From the front page of the Huron Expositor
Friday, 22 October 1931

Reprinted with the permission of the Huron Expositor
Copyright: the Huron Expositor
“Your Community Newspaper Since 1860”
P. O. Box 69
11 Main Street
Seaforth, Ontario N0K 1W0

Chapter 5 The Colborne Clique

For some time, Van Egmond appears to have been alone of the prominent men in the community in his opposition to the company, but soon reinforcements arrived. As a result of the Company’s new policy in the years 1833 to 1835, a number of Scots gentlemen and their families came to the Huron Tract and took up lands in Colborne Township. These people, the Hyndman’s, Lizars, Kippens, Lawsons, and Clarkes, had been in some degree known to each other in the old country and were in consequence inclined to act together when any grievance arose, so that they became known as the Colborne Clique. No doubt the change from civilized life in Scotland with its amenities and conveniences to the life of a pioneer community in Huron with all manner of hardships and deprivations would of itself have been sufficient to provoke a critical mood. But there was an additional incentive to dissatisfaction in that between the pictures of Huron presented in the Company’s advertising maps and charts in Scotland and the actualities of the Goderich area in 1834, there was considerable discrepancy, a feature found by no means for the last time in immigration propaganda. For example, the charts had shown an excellent bridge at the mouth of the Maitland where the settlers could perceive only a boat owned by a distinctly independent Highland fisherman who was on duty only when he had nothing better to do and who even then exacted a fee of one shilling for each passage, an exorbitant charge for the trifling labour performed. The Colborne settlers, in vital need of a passage over the river to Goderich, raised loud complaints in which Henry Hyndman led, and in the end they secured the construction of a floating bridge which parted in the middle to let boats through; an architectural feature, one of whose first consequences was the immersion of poor Henry Hyndman himself in an incautious moment. In the winter time, of course, frost came to the aid of the settlers and provided for two months a means of passage much more secure than either the Highland man’s boat or the Company’s uncertain bridge.

This dispute was no sooner in a measure settled than another arose concerning first the approaches to the grist mill and second that mill itself. From the settlers’ homes in Colborne to the Maitland no road of any kind existed; from the Maitland to the mill a fairway had been cut through the forest leaving quite unmolested the natural undulations of ground among the trees. These hollows the rain speedily converted into a series of mud holes which made approach to the mill a difficult matter. The imperfection or absence of roads, however, became only a minor grievance when it was realized that the grist mill was much too slow and small for the needs of the community, so inadequate in fact that intervals of two or three days elapsed between the arrival of the grain at the mill and its conversion into flour. At once the settlers raised loud complaints about “the tuppenny mill,” “the humbug of a mill.” One ingenious gentleman sent his daughter in charge of a convoy of flour, rightly confident that the miller would give precedence to a charming young lady; others made shift to crush their own grain in hollowed stumps or between hand-chipped stones, a method which must have seemed barbarous to these well-to-do people from Scotland. The mill certainly left much to be desired, a fault at once laid to the door of the Company which was supposed to provide the public utilities necessary for the community under its care.

Other topics of controversy arose. The price at which the Company sold its land was higher than the prevailing price in the United States or in the Crown domains of Upper Canada; and the settlers were in consequence busy raising complaints about the land monopoly and the extortionate rates charged. Further, the Company’s stores from which the settlers expected to be able to purchase implements, furniture and edible commodities imported from more advanced communities, displayed for sale nothing but the choicest Lake Huron fish. At a later date than that with which we are dealing, the displeased settlers were still writing to the British Colonist:

“Sweet Goderich city
So sweet and pretty
I’m sure no ditty
Its praise can declare,
The stores where the fish are
And the great Commissioner . . . “

Or the Company was busy

“Standing still
And doing nothing with a great deal of skill.”

A pamphlet appeared in stronger tones. “Whatever else was lacking in Colborne, strong words were plentiful . . . the Directors of the Canada Company have acquired for themselves the style and title of rapacious land-jobbers, peddlers and hucksters. . . . (there is) a want of individual responsibility which sets honour and virtue alike at defiance.”

From all of this it is clear that the well-to-do settlers of Colborne had fallen seriously foul of the Company in their short experience of its rule. In fact, however, their expressions of discontent were in part due to unfamiliarity with primitive conditions and a keen sense of the conveniences of civilized life in Scotland; and their grievances about gristmill, bridges, roads and stores were temporary matters, certain to disappear as better accommodation arrived. There was nothing deep-seated about the conditions of which they complained; nothing to compare with the difficulty of the clergy reserves which was then giving so much trouble in other parts of the province. For its part, the Company would doubtless have claimed that it was doing every thing which its limited finances would permit and that the settlers might do something for themselves, for example in the matter of roads. It is probable that much of the friction arose from the financial policy of the Directors in London, who kept a tight rein on their agents in Canada and insisted that there be no large expenditure without their sanction. Thus time was wasted in correspondence and the expenditures sanctioned fell behind those needed by the Huron community by the space of a year or more. In a word there was no conspiracy to starve the settlement but a misunderstanding of needs due to distance. Yet the settlers were in no mood to find excuse for the Company. Struggling as they were with the forest and with primitive disagreeable conditions, they felt every additional annoyance a distressing burden and a burden due to malevolence or niggardliness on the Company’s part. The Huron community of the eighteen-thirties remained highly dissatisfied.

At the same time as this local dispute was in progress, the whole of Upper Canada was engaged in the struggle between the Family Compact party and the Reformers led by Bidwell and William Lyon Mackenzie. In these circumstances it was to be expected that attempts would be made to relate the two subjects of friction. The pamphlet quoted above contained a sentence which identified Bishop Strachan and the Family Compact with the obnoxious Company. “The Lord Bishop who may be found everywhere directing the energies of the Family Compact which is one and the same thing as the Canada Company.” Economic conditions and the grievances of the settlers against the Company would at first sight suggest that Huron might furnish favourable ground for Reform propaganda. A test of this was to come in 1835 at the first election.

Meanwhile the Colborne men and Van Egmond had common ground in their opposition to the Company. But it does not appear that they and he were on intimate terms at any time. They seem to have distrusted him as a Dutchman, a foreigner and a fol­lower of that Napoleon with whom their country had been so long at war; and they held aloof from him. They went their way, acquiring full title to their homesteads, bestowing on these estates names such as “Lundaston’’ and “Meadowlands” in intimation of British usage, and entrenching themselves as leaders of Huron politics and society, while Van Egmond pursued his own path, appealed to the poorer settlers of the Huron Road who must continue to pay instalments to the Company for many a long day, and endeavoured to stimulate opposition to the Company.