Toronto Local History 3-Book Bundle. Scott Kennedy
to dismiss the farmers’ concerns. In 1835, the Legislative Assembly sent William Lyon Mackenzie to London, England, bearing a petition signed by 24,500 Upper Canadians asking the King to address their concerns. Even this plea from the overwhelming majority of citizens failed to bring about any sort of change. Having done their best to play by the rules, the farmers began to believe that their only recourse lay in a much more direct form of opposition.
Many Reformers now felt that physical force was the only tool left to engage the Family Compact. In 1837, groups of militia began training at the Shepard family’s mill site near present-day Bathurst and Sheppard, and also on the Gibson farm. David Gibson was appointed controller of the military organization of the rebels. As many as two hundred men would train at a time, trying to determine the most effective ways to use their numbers and their limited weapons, which were mostly simple farm implements and the occasional musket, to launch a successful overthrow of the upper house. The men came from the immediate vicinity and from many miles away, taking precious time away from the never-ending farm work in an attempt to ensure better lives for themselves and their families. As autumn settled in on Upper Canada and the harvest drew to a close, training intensified and resolve strengthened.
Thursday, December 7, 1837, was chosen as the date the Reformers would march south on Yonge Street to engage the government’s loyalist soldiers, but as the day grew near, farmers to the north became a little over-eager. It seems that they had been told that Toronto was currently undefended, so they jumped the gun and headed south. Travelling on foot through the snow-covered countryside, 150 “soldiers” arrived at Montgomery’s Tavern on Sunday, December 3. The tavern had been selected as a staging area because of the incredibly strategic view it commanded of the surrounding countryside from its location on the hill at present-day Yonge Street and Broadway Avenue. Though hard to believe, in today’s high-rise world, it was once possible to see both Lake Ontario and the heights of the Oak Ridges Moraine from the tavern’s upper floor.
The tavern, however, only had accommodations for two-thirds of the men. The situation grew tense as the farmers, by now quite tired, cold, and hungry, were reduced to commandeering food from local Reform supporters. By Tuesday, December 5, a large group of them had grown so impatient that they grabbed their weapons and headed out on their own. Quickly defeated by the government’s superior firepower, they retreated to Montgomery’s Tavern. One rebel had been killed, allegedly by a stray bullet, but the Reformers had somehow been able to take a number of loyalist prisoners. Apparently, the zealous Reformers had caught their foes somewhat by surprise, for even as they retreated to the tavern, word came that more troops were arriving from the east and west. On Wednesday, both sides regrouped. By Thursday, it was all over.
Early Thursday morning, one thousand government soldiers advanced up Yonge Street, armed with muskets and two cannons. The three or four hundred rebels were not only severely out-gunned and out-numbered; they had also been surprised by the early morning attack. For some idea of just how ill-equipped the rebels were, one need not look any further than their leader, William Lyon Mackenzie, who wore several overcoats as he went into battle — his own personal armour. Only 150 rebels had muskets, and they stationed themselves near the fence fronting the tavern. The others, armed with pitchforks and clubs, hung back by the walls of the tavern. The encounter was brief, lasting no more than fifteen or twenty minutes.
The first cannonball ripped through the walls of an adjoining tavern, the second through the walls of the rebel stronghold. Musket fire was exchanged, and, as the unarmed rebels fled into the surrounding fields and woods, Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head ordered Montgomery’s Tavern burned to the ground, declaring that the tavern’s destruction would signal the death of “that perfidious enemy, responsible government.”[2]
The resulting fire was so intense that William Gray, who was grinding flour at his mill over five miles away, near the corner of Don Mills Road and York Mills Road, saw the burning embers of the tavern as the wind carried them over his mill. Casualties were surprisingly few — one rebel killed, eleven rebels wounded (four of whom would later die in hospital), one loyalist killed, and five loyalists wounded. David Gibson, who had been in charge of the loyalist prisoners at the tavern, had marched his prisoners north along Yonge Street to protect them from the gunfire. As government troops pursued him, he turned his prisoners loose around today’s Lawrence Park and ran for his own life.
On the direct orders of the lieutenant governor, Sir Francis Bond Head, de facto head of the Family Compact, government soldiers continued north on Yonge Street and set fire to the Gibson house and barns. Eliza fled into the winter night with her four children, leaving baby Peter Silas Gibson in a snowbank with his siblings standing guard while she ran back into the house to save some of her husband’s surveying equipment and the workings and face of a prized grandfather clock. She then found refuge in a nearby parsonage before being taken in by neighbour John Cummer. The Gibsons’ hired hands had the presence of mind to set the horses free, allowing them to flee into the woods at the west end of the farm. The pigs and chickens weren’t so lucky. The government soldiers slaughtered them all, and rode away with the carcasses.
David, meanwhile, fled southeast through the biting December cold, not stopping until he reached the safety of his cousin William Milne’s house in Milneford Mills, where Lawrence Avenue East crosses the East Don River. William was Alexander Milne’s eldest son, and, though he wasn’t running from the government troops, his brother Peter was. Peter and David were hidden in a woodpile behind the family’s sawmill until a fellow rebel came to spirit David away. The two men then headed east where David found sanctuary at a friend’s farm near Oshawa. He stayed there until mid-January of the following year, hiding himself from the government troops by burrowing his way into a haystack. Though soldiers searched the farm several times and plunged their swords into all of the haystacks, David somehow avoided detection. By now, there was a bounty on his head of £500, ironically the same amount he had been granted by the former lieutenant governor for “good behaviour,” just twelve years earlier. Peter Milne was eventually captured, but was released after his trial, on bond for good behaviour.
In mid-January 1838, David Gibson and a number of his fellow rebels, all of whom had been indicted for high treason, fled into exile in the United States, crossing Lake Ontario in a small, open boat. Landing on the other side of the lake in Rochester, New York, with little more than the clothes on his back, David found a surprisingly warm welcome, and, in short order, some employment.
Leaving her children with members of the Cummer family, Eliza made a brief journey to Rochester, bringing her husband’s tools, clothes, and £180. On the basis of his impressive credentials, and, with the assistance of an influential friend or two, David was soon working on major projects such as the expansion of the Erie Canal, where he was hired as first assistant engineer. Things went so well, in fact, that Eliza and the children soon joined him. They lived in Rochester and Lockport before David finally purchased a farm near the now-vanished village of Hickory Corners.
Back in Upper Canada, David’s elderly father, James, and half-brother, William, had left their families behind, immigrated to Canada in 1843, and moved onto the family farm to keep it going. Eliza returned every six months to take care of paperwork and any other pressing business, and would then go back to her family. The Gibsons had plenty of company in the United States during this time since more than twenty thousand people left Upper Canada over concerns with the Family Compact. Among them was Thomas Alva Edison’s father, Samuel Edison of Vienna, Ontario. He too had been charged with treason for his role in the Rebellion and had a £500 reward posted for his capture.
In 1841, the government of Upper Canada instituted many of the changes that the farmers had fought for in 1837, and most of the rebels were pardoned shortly afterwards. By the time David Gibson’s pardon came in 1843, the family was so comfortable in New York State that they paid little attention. They even applied for United States citizenship in 1846, but it was a step they would never take. Some years earlier, perhaps feeling the pull of Upper Canada once again, David Gibson did a most unusual thing. He had started to build a house by remote control.
David contracted Toronto brick-maker Henry Neal to produce 133,333 bricks from raw materials found on the Gibson farm, where a kiln was to be built for the purpose. The project, supervised by John Cummer (the man who took Eliza and the children into