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A Short History of the Area

Holborn (pronounced Ho-burn) takes its name from Old Bourne, a vanished and forgotten river. The area’s main road, or “high street,” runs between Bloomsbury in the west and the City of London in the east. This was once a busy commercial route for country wool traders whose daily passage prompted the rise of pubs, whore houses, and other vices to fleece them of their profits. Today, High Holborn is more likely to be frequented by students from the nearby London School of Economics or two of the four medieval Inns of Court: Gray’s Inn to the north and Lincoln’s Inn to the south.

The Inns of Court were founded in medieval times as hostels for law students and practising lawyers. Within these early gated communities — one never knows if the walls were to keep lawyers in or angry citizens out — students studied law, ate meals together, and enjoyed pleasant garden walks until they were called to the bar, the traditional courtroom divide where qualified lawyers could plead their cases.

Like High Holborn, the name Fleet Street owes its origins to an ancient river. Fleet is the Anglo-Saxon term for tidal inlet and the river that emptied into the Thames was once an important north-south waterway carrying first manufactured goods and then human waste. Too much of the latter, in fact. The stench became so bad the river was bricked over in the 1700s and officially made a sewer in 1860.

Mind you, the awful odours didn’t seem to bother the printers and booksellers who settled in the area, starting in the 1500s. The first was the aptly named Wynkyn de Worde (unknown–1534) who set up one of London’s first printing presses in Fleet Street opposite Shoe Lane. He produced relatively inexpensive religious books for local churchmen but also more commercially appealing romantic works for the small but growing number of literate city dwellers. Other publishers followed and soon the street was the established home for the print trade.

To sustain the presses, however, publishers needed more than just ink: they needed news. Information was money after all, and said to have made the Rothschilds rich. The first newspaper, The Daily Courant, arrived in 1702 and so many others followed that Fleet Street became widely known for gossip and scandal. Shouted out and sold on every street corner, news fed an insatiable hunger in this city that has never been quenched. The novelist Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939) rightly advised visitors: “You must know the news, in order to be a fit companion for your fellow Londoner.”[1]

The Walk

At Holborn Tube Station, turn right and follow High Holborn eastward about 55 yards (50 metres). Look for the second narrow passage on the right called Little Turnstile and follow it by twists and turns past a pub called The Ship and emerge into Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This part of our walk reminds us how quickly the city can become small and claustrophobic. Navigating it makes us feel like old London hands — which by now we are.

Lincoln’s Inn Fields is one of the largest and earliest public squares in the city. While it has been a favourite stomping ground for students since the 1300s, it also has some more gruesome associations that we’ll leave to other guidebooks.

Just beyond the western side of the Fields, hidden from view, is the London School of Economics, founded in 1895. Numerous Canadian politicians have studied here, including Pierre Trudeau (1919–2000), who never took a degree, and separatist Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau (b. 1930), who did a Ph.D. in economics.

Walk into the fields and keep to the gravel path on the north side. This is called Canada Walk for a reason that will become clear in a moment.

Just north of us at 12–14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields is the one-time residence and now museum of Sir John Soanes (1753–1837), one of Britain’s leading architects in the Regency period and an incorrigible packrat. The amazing museum is one of London’s most eccentric treasures and worth a visit if time permits. Never has so much been stuffed into so little space.

Soanes is best known for designing buildings like the Bank of England but in 1818 he was approached to design the residence for Upper Canada’s new lieutenant governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland (1777–1854), in Toronto. Maitland may have needed convincing to move to Toronto, since he preferred Newark (Niagara) for the capital. Drawings show Soane envisioned a monumental building for Maitland with a domed entrance but it was never built.[2]

There’s no doubt about it, the Canadian is naturally adapted to flying. He operates a plane as naturally as he skates, or plays hockey and baseball. — RAF Group Captain Dr. Raymond W. Ryan, 1940[3]

A little farther along the pathway we come to a Canadian maple tree planted by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien (b. 1934) in 1998. It stands across from 20–23 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which was the overseas headquarters of the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War (1939–1945).

When aviation was in its infancy during the First World War (1914–18), Canada had little interest in having its own air force. Consequently, over 20,000 Canadians joined the British Royal Flying Corps (later the Royal Air Force) during the war. After the amazing exploits of a few notable Canadian airmen, however, Ottawa slowly began to change its mind and created the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) on April 1, 1924.

Naturally enough, the RCAF was modelled after its British forebear. It even incorporated the RAF’s flag, ranks, uniform, and motto (“Through adversity to the stars”). The services were so similar, in fact, that by the time the Second World War broke out some believed it would be more efficient if Canadian and British air crews served together in one air force. But not everyone shared this view — notably Canada’s prime minister.

20–23 Lincoln’s Inn Fields: Putting the “C” in RCAF

Just how Canadian should the overseas Royal Canadian Air Force be? That was a question posed at the start of the Second World War when there were only three RCAF squadrons stationed in Britain. With German raiders bombing London every night, Canada’s top air man in Britain, Air Commodore Leigh Stevenson (1895–1989), believed his crews could defend the country more quickly under British control. He saw the RCAF overseas headquarters as a liaison office with no role in directing the Battle of Britain.[4]

His views at first were shared by Charles “Chubby” Power (1888–1968), Canada’s affable if boozy minister of defence for air. Power ordered Stevenson to integrate the RCAF overseas into the RAF as quickly as possible to defend Britain. But Power’s decision irked his own commander-in-chief, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874–1950). When the PM learned what his junior minister had done, he nearly fell off his levitating office chair. He told Powers he wanted Canadian boys to fly in all-Canadian squadrons, be served by Canadian ground crews and be ruled by Canadian air chiefs.

Power sobered to the error of his ways and marched off to London in 1941 to fix the problem. When he told his British counterparts that he wanted the Canadian crews back under Canadian command, they reluctantly agreed.

Powers then replaced Stevenson with a new Canadian gunslinger, Air Vice-Marshal Harold “Gus” Edwards (1892–1952), and ordered him “to put the RCAF on the map.” Over the next few years, Edwards turned the Overseas Headquarters of the RCAF in Lincoln’s Inn Fields into a real command centre. But fighting the enemy as well as the British bureaucracy was tough on poor Edwards. “I find myself in the state that I want to get at somebody’s liver, fry it and jam it down his neck, but for the moment I cannot get my hands on the proper person,” he once complained.[5]

Follow the path around the square to the southeast corner and cross over Newman’s Row into Lincoln’s Inn via its ornate gate.

Lincoln’s Inn is the prettiest and most authentic of the four Inns of Court in London. By gentlemen’s agreement, none of the inns lays claim to being the oldest — though this one probably is. It was founded in the late 1300s on land once owned by Henry de Lacy (ca.1251–1311), 3rd Earl of Lincoln.

The gateway we pass through was built in 1843 at the same time as the Library and New Hall, immediately to our left. The library’s collection of law books goes back as far as 1497 and is one of London’s oldest. A plaque on the Old Hall directly ahead of us in Old Square dates the building from 1490, the fifth year of the reign of Henry VII (1457–1509; reigned from 1485).

Trivia: Cary Castle, a mansion built in Victoria, B.C., by Lincoln’s Inn barrister George Cary, was the residence of the lieutenant governor until it burned in 1899. Princess Louise called it “halfway between heaven and Balmoral.”

Americans like to point out that William Penn (1644–1718), the founder of Pennsylvania, was a member of Lincoln’s Inn. But Canada too can lay claim to some colourful legal characters who studied here. Among them are John Galt (1779–1839), a Scottish novelist and businessman. After studying at the Inn he created the Canada Company to purchase one million hectares (2.5 million acres) of cheap land in Ontario to sell to immigrants. Sadly, Bookkeeping 101 was not on the Lincoln’s Inn syllabus and Galt went to jail for running up bad debts. Another noteworthy member of the Inn was Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell (1814–81), a lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia. During the Confederation debates, MacDonnell became alarmed by John A. Macdonald’s proposals to reduce the power of lieutenant governors. He warned the future prime minister “you shall not make a mayor of me.” Macdonald did exactly that and MacDonnell moved to Hong Kong — happy to leave what he called “the unlucky cul-de-sac” that was Canada.[6]

Others associated with Lincoln’s Inn include Charles Ogden (1791–1866), the chief prosecutor of the 1837 rebels in Lower Canada, William Osgoode (1754–1824), first chief justice of Upper Canada for whom Osgoode Hall in Toronto is named, and John Simcoe Saunders (1795–1878), the last unelected provincial secretary in New Brunswick.

But two other members of the Inn deserve our more fulsome attention. One had a knack for disturbing the peace. The other helped restore it.

Lincoln’s Inn: B.C.’s Brawling Barrister

George Hunter Cary (1832–66) was a promising young barrister of Lincoln’s Inn. In 1859, he accepted the post of attorney general of British Columbia after James Douglas (1803–77), the first governor of the colony, appealed for “gentlemen of the best education and ability” to help him run the place. Douglas and the good people of B.C. got more than they bargained for.

From the moment Cary arrived in Victoria, controversy followed him like a winter shadow. Irascible and short-fused, he was renowned for throwing tantrums and cursing his superiors. Outside the courtroom, his behaviour was even worse. Cary once attacked a defendant with a horse whip and became such a public nuisance he was put in jail for disturbing the peace. His behaviour grew even more erratic after he was nearly ruined financially by building an elaborate country estate called Cary Castle. Even Governor Douglas began to doubt the mental balance of his attorney general.

The final straw came when a relative saw Cary out in the garden with a candle at night sowing peas amongst the potatoes. A week later he was certified insane. To lure him back to London for treatment, his family concocted a fake telegram announcing Cary’s appointment as lord chancellor of England (head of its courts). He returned to London with high expectations of donning silk robes of state but died here soon afterward of “paralysis of the brain.” He was only thirty-four years old.[7]

Walk ahead toward the chapel and into Old Square. The most famous phrase in Canadian politics may have been coined here: “Peace, Order, and Good Government,” found in our 1867 constitution. Whereas independent-minded Americans enshrined “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in their constitution, Canadians enshrined collective harmony and order in ours. Or did we? As we are about to discover, this wasn’t exactly how the Fathers of Confederation set out to define Canada, but rather how a Lincoln’s Inn barrister did.

22 Old Buildings: Peace, Order, and Good Government

The Fathers of Confederation may have agreed on the terms for union back in 1866–67 but the man who actually drafted the text was a little-known barrister of Lincoln’s Inn.

Sir Francis Savage Reilly (1825–83) was born in Dublin and graduated from Trinity College in 1847. He was called to the bar in 1851 and joined Lincoln’s Inn, where he specialized in arbitration, insurance cases, and train wrecks. His legal chambers were located at 22 Old Buildings.

In 1866, Britain’s Colonial Office approached Reilly to draft the legal text of the British North America Act. He agreed but may have soon regretted it. What was supposed to be a simple three-day job stretched out over many weeks when he couldn’t get hold of the Canadian delegation to bring legal clarity to their ideas. “I can’t make bricks without clay, to say nothing of straw,” he complained in frustration.[8]

Eventually Reilly did manage to sit down with Sir John A. Macdonald and the British colonial secretary, Henry Herbert (1831–90), 4th Earl of Carnarvon, to turn their ideas into a legal document. But Reilly was clearly more than just a scribe. In one of his drafts he proposed a name for the new colony: the United Province of Canada, though this was rejected by the Canadians. His more enduring addition, however, was perhaps the word “order.”

In earlier drafts of their agreement, the Fathers of Confederation had always used the phrase “peace, welfare, and good government.” For stiff empire men like Reilly and his Tory boss Carnarvon, not only was the choice less eloquent, but welfare probably seemed a bit too coddling, nannyish, and Liberal. They preferred a good old-fashioned Victorian sense of order and capitalized it just for good measure. In doing so, Reilly and Carnarvon helped define the attributes of Canadian society. For his services to Britain and the empire, he was knighted in 1882.[9]

Now head back to New Square and exit through the south gate into Carey Street. As the bankruptcy courts are just across the road, it’s wise not to tell people exactly where you are. To be “on Carey Street” is a local euphemism for being broke. Here and on Searle Street we find stores where barristers can purchase horsehair wigs — court dress for British lawyers for hundreds of years. (Canadian courts dispensed with the practice in the nineteenth century.) Walk to Bell Yard, turn right, and head to the Strand.

The impressive jumble of Gothic Revival turrets and spires on our right are the Royal Courts of Justice (or Law Courts). Conveniently for Fleet Street, this is where civil cases, including libel, are tried. They were opened by Queen Victoria in 1882 and are said to contain a thousand rooms and over 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometres) of corridors. Above the judge’s entrance on the north side are statues of a cat and dog representing litigants in court.

Trivia: Peace, order, and good government appeared in the first constitutions of several Commonwealth countries including New Zealand and South Africa.

On a treed island in the middle of the street is St. Clement Danes church. How this church became associated with Danes is a bit of a mystery, though some believe a king of Danish descent is buried beneath it. Despite escaping the Great Fire in 1666 unscathed, the church was rebuilt by the architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723) in 1681. His protégé James Gibbs (1682–1754) added the steeple in 1719.

In front of the church stands a 1905 bronze memorial to four-time British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809–98) dressed grandly in his ceremonial robes of Chancellor of the Exchequer (or finance minister). At the base of the statue are four female figures representing education, aspiration, courage, and (somewhat oddly) brotherhood. Noticeably absent is parsimony.

68. Gladstone Monument: Mr. G Says No

William Gladstone was a tight-fisted Liberal politician and anti-imperialist who opposed spending money and taking risks, no matter how small. This was certainly true when it came to supporting a colony like Canada.

In appearance, Gladstone was the polar opposite of his Conservative rival, Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81). Whereas Disraeli was dark, sensuous, and cloaked in Romanticism, Gladstone was pale, rough, and charmless with wispy chin hairs and unruly sideburns. Unlike Disraeli, Gladstone was relatively unskilled in oratory and more importantly, the art of flattery. The one who noticed the most was Queen Victoria. She complained Gladstone addressed her as if she were a public meeting and much preferred the smoother Disraeli.

Gladstone feared money spent in Canada was money lost forever: the colony would inevitably desert Britain like the United States had and leave the British Treasury to pay the bills. So he argued against financing defences and the Intercolonial Railway and withdrew British soldiers from Canada in 1871, leaving behind only a handful of soldiers at Halifax and Esquimalt. The attitude of “Gladstone & Co.” frustrated Sir John A. Macdonald and his pals, who felt abandoned by the British Government. “It is very grievous to see half a continent slipping away from the grasp of England with scarcely an effort to hold it,” Macdonald’s then-finance minister, Alexander Galt (1817-93), once complained about Gladstone’s parsimonious ways.[10]

Trivia: A flying “ace” was a pilot who had shot down five enemy aircraft. Canada’s Billy Bishop is said to have shot down seventy-two.

Like many of the churches in the area, St. Clement Danes was badly damaged in the Second World War. It was rebuilt with contributions from British, Commonwealth, and Allied air forces and designated the Central Church of Royal Air Force in 1958. Plaques in the floor, made of Welsh slate, commemorate British and Allied air squadrons that fought in the war, twenty-nine of which are Canadian.

On the left wall near the altar is a Roll of Honour that lists of the winners of the Victoria Cross. This is the highest military honour for gallantry in the British and Commonwealth forces. Three of the early winners of the “VC” listed here were Canadian flying aces: William “Billy” Avery Bishop (1894–1956), William George Barker (1894–1930), and Alan Arnett MacLeod (1899–1918). Sadly, the last two of these men died soon after the war. Barker won his VC for a dramatic dogfight over Canadian lines in France, but was killed in a plane crash near Ottawa in 1930. His raid was recalled in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, a short story by Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961). MacLeod, on the other hand, won his VC for rescuing his comrade from a fiery plane wreck and carrying him to safety under fire — only to die himself during the great flu epidemic of 1918. That leaves us with one flying ace to consider in more detail: the most charismatic and controversial of the three.

St. Clement Danes: Billy Bishop’s Other War

Born in Owen Sound, Ontario, Billy Bishop was a gregarious young man who attended Canada’s Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, before shipping out to France with the Canadian cavalry in 1915. Just before the deadly battle of the Somme, he transferred to Britain’s Royal Flying Corps to become a pilot. In the course of 184 sorties, he claimed an astonishing forty-seven victories. His record would eventually climb to seventy-two — the highest of any air ace. But it was his audacious, single-handed dawn raid on a German airfield in 1917 that earned him the distinguished VC. As the first Canadian flyer to win the award, Bishop was hailed a national hero.

But after Bishop’s death, you could say his real battle began. In 1977, the play Billy Bishop Goes to War cast the hero in a less positive light and was followed by a National Film Board docudrama called The Kid Who Couldn’t Miss. It raised questions about the airman’s seventy-two victories and sparked so much outrage that the Senate established a commission to investigate. (Not surprisingly, it couldn’t reach a conclusion.) Even an official historian of the RCAF weighed in, saying Bishop was a liar and a cheat who didn’t deserve his VC.[11]

Yet the evidence for and against Bishop may never be definitive. As a fighter who often flew solo behind enemy lines, Bishop had few witnesses to his triumphs. Moreover, tracking air victories at the time was more art than science. If Bishop was guilty of embellishing the truth, so were many others. In their eagerness to identify rivals to the Red Baron, the Allies desperately needed heroes and Bishop was a good as any out there. Truth, as the saying goes, is the first casualty of war.

Two other Canadian airmen listed here won their VCs in the Second World War. Their awards were never controversial. The airmen were Flight Lieutenant David Ernest Hornell (1910–44) and Pilot Officer Andrew Charles Mynarski (1916–44).

Trivia: Canadian flying aces Billy Bishop and William Barker created Bishop-Barker Aeroplane Lines in 1919. They flew flying boats out of Toronto until the company went broke three years later.

St. Clement Danes: Two Heroes of the Sky

David Hornell was born on Toronto Island and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. One night in June 1944, while he was flying his twin-engine amphibian aircraft off the coast of Scotland, Hornell and his crew engaged a German U-boat patrolling in the North Sea. In the melee that followed, Hornell’s plane was badly damaged and lost an engine. Ignoring more gunfire from the U-boat, Hornell managed to sink it and then miraculously land the blazing plane in heavy sea swells. With only one lifeboat, he and his crew took turns in the freezing water where Hornell kept up everyone’s spirits with his cheerful manner. After twenty-one hours at sea, Hornell succumbed to exposure and died shortly after being rescued. He was buried in Scotland.

Andrew Mynarski was born and raised in Winnipeg, the son of Polish immigrants. In 1941, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and trained in Edmonton and Calgary before coming to England in 1943. On the night of June 12, 1944, Mynarski was a mid-upper gunner on a Lancaster bomber involved in a sortie over France. When his aircraft was hit, a fire broke out between the mid and rear gunner turrets. As Mynarski prepared to abandon the aircraft, he saw that the rear gunner was trapped. Without hesitating, he fought through flames to rescue his comrade but the rear gunner couldn’t be freed. He told Mynarski to save himself and Mynarski reluctantly went back to the escape hatch. Before leaping to safety, he turned and saluted his trapped comrade.

Incredibly, however, the rear gunner survived the plane crash while Mynarski died from burns after his parachute caught fire. He was buried in France and is commemorated at the Valiants Memorial near the National Cenotaph in Ottawa.

Outside the entrance to the church are statues of Air Chief Marshal Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding (1882–1970), head of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, and Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris (1892–1984), head of RAF Bomber Command. Both are works by the British sculptor Faith Winter. Protests marked the unveiling of Harris’s statue in 1992, as he was responsible for the firebombing of Germany. Thousands of Canadian airmen died in pursuit of Harris’s controversial strategy.

Let’s now head down historic Fleet Street, sometimes called the “street of shame” for the unscrupulous scribes and ambitious press barons associated with it. In doing so, we pass a statue of Samuel Johnson (1709–84), London’s great man of letters, author of the first English dictionary, and the man most associated with Fleet Street. We’ll encounter Johnson a few more times on our walk.

Trivia: A ferry to the Toronto Island Airport is named in honour of Victoria Cross winner David Ernest Hornell. The airport is named after Billy Bishop.

Immediately in front of us is a bronze gryphon used to mark a significant urban boundary. This is the site of Temple Bar where we pass from the City of Westminster into the City of London (known colloquially as “the City”). In more gruesome times, the heads of traitors were displayed here. The original Temple Bar was a gateway that was removed to facilitate traffic. We will see it at the end of our walk in Paternoster Square.

Trivia: In The Patriot, Samuel Johnson defended the controversial Quebec Act of 1774, which protected the religious rights of Catholic French Canadians. “Persecution is not more virtuous in a protestant than a papist,” he wrote.

Immediately on our left is Twinings Tea Shop and Museum (216 Strand) which took over Tom’s Coffee House in 1706. Next is Messrs. Hoare Bankers (37 Fleet Street), a private bank established in 1672. On the wall beside the bank is a plaque that marks the site of the Mitre Tavern, demolished in 1829. It is here that Samuel Johnson often dined with his celebrated biographer, James Boswell (1740–95). On one occasion in July 1763, Johnson compared news about Canada to his Christian faith. There were many reasons to doubt news about the British victory at Quebec, he told Boswell, “Yet, sir, notwithstanding all these plausible objections we have no doubt that Canada is really ours. Such is the weight of common testimony. How much stronger are the evidences of the Christian religion.”[12]

Directly across from Hoare’s Bank is St. Dunstan-in-the-West church (at 186a Fleet Street).

Outside the church is a memorial to Alfred Harmsworth (1865–1922), 1st Viscount Northcliffe. He was Britain’s first press baron. In 1896, he and his brother Harold founded the populist Daily Mail. It sold over a million copies by 1902 and once had the largest circulation in the world.

In 1905, the Harmsworths ventured into Newfoundland in search of paper to supply their newspaper empire. In exchange for building a mill in Grand Falls-Windsor, the brothers were given extensive timber and water rights in the region. When the subsequent owner of the mill closed it in 2009, Newfoundland seized the company’s assets saying the closure violated the 1905 agreement with the Harmsworths.[13] The case was settled after Canada agreed to pay compensation to the mill owners.

Trivia: Sir Martin Frobisher, the first European explorer of Canada’s Arctic, died at Plymouth where his heart was buried. The rest of him was interred in the church of St. Giles Cripplegate in London.

Above the vestry door set back behind a mobile coffee stall is another statue of interest: an effigy of Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603; reigned from 1558). It’s notable because it dates from the queen’s lifetime and may be an authentic likeness.

Beset with treasonous plots, Spanish Armadas, and suitors by the dozen, Good Queen Bess probably didn’t think much about Canada. Royal interest in the New World had waned since the disastrous voyages of John Cabot (ca.1450–99) in the time of her grandfather. But saddled with debts, stagnant trade, and the growing might of Spain, Elizabeth was interested in reaching the riches of Asia. With southern routes blocked by other powers, she needed a route to get there.

St. Dunstan-in-the-West: Queen Elizabeth’s Dreams of Gold

The wars of King Henry VIII (1491–1547; reigned from 1509) and subsequent mismanagement by his daughter Queen Mary (1516–58; reigned from 1553) had left England weakened and badly lacking money. What the country didn’t lack were swashbuckling pirates ready to fill the queen’s treasury with gold. One of these was Sir Martin Frobisher (ca.1539–94) a tough and courageous mariner raised in London. He believed that the way to Asia lay through Canada’s Northwest Passage. After fruitless attempts to find a backer, Frobisher took his plan to the queen who cajoled a group of courtiers to pay for it.

In 1576, Queen Elizabeth waved off the explorer and his two ships bound for Canada. The first land he found he named wisely for his sovereign (Queen Elizabeth Foreland near Baffin Island) and the next immodestly for himself (Frobisher Bay). There he dug up some rocks with metallic shine and brought them back to London in high expectation. Three assayers rejected the rocks as Fool’s Gold (actually marcasite) but a fourth believed he could turn them into gold by the mysterious art of alchemy. It was enough to spark a mini gold rush in Canada and a second voyage for Frobisher. This time his backers told him to forget about Asia and just bring back more rocks. In her excitement, the queen awarded Frobisher a royal charter, invested her own money, and locked up his rocks with the crown jewels.

Two voyages later, the gold rush and the queen’s excitement were over. Ten times more rock only proved ten times more worthless. Frobisher’s backers went belly up and the queen lost her investment. To escape the axe, Frobisher wisely teamed up with the pirate Sir Francis Drake (1540–96) and went after easier loot that didn’t involve alchemy: Spanish ships laden with gold. These raids proved so profitable that Elizabeth’s treasury was soon full and her Arctic enterprise soon forgotten.[14]

Fool’s rush in: Martin Frobisher sparked a mini gold rush in Canada in 1576 when he returned from his voyage with a ton of useless rocks.

Just past Fetter Lane, we come to signs for Dr. Johnson’s House (17 Gough Square). This is a whimsical detour if the fancy takes you. The house was built around 1700 and is one of the last-remaining residences of its type. Take note of the security features above the door. The world’s first English dictionary was compiled here and published in 1755. It was unrivalled for a hundred years, until the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary. Among Johnson’s timeless definitions are:

Oats: “a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people;” and

Lexicographer: “a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge.”

Compared to him, I’m a liberal wet (softy).— British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on meeting Conrad Black[15]

Continue along Fleet Street eastward. On the north side is the former Daily Telegraph Building (135–141 Fleet Street) built in 1928–31, with six stately Greek columns across its front. It was once the jewel in the crown of a media empire headed by Conrad Black (b. 1944), Baron Black of Crossharbour, the last of three Canadian press barons to own a bit of the sidewalk here. At one time Black owned newspapers in Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, and the U.S.

135–141 Fleet Street: Black and White and Read All Over

Founded in 1855, the Daily Telegraph was one of Britain’s most successful newspapers and so politically right wing that journalists nicknamed it the Torygraph. But by the mid-1980s, the iron lady of print was haemorrhaging money. The owners knew what to do — like other newspapers, adopt new printing methods and move out of expensive Fleet Street — but they lacked the cash to do it. What they needed was a white knight who could help save the paper.

Conrad Black bought his first newspaper in his twenties and kept on buying them until he had acquired a chain. Later he won control of Argus Corporation, a Canadian company that owned Dominion Stores and Massey-Ferguson. His personal fortune grew to $100 million. But what he really wanted to be was an international press baron and began to scout around for acquisitions. In 1985, he quietly offered the owners of the Telegraph $17 million for a 14 percent stake in the company. “All I have to worry about is which pocket the money comes from,” he told them.[16]

But the Canadian knight’s chivalrous offer came with a hitch: the right of first refusal if the owners needed more dosh. And inevitably they did. A few months later Black advanced $34 million to the owners in return for 50.1 percent of the company’s shares — enough to win control of it. “I’ve hit the jackpot,” he told a friend. Robert Maxwell, another British press baron, was duly impressed. He congratulated the Canadian on “landing history’s largest fish with history’s smallest hook.”[17]

Black’s purchase of the Telegraph made him an international press baron and gave him a coveted entrée into British society. Yet when it came time to join the House of Lords like other press barons before him, Black ran into a little snag with Canada’s Prime Minister Chrétien, who blocked the move. In order to don his ermine robes, Black was obliged to renounce his Canadian citizenship.

His reign as chairman of the newspaper would last fifteen years until he sold the Telegraph under his own financial duress in 2004.

A few doors down at 120–129 Fleet Street, we come to a truly fascinating piece of modern 1930s showmanship. This was once the headquarters of the Daily Express, which overtook Northcliffe’s Daily Mail as the most widely read newspaper in the world.

The lady of Fleet Street: Lord Beaverbrook’s modern Daily Express building. It has been described as “quietly elegant in a tight-fitting black dress.”

Trivia: The novelist Evelyn Waugh is believed to have parodied the former Daily Express Building and its owner, Lord Beaverbrook, in his 1938 novel Scoop about life at a fictional newspaper, The Daily Beast.

Although the Express vacated the building in 1989, it has been restored and is now used by an investment bank. Inside the sleek chrome and marble lobby, silver maple leaves adorn the newspaper’s name behind the reception desk. Encased overall in gleaming black glass called Vitrolite, it has been described as “quietly elegant in a tight-fitting black dress.”[18] It’s an image that probably would have pleased the man who commissioned it: Fleet Street’s first Canadian-born press baron: William Maxwell Aitken (1879–1964), 1st Baron Beaverbrook. When it opened in 1932, the gleaming headquarters stood in stark contrast to the staid Telegraph down the street. The newspaper hailed its premises as “Britain’s most modern building for Britain’s most modern newspaper.”

“How much are you worth?” Lord Northcliffe once asked Lord Beaverbrook. After the Canadian replied frankly, he said: “Well, you will lose it all in Fleet Street.”[19]

120–129 Fleet Street: Lord Beenacrook

William Aitken was a strange gnome-like man born in Ontario but raised in New Brunswick. Small and intensely energetic, he had a large head, impish grin, and penetrating stare. After early attempts at journalism, selling insurance, and managing a bowling alley, Aitken settled on a profession far more lucrative than all of them combined — bonds and company mergers — and became a millionaire before he was thirty. In 1910, he moved to London just in time to dodge a securities scandal that might have sent him to jail.

Once in Britain, Aitken wasted no time sitting around on his laurels and got himself elected a Conservative MP before he was even entitled to vote. In 1917, he went to the House of Lords and adopted the name Beaverbrook, after a stream where he reputedly fished as a boy. Recalling the securities scandal back in Canada, some nicknamed him Lord Beavercrook or Beenacrook.[20]

Newspapers were high among Beaverbrook’s passions — after politics, women, and money. In 1916, he quietly purchased Britain’s Daily Express and introduced new features to boost its sagging circulation. These included sports and leisure coverage, lively headlines, and a popular new American invention: the crossword puzzle. The changes worked. The newspaper’s circulation rose to 1.6 million in 1929 from 277,000 in 1916. By the mid 1930s it was the best-selling newspaper in the world.[21]

As one of the most powerful men in Britain, Beaverbrook naturally had friends in high places. Among them was Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965). He said Beaverbrook was “at his very best when things are at their very worst.” Another friend was Andrew Bonar Law (1858–1923), a fellow New Brunswicker who was prime minister for a short time, with Beaverbrook’s help. Law’s last words to Beaverbrook were: “You are a curious fellow.”[22]

Max Aitken, the impish Lord Beaverbrook, was Canada’s first press baron of Fleet Street. He was a newspaper man, politician, and notorious philanderer — and one of the most powerful men in Britain.

Continue across Ludgate Circus toward St. Paul’s Cathedral. The street Old Bailey on our left follows the line of London’s old Roman Wall. The Central Criminal Court (15 Old Bailey) with its large dome and depiction of Lady Justice on top stands beyond on the site of the infamous Newgate Prison, which was demolished in 1904. Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (1850–92), the Lambeth Poisoner from Canada whom we discovered on Walk 4, was hanged and buried within the prison grounds. As “the Old Bailey” courthouse, the building has witnessed a number of sensational criminal trials including that of Dr. Harvey Crippen (1862–1910), the “cellar murderer,” who was arrested in Canada along with his mistress, Ethel Le Neve (1883–1967).

Trivia: The deep well courtroom at Victoria Hall in Cobourg, Ontario, is the only one of its kind in Canada. It is modelled after the original courtroom in London’s Old Bailey.

Old Bailey Criminal Court: Ms. Le Neve Escapes the Noose

Harvey Crippen was a homeopathic doctor from Michigan — small, polite, and balding — who sold fake medicines to the sick and the gullible. He did it so convincingly that he expanded his company first in Toronto and then in London. In 1892, he met and married a lusty music-hall singer named “Belle Elmore” (her real name was Cora Turner). Their marriage proved a disaster: she ordered him about, spent all his money, and apparently cheated on him too.

In June 1910, Belle disappeared. Suspicions grew when Crippen was seen frequently in the company of his secretary, a petite and quiet English typist named Ethel Le Neve. Police were called in and a gruesome discovery was soon made: human remains in Crippen’s cellar.

Crippen and Le Neve (disguised as a boy) had meanwhile fled the country on the SS Montrose to Canada, but the captain alerted police by wireless, who gave chase on a faster ship. They boarded the Montrose and arrested the astonished couple while their ship was still steaming up the St. Lawrence River.

The 1910 murder trial of Crippen and Le Neve at the Old Bailey took London, and the world, by storm. The prosecution painted Crippen as a henpecked husband who poisoned the domineering Belle rather than divorce her. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang. Le Neve was acquitted. She left London for Toronto and resumed a quiet typing career under a new name. What the jury never heard, however, was testimony that Le Neve had been seen researching poisons in a library. It seems Le Neve may have been an escape artist as well as a typist.[23]

We now find ourselves near the end of our walk at St. Paul’s Cathedral, the architectural masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723). It is the fourth cathedral since 604 to stand on this site. The previous cathedral, in the gothic style, burned down in the Great Fire of 1666. One of the only surviving artifacts from the old cathedral is the shrouded effigy of the poet and preacher John Donne (1572–1631). It miraculously fell through the burning floor into the safety of the crypt below.

Queen Anne’s statue in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral. She feted four Indian kings in London to win their support for a campaign against the French, but they took their own counsel. Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, is named after her.

Before we go inside, let’s pause a moment at the statue of Queen Anne (1665–1714; reigned from 1702). At the time the statue was placed here in 1712, the real Anne was gouty, bloated, and so large she had to be hauled up stairs by ropes and pulleys. None of her seventeen pregnancies resulted in a royal heir.

“Queen Anne’s War” (1702–13) was the name given to a series of clashes between the English and French in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New England. Two botched attempts to capture Quebec also occurred during her reign, in 1709 and 1711. When her namesake war ended, France gave up its territorial rights to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland for good.

Trivia: After the murder trial of Dr. Crippen, the captain of the SS Montrose went on to command the Empress of Ireland, which sank in May 1914 near the exact spot in the St. Lawrence River where the couple were arrested.

The female figures at Anne’s feet symbolize her realms: Britannia (England) holding her trident, Hibernia (Scotland) with her harp, and Gallia (France) with her crown. America is depicted as an Indian warrior. A severed human head under the warrior’s foot suggests the uneasy alliance Britain forged with North America’s first peoples for over a century.

In fact, the Iroquois deliberately tried to keep the skirmishes between the English and the French in North America from escalating to all-out war. They occupied a strategic position sandwiched between French Canada and the Anglo-American colonies and, until 1754, maintained a delicate balance of power by shifting their support from one side to the other.[24] Naturally, both European powers tried to win their loyalty with gifts to tilt the balance in their favour. Britain even offered some Iroquois leaders an all-expense-paid holiday to London.

Queen Anne Monument: Four Iroquois Kings

London’s West End theatres have attracted visitors of all kinds for hundreds of years but perhaps none so unusual or as sensational as four Iroquois kings who sat down to a performance of Macbeth in 1710. Tall, muscular, and covered head to toe in tattoos, they were so popular with the audience that they upstaged the actors. What, if anything, the warriors thought or understood of the Scottish play of kingly murder they diplomatically kept to themselves.

The four kings (three Mohawks and one Mohican) were invited to London by Queen Anne. (They originally numbered five but one didn’t survive the voyage.) It was a month-long state visit and the city rolled out the red carpet for them. Besides attending the theatre, they paraded around in royal carriages, toured sites like St. Paul’s Cathedral, and met with the queen at St. James’s Palace. She was so impressed that she asked them to sit for portraits by her court painter John Verelst (ca.1675–1734). She also presented them with a silver communion set still in use today at her Majesty’s Royal Chapel of Christ Church in Deseronto, Ontario.

As always the red carpet had a purpose. The British wanted to win the Iroquois’s support for an attack on the French stronghold at Quebec the following year. But the Iroquois were no fools. They knew their survival depended on maintaining a balance of power among the superpowers. As long as England and France were fighting each other, they wouldn’t be fighting them.

After being feted in London, the warriors agreed to help the British. Once home, however, they quietly sent word to the French what was afoot.[25]

Now let’s head up the long flight of steps into St. Paul’s Cathedral. These steps were far too difficult for the frail Queen Victoria to climb in 1897 when she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, so her service of Thanksgiving was conducted outside. During the Second World War, the iconic image of St. Paul’s rising above the plumes of smoke helped rally the spirit of Londoners. In fact, the cathedral’s survival owes a nod of gratitude in part to Lieutenant Robert Davies (1900–75), a Canadian soldier. He defused a bomb in front of St. Paul’s and won the George Cross for his bravery.

Trivia: When the British conquered Port-Royal in Nova Scotia for the last time in 1710, its name was changed to Annapolis Royal after Queen Anne.

The most popular memorials inside are those to Christopher Wren, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson (1758–1805), 1st Viscount Nelson, and Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley (1769–1852), 1st Duke of Wellington. Our attention, however, will focus on some others.

Trivia: Brock’s monument in Queenston, Ontario, was completed in 1824. A second one was completed in 1859, after an Irishman blew up the first.

Before descending into the crypt, walk to the Dome and then turn right into the south transept. Here, on the western wall, we find a memorial tablet to Major-General Sir Isaac Brock (1769–1812), commander of troops in Upper Canada during the War of 1812. He died at the Battle of Queenston Heights near Niagara Falls and became so legendary that towns, streets, and a university were named after him. The memorial here, by Sir Richard Westmacott, shows Brock dead in the arms of a fellow soldier as an Indian ally — the real secret of his military success — looks on.

Brock Memorial: The General’s Secret Weapon

Sir Isaac Brock was born in Guernsey and joined the British Army when he was fifteen. After uneventful military service in the Caribbean and Europe, he went to Canada in 1802 with his regiment, the 49th Foot.

Life in Upper Canada was sleepy and dull for the tall, energetic military officer. For ten years he did little but train militiamen and chase army deserters. He complained of being “buried in this inactive, remote corner” of the world away from the Napoleonic wars in Europe that promoted soldiers they didn’t kill. Just when he was about to take his leave, the United States declared war on Britain.

With a U.S. invasion imminent, Brock’s first task was to rouse his fellow countrymen to defend their homeland. With only a small fighting force of 1,600 regular troops, he needed civilian volunteers desperately. But many in Upper Canada had recently moved from the U.S. and others didn’t want to be on the losing side in a war that seemed so lopsided. So Brock had to “speak loud and look big” to prove he could beat the Americans. He did this with the help of his Indian allies.

Knowing Americans had deep-rooted fears about Indians, Brock falsified a note about their numbers in his army and let it fall into American hands at Fort Detroit before attacking it. Terrified for their safety, the U.S. forces there surrendered — without so much as a single gun being fired.

Brock faced his second test shortly afterward, when an American force crossed the Niagara River and took command of a British battery on Queenston Heights. Unfortunately, Brock’s earlier success in Detroit may have made him too confident. He led his forces hastily up the slope and was felled quickly by an American sharpshooter. The sight of his corpse demoralized his patchwork army of British regulars, militia, and Indian warriors but eventually they rallied and attacked the Americans with even greater ferocity. “I thought hell had broken loose and let her dogs of war upon us,” said one U.S. soldier.[26] Once again, it was the terrible war whoops of the Indians more than European firepower that brought the enemy to heel. Ironically, in a war that had no victors, it was the Indians who lost the most.

Now let’s descend into the crypt where two more memorials await us. As we descend, take note of the bust of Sir John A. Macdonald.

The first memorial we’ll consider honours our last Canadian-born press baron on this walk: Roy Herbert Thomson (1894–1976), 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet. His memorial reads: “He gave a new direction to the British newspaper industry. A stranger and adventurous man from nowhere, ennobled by the great virtues of courage and integrity and faithfulness.”

In 1963, U.S.S.R. President Nikita Khrushchev told the wealthy Roy Thomson: you can’t take it with you. “Then I am not going,” Thomson replied.

Thomson Memorial: Lord of the Press and Penny

Roy Thomson never spent a nickel he didn’t have to. As the head of a media empire and self-made millionaire, he counted pens and pencils and watched costs scrupulously. He also carried his own luggage, ate at McDonald’s, and took public transit to work every day. “I’d rather read a balance sheet than a book,” he once confessed.

Unlike other press barons on Fleet Street who wanted to influence politics, Thomson never did. For him, editorial content simply went around advertising. Newspapers were a licence to print money, he said.

The son of a Toronto barber, Thomson was a high school dropout and a latecomer to the world of success. He failed as a farmer and tried selling auto parts just when the Great Depression hit and gas stations closed. In 1930, he obtained a franchise to sell radios in North Bay, Ontario, and soon realized that his poor sales had much to do with the fact there was no radio station to listen to. So he started his own, and then went on to buy other stations in Kirkland Lake and Timmins. One of the radio stations shared office space with the local newspaper, so he bought that too. With a pushy aptitude for sales and a keen eye for the bottom line (despite notoriously poor vision), Thomson’s empire grew. At fifty-five, he became a millionaire when a million dollars was still a lot of money.

In the U.K., Thomson went on acquiring and picked up the Scotsman newspaper and a local Scottish television station. In 1964 his media holdings were so enormous he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Thomson of Fleet. But the biggest feather in his cap was yet to come. At seventy-three, he purchased The Times — Britain’s most important quality newspaper — and truly became the lord of Fleet Street.

Trivia: After Lord Thomson’s death, his son Ken sold off most of his father’s newspapers to focus on digital news. In 1989, his company merged to become Thomson Reuters.

Our last memorial of note marks the final resting place of someone we have encountered before: the “very model of a modern major-general,” Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833–1913), 1st Viscount Wolseley. On Walk 3, we learned about this can-do Victorian’s attempted rescue in 1884 of Major-General Charles Gordon (1833–85) in Sudan with the help of Canadian raftsmen. Years earlier, however, Wolseley successfully led one of the most logistically challenging expeditions ever undertaken in the British Empire: one across 620 miles (1,000 kilometres) of rugged Canadian wilderness to find another man, the controversial Métis rebellion leader Louis Riel (1844–85).

Wolseley Memorial: The Red River Challenge

The transfer of Rupert’s Land to the Government of Canada in 1869–70 led to the inevitable clash of cultures between the people who occupied the land and white parvenu settlers arriving mostly from Ontario. Louis Riel may have led an arguably justified rebellion, but it was his foolhardy execution of an English settler that set the prairie grass ablaze. The flames spread eastward to Ontario, where there were indignant calls for his head.

The military expedition to Fort Garry (now Winnipeg) to capture Riel was Wolseley’s first independent command, and a huge logistical test of his abilities. Since the U.S. wouldn’t allow him to go through Minnesota, Wolseley had to go the longer and more treacherous way by Thunder Bay, Lake Winnipeg, and the Red River. His force consisted of 400 British troops and over 700 Canadian militia, along with voyageurs to guide and paddle the maze of lakes and rivers. Between the rebel and Wolseley lay forty-seven portages, some five miles (nine kilometres) of rapids, and millions of mosquitoes. In May 1870, he and his men set off with the cry “For Fort Garry!” In all history, Wolseley liked to say, never had such an operation been attempted.

The keys to Wolseley’s success were good men and good boats. The latter not only had to carry up to twelve people each, but tents, ammunition, weaponry, and food and supplies for sixty days — though the journey took ninety-six. Spirits along the difficult route remained high with plentiful songs, campfires, and pipe smoking. But when the force finally arrived at Fort Garry in late August, they found the doors open and Riel gone. “Personally I am glad that Riel did not come out and surrender,” wrote Wolseley afterward. “For I could not then have hanged him as I might have done had I taken him prisoner while in arms against his sovereign.”[27]

As we take our leave of St. Paul’s Cathedral, we pass the Chapel of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in the south aisle. This order was established in 1818 and its chapel contains the nameplates of all those who have received the award since 1906. Among them is Sir Arthur Currie (1875–1933), head of the Canadian army in the First World War, and later principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University.

Trivia: Britain’s Order of St. Michael and St. George has three classes: Companion (CMG), Knight and Dame Commander (KCMG), and Knight Grand Cross (GCMG). Some people joke the initials stand for “Call Me God,” “Kindly Call Me God,” and “God Calls Me God.” Sir George Perley, a Canadian politician, told voters his KCMG stood for “Keep Calling Me George.”

Exit St. Paul’s Cathedral and walk around to the redeveloped Paternoster Square (Latin for Our Father) where the old Temple Bar archway now stands. It was placed here in 2004 after an extensive refurbishment. St. Paul’s Tube is found on the east side of the cathedral where our walk ends.

Walk 5: