John Graves Simcoe
John Graves Simcoe (
February 25,
1752 –
October 26,
1806) was the first
lieutenant governor of
Upper Canada (modern-day southern
Ontario plus the shoreline of
Georgian Bay and
Lake Superior) from
1791-
1796. He founded
York (now
Toronto) and was instrumental in introducing
British institutions such as the
courts,
trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure, and for abolishing
slavery in Upper Canada long before it was abolished in the
British Empire as a whole (it had disappeared from Upper Canada by
1810, but wasn't abolished throughout the Empire until
1834).
Simcoe was born in
Cotterstock,
Northamptonshire,
England to Captain John and Katherine Simcoe. He was named for both his father, and for his god-father, Admiral Sir
Thomas Graves.
In
1770, after graduating from
Eton College and
Oxford, he entered the
British army as the son of the captain of the royal marine. He obtained a commission in the
35th Regiment of Foot, and was sent to
Boston to fight in the
American Revolution. He purchased a majority in the
40th Regiment of Foot, but then in
1777 was made
commanding officer of the
1st American Regiment (the Queen's Rangers) of loyalist volunteers. Simcoe was one of the army's most successful commanders during this war. He achieved the rank of
lieutenant-colonel and was wounded three times before being captured in
1779. He returned to Britain two years later.
Prior to being posted to
Canada, Simcoe was elected as a
British MP for St. Mawes in Cornwall from
1790 to
1791.
The
Province of Upper Canada was created under the
Constitutional Act of 1791. This law stipulated that the provincial government would consist of the Lieutenant-Governor, an appointed Executive Council and Legislative Council and an elected Legislative Assembly. Simcoe was selected as the Lieutenant-Governor, and made plans to move to Upper Canada with his wife
Elizabeth and daughter Sophia, leaving three other daughters behind with their aunt. They left England in September and arrived on
November 11. This was too late in the year to make the trip to Upper Canada and the Simcoes spent the winter in
Quebec City. The next spring they moved to
Kingston and then Newark (now
Niagara-on-the-Lake).
Simcoe's first priority was to establish a provincial government. The first meeting of the nine-member
Legislative Council and sixteen-member
Legislative Assembly took place at Newark on
September 17,
1792.
Simcoe soon realized that Newark made an unsuitable capital because it was right on the US border and subject to attack. He proposed moving the capital to a more defensible position in the middle of Upper Canada's southwestern peninsula between
Lake Erie and
Lake Huron. He named the new location
London and renamed the river as the
Thames in anticipation of the change.
The Governor-General,
Lord Dorchester, rejected this proposal but accepted Simcoe's second choice of Toronto. Simcoe moved the capital to Toronto in
1793 and renamed the location York after
Frederick, Duke of York,
George III's second son.
Simcoe started to sell strips of Canadian
land to American settlers, in the hopes that they would become
loyalists and aid Canada if there were ever a war between them and the
United States.
Simcoe's other children and descendents included:
* son Lieutenant
Francis Gwillim Simcoe (born 1801), died 1812 in Trinidad Breach at Badajoz, Spain
* Daughter
Eliza Simcoe (died 1865)
* son Reverend Henry Addington Simcoe
* grandson John K. Simcoe, R.N and son of Henry Addington Simcoe
As a military-minded leader , one of Simcoe's major works after founding York was the construction of several roads connecting York to various larger towns in Upper Canada. The Kingston Road runs along the north shore of
Lake Ontario to
Kingston about 260 km to the east. The
Dundas Road, named after Simcoe's friend
Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, starts on the Lake Ontario shoreline running northwest, but soon bends westward to
its namesake near
Hamilton. Simcoe planned to continue it to London, where he had wanted to form the capital of Upper Canada. His most notable bit of road building remains
Yonge Street, running from the shoreline in the middle of York directly north until it reaches
Lake Simcoe (then known as Lake Toronto). Built by the newly reformed
Queen's Rangers between
1793 and
1796, the road was extended several times to eventually develop into the world's longest street, at some 1,896 km. Although military in nature, these roads were more influential in trade and settlement, opening wide areas of southern Ontario to easy travel and dramatically increasing settlement rates.
Simcoe's most notable achievement was the limitation of
slavery. Initially, Simcoe proposed the outright abolition of slavery, but the Legislative Assembly opposed this because many
Loyalists brought slaves with them to Upper Canada after the American Revolution. As a compromise, Simcoe passed legislation that allowed for gradual abolition: no new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, and children born to female slaves would be freed at age 25. This effectively ended all slavery in
1810. The act remained in force until
1833 when the
Emancipation Act abolished slavery in all British holdings.
In July
1796 poor health forced Simcoe to return to Britain. He was unable to return to Upper Canada and resigned his office in
1798. He later served briefly as governor of St. Domingo (
Haiti) and commander of the Western District in Britain. In
1806, he was appointed commander-in-chief of
India but died in
Exeter before assuming that post. A plaque placed by the
Ontario Heritage Foundation in
Exeter's cathedral precinct commemorates his life. He was buried in Wolford Chapel on the Simcoe family estate near
Honiton,
Devon. The Ontario Heritage Foundation acquired title to the
chapel in
1982.
The town of
Simcoe in southwestern Ontario and
Simcoe County to the west and north of Lake Simcoe are named for him (
Lake Simcoe itself was named by John Graves Simcoe for his father). A provincial holiday held on the first Monday in August is known as
Simcoe Day in Toronto [
1]. Simcoe's regiment still exists as the
Queen's York Rangers, an armoured reconnaissance regiment of the
Canadian Forces reserves. A school in
St. Catharines, Ontario, Governor Simcoe Secondary School, was also named after him. Simcoe Street and Simcoe Place (office tower) in
Toronto are both located near the fort where Simcoe lived during his early year in York.
*
Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online*
Ontario Plaques - Lieutenant-General John Graves Simcoe 1752-1806
