Bowmanville. William Humber

or philosophical musings unless they could assist his political allies. He was foremost a man of action as never better illustrated in his service to Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, on his appearance in town at an election rally in September 1867, two months after the new country’s genesis. Macdonald, a Conservative, wanted to follow his Liberal counterpart, George Brown, and neither man would budge in their desire to speak last.

      Train coming into the Grand Trunk Railway Station circa 1910.

      The Globe reported that Macdonald’s friend, “Cubitts [sic] rose and attempted to speak against time. The uproar and calls for the premier became so great that Mr. Cubitts was unheard, but so long as the time of the meeting was frittered away Mr. Cubitts purpose and the Premier’s was answered. . . . so when Cubitts became tired of gesticulating, hat in hand he took a hearty laugh at the fun of the affair.”¹² In frustration Brown finally took the podium so Macdonald’s purpose was served.

      The hearty laugh reveals the real Cubitt. In his youth he played for the renowned Darlington Cricket Club. In the 1840s and 50s this team became the most visible symbol of the area’s evolution from an almost accidental stopping-off point on the way to somewhere else, to an intentional community in which pride of place was celebrated in the fortunes of a sports team. Cubitt’s teammates included T.C. Sutton and St. John Hutcheson, his fellow worshippers at St. John’s Anglican Church—notable for its continuing receipt of an endowment provided by clergy reserve funds a hundred years after the Rebellion fought to end this excess of the Family Compact.¹³ This team played urban representatives from Cobourg in the east and Toronto in the west, though they shared a similar social background.

      Mr. Climie was also a sportsman. He had an interest in baseball, a game connected to America from which also emanated those ideas favouring more liberal forms of representative government, educational opportunity and freedom of religion. Mark Twain said that baseball represented the spirit of the 19th century. But for Climie his respect for the frivolousness of games was tempered by the needs of his society. He attended the Great Reform Convention held in Toronto in 1867 and expressed his philosophy bluntly through his paper.

      “A man may be born,” he said, “grow up, pass through life, and die in a place, and yet that place never receives one particle of benefit from his existence. He might as well have never lived. A turnip or a cabbage would exert just as favourable an influence on the public mind as he does. . . . Genuine original men are scarce. . . . One can conceive what a place would be if entirely controlled by such men—a Sleepy Hollow kind of paradise. . . . It is the duty men owe to themselves and their fellow men to encourage a liberal public spirit.”¹⁴

      So the climate was set for their rivalry and it testifies to the arrival of Bowmanville as a distinct place that men could invest such struggle with so much meaning.

      Their rivalry begins with their different politics, their family backgrounds and even the different bat and ball games they played. It received its ultimate impetus however from their respective positions in this new community. From 1866 to 1874 Frederick Cubitt was Bowmanville’s mayor while William Climie published the town’s leading newspaper. Though separated in age by twenty years they were, nevertheless, both at the peak of their emotional, physical and public powers. The collision, like those occasionally reported in that century between trains on the same track, was inevitable.

      It’s not clear where it started. The elements were all there, but this was after all a small town. People met on a regular basis. They shared a common interest in their community’s welfare. They socialized and played outdoor curling in conditions that would bind even apparent enemies.

      In his role as the town’s magistrate, Cubitt dispensed justice for matters involving vagrancy, drunkenness, using abusive language on the highway, obstructing streets, using blasphemous language and causing a disturbance on a public street.¹⁵ Liquor was often involved in these offenses and the colonel was often seen to take a tolerant position. On this one issue Climie would accept no backsliding. The mayor’s nearly eight years in office were drawing evermore ire from The Canadian Statesman which viewed him as not only soft on the liquor issue, but also in Climie’s words, “. . . a faithful paymaster to himself” and a man who could not match the challenger F.F. McArthur in appealing to the town’s business interests.¹⁶

      Bowmanville’s fortunes had been on an upward spiral. By 1867 the town was said to be in a period of modest prosperity. “The harvest has been plentiful and the trade of the neighbourhood is . . . in a flourishing condition. . . . This is a turning point in the history of Bowmanville. It is the flow of the tide which, as Shakespeare says, leads on to fortune. We have some good public buildings. The new Ontario Bank is an ornament of the town. We want an increased number of private dwellings of like respectability and comfort.”¹⁷ The town’s public infrastructure including sidewalks and roads, however, was in need of significant improvement, most particularly Liberty Street which “. . . was not safe enough to walk along in the day time and certainly not at night.”¹⁸

      Through the 1870s the town entertained grand notions such as a railway from Bowmanville to Georgian Bay¹⁹ and another to Bobcaygeon by way of Lindsay.²⁰ Both would allow the hinterland regions to take advantage of Bowmanville’s Port Darlington Harbour and its access to American markets particularly for the shipment of grain. In 1873 F.F. McArthur, manager of the Upper Canada Furniture Company, reported a large increase in his business over the previous year. The decade also marked the arrival of the Dominion Organ and Piano Factory which by the end of the century had a world wide reputation.