William Lyon Mackenzie

William Lyon Mackenzie (born March 12, 1795, Springfield, Angus, Scot.—died Aug. 28, 1861, Toronto) was a Scottish-born journalist and political agitator who led an unsuccessful revolt against the Canadian government in 1837.

Mackenzie emigrated from Scotland to Canada in 1820 and became a general merchant. Responding to the discontent in Upper Canada (now part of Ontario), he became involved in politics. In 1824 he founded a newspaper in Queenston, the Colonial Advocate, in which he criticized the ruling oligarchy. Later that year he moved to York (as of 1834, Toronto); there his newspaper office was sabotaged by political opponents, but, with the damages awarded, he set up an improved plant and became leader of the radical wing of the province. Elected as a member of the provincial Parliament for York in 1828, he was expelled six times by the Tory majority, mainly because of fierce invectives against the Tories in his newspaper, only to be returned each time by the York electors. He visited England in 1832; well received by the colonial office, he caused the dismissal of several officers in Canada. While in England he wrote Sketches of Canada and the United States, stating Canadian grievances. In 1835 he was returned to the provincial Canadian Parliament in a reform administration. A report by Mackenzie’s committee on grievances exposed the inadequacies of colonial rule and caused the British government to recall the current governor, but the new governor was the even more autocratic Sir Francis Bond Head. Mackenzie was elected mayor of the new city of Toronto in 1835; but he lost his parliamentary seat in 1836, along with other prominent reformers accused of disloyalty.

Mackenzie then began seriously to consider rebellion, and he founded a more radical news paper, the Constitution, in which he supported ideas of Jacksonian democracy (the policies of U.S. President Andrew Jackson). As corresponding secretary for the extreme wing of the Reform Party, he communicated with Louis Joseph Papineau in Lower Canada (now in Quebec), who was already planning rebellion. An economic depression in 1837 brought many newcomers to Mackenzie’s rural meetings; that December he assembled 800 followers near Toronto and planned to seize the governor and set up a provisional government. Inadequate organization and control resulted in failure, however, and Mackenzie escaped to the United States. When an attempt to rally his forces on Navy Island in the Niagara River collapsed, Mackenzie was charged by the United States with breaking neutrality laws and was imprisoned for 11 months. While serving time in a Rochester, N.Y., prison, he wrote The Caroline Almanack, expressing his disillusionment with U.S. politics.

Mackenzie was pardoned and allowed to reenter Canada in 1849. In 1851 he was elected to Parliament for Haldimand. Allied to the Radicals, he maintained his position of extreme independence and incorruptibility, refusing several government positions. He opposed the development of large-scale corporations and clung to the ideal of an agrarian democracy and small-scale industrialism. He was forced to resign in 1858 because of illness. After his death he became a symbol of Canadian radicalism.