211, 212 Cooke, Jay 64 Copperfield, David 160 Confederation 10, 14, 46, 48, 54, 61, 89, 90, 97, 99, 100, 101, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111, 133, 134, 139, 140, 142, 149, 165, 167, 207, 222, 225, 226, 228, 234, 259, 272, 273 Corn Laws 131, 134, 200, 225 Cornell University 109 de Cosmos, Amor 174 Cowan, James 71 Craigellachie, British Columbia 63 Cushing, Caleb 203 Darwin, Charles 17 Daumier, Honoré 2 Davies, Robertston 12 Day, Charles 71 Delfosse, Maurice 207 Denison, G. T. 84, 118, 119, 256 Desbarats, Georges Edouard 37, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 53, 57, 60, 78, 106, 147, 171, 204, 211, 228, 234, 237, 238, 251, 281 Desdamona 153 DeSousa, M. A. 4 Dickens, Charles 61, 78, 160 Diefenbaker, John 277 Dingley, Nelson 194 Dion, Stéphane 178

Index Disneyworld 12 Dominion Grange, The 180 Dramatic Episodes in Canada’s Story 79 Dryden, Mr. J. 253 Durham, Lord (John Lambton) 39, 100 Eastman, George 5 Elgin, Lord 93 Erie Canal 236 Evangeline 39 Evarts, Senator William 211 Factz, P. N. 178, 246 Faneuil Hall 120 Fargo, North Dakota 47 Farrar, Edward 252 Fenian Raids 18 Fish, Secretary of State Hamilton 150, 225 First Baron of Atholstan 147 Fort Dufferin 47 Foster, George 147 Foster, William A. 109, 110, 145, 232, 233, 259 Franco-Canadian Annexationists of Elmira, N. Y. 101 Franklin, Benjamin 9, 15 French, Colonel G. A. 46 48 Galarneau, Claude R. 38 Gambee, Budd L. 3 Gamble, John William 95, 96, 136 Gaspé Peninsula 49, 134 Gatineau Quebec 45 Geneva, Switzerland 35, 44, 99, 203, 208 George, Henry 61, 147 Gibbs, T. N. 50 Globe, The 61, 66, 74, 77, 82, 98, 99, 111, 112, 157, 206, 234, 238 Governor-General 76, 110, 169, 202, 276 Graham, Sir Hugh 57, 58, 78, 147 Grand Banks of Newfoundland 193 Grange, The 109, 180 Grant, President Ulysses S. 102, 112, 139, 151, 150, 152, 164, 203, 225 Great Britain see Britain Great Canadian Republic, The 116 Great Depression 186, 272, 274, 275 Greeley, Horace 201, 238, 239

293

Green, Thomas Henry 147 Greenbackers 176 Grey, Earl 93 Griffin, Watson 115 Guillaume, Boivin 180 Gulf of St. Lawrence 193 Halibut Treaty 193 Halifax, Nova Scotia 49, 63, 159, 207, 209 Halifax Award 209, 212, Hamilton, Ontario 90, 95, 136, 139, 140, 152, 238 Hardt, Hanno 1, 3, 6, 21 Harper’s Weekly 3, 15, 16, 52, 61, 62 Harrison, Benjamin 115, 180 Harvey, Arthur 198, 199 Hayes, Rutherford B. 164 Hearst, William Randolph 78, 266 Hearthstone 38 Hincks, Sir Francis 67, 68, 70 Hoar, Senator George 217, 218 Holiwell, C. E. 11, 21, 227 Holmes, Benjamin 93, 94, 131, 136 Holt, John 15 Holton, Luther 97, 99 Hopkins, J. C. 260 Horowitz, Gad 10 House of Commons 63, 64, 66, 72, 74, 77, 131, 169 Howe, Joseph 105 Hudson, Frederic 24 Hudson’s Bay Company 32, 46, 48, 63, 138, 193, 197, 203 Hull Quebec see Gatineau Hunter, Sam 16, 82, 184, 185, 251, 252, 265, 281 Huntington, Lucius 64, 66, 68, 72, 74 Imperial Federation 110, 112, 115, 118, 119, 225, 226, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 240, 241, 243, 251, 253, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260, 265, 266 Income Tax Act Bill C 58, 277 Industrial Banner, The 77 L’Institut-Canadien 93 Inter-colonial Railway 105, 228 Innis, Harold 271, 272 Ireland 131, 174

294 Index Janes, S. H. 251 Jay, John, 211 Jester, The 24, 53, 147, 148 Julien, Henri, 6, 16, 37, 39, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 77, 79, 84, 106, 145, 147, 152, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 164, 176, 208, 209, 218, 222 Johnson, President Andrew 35 Johnson, Reverdy 35 Kearney, Dennis 174, 180, 245 Kearsage 34 Kellogg, Ensign H. 207, 208 Kemnitz, Thomas 3, 6, 15, 17 King, William Lyon Mackenzie 274, 275 Kingston, Ontario 68, 72, 74, 131, 136, 226 Kipling, Rudyard 167 Knights of Labor, The 16, 24, 180 Kunzle, David 2, 3 Labrador 193, 197 L’Ami Du Peuple 36 La Patrie 45, 59, 185 Laocoon 67 Laurier, Sir Wilfrid 82, 123, 124, 125, 146, 147, 177, 178, 183, 184, 185, 243, 263, 265 Lawlor, Sarah 28 Le Canard 50, 82, 179 Le Club Unionist Canadien 107 Le Front Pour La Liberation Due Québec 60 Le Patriote 60 Leech, John 15 Leggo, William 37, 38 Liberal Party 50, 52, 58, 61, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 75, 81, 82, 89, 110, 112, 123, 125, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 161, 164, 167, 168, 176, 177, 178, 179, 183, 184, 185, 211, 222, 230, 238, 243, 259, 277 Lipset, Seymour Martin 12, 14, 21, 274 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 39 Lovell’s Series of School Books 28 Lower Canada 14, 92, 100, 131, 134, 137, 138, 139, 141, 193

loyalists 10, 11, 80, 89, 275 loyalty, aristocracy, jingoism 119, 256 Louisiana Example 39 Macawber, 160 Macdonald, Ernest Albert 120, 260 Macdonald, Sir John A. 16, 33, 44, 48, 49, 53, 55, 62, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 89, 104, 105, 118, 119, 123, 136, 139, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 174, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 183, 184, 186, 196, 199, 203, 204, 206, 207, 215, 216, 228, 229, 230, 236, 237, 238, 241, 242, 246, 251, 252, 255, 261, 271, 280, 281 Macdonald, John Sandfield 176 Mackay, James G. 151 Mackenzie, Alexander 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 63, 65, 69, 70, 76, 77, 110, 112, 139, 145, 147, 149, 150, 152, 160, 161, 162, 165, 167, 168, 169, 176, 177, 183, 230, 233, 234, 235, 238 Mackenzie, William Lyon 27 Mackintosh, W. A. 272, 273 Maclean, John 140 MacPherson, Duncan 174 Magdalen Islands 193, 197, 201, 204 Magee, Knox 79 Maine, state of 63, 194, 279 Malaspina, British Columbia 191 Malcolm, James P. 3 Manchester, U.K. 131, 255 Marquis of Lorne 111, 169 Marx, Karl 1, 17 Mason and Sidell 98 Massachusetts Worcester 38 Massey, Vincent 276 Massey Manufacturing Company 177, 243 McArthur, Peter 125 McDougall, William 46 McGee, Thomas D’Arcy 101 McKinley, William 181, 183 McMullen, George 50, 63, 64 Medhurst, M. J. 4 Mercier, Honoré 178 Monro, Alexander 200

Index Monroe Doctrine 101, 266 Mill, John Stuart 147 Mills, the Honorable David 74 Montcalm, Marquis de 9 Montreal Herald 66 Montreal Star 23, 50, 53, 57, 58, 59, 77, 78, 126, 147 Moreau, C. Henri 99, 227, 228 Mother Britannia 32, 35, 44, 45, 106, 233 Mott, Frank Luther 3 Morning Chronicle (London) 77 Mousseau, Joseph-Alfred 37 Mowat, Oliver 61, 119 Mulcahy, Kevin, 273 Mulroney, Brian 9, 186 Murray, George 31 Murray, William Henry Harrison 266, 267 Napoleon 10, 196 Nast, Thomas 15, 16, 61, 62, 89, 173, 267 National Policy 39, 53, 147, 150, 167, 168, 170, 171, 173, 176, 177, 179, 186, 236, 252, 255, 265, 271, 276, 280 Nerone, John 4, 5, 6 New Brunswick 10, 39, 92, 104, 141, 142, 167, 177, 193, 199, 201, 205, 275 New Republic 77 New York Daily Graphic 38, 57, 78 New York Herald 14, 79, 209, 227 New York Tribune 238 No Truck Or Trade With The Yankees 185 Nobel Prize 277 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 9, 281 North Bay, Ontario 279 Northern Pacific Railway 64, 66 Northwest Mounted Police 46, 47 Nova Scotia 92, 105, 141, 142, 167, 169, 177, 183, 184, 193, 199, 201, 204, 207, 255 Ogden, William Butler 64 Old and New Canada 226 Ostell John 28 Othello 152, 153 Panama Canal 271 Papineau, Louis-Joseph 27, 91

295

Patrons of Industry, The 180 Patterson, T. C. 70 Pearson, Lester B. 277 Peel, Sir Robert 131 Pembina, North Dakota 46, 278 Pennsylvania Gazette 15 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 41, 64, 78 Philipon, Charles 2 Poe, Edgar Allen 61 Poker, The 24, 133 Polette, Antoine 71 Political Recipes 231 Press, Charles 4 Prince Edward’s Island, 30, 92, 105, 177, 193, 201, 204 Prince John 27 Prince Rupert 191 Progressive Age 163 Public, The 77 Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company 203 Pulitzer, Joseph 78 Punch In Canada 24, 25, 27, 91, 132, 135, 273 Québec City 9, 10, 11, 30, 31, 45, 52, 57, 90, 93, 136, 226, 227 Queen’s University 79, 272 Queenston Heights 256 Racey, Arthur George 23, 58, 124, 222, 263, 266, 281 Rag Baby 174 rag money 175 Reader’s Digest 277 Reagan, Ronald 9 Rebellion Losses Bill 91 Reciprocity Treaty (1854) 97, 99, 134, 137, 139, 142, 150, 154, 201, 202, 204, 220, 245 Red Parlour Gang 256 Reform Party 149 Report On The Affairs Of British North America 100 Republican Party 173, 181, 218 Resnick, Philip 12, 141 R. G. Dun’s Mercantile Agency 248 Riel, Louis 33, 46, 123, 236 Robertson, John Ross 78

296 Index Robinson, Alexander 37 Rochester, U.K. 78 Roosevelt, Theodore 271 Rose, Sir John 203 Rowell, George 78 Royal Commission (Pacific Scandal) 71, 73, 74, 76, 272, 273, 274, 276 Rush-Bagot Treaty 30 Russell, Major Benjamin 15 Russell, Earl 139 Rupert’s Land 32, 33, 123 Ryan, Alonzo 16, 80, 81, 82, 123, 184, 266 St. Albans, Vermont 30, 99, 105 St. Francis Xavier 59 St. James Street 59 St. Lawrence Hall 238 St. Paul, Minnesota 47 Ste. Rose, Québec 59 Salmon and Shad 204 San Francisco, California 41, 174 San Juan Island 203 Saturday Night 118, 252 Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan 251 Senate Foreign Relations Committee 151 Shaw, Thomas 244, 245 Sherman, Senator John 253 Single Tax Review 77 Smith, Goldwin 54, 62, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 127, 149, 156, 167, 213, 228, 236, 248, 249, 251, 255, 257, 263, 265 Somers, Paul 3, 16 South Oxford 112 Sports Illustrated 281 Sprite, The 11, 21, 24, 31, 227 Statute of Westminster 193 Stead, William T. 13 Stephen, George 63 Stern, Madeleine B. 3 Stone Lithographic Company 57 Sumner, Senator Charles 35, 36, 160, 228 Syracuse, New York 248 Taft, Robert, 3 Tammany Ring 61, 62, tariff wall 89, 145, 158, 164, 170, 251, 281 Taylor, Samuel 15

Taylor, President Zachary 134, 201 Tenniel, John 15 Thomas, Isaiah 15 Thompson, Phillips 14, 74, 75 Thompson, W. Fletcher 3 Treaty Of 1818 142, 211 Ghent 196 Oregon 203 Paris 9, 44, 169, 191, 193, 196, 207, 211, 225 Utrecht 46 Washington 203, 204, 205, 207, 212, 231 Tilden, Samuel J. 164 Tilley, Leonard 53, 169 de Tocqueville, Alexis 12 Toronto, Ontario, 13, 14, 45, 47, 48, 52, 54, 58, 61, 62, 70, 72, 74, 77, 78, 79, 82, 84, 89, 95, 97, 98, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 119, 120, 133, 136, 139, 140, 145, 147, 149, 154, 164, 185, 196, 199, 209, 214, 220, 230, 238, 246, 248, 251, 252, 256, 258, 276, 277, 279 Leader 70 Mail 70, 234 World 82 Toronto News Company 246 Trudeau, Pierre E. 277, 278 Tuck, The Honorable 136, 200 Tupper, Sir Charles 105, 147, 159, 160, 161, 180, 183, 211, 215, 216, 218 Twain, Mark 42 Tweed, William Magear 16, 61, 62, 74, 89 Two Mountains 184 Uncle Sam 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 31, 39, 44, 45, 53, 70, 82, 83, 84, 91, 104, 106, 107, 122, 123, 124, 132, 142, 144, 148, 152, 157, 160, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 180, 183, 194, 195, 196, 199, 202, 204, 207, 208, 209, 210, 212, 218, 235, 241, 245, 246, 248, 265 Union between Canada and The United States, in favor of 95, 107, 114, 157, 251

Index Union Jack 13, 94, 243, 281 United Empire Loyalists 10, 89, 100, 275 United Kingdom see Britain United States 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 24, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 41, 44, 49, 53, 54, 61, 64, 77, 79, 82, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 105, 106, 107, 109, 112, 114, 119, 125, 126, 131, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157, 158, 162, 164, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 191, 193, 194, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 218, 219, 220, 221, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 234, 235, 236, 246, 248, 251, 253, 255, 258, 259, 260, 265, 266, 267, 271, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281 University of Toronto 79, 271 Upper Canada 45, 92, 100, 109, 132, 141, 193, 196 Urtica 142, 143

297

Vermont Legislature 94 Victorian Miss Canada 55 Walker, John Henry 6, 16, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 45, 82, 84, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 102, 103, 105, 131, 132, 133, 136, 148, 180, 194, 202, 205, 222, 273, 281 Waltz, Kenneth 273 Washington, State of 191, 203 Waterloo 196 Welland Canal 251 West, Clara 79 Whitman, Walt 10, 62 Wilkes, Captain Charles 29 Wilson, Frank 77 Wiman, Erastus 248 Wolfe, James 9 Working Man’s Party of California 174 Yankee Doodle 11, 15 Yellow Kid 24 Young Canada 33, 106, 115, 245 Young Men’s Liberal Club 119, 256