Brown of the Globe. J.M.S. Careless

office still; they had an over-all majority. But their failure to win decisively in Upper Canada, their crumbling position in Lower, meant that the movement of only a few of their more uncertain supporters into opposition could bring the Coalition crashing down at last. With this in mind, accordingly, and at the behest of his own followers, George Brown made certain political inquiries of Dorion by letter, shortly after the elections closed in mid-July. Neither man would be in the next House. They had each refused to take other “safe” seats offered them. Yet they were still the Liberal leaders for the present, and hence conducted the negotiations.

      The western captain carefully outlined the Upper Canadian balance of seats as it now appeared, and asked Dorion for a similar assessment of the situation in Lower Canada. Could a common opposition policy be adopted, one that could swing over the uncertain quantities in the Assembly by its very display of unity – and thus turn out the ministry? To secure a solid western following, there was really only one line such a policy could take: reform of the representative system. “The Upper Canada Reformers,” Brown noted, “can enter no government that is not pledged to take up this question with the sincere determination of framing a measure that, while assuring justice to the 300,000 unrepresented people of U.C., will at the same time protect your countrymen from that interference with their local matters so much dreaded or affected to be dreaded.”⁵⁸

      Dorion sent back both a personal letter and an official party answer. The first was a friendly return to Brown’s own private covering note. The second was a flat rejection of the western leader’s proposal for the renewal of Reform unity. “The great and perhaps only difficulty in the way of that united party,” he asserted formally, “is, as you are aware, the question of representation. There is no party in Lower Canada who while in opposition could attempt to submit a proposition or agree to a plan for the settlement of this question on a basis which would meet the views of the Upper Canada majority without completely destroying itself as a party. The difficulties are now much greater than they were in 1858.”⁵⁹ In other words, the results of the census had hardened Lower Canadian opinion far beyond the time of the Brown-Dorion administration, when that government had actually combined the leaders of both sections of Liberalism behind an agreement on rep by pop. Furthermore, as Dorion went on to observe, the Coalition ministers were now claiming in Lower Canada that they had beaten the evil scheme, and that it surely would be abandoned. “I can well conceive the advantages of having an opposition united on all questions of public policy,” he concluded, “but with the present feeling in Lower Canada the difficulties appear to be insuperable.”⁶⁰

      The Rouge leader’s personal letter in no way differed from this unhopeful stand; but the comments he added were illuminating. Brown had privately urged him to re-enter the House, even to take the Upper Canadian seat of North Waterloo – one of two constituencies won by Foley.⁶¹ But the calm, perceptive Dorion had no intention of seeking a place in this new parliament. He expected no good from it. For, if the existing government fell, some other attempt at meaningless coalition would only follow; and then, as he said, “failure and confusion until the parties are thoroughly reorganized through another appeal to the people”.⁶² It was wise to stay outside until the current tendencies had played themselves out. “This parliament will not last long, and it is better for us that the moderates of all shades should try their hands, in order that the country should be convinced of their incompetency to settle the difficulties accumulated by seven years of mismanagement.”⁶³

      Here was shrewd prediction and advice, a sound answer to Brown’s gesture for Liberal unity. The time was not right. The next period properly belonged to moderates who abjured constitutional change: the Sandfield Macdonalds and Louis Sicottes, who thought that new men in a new combination, freed from the “extremists”, could somehow satisfy both sections and make the present union work. Let the moderate men try, and in trying prove their bankruptcy – along with that of the union itself. Brown could afford to wait. He could no longer be used as an excuse for the persistence of sectional friction, the reputed trouble-maker blamed for all the discord in the union’s politics. Dorion had given him a further excellent reason for retirement.

      He had made his gesture for party reconstruction. He now withdrew from further political activity, refusing invitations to party rallies in August on the grounds that the Toronto election had “relieved me of public responsibility, and I think it best to enjoy the full benefit of the period of relaxing at my disposal”.⁶⁴ That is, he would relax from politics, so far as the owner of the Globe and the ertswhile leader of Reform could ever find this possible.

      4

      Wonderful changes were occurring in Upper Canada’s far south-west, Brown’s favourite countryside. Oilfields were being developed not twenty miles from Sarnia in Lambton County, his old constituency, and near Bothwell in the adjoining county of Kent: the settlement that had grown up out of his own estate. In September, the Globe ran a series of long articles on the “Oil Region” that was rapidly coming into production.⁶⁵ “Rock oil” – petroleum – had gained a new significance in two short years since 1859, when Edwin Drake had drilled a well in Pennsylvania to tap rich sources far underground. Henceforth, instead of the limited, scanty offerings of shallow pools and hand-dug wells, drilled wells promised to provide an ample flow of petroleum for commercial uses: above all, to replace the whale-oil of a lamp-lit civilization. The resulting boom in rock oil had brought a spate of advertisements in the Canadian press (“Beauty, Brilliancy, Economy – NOT Explosive”) and produced a flurry of well-drilling in Upper Canada in those parts where surface oil pools had long been known and utilized.⁶⁶

      Enniskillen Township in Lambton and lands along the Thames a few miles from Bothwell were notable areas of this kind. Here Indians had prized the dark and scummy oil pools for their medicinal value, and had dipped blankets in their surface, wringing them out to obtain the oil. It was said that natives who swallowed this “lion’s grease” never took the cholera – or rather, never died of cholera, which was not quite the same thing.⁶⁷ But now this land of pools was prized far more highly, as, in happy bewilderment, settlers who had replaced the wandering Indians saw speculators lease portions of their farms and drill wells in frantic haste. An ugly litter of rough pole derricks, squat black oil vats, piles of barrels, and greasy mounds of mud spread out through clearings in the still-enclosing forests. The creak of the wooden treadles that drove the drills continued day and night, and always there was the harsh smell of oil and escaping gas.

      Men with packsacks were tramping to the “oil springs” to make their fortunes.⁶⁸ Teamsters were making theirs, as they hauled wagon-loads of barrelled oil down jolting, rutted trails to the railway line, where the Great Western’s new oil cars were waiting. Plank roads were going in; taverns and hotels were going up. The far south-west was entering on a land boom greater than anything it had yet known. And Bothwell, on the railway, was ideally situated to enjoy it – there where Brown’s own lands lay. There could be little question now about his credit, or the value of his holdings. The new questions facing him were what to buy and when to sell, and when the boom might reach its peak.

      He bought 400 more acres, and for the time being held on.⁶⁹ Apart from his sawmills, he enjoyed the working and developing of his Bothwell farm; in any case, the boom was still too young to foresee how it might grow in that quarter. No doubt, he went up to Kent and Lambton to watch the developments for himself. In October, at any rate, he could see them gain fresh impetus from the application of the new Pennsylvania technique of deep drilling.⁷⁰ Wells were being sunk beyond 200 feet now, instead of less than 100, and were producing a continuous flow of oil in large quantities. The remaining problems were the market and the price. Thanks to the lack of sufficient Canadian refineries, American imports were largely supplying the province’s needs, and Canadian crude was worth but six and a half cents a gallon at railhead.

      It was natural that Brown’s Globe should hail the building of new refineries in Sarnia, London, Toronto, and elsewhere, and deem it “suicidal” for Torontonians with sensitive noses to try to block the building of still another refinery in the city.⁷¹ It mused besides on the full meaning of the “recent remarkable discoveries” in the western peninsula. Where would they all lead? “We are apparently only at the beginning of a very remarkable