The Games People Played: Tavern Amusements and Colonial Social Relations

Document generated on 09/25/2021 5:48 a.m. Ontario History The Games People Played Tavern Amusements and Colonial Social Relations Julia Roberts Imagining New Worlds in the New World: Entertainment, Agency, Article abstract and Power in Upper Canada Play was serious business. By entertaining themselves in many ways in the Volume 102, Number 2, Fall 2010 many public houses of Upper Canada, tavern-goers defined and enacted the contours of social power in this colonial society. As we see them “throwing URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065580ar sticks and stones,” playing “sleight of hand tricks,” dancing jigs and “8 reels,” or DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1065580ar “gambling and drinking around a large table,” we see that play was a defining part of a social world linked to the tavern. Play was a means through which tavern-goers bound themselves together, but a means also, and paradoxically, See table of contents through which they could define social distance and cultural space. Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Roberts, J. (2010). The Games People Played: Tavern Amusements and Colonial Social Relations. Ontario History, 102(2), 154–174. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065580ar Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2010 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ 154 ONTARIO HISTORY The Games People Played: Tavern Amusements and Colonial Social Relations by Julia Roberts n Easter Day in British-occu- in his charge to the jury, the judge called pied Detroit, 1793, at about the men’s amusement “rude” and “coarse 11 o’clock in the morning, four play.” His choice of language suggests his Olabouring men named Francis Lalonde, own distance from them, his privileged Felix Mettiz, Antoine Prevost, and Louis ability to place cultural judgement upon Roy “were diverting themselves” both in- what labouring men did for fun, and sug- side Gouin’s tavern and outside it on the gests too that different people, located road. They were “throwing sticks, stones, in different places on the colonial social and mud at each other.” They were drink- spectrum, had different ideas about the ing and perhaps “a little intoxicated.” By best forms of public entertainment. A accident, Roy hit Lalonde on the head game of sticks and stones that did worse with a mis-thrown stone and stood trial than break some bones is a suitably seri- for his “felonious murder.” A jury of Roy’s ous introduction to the subject of colo- peers that included four yeoman (inde- nial tavern amusements. For though this pendent farmers), a cooper, three inn- article catches Upper Canadians at their keepers, a joiner (carpenter), a shoemaker, play, it argues that through it historians an armourer (gun maker and repairman) can begin to map the geography of power and a blacksmith, found him “guilty within tavern spaces, how class, gender, of excusable homicide by misfortune.” and race were enacted there spatially. In Roy’s social equals recognized the tav- particular, colonial gentlemen staged ern-based rough play for what it was—a their amusements in the public houses popular entertainment gone awry. So too in ways that asserted privilege, maleness did a handful of his social betters—“gen- and whiteness, although not always suc- tlemen” close enough to see the events of cessfully.1 the day and those called later to court. Yet By wending their way in and out of 1 William Renwick Riddell, Michigan under British Rule: Law and Law Courts, 1760-1796 (Lansing, MI: Michigan Historical Commission, 1926), 345. Ontario History / Volume CII, No. 2 / Autumn 2010 the games people played 155 published travelogues, two diaries (one of a tav- Abstract ern-keeper, one of a tav- Play was serious business. By entertaining themselves in ern-goer), account books, many ways in the many public houses of Upper Canada, licensing records, and, tavern-goers defined and enacted the contours of social newspaper reports and power in this colonial society. As we see them “throwing sticks and stones,” playing “sleight of hand tricks,” danc- advertisements. Yet, evi- ing jigs and “8 reels,” or “gambling and drinking around dence about the amuse- a large table,” we see that play was a defining part of ments of the colonial tav- a social world linked to the tavern. Play was a means erns is rare, fragmentary, through which tavern-goers bound themselves together, and discoverable more but a means also, and paradoxically, through which they could define social distance and cultural space. through serendipity in the archives than through Résumé: Se divertir était alors une affaire sérieuse. En any rigorous research prenant part aux différentes formes de divertissement plan. As such, some para- public qui leur étaient offertes dans le Haut-Canada, les participants définissaient les contours du pouvoir graphs in what follows social dans cette société coloniale. Jouer aux ‘bâtons et have appeared before: pierres’, faire des tours de prestidigitation, danser des these are the examples of ‘jigs’ et des ‘reels’, jouer à des jeux de hasards ou boire tavern amusements that autour d’une grande table, tous ces divertissements I have and here they are aidaient à déterminer une structure sociale liée à la taverne. Pour ceux qui fréquentaient les tavernes, le examined through a new divertissement était un moyen de fraterniser, mais lens—one that allows us aussi, et paradoxalement, un moyen d’établir des to focus upon the ways distances sociales et de définir un espace culturel. that play defined and enacted the contours of social power in this colo- Gouin’s tavern, from its public room to the nial society.2 Still, some of the sources are public street, four labourers also wended so opaque as to make historical certainty their way, by accident, into a courtroom about what they might mean unreach- and into a legal record that enables us, able, but they encourage us to query their today, to ask questions about public life, meanings. For example, though we know public entertainment, and ownership that in the spring of 1846, a clockmaker over colonial public space. The analy- named Isaac Macdonald called at Sebach’s sis here draws upon such legal records, Tavern on the Huron Road (today, High- as well as other primary sources—those way 8, Mitchell, Ontario) and passed a documents that remain from the colonial Sunday afternoon there “telling some past to tell it’s stories to the present—cor- stories,” drinking a little beer, and playing respondence with government officials, “sleight of hand tricks,” “for amusement,” 2 Julia Roberts, In Mixed Company: Taverns and Public Life in Upper Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), 80-5. The material appears with the kind permission of the UBC Press. 156 ONTARIO HISTORY we hardly understand what those tricks consequence: a thorough listing, as far as were. What does it mean that he was the sources will allow, of the many forms “endeavouring to put a ring on a wood- of tavern-based public entertainment in en ramrod which was in Jacob Cramer’s Upper Canada, and, again as the sources hands [and] succeeded in getting the ring allow, an analysis of what access to tavern- on the rod while Cramer held both ends?” based public entertainment tells us about What does it mean that Macdonald then different peoples’ membership in public “performed the feat of lifting a chair by life and public space, be they identifi- the spars?” Why is it important that “no able as First Nations or other racialized treats were bet on the outcome”?—that is, identities (including white), be they men, no drinks were wagered—and why does women, or members of particular faiths, the historical record tell us that after all poor or privileged, those opposed to the of this, when Macdonald sat down, Wil- taverns’ ready supply of alcohol, those liam Sebach then “knocked his hat over not, and other colonial permutations of his eyes...in fun?” Everyone there, at Se- ‘identity.’ Historiographically, then, this bach’s in 1846, understood these words, article slips into that space where social these feats, the joke with the hat, and the and cultural history meets alcohol stud- social and cultural context in which they ies, a space which can usefully be called resided. Even the Chief Justice of the the ‘new tavern history.’ The published colony of Upper Canada, John Beverley literature is already enormous and expo- Robinson, once wrote about the “kind nentially growing, international in scope, of sport that people in the bar room of diverse in terms of analysis, but shares a an Inn constantly indulge in.” Even this common preoccupation to read drink and highly privileged, well educated, accom- drink supported amusements for what plished, and successful man, distant from they reveal about, for example, the nature the Isaac Macdonalds of his world, had an of gendered power in a society, or the rela- intrinsic understanding of the contested tionship between “polite” and “popular” cultural and social meanings of public, culture, or the ways in which racialized tavern-based entertainments.3 identities carried the benefits of privilege We lack that. This article, in a spe- or the burdens of discrimination.4 cial “Entertainment in Upper Canada” A tavern in Upper Canada, varied issue of Ontario History has two goals in across time and space.

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