Chapter 3

The Captain Cook Connection

With the impending arrival of Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe and his wife at Niagara in the summer of 1792, the original building at Navy Hall was renovated to serve as the residence and offices of the viceregal couple. However, the Simcoes found the accommodation dark and dingy and much preferred to live in “the canvass houses,” even through the long, cold Canadian winter. These were not the simple canvas tents that would later be pitched on the Commons by the thousands during the Camp Niagara days. British military officers and government officials during military campaigns or exploratory expeditions throughout the world often lived “under canvas” outfitted with specially designed campaign furniture.[1] The Simcoes’ canvas houses, however, were quite unique. Shortly after Simcoe’s appointment as Lieutenant Governor, he purchased at a sale of Captain James Cook’s effects[2] in England one or two canvas houses. The famous explorer had used these during his three circumnavigating expeditions in the 1760s and 70s. Sketches taken during these voyages illustrate the canvas houses in use.[3] By strange coincidence, at the British conquest of Louisbourg in 1758 John Graves Simcoe’s father Captain John Simcoe was commander of HMS Pembroke, under whom a young James Cook had served admirably as master.

An itemized account from a Mr. Nathan Smith lists upgrades to the canvas houses commissioned by Simcoe:

Improvements in the Canvas House … made in frames, 38 feet 4”long by 12 feet wide and 7 feet 2 inches high at the side with 6 glazed windows and a partition to each room, also a cosy iron stove, fender, shovel, poker, and tongs, the inside of the rooms papered complete, the outside painted in oil colour and properly packed, marked and numbered.[4]

A later invoice refers to camp tables and chairs “packed with the canvas houses.”[5]

The canvas was apparently applied over a wooden framework and could be boarded up from the outside when necessary for warmth.

Mrs. Simcoe recorded in her diary that upon their arrival in July 1792 they lived in three simple canvas tents, or “marquees,” pitched on the hill above Navy Hall that “command a beautiful view of the river and garrison [Fort Niagara] on the opposite side.”[6]

Mrs. Simcoe later recorded that the canvas houses finally arrived. After they were reassembled a partition was built so that one part was a bedroom, the other a “sitting-room.”[7] The other canvas house was apparently occupied by the “squalling children” and the servants. Such were the domestic arrangements for His Majesty’s representative during their first Upper Canadian winter, and quite a
change from their forty-room mansion in Devonshire with its superb view across the Vale of Honiton.

Captain Cook’s Canvas Houses, Matavi Bay, Tahiti, April 1769, watercolour. Two of these canvas houses were occupied by the Simcoes at Navy Hall and later on the edge of Garrison Creek at York.
Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library, Toronto Reference Library, John Ross Robertson, JRR #4610.

Surveyor Joseph Bouchette[8] described the canvas house: “Frail as was its substance, it was rendered exceedingly comfortable and soon became as distinguished for the social and urban hospitality of its venerable and gracious host, as for the peculiarity of its structure.”[9] Also impressed was an American official, General William Hull, who was attending an Indian Council meeting held in Niagara,

On my account the Governor ordered supper in his canvas-house, which he brought from Europe … It is papered and painted, and you would suppose you were in a common house. The floor is the case for the whole of the room. It is quite a curiosity … Perceiving me so much pleased with the canvas-house, the Governor ordered breakfast in it.[10]

In the summer of 1793 one of the canvas houses was dismantled and transported across Lake Ontario to the site of York (future Toronto). Reassembled on a small knoll above the pristine shore of Lake Ontario, near the mouth of the Garrison Creek across from the chosen site for Fort York, the Simcoe family spent another cozy winter “under canvas.” Not all visitors to the canvas house were impressed. Bachelor Peter Russell reported to his half-sister, “you have no conception of the Misery in which they live — The Canvas house being their only residence.”[11] Eight months later the canvas house was back in Niagara on the edge of the Military Reserve/Commons and remained the official viceregal’s residence until the Simcoes returned to England in 1796. What became of Captain Cook’s well-travelled canvas houses is not known.