The Reform movement in Upper Canada was a political movement in British North America in the mid-19th century.
It started as a rudimentary grouping of loose coalitions that formed around contentious issues. Support was gained in Parliament through petitions meant to sway MPs. However, organized Reform activity emerged in the 1830s when Reformers, like Robert Randal, Jesse Ketchum, Peter Perry, Marshall Spring Bidwell, and William Warren Baldwin, began to emulate the organizational forms of the British Reform Movement and organized Political Unions under the leadership of William Lyon Mackenzie. The British Political Unions had successfully petitioned for the Great Reform Act 1832 that eliminated much political corruption in the British parliamentary system. Those who adopted these new forms of public mobilization for democratic reform in Upper Canada were inspired by the more radical Owenite Socialists who led the British Chartist and Mechanics Institute movements.
Early organized reform activity in Upper Canada
Organized collective reform activity began with Robert Fleming Gourlay (pronounced "gore-lay"). Gourlay was a well-connected Scottish emigrant who arrived in 1817, hoping to encourage "assisted emigration" of the poor from Britain. He solicited information on the colony through township questionnaires, and soon became a critic of government mismanagement. When the local legislature ignored his call for an inquiry, he called for a petition to the British Parliament. He organized township meetings, and a provincial convention - which the government considered dangerous and seditious. Gourlay was tried in December 1818 under the 1804 Sedition Act and jailed for 8 months. He was banished from the province in August 1819. His expulsion made him a martyr in the reform community.
A loose committee of the "Friends of Religious Liberty" composed of William Lyon Mackenzie, Jesse Ketchum, Egerton Ryerson, Joseph Shepard and nineteen others, chaired by William Warren Baldwin (who was one of only 3 Anglicans) circulated a petition against an "Established Church" in the province. It gained 10,000 signatures by the time it was sent to the British Parliament in March 1831. The petition gained little due to direct intervention by the Church of England.
By mid-1831, the leaders of the reform faction in the House of Assembly such as Rolph and the Baldwins were discouraged and withdrew from politics. At this point, William Lyon Mackenzie organized a "General Committee on the State of the Province" which organized the first truly provincial petitioning campaign to protest a whole series of ills. Although 10,000 signatures were obtained the only real gain was to organize the reformers in the province.
Mackenzie's organizational efforts made him many enemies in the House of Assembly. When the House reconvened, Mackenzie was unjustly expelled. Over the next two years, Mackenzie was re-elected only to be expelled a total of five times. As demonstrations in support of Mackenzie were increasingly met with violence by Orangemen, he travelled to England to personally present his appeal in March 1832. Mackenzie's trip to England was to prove inspirational, as he was exposed to the power of the British form of reform activity, the Political Unions, in the run-up to the passage of the Reform Act 1832.
British Reform Movement
Upper Canadians saw themselves as citizens of Great Britain with all the rights granted by the British Constitution. It is no surprise then, that the Upper Canadian Reform Movement should adopt the organizational forms of the British Reform Movement.
Political unions and the Reform Act 1832
During the late 1820s, large scale, national petitioning campaigns were organized through a new form of organization, the "Political Union". One of the first and largest was the Birmingham Political Union founded in 1830. Its stated aim was to campaign for electoral reform of the House of Commons, "to be achieved by a general political union of the lower and middle classes of the people". Other more radical Political Unions, like the "Metropolitan Political Union" had their roots in Owenite socialism.
The London-based "Metropolitan Political Union" was formed by members of the London Radical Reform Organization, including Henry Hunt, Henry Hetherington, William Lovett, Daniel O'Connell and William Gast. The MPU was radically democratic, and depended upon its members' input to function. It not only advocated parliamentary reform, but embodied these reforms in the way in which it was organized; it was committed to universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and vote by ballot, all eventually incorporated in the Chartist platform.
The Representation of the People Act 1832 (commonly known as the Reform Act 1832 or sometimes as the Great Reform Act) was an act of Parliament (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 45) that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. William Lyon Mackenzie was in London appealing his expulsion from the Upper Canadian Legislative Assembly to the Colonial Office at the time, and was present in the galleries of the British Parliament for the debate on the Reform Act 1832. Seeing the effectiveness of the political unions in the United Kingdom, Mackenzie recommended their adoption in Upper Canada.
National Union of the Working Classes and the Coldbath-fields National Convention
Disappointment about the refusal to include the working classes in the Great Reform Act 1832 led to a more protracted campaign for universal suffrage (known as Chartism) by the radical political unions. The London-based, Owenite inspired National Union of the Working Classes was founded in 1831 by former members of the Metropolitan Political Union. They organized a constitutional convention at Coldbath-Fields to challenge the British parliament in the spring of 1833. They called for adult male suffrage, the secret ballot, annual elections, equally sized electoral districts, as well as for salaries and the elimination of property qualifications for members of parliament. The government prohibited the meeting, and sent 1,800 police against a crowd of 3,000 or 4,000, leading to a general riot. Mackenzie was no doubt aware of the riot as he was living a ten-minute walk away, and news of the riot was published back in Upper Canada by his newspaper, the Colonial Advocate.
Atlantic Revolution and Chartism
The membership of the NUWC was later integrated into the London Working Men's Association, an organization established in London in 1836, that led the Chartist movement. The founders were William Lovett, Francis Place and Henry Hetherington. They were associated with Owenite socialism and the movement for general education. They published a People's Charter on 8 May 1838 calling for universal suffrage. The London Working Men's Association was aware of the unrest in the Canadas in early 1837, and themselves petitioned the British Parliament after a public meeting to protest the "base proposals of the Whigs to destroy the principle of Universal Suffrage in the Canadas". To implement the Chartist plan, they called a series of mass meetings across the country in the summer of 1838 to select delegates to a "General Convention of the Industrious Classes". After the General Convention of the Industrious Classes met in May 1839, their Charter petition was rejected by Parliament. This rejection led to the Newport Uprising of 1839 in Wales, suppressed by Sir Francis Bond Head's cousin, Sir Edmund Walker Head. Rather than view each rebellion in isolation, the Newport Rising (1839), the two Canadian Rebellions (1837–38) and the subsequent American Patriot War (1838–39) can be seen to share a similar republican impetus. They should all be viewed in the context of the late-18th- and early-19th-century Atlantic revolutions that took their inspiration from the republicanism of the American Revolution.
Political Union Movement in Upper Canada
Upper Canada Central Political Union
The Upper Canada Central Political Union was organized in 1832–33 by Thomas David Morrison while William Lyon Mackenzie was in England. Although inspired by British examples, the Upper Canada Central Political Union was more radical than most reform organizations of the period. The goals proposed by Thomas Morrison at the York election hustings in late 1832 mirrored those of the Metropolitan Political Union, and the Owenite National Union of the Working Classes. The Union's objects began with the usual invocation of Upper Canada having been "singularly blessed with a Constitution the very image and transcript of that of Great Britain" but continued with a list of the ways in which that constitution had been abridged before concluding on a radical democratic note. It was not an electoral organization per se, but, like its British model, a voluntary political organization devoted towards electoral reform. It, like its successor, the Canadian Alliance Society, was formed immediately after an election, not before, since their aim was to influence the legislature rather than elect candidates. This union collected 19,930 signatures by May 1833 on a petition protesting Mackenzie's unjust expulsion from the House of Assembly by the Family Compact. It dissolved shortly thereafter.
Children of Peace and the Grand Convention of Delegates
In the absence of Mackenzie, the village of Hope (now Sharon), founded by the Children of Peace, a branch of Quakerism, became the new focus of reform activity. They were leaders in the new Fourth Riding of York (a part of the riding that had continued to re-elect Mackenzie over the years). A member of the group, Samuel Hughes, the president of Canada's first farmers' cooperative (the Farmers' Storehouse), established a "committee of vigilance" to nominate an "independent member" for the Assembly in June 1832. Half the committee were members of the Children of Peace, including the leader of the Children of Peace, David Willson. The group also included Randal Wixson, the editor of the Colonial Advocate in Mackenzie's absence.
Mackenzie returned to Toronto from his London journey in the last week of August, 1833, to find his appeals to the British Parliament had been ultimately ineffective. At an emergency meeting of Reformers, David Willson proposed extending the nomination process for members of the House of Assembly they had begun in Hope to all four Ridings of York, and to establish a "General Convention of Delegates" from each riding in which to establish a common political platform. This convention could then become the core of a "permanent convention" or political party – an innovation not yet seen in Upper Canada. The organization of this convention was a model for the "Constitutional Convention" Mackenzie organized for the Rebellion of 1837, where many of the same delegates were to attend.
The Convention was held on 27 February 1834 with delegates from all four of the York ridings. The week before, Mackenzie published Willson's call for a "standing convention" (political party). The day of the convention, the Children of Peace led a "Grand Procession" with their choir and band (the first civilian band in the province) to the Old Court House where the convention was held. David Willson was the main speaker before the convention and "he addressed the meeting with great force and effect". The convention nominated 4 Reform candidates, all of whom were ultimately successful in the election. The convention stopped short, however, of establishing a political party. Instead, they formed yet another Political Union.
Shepard's Hall