Village Squire, 1979-04, Page 31Canada Company History
well worth the wait
REVIEWED BY KEITH ROULSTON
The appearance of The Canada
Company. the history of the organization
that was responsible for the settlement of
most of Western Ontario has been long
awaited, but it's been worth the wait.
The main portion of the book is by
Stratford writer Thelma Coleman with
additional chapters at the end of the book
by James Anderson. archivist with the
Perth County Archives. The book was
intended to mark the 150th anniversary of
the survey of the Huron Road from Guelph
to Stratford to Goderich but it didn't make
it to the bookstores until early in March.
The book was published by Cumming
Publishers, Stratford with the support of
the County of Perth and the Perth County
Historical Board.
The point has been made many times
over that Canadian history is dull but in
fact the real problem has been that our
history writers are dull. Thankfully with
The Canada Company we don't have that
problem. In his forward Mr. Anderson says
that the book is not intended to be a
definitive work but an introduction to the
history of the Canada Company and it
proves a good introduction because it
makes anyone with even the least interest
in our history. want to read more. The
writer has written a popular history, not
one of those overly -scholarly tracts that
make one fall asleep after three
paragraphs. The writing style is informal,
with touches of humour here and there.
It's a story that shouldn't be dull. It has
many elements of drama: high finance,
political intrigue, victory over immense
hardships. even open warfare. There are
good guys and bad guys.
The story begins in Britain following the
Napoleonic War which had torn Europe to
shreds. As a side effect it had also brought
hardships to early Canadians because the
Americans, seeking to strike back at
Britain for its interference with shipping,
had attacked Canada. It was a half-hearted
war with many Americans being opposed
to it and many of the Canadians, fairly
recently arrived from the U.S. themselves,
being reluctant to take up arms or even
inviting annexation to the U.S. Still, it was
this at times farcical war that led indirectly
to the founding of The Canada Company.
After the war Canadians who had suffered
losses to their towns and farms from a war
they had done nothing to bring on, sought
compensation for their losses from the
British government. They took on as the
agent to get them their reparations, a
Scotsman named John Galt. Galt became
interested in Canada through this contact
and in his battle to win money for his
clients eventually persuaded the Crown to
sell off its crown reserves to raise money to
pay for the war losses. The Canada
Company, made up of wealthy Britains was
to buy the reserves, bring settlers to them
and thus serve the double task of bringing
in the money for the war losses and bring
new settlers to the land.
Galt, the man who had the dream, was to
find both happiness and disappointment
through the venture. He came to Canada as
superintendent of the company and
assembled some of the giants of our history
around him. Dr. William "Tiger" Dunlop
was the Warden of the Forests for the
company. Col. Anthony Van Egmond, the
old Belgian soldier who became a fast
friend of Galt, helped build the taverns
along the first narrow Huron Road, and
later took on the contract for widening the
road. Galt, by this account, was a kindly,
compassionate man who sought to help the
settlers, whether they had money or not.
But the fact that this was a company
designed to make money, not be
compassionate to the homeless, and the
fact that thousands of miles separated the
men in England who had invested the
money and felt they should make the
decisions, and this new wild land where the
British gentlemen could hardly understand
the circumstance, these things conspired to
make the governors of the company think
that Galt wasn't doing his job properly. He
was taken home to Britain and relieved of
his job. His stay in Canada was actually
quite brief, but he had a huge impact on
our history.
The Company was granted more than a
million acres of land in Perth and Huron
counties, around Guelph and south into the
northern part of Middlesex and Lambton
counties. It was a million acres of primeval
forest that had to be cleared of trees by
men with little but axes, men who had
never even used such tool before. It was a
task comparable to the building of the
pyramids in many ways. The immensity of
this task can be seen in the writer's account
of the building of the first 12 -foot wide
sleigh road along what was to be the Huron
Road, the present Highway 8.
"The trees were so tall the forest was
eternally dark and with the constant rains
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