In founding The Globe newspaper in Toronto in 1844, George Brown gave the ambitious Upper Canadian capital its first rotary printing press and, later, its first steam-powered press. These were weapons in his crusade for freedom of religion and political reform, and against annexation by the United States as well as a common bugbear of the 19th century: Roman Catholic “influence.”
But though in many ways a divisive figure, Brown became a bridge builder. He united Upper Canadian reform factions around the rallying cry of “rep by pop” (representation by population), cobbled together the beginnings of a Liberal Party, and worked for a wider Confederation of the British American provinces.
Brown’s rough edges were smoothed by a love-match at the ripe age of 43 with Anne Nelson, herself a slightly over-eligible 35. Anne was well-read, the daughter of an Edinburgh publisher, had attended schools in Europe, spoke French and German, and had done the Grand Tour. Her two brothers, William and Thomas, ran Thomas Nelson & Sons, the publishing house founded by their father in 1798. They also happened to be George’s former schoolmates.
Having lost money during the 1857 depression in Canada, Brown then endured several bad years. By 1861, he was working so hard that he was bedridden for two months. He decided on a restorative trip home, his first in 25 years. He spent much of July 1862 in London. Then in August, travelling to Edinburgh by train, he was one of the first passengers to catch the Flying Scotsman from King’s Cross, a new 10.5-hour service just launched that summer.
Catching up with the Nelsons, Brown met his true love. He was soon invited to join the family holiday on the Isle of Arran. Their courtship blossomed and after the holiday, Brown proposed to her. According to the biography by J.M.S. Careless, “Brown of the Globe,” Anne accepted his proposal during a dramatic twilight coastal walk on the Firth of Clyde near Greenock. They were married at Abden House in Edinburgh on Nov. 27.
Returning to Canada, Brown was a man transfigured and soon rebuilt his fortune. The marriage was a success, and they had two daughters and a son.
Brown had always been less happy with the political marriage between Upper and Lower Canada. He picked up where he left off, denouncing the Tories as well as the more radical Reform elements known as “Clear Grits,” so called because, influenced by the Puritan tradition, they asserted greater political virtue over their less-pure rivals. Hence they were “all sand and no dirt, clear grit all the way through.” The Grits tended to be anti-Catholic, anti-French, and pro-American; even supporting the annexation of Canada to the United States. Brown disagreed with that, but he gradually brought the factions under his influence and cobbled together what became the Liberal Party of Canada.
Hon. George Brown (1818–1880) newspaperman, politician, and one of the fathers of Confederation. Public Domain
The rallying cry was “rep by pop.” To understand this, we must remember that the Province of Canada was a shotgun wedding between Lower and Upper Canada, forced by the British government in 1840–41. The two halves were quite unequal. Lower Canadians had a native-born population of 670,000, an established culture already two centuries old, and an elected French- and Catholic-majority assembly, with a good measure of self-governance since 1791. But they were forced into a union with the anglophone western farmer frontier of Upper Canada, population 480,000, riven by Protestant sects, with a leavening of American ideas and a unique set of internal factions and conflicts.
And yet the two halves—officially Canada East and Canada West—were given an equal number of seats in a combined Assembly. “Everyone knows,” said George Cartier, “that the union of the two provinces was imposed on Lower Canada, who did not desire it at any price.” In contrast, Upper Canadians were delighted with their newfound equality—at first.
By the 1850s, however, as high numbers of British immigrants poured into Upper Canada, their population outstripped that of Lower Canada. And so Upper Canadians were less and less happy with electoral equality, especially since French Canadian politicians were better at coalition-building and, by working with Upper Canadian Tories and moderates, always managed to come out on top.
Hence, cries of “French Domination,” added to the Grits’ and farmers’ anti-Catholic mix, denouncing “priestcraft” and “state churchism” (which referred to the Tory idea of state schooling for Catholics as well as Protestants), was to Reformers “the entering wedge” of corruption and undue influence.
Brown’s solution was that the number of assembly seats should not be equal anymore but should be based on population size, or “rep by pop.” Upper Canadians would then have the preponderant influence to which they felt entitled.
Upper Canada tended to be more divided while Lower Canada was relatively unified, and so the Reform-minded Upper Canadians continued to feel aggrieved.
Brown was not altogether a bigot and had previously reached out to Reform’s French counterparts, the Rouges, who were also drawn to American ideas of democracy. However, when negotiating with their leader Antoine-Aimé Dorion in 1858, Brown came up with the idea of “a federal union with provincial rights guaranteed,” later adopted in Confederation.
Brown’s next crusade, in part to overcome the appeal of American annexation, was for a wider East–West federation with the Maritime provinces and Western expansion towards British Columbia. That would also ensure an English-speaking majority, dominated by Upper Canada, with provincial rights and an appointed regionally based Senate to assuage the French Canadians.
Under Anne’s positive influence, Brown worked with men of other parties and provinces in the negotiation of a federal union from 1864 to 1866. In June 1864, he famously shook hands with John A. Macdonald, a rising Conservative member three years his senior but less influential at that stage, “in the centre of the Assembly room.” On the margins of the discussions, Macdonald paid courteous and respectful attention to Anne Brown, which historians say was a factor in clinching her husband’s support for Confederation as leader of the Upper Canadian Reformers.
At the time George was adding a new feather to his cap as a sort of “Farmer Brown.” He took up breeding and selling purebred shorthorn cattle outside Brantford on Bow Park Farm, which he established in 1866 by buying out 18 owners and amalgamating the land. (Today it operates as a seed farm owned by German immigrants.)
Brown led a mission to London in 1865 to enlist British help in securing a trade deal with the United States. At the same time, he was deeply concerned that United States whim should never have control over Canadians’ prosperity.
He began to withdraw from direct political involvement, though he continued to be influential through the newspaper.
Even so, Brown played a prominent role for Canada’s first Liberal government when Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie sent him to Washington in 1874 to secure a trade deal with the United States. The deal failed in the U.S. Senate. By 1878 he joined many other Canadians in concluding that Canada should not rely on the consistency of U.S. goodwill—and he campaigned in favour of Macdonald’s National Policy tariffs.
Brown accepted a Senate appointment in 1874, first taking his seat in 1875. But he refused the appointment of Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and declined a knighthood in 1879.
Strange to say, George Brown died of a gangrenous leg wound from a revolver bullet in 1880. The shot was fired by an employee of the newspaper who had been fired for excessive drinking and appeared at Brown’s office. In the struggle, Brown managed to force the barrel downward, so that the bullet missed his groin but entered his left leg. He still managed to pin the man against the wall until help came.
Brown’s spirit of compromise—with both Lower and Upper Canada Conservatives and other factions of Reformers—is what enabled the Province of Canada to enter Confederation talks with the Atlantic provinces. Lord Monck, the first Governor General of Canada, in 1878 referred to Brown as “the man whose conduct in 1864 had rendered the Union feasible.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
C.P. Champion
Author
C.P. Champion, Ph.D., is the author of two books, was a fellow of the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen's University in 2021, and edits The Dorchester Review magazine, which he founded in 2011.
