After Queenston: Schooner Days MCXXVII (1127)

by C. H. J. Snider

NEVER a 13th of October comes 11 and goes but we think of

"Upon the heights of Queenston

"That dark October day"—

Picture the foot of Bathurst street, Toronto, the day after Oct 13, 1812. An original blockhouse of old Fort York still stands near the east gate but the view from it has been changed beyond recognition. The lake has been pushed half a mile away, the bank and shoreline buried under buildings, pavements and traffic. Where a hundred thousand tires now spin on concrete was a roadstead whose angry waves washed the bastions of the fort.

Here tossed, that morning-after, 141 years ago, a tall black chequer-sided square rigger. A whiplash commission pendant and florid figurehead proclaimed her a Provincial Marine brig. The figure under her spearing bowsprit represented the Master of Ordnance, the Earl of Moira in England. He was flourishing a wooden parchment and getting his painted gold and scarlet and white uniform splashed by rude lake water.

The town of York, population 700, had not yet spread West of Yonge street, but this day most of its inhabitants had ploughed and plunged a mile beyond, as far as Crookshanks Lane (Bathurst street) and Fort York. Lane and fort and King's wharf there swarmed with beaver hatted men, shawled women and bewildered children. They had heard big guns and seen flashes in the clouds across the lake the night before. Flags on Gibraltar Point signaled that a vessel was coming over from Niagara.

Two hundred of the 3rd York militia, Brock's "brave York volunteers," had gone from desk and farm and fireside with the regulars and the Indians to meet threatened invasion. The flower of the old Home District of Upper Canada, including Camerons, Hewards, Robinsons, Jarvises, Stantons, Playters, Ridouts, Duggans, McLeans, Boultons, MacDonells—names yet legible with Brock's on Toronto street signs—-had joined battle with the foe above Niagara's flood.

People felt things before they knew of them, when there was no radio to dull their senses. All York was clamorous for news of kinsfolk who had been under fire.

"The Moira" wrote Dr. Scadding in Toronto of Old, "was lying off the Garrison at York when the Simcoe transport came in sight, filled with prisoners taken on Queenston Heights. We have heard the Rev. Dr. Richardson of Toronto, who at the time was sailing-master of the Moira under Captain Sampson, describe the scene.

"The approaching schooner was recognized at a distance as the Simcoe; it was a vessel owned and commanded at the moment by Dr. Richardson's father, Capt. James Richardson. The young sailing-master speedily put off in a boat from the Moira to learn the news.

"As the Simcoe anchored he was first startled with the crowded appearance of the schooner's deck, and at the unwonted guise of his father, who came to the gangway conspicuously girt with a sword.

"A great battle had been fought," he was told, "on Queenston Heights, The enemy had been beaten. The Simcoe was full of prisoners of war, to be transferred instanter to the Moira for conveyance, to Kingston. But—

"GEN. BROCK WAS KILLED!"

Not only that but young Col. John MacDonell and others of the York volunteers had been slain, and still others wounded.

Like flaming maple leaves, whose scarlet and gold had been blighted by October frost and blackened by autumn rain, matter for pride and grief, joy and sorrow, came whirling across the tossing anchorage, from ship to shore and schooner to brig, and back to the wave washed beach and windswept pier. Brock's death blacked out all.

Canada's momentary, safety had been achieved, at the cost of 16 white men and 5 red men killed, 70 British and 9 Indians wounded, heroes all. For each bayonet in their own thin, battle line fewer than a thousand fighters, less than a modern battalion, had taken at least one prisoner-two generals, 71 officers, 850 rank and file, and two boatloads of "mixed grill." They had thrown the rest of the invaders back into the racing river or into the grave, or "to beg at the town's end." Their own hundred casualties were over 10 per cent of their total strength, without counting the unlisted missing.

Brock was not only in command at Queenston and in Upper Canada. He was President and Administrator of the Province.

"Had General Brock been less prodigal of his valuable life and survived the Queenston battle," wrote James, the historian, "he would have made the 13th October a still more memorable day by crossing the river and carrying the American Fort Niagara." Be it remembered, when the war was only a month old he had already taken Detroit and Mackinac.

"The men of Lincoln county and brave York volunteers," wrote Col. Coffin, "with 'Brock!' on their lips and revenge in their hearts, had joined in the last desperate charge, And among the foremost, 'foremost ever found' was John Beverley Robinson, United Empire Loyalist, a lawyer from Toronto and none the worse for that."

He was the young Attorney General's still younger law student. He rose to the position of Chief Justice of the province and to the rank of an English baronet.

The few lawyers of little Muddy York fought well at Queenston Heights. Lt.-Col. John MacDonell, of Toronto, in his 25th year, and a brother-in-law of that "happier bride" of recent Schooner Days, Anne, Smith MacDonell was the Attorney General and also Brock's aide. He galloped up from Newark with his chief, "pushed on" the York volunteers-—Brock's last order—and died writhing under four bullet wounds, but with Brock avenged.

Generals, whether attorney or major, to make a poor pun, died with their boots on in 1812.

All the short autumn day boats passed to and fro between the Simcoe and the Moira and the Fort, sorting put prisoners for exchange, or release on parole, or sending down to Quebec. When the crescent moon hung her lantern in the early dusk the chequer-sided square-rigger shook out her dark wings, hove up her anchors, and stood out past Gibraltar Point light. That light is shining yet from the same stone lighthouse, the oldest lamp on Lake Ontario. It was the only light then on all the darkling lake, until the Moira would raise the barracks lights at Kingston.

In candle-lighted York, as in the longhouses of the Six Nations, was weeping.

"GEN. BROCK WAS KILLED!"