The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
Last week’s column concluded with the unseating of Charles Allan as MP for Wellington North.
A committee of the legislature had found him guilty of bribery and coercion in connection with a hospitality room at Black’s Tavern in Garafraxa in the election of December 1857.
Nominations were called for Aug. 3, 1858, with the vote to follow on Aug. 13 and 14. As a freshman MP, Charles Allan’s first months were unremarkable, other than a couple of evenings in the parliamentary saloon. Members from all factions cheered as Allan demonstrated the Highland Fling. Though sitting with the opposition, his middle-of-the-road political notions allowed him to be on amicable terms with John A. Macdonald’s cabinet. With his effusive, outgoing personality he made friends quickly.
During the 1857 election, the only issue on which Allan had voiced strong opinions was his unqualified endorsement of Orangeism (the Orange Lodge was an anti-Catholic organization).
Consequently, the folks back home expressed surprise when he was reported demolishing an ample meal in a Toronto Hotel with Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the leader of the liberal Catholics. McGee had been exiled from Ireland in his youth as a fighter for an independent Ireland. An air of disloyalty and republicanism still surrounded him.
McGee and George Brown, leader of the Clear Grit radical liberals, were putting together a coalition that included English-speaking and French-speaking MPs, and thus both Catholics and Protestants. Allan soon announced his full support of Brown and McGee. It was all too much for the Orangemen who had worked so hard to elect Allan the previous December. He had to be stopped.
Less than a week after Allan had been unseated, George L. Allen of Toronto, Grand Master of the Orange Order in Canada, announced that he would contest the Wellington North seat. The electors were spared a confusing contest of Allan vs. Allen. George Allen was the governor of the York County jail. Fearing that he would cause embarrassment and no end of trouble, the Macdonald government pressured Allen to withdraw. He did so on July 26.
The following day, Orange Order officials from across Wellington met with the national officers in a closed meeting at the St. Andrew’s Hotel in Fergus. When they emerged from the meeting, the Orangemen presented Nassau C. Gowan as their candidate to oppose Charles Allan. Gowan was Grand Secretary of the Orange Order in Canada, and son of Ogle Gowan, founder of Orangeism in Canada.
At the conclusion of the Fergus meeting, both Gowan and Charles Allan addressed the crowd that had been milling about all day. It was a brave stand for Allan, who dodged missiles as he spoke. The mob constantly interrupted with chants of “Traitor!” Badly split on the religious issue, the Conservatives neither officially endorsed Gowan nor entered a candidate of their own. Backed by a well-filled campaign chest, Gowan embarked on a tour of the riding in the last days of July.
No one was in a good mood. The economy was in wretched shape, with falling commodity prices following the inflationary period of the Crimean War. The immediate future looked very bleak. Weevils and rust promised to wipe out most of the grain crop in Wellington.
Gowan encountered angry mobs everywhere, and in Elora a crowd of drunken rowdies broke up his meeting. Gowan and Allan returned to Fergus for the nomination meeting on Aug. 3. As he had the previous December, Reeve James Ross of Nichol nominated Allan. He delivered a long speech, minimizing the seriousness of the charges against Allan and outlining his qualifications to represent Wellington North. Allan and his associates had brought a large crowd of supporters, but had difficulty keeping them orderly.
Following the nomination speeches, the candidates spoke. Allan was on his feet less than a minute, stating that Ross had left him nothing to say. He thanked his supporters and sat down.
A wheezing gas bag on the platform, Gowan soon had the crowd in a restive spirit. Then he started to sprinkle his oration with Latin phrases. “We want none of your Latin here, we don’t understand it,” shouted a farmer from the rear of the crowd. Gowan won no friends with his reply: “When I quoted Latin, I spoke to educated men, not to you, Sir,” he sneered back.
Mercifully, only 10 days separated the nomination meeting from polling day. Nassau Gowan brought in at least a dozen agents from Toronto and elsewhere – all prominent Orangemen – to conduct his campaign through the townships. They appealed to Protestant loyalties, and denounced Allan as a traitor to the cause. Gowan claimed that Allan, after his conviction for electoral corruption, could not legally run again, and that in any case he was an embarrassment to the riding.
Allan’s campaign workers, as in 1857, came largely from Elora and Pilkington. He portrayed himself as the victim of a packed tribunal, and poured out a torrent of abuse on Gowan as an interloper in the riding and as a rabid extremist. He defended his role as a supporter of Brown and McGee.
Local newspapers toned down their attacks somewhat from the previous year. The Fergus Constitution, for example, was content to point out that Allan’s inner circle included an ex-convict and a defrocked minister, and that he was “a passive tool of George Brown.”
The election days, Aug. 13 and 14, brought fresh rounds of violence, particularly in Peel and Maryborough. Rowdies attempted to disrupt the voting in Peel. In Maryborough the poll clerk swore in 12 special constables to help keep order. An incident in Elora received publicity across the country, and resulted in a charge of attempted homicide.
Nassau Gowan brought in his brother-in-law, Thomas Ferguson, to direct his campaign in Maryborough Township. Some of Allan’s workers found Ferguson exceptionally objectionable, and vowed that they would not let him into the village if he turned up there.
On the evening of Aug. 14 an unruly mob of more than 100, many the worse for liquor, greeted Ferguson’s carriage as it returned from the north. They closed in and some climbed aboard. Alarmed at the situation, Ferguson produced a pistol and brandished it at the crowd. After much foul language and jostling, Ferguson made his escape.
One of the mob, Andrew Gordon, the Elora harness maker, immediately filed charges that Ferguson had pointed the gun at him and threatened to shoot. Ferguson was subsequently arrested, brought before the local magistrates and acquitted.
The episode, reported variously as “the Elora outrage” and “the Ferguson shooting affair,” occupied the press of Guelph and Toronto for the next month, and overshadowed the election results.
The voting produced a triumph for Allan. The support of moderate Conservatives more than doubled his 1857 majority: he won by 1,420 votes to 901.
Gowan took only Amaranth and Garafraxa. He also had solid support in Peel and Maryborough. Allan took Elora by 136–2 and Minto by 34–1.
The attempt of the Orangemen to divide the electorate on strictly sectarian lines failed. The political influence of the Orange Order in Wellington peaked in the 1858 election. Voters voiced their preference for the moderate position Allan had come to embrace: that religion was a private matter that had no place in politics.
Continued next week.
*This column was originally published in the Advertiser on Oct. 19, 2001.
