From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community Among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-1850 by Robynne Rogers Healey Chris Raible
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Document generated on 10/01/2021 10:55 p.m. Ontario History From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-1850 By Robynne Rogers Healey Chris Raible Forging Freedom: In Honour of the Bicentenary of the British Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade Volume 99, Number 1, Spring 2007 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065804ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1065804ar See table of contents Publisher(s) The Ontario Historical Society ISSN 0030-2953 (print) 2371-4654 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Raible, C. (2007). Review of [From Quaker to Upper Canadian: Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801-1850 By Robynne Rogers Healey]. Ontario History, 99(1), 120–122. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065804ar Copyright © The Ontario Historical Society, 2007 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/ 120 ONTARIO HISTORY From Quaker to Upper 1813, barely a decade after their arrival in Upper Canada, several key members, led Canadian: Faith and by David Willson, withdrew to form the Community among Yonge “Children of Light.” This body, and the Street Friends, 1801-1850 familiar Sharon Temple which they built south of Lake Simcoe, has been well cov- By Robynne Rogers Healey. Montreal ered in studies by Albert Schrauwers and and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Univer- by W. John McIntyre, works on which sity Press, 2006. 292 pages. Illustrations. Healey often relies. But her focus, sharp- $75.00 cloth. ISBN 0-7735-3136-X. ened by analysis of Quaker archives, is less on Willson and more on the impact of the rom Quaker to Upper Canadian is the separation on the whole body of Quakers. most recent volume in the extensive Some were disowned; some returned dis- FMcGill-Queen’s ‘Studies in the History illusioned; some attempted to maintain of Religion’ series. It centres on one small connections; some severed themselves community, the Society of Friends, living in completely. a few square kilometers north of the town The second upset occurred in 1829 of York in Upper Canada in the first half when the community divided between of the nineteenth century. They are often Hicksites and Orthodox. The Hicksites spoken of as the Yonge Street Quakers. The trusted the traditional Quaker “inner focus is thus very specific, but the signifi- light” of personal experience, whereas the cance of Healey’s thesis is almost universal, Orthodox faction insisted on the truths of for she asks the compelling question: how Biblical revelation, the divinity of Christ can a community insulate itself from the and Christ’s atonement for human sin. perceived evils of a larger society without Both groups believed they were true to isolating itself from responsible participa- the Quaker Book of Discipline. This divi- tion in that society? sion among North American Quakers Trinity Western University professor has been fully examined by a number of Robynne Healey, not a Quaker herself, American scholars, and forty years ago by sensitively describes a people caught by Arthur G. Dorland in his classic canvas of conflicting pressures such as between the Quakers in Canada. Again, Healey brings disciplines of faith and the demands of sec- fresh insights, looking at specific families ular society, or between the obligations of and individuals, and pondering the con- kinship ties and the realities of economic sequences of the controversy. She suggests necessities. The power of personal experi- that Methodist support of the Orthodox ence was in conflict with the authority of Quakers helped lead to their eventual ab- recorded revelation, and so too were the sorption into broader, evangelical Canadi- commands of traditional teaching with an Protestantism. Healey is especially con- the sway of charismatic leadership. Still cerned with the importance of women to further, the need for unity and keeping the Quaker community and their central the community together was not easily re- involvement in both of these community solved with the ideal of purity and keeping crises. Quaker belief affirms the spiritual the community virtuous. equality of men and women, and women In less than a half-century these Quak- could play crucial roles on both sides in er settlers suffered three major traumas. In each of these conflicts. book revews 121 The third upheaval and the neglect of roads was the Upper Cana- and bridges. da Rebellion of 1837. Healey includes a Quakers, fully as much fascinating brief chapter as their neighbours, on the secularization of held grievances against education and its effects the British colonial ad- on the Quaker com- ministration, and both munity. The Hicksite- the Yonge Street Quak- Orthodox split forced ers and members of the them to abandon their Children of Light were “religiously guarded” deeply involved in the education, with the re- ill-fated skirmishes or as sult that their children active supporters of the had to attend govern- rebels. Citing a modern ment-funded schools authority, Healey twice and began losing their states that Quakers unique Quaker iden- “formed 4.2 per cent of the population in tity. Secular tensions, and especially those rebel areas, yet accounted for 40 per cent related to the Rebellion, deserve much of the known rebels and supporters.” (pp. fuller consideration than Healey offers here 13, 146) This is a questionable assertion, however. Colin Read’s pamphlet is her only surely, as Quaker pacifist teachings were citation for understanding the Rebellion totally opposed to armed rebellion. Many and she relies too heavily on Gerald Craig’s Quakers undoubtedly experienced a cri- forty-year-old general history for her dis- sis of conscience, yet significant numbers cussion of the complexities of the Clergy did take up arms. Many were jailed and Reserves. Healey’s bibliography shows her one former Quaker, Samuel Lount, was appreciation of a cluster of recent studies, hanged. but her principal sources – and the book’s The Rebellion was the most dramatic true strength – are the Quaker manuscripts of a series of severe tensions between Quak- she so extensively researched: minutes, let- ers and the government. They first settled ters, diaries, articles and other documents. in Upper Canada with assurances, they She mined hitherto neglected veins, most thought, that their beliefs would be fully notably the Canadian Yearly Meeting Ar- respected; yet they could not vote or serve chives at Pickering College in Newmarket, on juries because they would not swear and found gold. Pity that the price may dis- oaths. Quakers were fined – and jailed if courage many from purchasing a work of they did not pay the fines – for refusing to such import. serve in the militia, and their goods were requisitioned to supply the military in the Chris Raible, War of 1812. Their faith forbade Quak- Creemore, Ontario ers from leasing Clergy Reserve land and thereby financially supporting another Bibliography: church. Also, like other settlers, Quakers Dorland, Arthur G. The Quakers in Can- were caught up in such controversies as the ada: a History. Toronto: Ryerson Press, Alien Question, the court and legal system, 1968. 122 ONTARIO HISTORY McIntyre, W. John. Children of Peace. Mon- um: the Children of Peace and the Village treal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s of Hope, 1812-1889. Toronto: Univer- University Press, 1994. sity of Toronto Press, 1993. Read, Colin. The Rebellion of 1837 in Upper Society of Friends. Book of Christian Disci- Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical As- pline: Consisting of Extracts on Doctrine, sociation, Historical booklet #46, 1988. Practice and Church Government. Lon- Schrauwers, Albert. Awaiting the Millenni- don: Harris, 1883. Revival in the City: The Impact of American Evangelists in Canada, 1884-1914 By Eric R. Dwight L. Moody, Sam Jones, Sam Small, Crouse. Montreal Reuben Archer Torrey, Charles Alexander and Kingston: and J. Wilbur Chapman. While there were McGill-Queen’s other evangelists who came up from the University Press, United States to Canada, these men were 2005. xv + 230 the ones with the most significant impact pp. $65.00 and audiences. Crouse examines each man’s hardcover. ISBN revivalist campaign in Canada, and shows 0-7735-2898-9. how support for such campaigns waxed and waned under each, ultimately waning his volume by the time of Chapman. The description Tis a part of of the popular reaction to these revivals is the growing and valuable ‘Studies in the fascinating, and Crouse’s adept handling History of Religion’ series being published of the contemporary reports of the reviv- by McGill-Queen’s University Press, be- als provides the reader with a clear sense gun by George Rawlyk but now edited by of the religious and social impact of these Donald H. Akenson. Revival in the City larger-than-life men. For instance, Crouse’s is an examination of how Canadian Prot- description of people breaking a window estants reacted to, and were influenced to avoid asphyxiation in an over-packed by, prominent American evangelists who auditorium in Toronto in 1886, only to travelled throughout Canada in the late have a hundred or so people try to get in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. through the window, provides a sense of The main sources for the extensive and the religious zeal of those who longed to detailed research by Professor Eric Crouse hear these men preach. are the reports and analyses of the revivals From the 1880s through to the early in secular publications like the Hamilton 1900s these prominent evangelists trav- Daily Spectator or the Montreal Daily Star, elled throughout Canada, speaking in and in church publications such as the most of the major cities and many smaller Methodist Christian Guardian or the An- ones such as Ottawa, Hamilton, Kingston glican Canadian Churchman.