Books in Review / Comptes Rendus
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Books in Review / Comptes rendus Michel Brisebois and/et Frangois Melangon Chris Raible. Muddy York Mud: Scandal e) Scurrility in Upper Canada. Creemore, Ont.: C.uriosity House, 1992. xiv, 289, [I] pp.; $18.oo (paper). IsBN o-96964Is8-ox. The career of William Lyon Mackenzie has often occupied centre stage in the history of both early nineteenth-century Upper Canada and the town of York (later Toronto). While the rebellion of I837 figures largely in our histories of the period, some attention is paid to the destruction of Mackenzie's press in 1826 in the so-called Types Riot. Indeed, this episode was largely responsible for turning a failing provincial newspaper into a leading reformist publication. In this book writer and broadcaster, Chris Raible, re-examines the attack on Mackenzie's print shop from a new perspective. He shifts the focus away from William Lyon Mackenzie and on to the rioters and other participants in the affair of the types. When in early June 1826 some fifteen or so young men invaded Mackenzie's premises, forcibly removed his types and tossed them into Lake Ontario,they set in motion a very complex legal and historical drama. Moreover, their actions were the culmination of an earlier configuration of causes and forces, both political and personal, that brought these particular men to break the law in this way. Chris Raible tries to unravel the multi-dimensional Types Riot using a rather unique structure for his book. Each chapter explains the role of one individual rioter, or one of the victims of their actions, or the part played by a person important to but removed from the scene of the actual riot. The result is a fasclinating and well-written insight into early nineteenth-century Ontario history. While the author takes great pains to explain in detail the relationships between a large cast of characters, those unfamiliar with the period might have need of a program to keep all of them straight, especially when so many are connected by kinship. York in the 1820s was a small town of only 2,ooo people and political power rested uneasily with its elite. Most of those holding high office had risen quite rapidly from lowly social origins in Upper Canada, the United States or the British Isles. What Raible shows is that they were sensitive about their humble origins and open to criticism from others of similar backgrounds who had not risen so high and mighty in the affairs of the world. York had an upstart 'aristocracy'that employed patronage, nepotism, injustice, and maladministration to secure its shaky position of authority. Into this little world of corruption dropped the Scottish immigrant and news- paperman, William Lyon Mackenzie, a man of liberal political principles and a 46 Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada 32/I self-proclaimed expert on almost all public issues. At first Mackenzie refrained from personal attacks on political figures in his papers, TI2e ColonialAdvocate, but as Raible shows, a small episode changed that stance. In a dispute with a leading lawyer and member of the executive council of the colony, Mackenzie believed that his mother had been mocked. As a result, his attitude changed, and he began to publish satir·ical columns in his paper under the pseudonym, Patrick Swift. These are reproduced by Raible as an appendix to his book. The Patrick Swift material was highly personal yet it rarely named its target. The victim of the satire knew he was the object of ridicule and soon others caught on, yet Mackenzie was clever enough to write in a way that made prosecution for libel impossible. The resulting personal attacks on the political elite left them extremely frustrated and in search of a remedy for their predicament. Raible's technique is to unravel or decode key passages from the Patrick Swift series as well as other journalism by Mackenzie and to link these with persons involved in or connected with the Types Riot. Here the author is at his best and in detective-like fashion explains many cryptic references in Mackenzie's various diatribes. Samuel Jarvis, law clerk, director of the Bank of Upper Canada and Types Rioter, harboured a grudge because Mackenzie referred to him as a mur- derer. Jarvis had killed a young man in a duel 1in highly questionable cir·cum- stances. The attorney general and the solicitor general also felt the lash of Mackenzie's prose as their· behaviours and backgrounds were criticized. Five of the rioters were law clerks in their offices and several others were law students. Several were former students of the Reverend Doctor John Strachan whose policies had been under attack in TI2e Colonial Advocate and who had been branded an 'insignificant Scotch turn coat parish schoolmaster' by Mackenzie. Another rioter was the private clerk to the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, whose wife had her reputation sullied by Mackenzie's 'yellow' journal- ism. From this Raible constructs a speculation as to how the Type Rioters' conspiracy was hatched. It can't be proven that those at the highest rank were in on the plot, but their immediate subordinates carried out the acts of destruction, possibly without either the knowledge or support of their superiors. Other subordinate participants are also analysed by Raible in their turn. Mac- kenzie had criticized in print a magistrate who later stood idly by while the rioters destroyed private property in the Types Riot. In the subsequent trial considerable damages were awarded to Mackenzie, but a certain Colonel James Fitzgibbon took up a collection to help the rioters pay their fines. Fitzgibbon was yet another victim of Mackenzie's provocative penmanship. Two of the printers in Macken- zie's employ come in for special study. One had a reputation for anti-government propaganda, and was mistakenly believed by some of the rioters to be the writer of the Patrick Swift columns. Another was executed for murder in I828. In an admittedly highly speculative chapter Raible suggests there may have been a conspiracy to frame the man for reasons that go right back to the Ty;fpes Riot of 1826. The liberty of the press was at stake in the Types Riot according to many persons, both inside and outside the Mackenzie camp. Yet when the rioters were brought to trial this was a secondary matter because they admitted guilt and the 47 Books in Review / Cornptes rendus purpose of their defence was to limit the damage awarded. Nevertheless, the government of Upper Canada did conduct a long campaign against many publish- ers in the courts. Raible effectively sets out the process with short studies of the cases of Bartemas Ferguson, Robert Gourlay, and Francis Collins, all of whom had links to the Types Riot. This is a well-written and well-researched book that holds the reader's attention from first page to the last. At the same time the focus of the study is often too narrow and the secondary sources employed by the author too tightly circum- scribed. The human forces at work in York in the 1820s are those of jealousy, greed, prejudice, hunger for power, and obsession with social class. These invite wider comparisons to historical episodes and precedents beyond the bounds of early nineteenth-century Upper Canada. The Types Riot itself has all the charac- teristics of a classic English 'Church and King' riot of the eighteenth century. Perhaps we need to set the I826 event in that wider context. Likewise the outrage over the Jarvis-Ridout duel is never clearly explained by the author. We are left to assume that the code of duelling behaviour was violated in the eyes of Mackenzie and others. There is, however, another possibility. There were those who completely opposed duelling and regarded any resulting death as murder. The difference is very important, and this episode should have been more clearly set out in the context of the recent literature on the topic. Finally, there is the matter of the author's attempt to reconstruct the episode that set in motion the Types Riot. This is a very useful exercise in spite of the limitations imposed by the sources available. According to Charles Raible, what we have is men close to those exercising the highest power who hear their superiors denounce their political enemies. On their own initiative those subordinates then go out to break the law thinking they have the authority to act in an extraordinary way. This, I think, is quite a common occurrence in history. Perhaps the best known of these is the murder of Thomas Becket by the four knights of King Henry n1of England in the twelfth century. Chris Raible has done a fine job in unravelling the complex matter of the Types Riot of 1r826, and his conclusions invite wider comparisons. F.K. DONNELL~Y Universityof New Brunswick (Saint John Can2pus) Maurice Lemire, dir. La vie littdraire au Québec, II, z806-z839: le projet national des Canadiens. Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de l'Uni- versit6 Laval, 1992. 587 PP-; 45$. IsBN 2-7637-7282-x. La vie littéraireau Québec, II, I806-z839: le projet national des Canadiens est le deuxième d'une s6rie de cinq ouvrages (trois restent à paraitre) consacr6s à la litt6rature québ6coise du xxxe siècle. Le premier tome couvrait la p6riode 1764-1805, le deuxième s'6tend de 1806 à I839, soit de la cr6ation du Canadien. '[ . .. ] premier hebdomadaire entièrement en langue frangaise dans la ville de.