From the front page of the Huron Expositor
Friday, 16 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 4 An Early Visitor to Huron

In the year of grace, 1833, a traveller set foot in the Huron Tract, Patrick Shirreff, man of means and gentleman farmer of MusgosweIls, East Lothian, Scotland. Being interested in the pioneer communities of the American continent, Patrick had crossed the ocean in the spring of that year, had landed at New York and had spent the summer visiting the outposts of settlement, as he viewed them, in New York State, and in Lower and Upper Canada. He had ascended the St Lawrence River, inspected Kingston and York, and had reached Guelph after the middle of August. Thence his travels took him into the Huron Tract, of which he writes a comparatively full account. In company with a friend, he left Guelph (apparently) the 26th of the month by the Huron Road, made stops at Smith’s Creek (near New Hamburg), at Avon Creek, which seems to be our Stratford, and at Seebach’s tavern by Sebringville. Late in the afternoon of the 27th, the two arrived at Van Egmond’s tavern, for which Patrick has words of tepid praise, nevertheless the only words of that nature which he has for anything in the Tract. Van Egmond’s he found “a wealthy-looking place for the country with a store of miscellaneous goods, large barns and a tolerably good garden,” all of which were rare indeed in Upper Canada west of Toronto in 1833. He makes no mention of the Colonel or the Colonel’s numerous family, from which fact it is perhaps to be deduced that they, or the more important portion of them, were not at home. At all events, Patrick and his companion had dinner at the tavern, after which they travelled by night to Goderich, a distance of “five or six miles.” This curtailment of the actual mileage between Clinton and Goderich by more than a half would seem to speak well of the quality of Van Egmond’s dinners if not for the accuracy of those who made the estimate. At Goderich he had completed a sixty-mile journey from Smith’s Creek, two-thirds of which was performed over corduroy or crossway and none of which had roused in him any sensation of pleasure. He remarks that occasionally a tree had been left standing in the middle of the road as if for the purpose of attracting attention. The hypothesis that these trees, usually rock elms of the finest description, had been left for future conversion into timber he thought unlikely, in view of the fact that trees equally good could be obtained a few yards from the edge of the road. One may be permitted to guess that it was nothing less than the physical difficulties of removing formidable rock elms, which induced Van Egmond and his men to refrain from disturbing them. The problem was yet unsolved when Patrick and his companion arrived at their temporary destination.

Once in Goderich, they sought accommodation for the night at the best hotel, Reid’s, but here they received information that there was nothing for them unless they were willing to share a bed between them. The prospect of such restrictive space did not greatly attract Patrick and his friend, who sought elsewhere, in the second hotel of Goderich, Fisher’s. Again, however, beds were not to be obtained; but the landlady laid a pallet for them on the floor, meanwhile informing them that Goderich was a poor place, an estimate with which Patrick was probably not inclined to quarrel. The good lady, however, produced moderate refreshment in the form of tea and cream. Patrick and his companion at once searched for the sugar but without success until an enquiry elicited the information that the sugar was present but invisible, having been mixed with the cream. The innovation must have seemed doubtful to Patrick, a heretical disturbance of the natural order of things; but from the fact that he makes no disparaging remarks about the resulting beverage, we may conclude that he was not displeased. At the time workmen of all descriptions, probably labourers for the Canada Company, crowded the hotel. The noise occasioned by their presence and the roughness of the pallet troubled the newcomers so that they “slept uncomfortably.” In the morning, however, they received an invitation to breakfast with the family. This honour resulted probably from an extraordinary effort at hospitality on the part of the excellent Mr Fisher but it met no due appreciation since Patrick soon found the butter nauseous. Lest this be interpreted as a unique quality of Mr Fisher’s butter, Patrick hastens to add that the butter of Upper Canada generally was of the worst quality. Breakfast over, Patrick, the very soul of a gentleman, yearned for a shoeshine, a luxury denied him for several days while he had been travelling in the wilds of the Huron Tract. The request must have seemed unusual to the proprietor of the Fisher Hotel, who nevertheless found means to grant it for the sum of three pence. Worse than the price was the fact that a few minutes’ walk in the dewy grass made the shoes as brown as ever to the entire wastage of fully three pence, which must have been a sore blow to this good Scotsman.

In the morning, Patrick crossed the Maitland, which he found disappointing, a mere brook, unable to float a canoe, and approached Dr Dunlop’s new cottage on the north side called the Eagle’s Nest (Gairbraid) a name, he remarks, quite characteristic of the owner. He discovered the doctor himself in the office of the Canada Company with his brother, the captain, only recently arrived in Goderich, and made himself known to his fellow Scotsmen. But he found the doctor busy, little inclined for conversation; and in a short while Patrick took his departure, consoling himself with the thought that he could, and should, see with his own eyes everything of importance in that community. With memories of Fisher’s butter in his mind, he went for dinner to the principal hotel, Reid’s. There he received an invitation to be seated at the same table as the twelve or fourteen inmates, boarders and travellers, company not altogether to his liking, but obligatory if he were to dine. During the meal a diversion was provided when Mr Reid’s fingers slipped into the soup as he stirred it with a short-handled ladle. The worthy host failed to notice his faux pas and promptly and courageously served out the soup so flavoured. It is no wonder that Patrick found neither the “entertainment” nor the fare a success. Nevertheless, he took consolation in the not extravagant price, six pence.

By this time Patrick was ready to sum up his impressions of Goderich, obtained on this 28th of August, 1833. There were about forty “mean wooden houses” scattered irregularly over a considerable space. Half a dozen of these stood on the shore near the pier, the rest of the village on the height two hundred feet above the lake level, partly situated on a cedar swamp through which ran a street of corduroy. There was a “coarse rawness” about men and things at Goderich, which the visitor found far from agreeable. The land of the Huron Tract, however, he found excellent, except a few miles around the village. During his journey to London, commenced next day, he formed a very favourable impression of the soil from Van Egmond’s tavern south, “particularly fine clay, especially near the Bayfield River - the whole surface level excepting the margins of the creeks.” The roads were simply straight lines formed by felling trees, the branches and trunks of which had been burnt or made into corduroy, the stumps, two or three feet high, left standing. As for the corduroy, he continues, “most travellers speak with horror; but, without meaning to praise it, I must say that it was the best and smoothest portion of the Goderich roads. The roots projecting from the stumps in a slanting direction kept the wheels and axles of the wagon moving up and down like the beam of a steam engine,” a movement which, with good reason, he found “annoying to us and fatiguing to the horses, especially between Van Egmond’s tavern and London.” Only near Goderich was there better prospect, where people were burning out the stumps and throwing earth from the sides into the middle of the road to make a convex surface, a turnpike, as they called it in American fashion. It will be surmised that Patrick saw little to praise in the Huron Tract; nor is it a matter of wonder that a gentleman of East Lothian should find the circumstances of a pioneer community not to his taste.

Of some importance are the worthy Patrick’s remarks about the Canada Company and its settlers. He found Dr Dunlop a favourite with all, but the Company unpopular, and the settlers “of the poorest class, without industry or energy of any kind.” The Company charged seven shillings six pence per acre, payable in instalments; if the settler took a certain minimum area, they allowed him travelling expenses out of the second instalment. But in the first three years it was difficult for the settler to do more than keep his family, a real strain to make the payments. Even when all the instalments are paid, Patrick adds, the price of the forest land, quite unproductive, remains an overwhelming burden on the few acres cleared. To make matters worse, the first settlers were people of limited means, mostly paupers, who soon became so involved with the Company that they abandoned their holdings. In fact only one of the original settlers continued to occupy his land in 1833. The people were apt to despair of overcoming their pecuniary difficulties, to fall into indolence and dissipation. They lived in habitations “of the meanest description, equal in wretchedness to the worst hovels in Ireland and Scotland,” the poverty of which he attributed in part to the notions of the settlers, their shiftlessness and lack of desire for anything better. The Company had modified its policy, however, and was now permitting forty or fifty of the recent purchasers to work off part of the price on the roads, by which means only the settler could pay. Nevertheless Patrick found the source of the evil in the system under which the settlement was being made, in the plan of absentee landlords, of a monopoly of land in the Company’s hands and the consequent enhancement of the price. The Company, he predicted, would soon lobby in the legislature for favours to itself and for the rejection of any projected local improvements which threatened its position; it would, in short, act as an obstacle to progress.

It is evident that Patrick looked with no favourable eye on conditions in the Huron of 1833. Yet he makes it clear that antagonism had sprung up between the settlers and the Company in the Tract. He reveals a state of affairs which left something to be desired; payments on insufficient time allowance, discouragement on the part of the settlers, a transient population, ill-will to the Company in spite of the personal popularity of Dr Dunlop. The doctor’s unwillingness to talk to his fellow Scotsman seems another indication that something was amiss in this little pioneer community. The officials of the Company doubtless would have pleaded that they had not unlimited money to spend, that they must have regard to their profit-and-loss accounts, that they were doing their best for settlers who expected too much. But right or wrong, a general conviction that the system of company settlement was not the best that could be devised even if shareholders, directors and agents were men of excellent intentions had developed by 1833 into a feeling of positive hostility.

In this sentiment Van Egmond became involved. He had a private quarrel with the Company in 1833, in that they were refusing to pay him the balance due for his road contracting; and he appears to have filed an action over the matter at law. But this affair seems insufficient to account for the bitterness with which he henceforth assailed the Company in all its works and ways. Probably he entertained motives in great part disinterested, believing like Mr Shirref, that the Company was not dealing fairly with the settlers and was retarding the development of an excellent section of the province which, of course, included his own holding. Whatever the motive, Van Egmond became a determined opponent of the Company. He proceeded from sentiment to action; as the Misses Lizars inform us, in 1833 he “tried to disaffect” the Easthope Highlanders and to that end summoned a meeting of the settlers at Helmer’s Inn, where all discussed and presumably denounced the high price of land in the Company’s territory. The Easthope men appointed a delegation who went to Toronto and visited the Company’s commissioner in his office. But this man overwhelmed them with his words and his presence and ordered them out, after which they retired ignominiously. This affair was a small humiliation for the men, a rebuff for the Colonel who had evidently chosen his men badly and a small victory for the Company. But this petty skirmish had opened a war between Colonel Van Egmond and the Canada Company.

Meanwhile the agents of the Company at Goderich had decided that all was not well with their settlement. Mr Prior found the root of the evil in the character of the inhabitants, and took two steps, one negative and the other positive. According to his statement to Mr Ferguson at Guelph (Tour in Canada, 1831) he sent for a vessel and shipped off by force fourteen families, who he had decided, were undesirable. Next he made representation to the Company to be much more circumspect in choosing its settlers, to serve none but “sober, moral, correct men for a good neighbourhood.” The Company accordingly changed its immigration policy and directed appeals to the better class of Englishmen and Scotsmen. Thus it happened that after 1831 Huron began to receive an influx of settlers of high quality who established standards which have left their mark to the present day.