Isabel Baxter can’t have had any idea what she was in for. She was still only a teenager when her ship docked at Quebec City, dwarfed by the soaring cliff that rose high above the great river below. She had come to make a new life in Canada — with a new husband. He was out there somewhere on shore, waiting for her to disembark. She hadn’t seen William in years — not since they were both children attending the same one-room schoolhouse back in Scotland. She couldn’t even remember what he looked like. But this stranger was the man she was about to marry.
It wasn’t her idea. Or even his. It was his mother who made the match. Arranged marriages were a common practice back then, when Canadian women were in short supply and men were hard to find in Scotland. The old woman must have hoped that Isabel — a solid and reliable girl — would have a positive influence on her son. William had spent his Scottish youth drinking and gambling, even fathered an illegitimate child. But now his mother was following him to Canada where she could keep an eye on him. She brought that illegitimate son with her, and Isabel to be William’s bride. Hopefully, a family would ensure he never returned to his wild ways.
It didn’t work. The couple would be married in Montreal just three weeks later, then they would all head west to begin their new life. And while William never did go back to drinking and gambling, he would find a new passion out there in Upper Canada: politics. And politics would prove to be an even more dangerous vice.
Isabel didn’t know it as she stepped off that ship in Quebec City, but the man she was about to marry was destined to become one of the most notorious figures in the history of Toronto. His radical views would soon make him the city’s most wanted man. He would be forced to flee into exile with a price on his head. He was willing to risk everything for his beliefs. Including his life. And his family.
Isabel Baxter was about to marry William Lyon Mackenzie.
It was four years later that Isabel Baxter Mackenzie came home to find that her house had been trashed. It was a modest wooden home, tucked away behind a little fence, with a small garden; it stood on what’s now called Front Street — just down the road from the St. Lawrence Market. It was surrounded by the bustle of the town, with a view of the lake and the busy wharf right across the street. The Mackenzies lived upstairs, and in the back, but the ground floor was mostly dedicated to a newspaper office. William Lyon Mackenzie’s Colonial Advocate had become one of the most urgent voices for change in Upper Canada. There, in their front room, a big printing press churned out his radical ideas in paper and ink.
In Upper Canada, the Family Compact still ruled supreme. And their fear of democracy had only grown stronger. The War of 1812 had shown them all the upheaval and bloodshed it could cause. To them, democracy felt not only like a threat to their power, but to their lives. So, they used their power to crack down on anyone who opposed them. Those who dared to argue in favour of democratic reform were liable to find themselves under attack: denounced, imprisoned, exiled, beaten bloody in the streets, sometimes even tarred and feathered. And William Lyon Mackenzie was the Family Compact’s number one target.
Upper Canada had never been as monolithic and British as those in power would have liked. And as the Family Compact’s abuses piled up, more and more settlers came to believe that real democracy was necessary. The Reform Party was born, opposing the Tories and arguing for democratic change; for the right of Canadians to have more power over their own affairs.
Mackenzie was the most notoriously radical of all Reform leaders. He used the Colonial Advocate to denounce the Family Compact at every turn. He called them parasites, demons, jackals, and fungus. As he later put it, “The family compact surround the Lieutenant-Governor, and mould him like wax, to their will; they fill every office with their relatives, dependents and partisans.… The whole of the revenues of Upper Canada are in reality at their mercy.”
Mackenzie was determined to get his word out. In fact, he was giving away more free copies of his newspaper than he was selling, sending them to influential citizens in the hope he could sway their opinion. He was running up a mountain of debt doing it. By the end of 1825, just three years into the Mackenzies’ marriage, he was in real trouble, forced to shut down publication for six months and flee York in order to avoid his creditors.
That’s when the Family Compact struck.
On a June day in 1826, a mob of angry young men marched down to Front Street, to the Mackenzies’ home. They burst into the house and began to trash the newspaper office. Isabel wasn’t home when they did, but William’s mother and son both were — they hid in fear while the mob broke the printing press and seized the type, scattering the metal letters everywhere: on the floor and in the garden — some of them were even hurled into the lake. The event would become known as the Types Riot. It was a brazen attack, carried out in broad daylight. Some of York’s most prominent citizens watched it happen, looking on with approval; two of them were magistrates, responsible for upholding the law.
As Isabel Baxter Mackenzie surveyed the damage after the riot, she must have realized what a dangerous life she’d married into. But she agreed with her husband. She may not have chosen him, but she believed in his cause. By all accounts, she was a well-read woman, with a strong knowledge of political history; she could see what was happening in Upper Canada perfectly well. And while she may have been calmer and more stable than her impulsive husband, she still held strong views. “The spirit of independence fired her imagination,” as historian Charlotte Gray puts it, “and the blood of dispossessed Scots ran just as strongly through her veins as through his. She believed utterly in the Reform campaign; she shared Mackenzie’s outrage at the corruption and lethargy of the Family Compact rulers.”
The Types Riot was only the beginning. The Mackenzies’ marriage would be engulfed by political violence for decades to come. Mackenzie sued the rioters and won. The money was enough to restart the newspaper and even enter politics himself. Within months, he’d won a seat in the Legislative Assembly. Now, he had a bigger voice than ever before. He kept up his propaganda campaign against the Tories of the Family Compact, calling them names, interrupting their meetings, demanding change, and generally being a thorn in their side.
The Family Compact fought back. That winter, the Tories in the assembly voted to kick Mackenzie out of office. His supporters stormed Parliament and in the by-election that followed, Mackenzie was re-elected in a landslide. Only one person in his riding voted against him. A victory parade of more than 130 horse-drawn sleighs marched down snowy Yonge Street to the sound of bagpipes, bringing their democratically elected representative back to office.
Five days later, the Tories kicked him out again. There was another by-election. And another landslide victory for the famous Reformer. It happened over and over again, as the Family Compact got angrier and angrier. During a visit to Hamilton, Mackenzie was beaten by thugs and left bloodied in the street. In York, he was pelted with garbage and burned in effigy. That day, Mackenzie was only rescued from the mob thanks to the peacekeeping James FitzGibbon — the old hero of the War of 1812 had broken up more than one street fight in recent years. When Mackenzie’s new office on Church Street was attacked, his apprentice could only keep the mob at bay by firing a pistol out the window; some people like to say he used type from the printing press as ammunition.
For a while, Mackenzie went into hiding. He feared for his life. But his support kept growing. He would soon find himself in a more powerful position than ever before.
As Reformers and Tories battled in the streets of York, a pandemic was raging across the globe. Cholera would kill tens of thousands of people when it reached the Canadian colonies in the summer of 1832. The streets of York were filled with death carts. Thousands fled the town, while hundreds died sudden and horrifying deaths. In the wake of the outbreak, even the Family Compact agreed that in order to be ready for the next wave, the growing town needed its own municipal power: a democratically elected government with the authority to make and enforce its own bylaws.
And so, in 1834, the Town of York officially became the City of Toronto. William Lyon Mackenzie was elected as the city’s first mayor. He spent much of his year in power battling a second outbreak of the deadly disease. Under his watch, the first wooden sidewalks were built; garbage collection was introduced; there were new regulations around the disposal of waste and corpses; and pigs were no longer allowed to run free in the streets. Mackenzie operated some of the ambulances and death carts himself. He caught the disease and was lucky to survive.
But when his year as mayor was done, Mackenzie returned to provincial politics. And there, he discovered he still couldn’t get anything done. It didn’t matter how much popular support he could muster, the system hadn’t really changed. The Family Compact had the power and they made it abundantly clear they had no appetite for reform — or for William Lyon Mackenzie. Even if that’s what the people of Upper Canada wanted.
The Mackenzies had spent years fighting for democracy, risking their safety, sacrificing their time and money, dedicating their entire family life to supporting that one goal. But their patience was wearing thin. Soon, it would run out entirely.
There were men at the door. The Mackenzies were living on York Street now, in a red brick house just south of Osgoode Hall. It had plenty of space for their growing family, even a garden out back filled with raspberries, gooseberries, grapes, and currants. They had a stable for the horses, too, with enough room for a cow. The Mackenzies would live in at least twenty houses during their four decades of marriage, but this was the home Isabel and William would always remember as their favourite. And now, it was in danger.
The rebellion had begun.
Mackenzie had always believed he could find a peaceful solution to the problems that plagued Upper Canada. He had faith in the British system. Together, in 1832, the Mackenzies had even travelled all the way to England to make the case. William was sure that if only the colonial rulers in London knew what was happening in Canada, they would be outraged enough to fix things.
Ten years after she first arrived at Quebec City, Isabel Baxter Mackenzie found herself sailing across the Atlantic once more — this time, in the other direction. She was in her late twenties and pregnant yet again; she would give birth to her seventh child that fall, thousands of kilometres from home and the rest of their children. In England, the couple lived in cramped quarters, with little income and plenty of mounting debt. But they were just a couple of kilometres from Westminster — a short walk away from the heart of power in the Empire.
Mackenzie began to have meetings at the Colonial Office, presenting the mountain of evidence he’d collected. For a while, it really did seem as if the British were taking his concerns seriously. He was invited to share his thoughts in the major newspapers. He published a book. He even met with the prime minister. When he produced petitions signed by tens of thousands of Upper Canadians, the documents were presented to the House of Commons with the support of the government. When they asked him to submit a written copy of all of his grievances, he responded by staying up for six straight days and nights, writing furiously, switching from one hand to the other when the first cramped up.
It looked like they were winning. The colonial secretary — the man who oversaw the entire British Empire — sent a stern letter to the Family Compact demanding changes. And when they refused, he fired two of Mackenzie’s greatest enemies. It must have been an incredibly joyous time for the couple. After years of anguish and frustration, it looked like they were finally winning the battle for reform. And just three weeks after the colonial secretary sent his letter, Isabel gave birth to a baby boy — their first after six straight girls.
But then it all quite suddenly fell apart. The British government began to change course. The colonial secretary was replaced by a man who took the Family Compact’s side, rehiring the officials who’d just been fired. The Mackenzies’ victory suddenly evaporated. William and Isabel sailed back to Canada, defeated. A few months later, baby Joseph died. Darkness had descended once again.
But the colonial authorities were far from the only people they’d met in England. They’d also spent plenty of time getting to know the radicals and reformers behind the democracy movement in England — they’d even named their baby after one of them. Those English reformers were even more radical than Mackenzie. They told him the Canadian colonies should be independent from Britain. And they made it clear that if his attempts to achieve peaceful reform failed, they thought he should simply overthrow the government.
After four more years of abuse at the hands of the Family Compact, those ideas began to make a lot of sense to him. Mackenzie spent the summer of 1837 travelling through the province, gathering support for an armed revolution. “Mark my words, Canadians!” he wrote. “The struggle has begun — It will end in freedom. We are determined never to rest until independence is ours.… Up then brave Canadians! Get ready your rifles and make short work of it.… Woe to those who oppose us.”
His rebellion began on a Tuesday morning in December. Mackenzie led a motley rebel army of five hundred men down Yonge Street to seize the city, overthrow the government, and declare an independent Republic of Canada.
The loyal Tories rushed to defend the city. They’d been tipped off; some had seen the rebels gathering north of the city. And while the lieutenant-governor was slow to take the threat seriously, James FitzGibbon wasn’t. As he leapt into action, preparing for the defence of Toronto, soldiers were sent to the Mackenzies’ house on York Street. Isabel was there to meet them.
They claimed they were there on orders to protect the family. But they began to trample through the house, sticking their swords through mattresses and under the beds, looking for hiding rebels. They rifled through cupboards and drawers, hunting for William’s letters and plans. All the while, Isabel must have been watching nervously. She knew her husband’s files were hanging from the ceiling of their bedroom. The soldiers repeatedly passed right under them; according to some versions of the story, plumes on their helmets even brushed against the papers.
Finally, she was able to find an excuse believable enough to get the men out of the house for a few minutes — just long enough for her daughters to grab the files and feed them into four wood stoves, burning the evidence.
The men were supposed to keep the family under watch, but when Mackenzie’s mother — then in her late eighties — marched downstairs and berated them for harassing women and children, the soldiers retreated. And for the moment, Isabel could only wait and hope her husband would return in one piece.
He didn’t. Word eventually reached the house on York Street: the rebellion was over; it had been crushed. But William still hadn’t come home. Isabel had no idea what had happened to her husband. She hadn’t heard from him in weeks, since well before the uprising began. But there was hope. Rumours of his daring escape ran wild as the lieutenant-governor put a price of a thousand pounds on his head. Some said Mackenzie had hid out in a cave on the Niagara Escarpment. Or in a haystack. Or a pigpen. A local farmer had saved him by giving him a horse to ride. “The horse was true as steel, sure footed, spirited,” the rebel leader would later remember. He rode fast through the December cold, slipping across the Niagara River into the United States. He was safe.
When Isabel Baxter Mackenzie finally heard the good news, she rushed to her husband’s side.
Navy Island is in the middle of the Niagara River, not far above Niagara Falls, just barely on the Canadian side of the border. It was there, living in a pair of wooden huts, that the Mackenzies regrouped after William’s failed revolution. They weren’t ready to give up quite yet. They were joined by what was left of his supporters. He declared the island to be the independent Republic of Canada. From there, he planned to continue the fight. As far as he was concerned, the rebellion wasn’t over yet.
Isabel had left the children behind in Toronto, catching a stagecoach to Buffalo — briefly frightened when she overheard a rumour that her husband was dead — hanged or drowned. Soon, she reached the river and boarded an American steamship that the rebels were using to ferry supplies to their island: the SS Caroline. It was on Christmas Day that she finally reached her destination, reunited with her husband at last.
The danger, however, was far from over. Just a few nights later, the Upper Canadian authorities launched a raid across the river. But instead of attacking the rebels on the island, they crossed all the way over to the American side of the border. Their target was the Caroline. They seized the ship, towed it out into the middle of the river, set it on fire, and left it to drift over Niagara Falls. They’d cut off the rebels’ supply line. But things hadn’t gone entirely smoothly. As they fought to take control of the ship, they shot and killed an American watchkeeper, Amos Durfee. It sparked an international crisis, with many outraged Americans calling for war. Durfee’s body was eventually strung up in front of a tavern in Buffalo as a way to recruit even more men to Mackenzie’s cause.
Isabel helped William prepare for war. There were about two hundred men on Navy Island, but Isabel was the only woman who spent any real time there. She got busy with her needle and thread, turning her petticoats into cartridge bags to be used in the battles to come. They say her mere presence on the island inspired all the men she came in contact with, as she camped out there in the middle of the river, sewing hour after hour in the name of democracy and revolution while their enemies bombarded the island. At one point, while she was cooking dinner, an artillery shell crashed through the roof of their shack and landed in a barrel of beans, sending animal feed flying through the air.
Luckily, she’d escaped unharmed. But it was rough life. It took a toll. It wasn’t long before she fell ill and was too sick to continue. Mackenzie helped his wife back to Buffalo so she could recover. When he did, he was arrested by the American authorities — his adventures on Navy Island had violated the country’s neutrality laws. The arrest barely slowed him down; he was only briefly in custody, released thanks to the bystanders who immediately stepped forward to bail him out.
Still, things on Navy Island weren’t going well. As time passed, the rebels’ numbers were dwindling. Mackenzie’s promises of land and silver must have been hard to believe. He seemed to be spending more time designing his republic’s flag than in planning his coming war. When he and the rest of the leadership fell out, Mackenzie finally realized his cause was lost. As the rebels abandoned Navy Island, Mackenzie abandoned his rebellion.
The fight would carry on for another year without him. The Patriots, as they called themselves, launched a series of border raids and fought more than a dozen minor battles along the St. Lawrence and Detroit Rivers. More than a hundred men died in the Patriot War before the uprising was finally, fully, and completely crushed. William Lyon Mackenzie’s dream of a Canadian revolution was over.
You can still visit the Mackenzies’ last home in Toronto. It’s operated as a museum now. Mackenzie House is an elegant building, with yellow brick and black shutters. It stands on Bond Street, in the heart of downtown, just around the corner from Yonge-Dundas Square. Inside, you’ll still find some of the couple’s own belongings, including their copy of the “Wanted” poster that called for Mackenzie’s capture; they proudly framed it and hung it on their wall. Walking through their home, you can still get a hint of what it must have felt like when they were living there a century and a half ago. This is where the rebel mayor and his rebel wife spent their final years together.
After the failed rebellion, they would spend a decade living in exile, most of it in Rochester and New York City. Those were terrible years. All of Mackenzie’s attempts to launch a new newspaper failed. At times, the family could barely afford to eat. At least one landlord threatened to throw them out for failing to pay the rent; others refused to take them in. Mackenzie fell into a deep depression. There were illnesses in the family. A fire swept through their home. One of their daughters suffered a mental breakdown and had to be institutionalized. A second died. So did William’s mother, who’d played such an important role in their lives ever since she’d brought Isabel to Canada all those years ago. Her son couldn’t even attend her funeral; he could only watch the procession from a distance, through the barred window of his prison cell. He’d finally been convicted of breaking U.S. neutrality laws. He barely made it out of the prison alive: one morning, an assassin’s bullet was fired into his cell.
But Isabel stuck with him through all those hard times, just as she always had. And there would, eventually, be a glimmer of hope. News from up north. Years after the rebellion, the political tide would finally turn. Democracy would come to Canada.
Eventually, the old rebels of 1837 would be pardoned. The Mackenzies would finally be welcomed home. Not everyone was glad they were back. William’s first tentative visit sparked riots. But they had supporters, too. William couldn’t resist getting back into politics and he was re-elected, giving passionate speeches in the legislature, pushing for even more reform, a thorn in the side of the powerful once again.
The Mackenzies would never be rich. But many in Toronto remembered their years of struggle, the sacrifices they’d made in the name of Canadian democracy. Their friends and supporters pooled their money together and bought them a nice new home, right downtown: Mackenzie House.
Isabel Baxter Mackenzie might not have chosen her husband, but she did choose her cause — a rebel in her own right. She’d stood with William from the very beginning, and she would stand with him to the end. After years of riots and rebellion, the Mackenzies finally had somewhere to grow old together in peace.
And that’s just what they did.