Читать книгу Reminiscences of a Raconteur, Between the '40s and the '20s - George H. Ham - Страница 11

Table of Contents

A Momentous Election—Meeting Archie McKellar—Go

on the Turf—A Sailor Bold—A Close

Shave—Stories of Pets—An Exaggerated

Report—Following Horace Greeley’s

Advice—And Grow Up with the

Country.

A momentous election was that in South Ontario in 1867—the first one held after the Confederation of Canada had been consummated.

Hon. George Brown, of the Globe, the leader of the Reform party, was standing. The riding had always been staunchly Reform and had returned Oliver Mowat and other Reformers by sweeping majorities. In an election two years previously Hon. T. N. Gibbs, of Oshawa, the Independent Liberal candidate, had joined hands with Sir John Macdonald, whose coalition with Hon. George Brown had not been long-lived, and won. This election was to be a test one, and upon its result depended whether the new Canada should be under Liberal-Conservative or Reform rule. There was open voting in those days, and two days’ polling, it being generally conceded that the candidate who headed the poll on the first day would be the winner. Meetings were held nightly throughout the riding, and the greatest excitement prevailed during the campaign. I was too young to have a vote then, but I had a good deal to say. There were others. Canvassing of votes was kept up continuously and large sums of money were expended. It was necessary in a good many cases to pay men to vote for their own party. On the night of the first day’s polling, I was with Jimmy Cook, then of Robertson & Cook, of the Toronto Telegraph, who was a practical telegrapher. The returns, as Mr. Brown figured them out, gave him a majority of 11, with one poll to hear from. Complete returns, as Jimmy Cook got them, gave Brown a majority of one. But while that was practically an even break, the Reformers were in great glee, and while they were celebrating the Liberal-Conservatives got down to work and arranged for relays of teams to bring the distant voters the next day to the polls. At three o’clock next afternoon the Union Jack went up in front of Jake Bryan’s Tory Hotel—there were Grit and Tory hotels then—and at the close of the poll Gibbs had a majority of 69.

Mr. Brown started for his Toronto home on the following afternoon train, and while at the Whitby station walked up and down the platform with a friend. A man named Jago, an employee of the railway, who had had a serious personal difference with the defeated candidate, was in the waiting room, and on Mr. Brown passing the door, he would stick his head out and tauntingly shout:

“You got licked, Mr. Brown, you got licked.”

Brown kept walking and Jago kept on taunting him upon his defeat. This at last so exasperated the Honorable George, that he made a dash for Jago and grabbed him by the lapels of the coat. But just then the train came in, friends interfered, the conductor shouted, “All aboard” and Mr. Brown was hurried to his coach. It was, of course, reported all over the country that Brown had assaulted the man and grievously injured him, which wasn’t true.

The country gave Sir John Macdonald a majority of only 20; many of us wondered what would have been the result if Mr. Brown had carried South Ontario.