William Lyon Mackenzie
(1795-1865)

William Lyon Mackenzie was born in Dundee, Scotland. After education at the parish school and working in trade, he migrated to Upper Canada in 1820. After working as a shopkeeper in a number of communities he started up the Colonial Advocate, a political journal in York (Toronto). This was a vehicle for attacks on the Family Compact, the Tory elite in the colony. In reaction to Mackenzie's broadsides his printing presses were trashed in the so-called "types riots" of June 8,1826, carried out by young supporters of the Compact including students at law in the offices of the Attorney General. The editor of the Advocate was awarded substantial damages. He became a popular hero and the leader of the radical wing of the reform movement in Upper Canada. His rhetoric was powerful reflecting the influence of American institutions, and of a social compact theory close to that of John Locke.

In 1826 Mackenzie was elected to the Legislative Assembly for York and took an active role in its work. He was expelled in 1831 for libel in breach of the privileges of the house, only to be reelected five times by constituents, and five times expelled. In 1834 he caused a stir by publishing a letter of English radical, Joseph Hume advocating independence for the colony. In 1835 the reformer was elected Mayor of Toronto and returned to the legislature, sitting for York County. As a result of that election reformers had a majority and Mackenzie dominated the house, producing among other things the Seventh Report of the Committee on Grievances (1835) which set out the constitutional demands of the more radical reformers. After the dissolution of the house by Lieutenant Governor Sir Francis Bond Head, the 1836 electoral loss by the reformers and British rejection of his demands he became embittered. He engaged in armed rebellion in 1837, leading an ill-fated march on Toronto which ended in fiasco. Thereupon he escaped to the United States, setting up a provisional government on Navy Island. After being imprisoned by the Americans for breach of their neutrality laws, he became a journalist.

Permitted to return to Canada in 1849 under amnesty legislation, he was again elected to the Assembly, but after an undistinguished second political career he retired to private life in 1858. Mackenzie was not an advocate of responsible government. Rather he had wanted the Legislative Council elected. (See further Frederick Armstrong and Ronald J. Stagg, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 9, 1861-70 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1976), pp. 496-510).

Source: The Illustrated History of Canada, ed. Craig Brown, (Toronto: Lester & Orpen, Dennys, 1987) p. 211.