From the front page of the Huron Expositor
Friday, 2 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 2 The Canada Company

Colonization by organized companies was no novelty in the days of European settlement in America. Virginia had been colonized by a company; so also Massachusetts. The Quebec of the mid-seventeenth century had been controlled by the One Hundred Associates who had contracted to bring out Frenchmen to New France. In under-taking these enterprises, groups of capitalists had obtained grants of land and usually monopolies of trade in return for which they had pledged themselves to secure settlers, transport them to the colonies, place them on the land at a price stipulated in advance and give them assistance during the difficult transition period. The stockholders were not, in intention at any rate, philanthropists; they desired to recover their expenditure as quickly as possible and to make a good profit. In consequence friction always arose between settlers anxious to obtain land cheaply and to enjoy public conveniences such as roads and bridges, and the company anxious to obtain high revenues from the sale of land and to restrict non-remunerative expenditures. But the plan provided or at least promised to provide organization and direction of the settlement and supervision and practical help for the settler without involving governments in any expense, for which reason it made a strong appeal to the political leaders of the time. In fact the history of such companies was not in general such as to encourage investors of money or would-be emigrants. Nevertheless, it was always possible to hope that in a fresh venture conflicting interests might be reconciled or at least prevented from leading to disaster. It was out of such a hope that the Canada Company was born.

John Galt, moving spirit of the new enterprise, native of Ayrshire, in Scotland, but resident of Greenock, became interested in Upper Canada while acting as agent for certain inhabitants of that province, who were pressing on His Majesty’s Government claims for compensation on account of losses arising out of the War of 1812. He persuaded a group of capitalists, principally from London, to form the Canada Company in August 1824, with the object of purchasing for colonization certain Crown and Clergy Reserve land in Upper Canada. The preliminary sanction of the Crown having been obtained, the directors chose five men as commissioners to go to Canada, ascertain what lands might be secured and at what price. These five, Lieutenant Colonel Francis Cockburn, Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Harvey, and Messrs. Simon McGillivrary, John Davidson and John Galt came to Canada in 1825, consulted government officials, surveyors and landholders, and resolved to advise the purchase of 1,384,413 acres of Crown Reserves and 829,430 acres of Clergy Reserves, such being the total of a large number of small blocks scattered through nearly all the townships of the province. A difficulty at once arose; the clergy of Upper Canada became alarmed at the prospective loss of their reserves and moved the Colonial Office to block the grant until their rights were secure. Thereupon Galt sought a conference with Bishop Strachan and agreed to yield the Clergy Reserves in return for an equivalent from the ungranted Crown domain. All obstacles being now removed, the Company entered into a contract with the Crown as represented by Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary, who sent a copy of the terms, dated May 23, 1826, at Downing Street, to Sir Peregrine Maitland, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. On behalf of the Company, the signatures appeared of Messrs. Downie, Hullett, Fullerton, McGillivray, Logan and Galt, most of whom soon found their memory perpetuated in the township names of the present Huron and Perth counties.

According to this agreement the Canada Company would receive in lieu of Clergy Reserves a million acres in the territory lately purchased from the Six Nations Indians in the London and Western districts of the province bordering on Lake Huron, for which reason this area would henceforth assume the eminently practical name of Huron Tract. For the million acres, the Company contracted to pay 145,150 pounds five shilling, two-thirds directly to the Crown, one-third in public works and improvements, defined as canals, bridges, roads, churches, wharves, school houses and other works for the common use and benefit of His Majesty’s subjects. The plan for any such improvement was to be submitted to the Governor-in-Council, from whom an appeal might lie to the Secretary of State. The purchase price was to be paid in sixteen annual instalments, gradually rising (excluding the first year ending July 1, 1827, for which 20,000 pounds was due) from 15,000 pounds in 1828, to 20,000 pounds in 1836 and thereafter. On July 1, 1843, the Company would either take up and pay for all the lands then remaining to be taken up or would terminate its contract and abandon all claim to the untaken lands. Any difficulty arising from the probable inclusion of worthless land in the million acres was solved by a supplementary agreement that the Company should receive an additional grant of 100,000 acres to be paid for on similar terms. The boundaries of the Huron Tract thus handed over to the Canada Company were traced on two maps, one to remain in London, the other to go to Canada; they included a wedge-shaped territory stretching from the present Guelph to the present Goderich, south past the Aux Sables River and east back to Guelph. The names of the townships as given in an old map reproduced in Skelton’s Life of Galt are as follows: Guelph, North and South Easthope, Ellice, Logan, McKillop, Hullett, Horton, Goderich, Tuckersmith, Hibbert, Fullerton, Downie, Usborne, Stanley, Hay, Stephen, Bosanquet, Williams, McGillivray, Biddulph and Blanshard, most of which have endured to the present day. In this way the Canada Company came into possession of the Huron Tract. No stipulation was made concerning the price at which the land was to be sold to the settlers, an omission doubtless pressed as a sine qua non by the stockholders, but almost certainly destined to cause trouble. Probably, however, the Colonial Secretary believed that he had safeguarded adequately the interests of the settlers.

Legal business concluded, the officers of the Company in Great Britain set to work to attract prospective emigrants by propaganda setting forth the virtues of residence in Upper Canada. Galt returned to the province and fixed his headquarters in York in a shack ten feet square, probably not greatly dissimilar to structures of the kind now to be found in pioneer communities of Northern Ontario. He had determined to found two towns immediately on favourable sites within the Huron Tract, one at the eastern end and one on the lake. On April 28, 1827, he supervised the commencement of the foundation of the first town which he named Guelph after the family appellation of the reigning sovereigns. Then he turned his attention to the second nucleus of settlement, for which he chose the mouth of the Minnesetung River, largest of the streams flowing into Lake Huron proper from the eastern side and likely to furnish a good harbour. He had already engaged William Dunlop, a Scotsman like himself, army surgeon, veteran of the War of 1812, who was well known for his ability, his personal qualities and his knowledge of the province, and he instructed Dunlop to make his way overland to the mouth of the Minnesetung and spy out the land, leaving himself (Galt) to reach the same destination by water from Georgian Bay. Accordingly the doctor assembled a small party in the neighbourhood of the present town of Galt, consisting of John Brant, the Mohawk chief, Messrs. Sproat and Macdonald, and with them he plunged into the forest. The party made a cursory inspection of the resources of the Huron Tract; experienced disappointment and a little hardship at the lack of game, but formed a favourable opinion of the ground from the appearance of the hardwood trees; finally reached the mouth of the Minnesetung and built a rough cabin there. In this same summer of 1827, Galt travelled to Penetang and there took ship on His Majesty’s gunboat, the Bee, placed at his disposal by orders of the Admiralty. He enjoyed a calm voyage around the Bruce Peninsula; then followed the coast to the south until he perceived a small clearing in the forest where “a cottage stood on some rising ground.” A canoe came out to meet the ship, laden with “a strange combination of Indians, velveteens and whiskers through which appeared the living features of the Doctor.” With the doctor’s guidance, the Bee crossed a river bar of eight feet and came to a “beautiful anchorage of fourteen foot water in an uncommonly pleasant small basin.” Next day Galt and Dunlop, officers of the company, set to work on the plans for the new Town, which they had determined to name after the ephemeral Prime Minister, Goderich. For the river Minnesetung, they selected a new designation less liquid and poetic, the name of the Governor, Maitland.

Of the tract, Dunlop wrote in his journal “Such is the general excellence of the land that if ordinary care can be taken to give each lot no more than its own share of any small swamp in the vicinity, it would be difficult if not impossible to find two hundred acres together in the whole territory which would make a bad farm. The black ash swales make the best ground for hemp, after two or three crops of which the ground will be made more fit for the raising of wheat. The rich meadows by the sides of the rivers are ready without further preparation for tobacco, hemp and flax. The lower meadows and meadows adjacent to the beaver dams, which are abundant, produce at this moment enormous quantities of natural hay and grass, and the rest of the land for the production of potatoes, Indian corn, wheat and other grain is at least equal, if not superior, to any other land in the Canadas.”

“The sugar maple is the principal growth and the size and height which it attains sufficiently evince the strength and power of the soil. Next to this comes beech, elm, basswood in various proportions; in some instances beech and elm predominate over the maple, but this is rare. Near the streams the hemlock is found, and interspersed through the whole is the cherry, butternut, the different species of oak and the birch.”

Another early visitor, MacTaggart, was of the same opinion. “The Huron Tract has within its limits one considerable river at the mouth of which is a good harbour, another river which may probably be rendered navigable, numerous creeks and streamlets, many of which are large enough and have fall sufficient to drive mills or machinery of any description. The climate is known to be temperate, and compared with that of England it may be described as warm for at least nine months of the year. The climate increases in warmth with the destruction of the forest and the cultivation of the soil.” Others also had good reports. “Not a better tract of land if there is any equal in the Province of Upper Canada. The soil is a black loam sometimes with a proportion of sand; there are very few stones except in the beds of rivers and creeks and that principally limestone.” “There is great advantage,” continues MacTaggart, “in that there are no clergy reserves. Lake Huron and the rivers abound in excellent fish. Sturgeon are found in the rivers generally, and a species of excellent trout sometimes weighing 40 or 50 pounds is found in the lake. Whitefish, black bass, pickerel and various other species of fish . . . at the mouth of the Maitland in June last (1827), the exploring party found fish in such abundance that in one day a man could spear enough to fill a pork barrel. Salt springs are common in the Huron Territory. … In a few years Lake Huron will be made to communicate with the Grand River (the Ottawa), and thus an open and direct course obtained to the ocean.” Such were the first impressions of the Huron Tract, impressions in essence justified by a century of development in one of the best agricultural areas of the province of Ontario.