Robert Fleming Gourlay (1778-1863)

Robert Fleming Gourlay, around 1814, drawn by his friend Sir David Wilkie

Robert Gourlay spent only two years in Canada (1817-19), but left an undeniable mark on the history of this province and the country. His dogged, albeit fruitless, efforts to reform government set in motion political developments that eventually led to a democratic government in Canada.

Gourlay, a well-educated gentleman from Fifeshire, Scotland, came to Upper Canada in early 1817, having already tried and failed to reform Britain’s moribund agricultural infrastructure. He was optimistic that the new world would welcome his forward-thinking ideas

The inhabitants of Upper Canada, almost all of them farmers, were in a state of deep dissatisfaction with the status quo. The colony’s economy had been in the doldrums since the end of the War of 1812, but the political elite, out of touch with the settlers of Upper Canada, had done little to improve the situation.

Gourlay submitted to the government several ambitious schemes to encourage British immigration and help settlers implement new agricultural methods. However, the governing class, jealously guarding its privileges and authority, refused to consider the newcomer’s petitions. In February 1818, Gourlay began to attack Lieutenant-Governor Peregrine Maitland for his inaction, and took to task Bishop John Strachan, all-powerful éminence grise of Upper Canada.

Gourlay presented his arguments for agricultural and electoral reform in a column in the Niagara Spectator. He began to organize township meetings with elected representatives to confront parliament effectively. As a pacifist, he stayed away from violence, and instead put his faith in the courts of law, whose interpretation of British law would force the government into action.

Elected representatives, township meetings, freedom of the press, and citizen petitions are now accepted as the basic elements of a citizen-led government, but in 1818 Gourlay’s proposals and tactics were revolutionary. The political elite, intent on creating a system of constitutional aristocracy parallel to that in the mother country, almost instinctively interpreted the challenge as ‘sedition’, viz. treason. Very quickly Gourlay became an enemy of the state, and his friends began to disassociate themselves from his cause.

The establishment, led by Strachan and Maitland began to harass Gourlay, and twice took him to court on the most ridiculous of charges in order to have him exiled. However, the province’s prosecutors found in Gourlay a formidable opponent. Educated at Edinburgh’s renowned law school, he was a most knowledgeable and persuasive interpreter of the law, and each time the judges ruled in Gourlay’s favour.

In the summer of 1819, however, Gourlay was found guilty of ‘organizing seditious meetings’, and sentenced to be exiled. In the months preceding the final trial, the government conjured up legislation designed solely to get at Gourlay. It suppressed freedom of the press, and allowed dubious individuals to bring forth charges and evidence. The usually superbly eloquent Gourlay was so exhausted and traumatized by the treatment he had received in prison that he was unable to defend himself. By all appearances, the court was unduly influenced by the executive powers, and the verdict based on dubious interpretation of British law.

In the years following his departure Gourlay lived in the United States, then moved back to Britain. He revisited Upper Canada briefly in 1856, but finally returned to Edinburgh, where he died in 1863.

Gourlay was among the first to envision a province governed by all of its (male) inhabitants, not by a political elite. In many ways, he was the country’s first agent of democracy, at a time when the very word ‘democracy’ could not be uttered in respectable company.

It took the vision, and sometimes personal sacrifice of people such as Gourlay for us to enjoy rights and privileges. We can serve their memory best by not taking our democratic institutions for granted, and by ensuring that our voices as citizens, neighbours, and working people continue to be heard.

Courtesy illustration