James Hunter Samson was worried. It had been months since he’d gotten a letter from his best friend. And in that last message, Robert Baldwin had spoken of a new girl: his latest crush. That wasn’t a good sign. Samson knew perfectly well that Baldwin was a hopelessly romantic teenager who devoured romance novels and longed to be swept up in a great love story of his own. Baldwin was only fourteen, but he was already falling head over heels for the girls of York on a regular basis, writing love poems to them, and waxing on about them at length in his letters to his friend. And so, as the silence grew longer and longer, Samson must have had a sinking feeling in his stomach. It seemed as if Baldwin might be falling in love yet again. And that was truly terrible news, because James Hunter Samson was sure he loved Robert Baldwin more deeply than any woman ever could.
Many years later, when they were both grown men, they would take their place among the most powerful politicians in Upper Canada, their relationship in tatters as they stood on opposite sides of the vicious fight over Canadian democracy. One them would change the country forever. But it all began when they were boys in a blue schoolhouse in 1818.
Samson was born in Ireland and had sailed across the ocean as a young teenager — his father was a soldier sent to fight in the War of 1812. When the war ended, the family stayed in the Canadian colonies, with Samson aspiring to become a lawyer. He was eighteen when he arrived in York to attend the most prestigious school in the province. The Home District Grammar School stood on a square near St. James Church; it was two storeys high, held about fifty students, and had such a distinctive paint job that it became known as the Blue School. (It would eventually evolve into today’s Jarvis Collegiate.) The students learned to develop moral character, to love the British monarchy, and to be devoutly religious Protestants. And since the school was run by none other than Reverend John Strachan, Samson’s classmates included the sons of all the most respected families in Upper Canada.
Robert Baldwin was one of them. His life had been intertwined with the history of Toronto since the day he was born. He’d been part of the very first generation of settlers raised in York, born in the same house where the Mackenzies would later live: the one where the Types Riot happened. He grew up at Russell Abbey, where John White had died after his New Year’s duel. On the day the Americans invaded, Robert was nine years old, fleeing up Yonge Street with his mother. He heard the great explosion that killed Zebulon Pike and saw the plume of smoke rise into the air. His father was one of the town’s leading citizens: William Warren Baldwin was a doctor, lawyer, and one of the original architects of Osgoode Hall. He’d also married one of the Willcocks sisters, so he was there the day Eugenia married Augustin Boiton de Fougères, brandishing his rifle to scare off the revellers at that night’s charivari.
And while William Warren Baldwin was a leader of the Reform Party, passionately opposed to Reverend Strachan’s politics, that didn’t stop him from giving his son the best possible education. When he was old enough, Robert Baldwin was sent to the Blue School just like all his most privileged peers.
It was there at the schoolhouse that the two boys must have met for the first time. Baldwin was a few years younger than Samson, but they still quickly hit it off. Within months, they’d become best friends. But one of them seems to have longed for more than simple friendship.
Samson didn’t live in York for very long. His year at the Blue School complete, he was sent off to continue his education by serving in the office of one of the most successful lawyers in the province. It was a great opportunity. Christopher Hagerman was a major figure in the Family Compact; in fact, he was one of the Tories that Mackenzie got fired during his trip to London. But taking that great opportunity also meant that Samson had to move to Kingston, which must have seemed a long way from York and his dear new friend — in those days it took a steamship to get there, or a long stagecoach ride over punishingly rough roads. Still, distance wouldn’t weaken their bond; in 1819, Samson and Baldwin sent a flurry of letters up and down Lake Ontario.
In their messages, they talked about everything from juicy gossip to politics and literature. Baldwin came from a proudly literary family — his grandson Robert Baldwin Ross would one day have his own great love affair with Oscar Wilde — and he fancied himself something of a poet. He kept his friend up to date on all his latest crushes by sending him love poems dedicated to a pantheon of teenage girls.
Samson was incredibly supportive of his friend’s writing. He was constantly encouraging him, acting as his editor, even suggesting they collect their poems together into a homemade book. When one of Baldwin’s pieces was criticized, Samson rushed to his defence by slamming the critic: “[H]e knows as much about poetry as a horse does about his grandfather.” But he clearly didn’t like hearing about all the enchanting young women Baldwin was spending his time with. Samson suggested that his friend focus on his studies instead of his crushes. He wanted Robert to himself. “His letters show Samson as articulate, sensitive, fond of poetry, hard-working, and ambitious,” historian Gerald E. Boyce once explained, “but also insecure, subject to fits of depression, and extremely jealous of anyone who threatened to come between himself and Baldwin.”
“I love and esteem you with my whole soul,” Samson once confided to his friend. As with Alexander Wood and George Markland before him, it’s impossible to know now exactly how romantic Samson’s feelings really were. But his letters suggest those feelings were intense and that he was deeply worried that Baldwin didn’t feel the same way. When his friend fell suddenly silent, it must have seemed as if that fear had been confirmed.
Every day, Samson walked to the post office “tortured by anxiety and suspense.” And every day, he was disappointed: there was no letter waiting for him. He sent his own messages off to York, pleading with Baldwin not to choose a girl over his best friend. “Believe me,” he warned him, “she cannot love or esteem you more than I do.”
But Baldwin was always falling in and out of love. It had already happened at least ten times by Samson’s count. And this new crush would eventually pass, as well. It would be a few years before James Hunter Samson’s greatest fear really did come true. In 1825, Robert Baldwin fell deeply and irreversibly in love.
Her name was Elizabeth Sullivan. Baldwin was in his early twenties when they fell for each other. She was only fourteen or fifteen, but he was charmed by everything she did. She was the one person that he felt he could truly confide in — much to Samson’s chagrin. But in the end, it wasn’t his jealous friend who would prove to be the biggest obstacle to Baldwin’s new relationship; it was his family.
That’s because it was her family, too. Robert and Eliza were cousins. Their relatives didn’t approve of the incestuous match or the worrying age difference. Eliza was banished to New York City; the family hoped that with a little time apart, the young love would fade. But they were wrong. For more than a year, Eliza and Robert exchanged their own flurry of love letters. He wrote poems about her. Had dreams about her. Longed for her as the scent of lilacs drifted through the air at Russell Abbey, reminding him of their time together. On the first day of every month, they had a set hour when they would both think of each other, knowing the other was doing the same. If anything, their love was growing stronger. “Be assured,” he promised her, “every day increases my affection.”
And so, with every passing day, Samson’s hopes were fading. In the end, Robert and Eliza’s parents gave up. She was allowed to return home to York and to marry Robert at a modest ceremony at St. James Church in front of their reluctant relatives.
Samson was there, too. He stood at Robert’s side, serving as his groomsman, but he’d been deeply wounded by the news. “It seemed to me,” he wrote, “as if I were losing some portion of that, to which I had prior claim.” In that moment, as the ceremony was performed, he must have felt a greater distance between himself and his best friend than ever before, his heart breaking as he watched Robert pledge his undying love to Eliza instead of to him.
As soon as the wedding was over, the Baldwins excitedly began building their new life together. For a while, they lived at the family’s summer residence — Spadina House — and then settled into an elegant brick home on the corner of Front and Bay Streets. They had three children together. Robert’s career began to take off. It was a blissful life. “I wish every one was as happy as I am,” Eliza wrote.
In the years to come, Baldwin and Samson — once such close friends — would do more than just drift apart. They would become political foes.
After the wedding, Samson retreated to his own new home in Belleville. The city was just a village back then, home to only a few hundred people. Samson had become their first lawyer and was a leader in the small community. When cholera swept through the Canadian colonies during the summer of 1832, he helped to pay for the construction of the town’s first hospital. He sat on the local board of health, and on the village council, too.
He even got married. And he married well. Alicia Fenton Russell was the niece and ward of Sir John Harvey, a hero of the War of 1812 who would go on to become lieutenant-governor of all three Maritime provinces, and civil governor of Newfoundland, too. Samson and his new wife would never have any children, but the impressive match did undoubtably help cement his public reputation. Just a few months after getting married, he ran for a seat in the Legislative Assembly. And he won.
But if he thought his new career would provide a distraction from an aching heart, he was sorely mistaken. He would now have to travel to York on a regular basis to take his seat in Parliament. And soon, Baldwin would be there waiting for him.
Six months after Samson took his seat, John Beverley Robinson resigned from his. He’d been appointed as chief justice of Upper Canada, finishing his climb up to the very top of the legal profession in the province. That meant Robinson was leaving the Legislative Assembly. There would be a by-election to pick his replacement. The riding of York, the capital itself, was suddenly up for grabs.
The Reformers saw a huge opportunity. Robinson had held that seat for nearly a decade, using it to consolidate the power of the Family Compact. If they could win in his old riding, it would be a major symbolic victory: the leader of the Family Compact replaced by a Reformer, a sure sign that popular support was beginning to swing away from the Tories. And the candidate the Reformers picked to perform this miracle was Robert Baldwin.
It was a tough race. He and his Tory opponent were neck and neck right to the very end. Baldwin was running against William Botsford Jarvis, a leading member of the Family Compact and who was serving as sheriff at the time. He had co-founded the village of Yorkville, and his country estate would one day become the affluent neighbourhood of Rosedale. In a few years, he’d be leading the militiamen who faced down Mackenzie’s army on Yonge Street. And yet even with the support Jarvis enjoyed, when the dust had settled, Baldwin had done it. Barely. He had won by only nine votes.
It was the beginning of a transformative political career. Over the next twenty years, Baldwin would be in the thick of the battles over Canada’s future. While he was a moderate who opposed Mackenzie’s violence, he still found himself caught up in the rebellion crisis.
It’s thought he was the one who convinced George Markland and the rest of the Executive Council to resign with him in protest when Lieutenant-Governor Francis Bond Head refused to heed their advice. On the day Mackenzie marched his army down Yonge Street, Baldwin was there trying to arrange a truce. After the rebellion was crushed, it was Baldwin who represented Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews in court as their defence attorney, convincing them to plead guilty in the vain hope that John Beverley Robinson would show mercy and spare their lives. And in the years to come, with all the most radical Reformers dead, imprisoned, or driven into exile, it was the moderate Baldwin who would find himself the undisputed leader of the Reformers and the struggle for responsible government.
James Hunter Samson, on the other hand, would spend his entire political career opposing almost everything Robert Baldwin believed in.
When Samson first took his seat in Parliament, he claimed to be a moderate, too. But that was far from the truth. His days as a student under John Strachan and Christopher Hagerman seem to have rubbed off on him — and the heartbreak he suffered at Baldwin’s hands can’t have helped. He soon proved himself to be one of the most radically conservative Tories in all of Upper Canada, opposing the Reformers at every turn. William Lyon Mackenzie despised him, putting him on his “Black List” of Family Compact villains, calling him “a selfish illiberal creature.” Samson retaliated by suing Mackenzie. He dismissed his opinions as “gross, scandalous, and malicious libels — intended and calculated to bring this House and the Government of this Province into contempt.” It was Samson who introduced the motion to have Mackenzie thrown out of Parliament, sparking the crisis that led to the rebel mayor’s mission to London.
While Baldwin believed wholeheartedly in democratic reform, Samson simply couldn’t understand why anyone thought change was needed in Upper Canada. “We have less cause of complaint,” he argued, “than any people on earth.” And for a while, it seemed as if it was Samson’s vision for the future that would win out: as if ultimate power in the hands of the British lieutenant-governor and his bosses in England forever; and as if Canada would never embrace democracy.
Robert Baldwin might have been destined for great things, but his political career got off to a rough start. Just a few months after his big by-election victory, tragic news arrived: King George IV had died. The monarch’s death meant a new election was automatically called. Samson won his seat again; in fact, he’d hold it for the rest of his life. But Baldwin lost. It was Sheriff Jarvis and the Tories who won the riding of York — as well as the entire election. Support was swinging back toward the Family Compact.
Baldwin had never really liked politics. He wasn’t a particularly good speaker or at all charismatic. He was perfectly happy to return to his private life, focusing on his thriving legal career, and his love for Eliza and their children. But that blissful existence was about to suffer a much greater loss than any election could ever deliver. Heartbreak was coming for Robert Baldwin, too.
Giving birth in the early 1800s was a life-threatening ordeal. And Eliza’s fourth labour proved to be difficult, requiring a Caesarean section. The wound never fully healed. It slowly and painfully killed her over the course of the next two years.
Robert was devastated. He’d be deep in mourning for the rest of his life. During the fight for responsible government, Baldwin suffered bouts of severe depression. He was plagued by nightmares and insomnia. There were days he couldn’t muster the energy to complete even the most simple tasks. He kept Eliza’s room untouched: a shrine to her memory, one that only he was allowed to enter. He kept her love letters in his pocket wherever he went. On the day of their wedding anniversary, he could be found wandering the streets of Toronto like a ghost, visiting the landmarks of their relationship. A devoutly religious man, he longed for the day when he would finally be reunited with his lost love.
It finally came in 1858. A thousand mourners attended Toronto’s first state funeral, following the horse-drawn hearse as it made its way up from the new St. James Cathedral to Spadina House. There, Robert Baldwin was taken into the family tomb and laid to rest beside his beloved Eliza.
It was a month later that they found the note, tucked away in a pocket of one of his vests: a list of his final wishes. Most of them were fairly ordinary, touching requests. He wanted to be buried with Eliza’s love letters, and with a brooch she’d given him as a gift. But some of them were much more bizarre. Baldwin had never lost the sense of romantic drama he’d shared with James Hunter Samson through those teenage love poems all those years ago.
On a chilly winter day in 1859, three of Robert Baldwin’s closest relatives descended into the family tomb to crack open his casket. They brought a doctor with them. There inside the tomb, the physician took a scalpel to the corpse, splitting Baldwin’s stomach open, giving him a Caesarean section like the one that had killed his wife. Then they closed the coffin and chained it to Eliza’s, so that in death the two lovers would never be apart.
By then, James Hunter Samson had been dead for more than twenty years. The heartbroken Tory never fully recovered from the loss of his cherished relationship with Baldwin. As their political views diverged, the two old friends were driven further and further apart. When Samson’s father died, it left him even more bereft. At the very same time that Eliza Baldwin’s health was spiralling toward death, so, too, was his. Samson sank into alcoholism and despair. Eventually, he was unable even to attend Parliament. The state of his mental health became fodder for the press. Ravaged by his drinking, plagued by depression, he lived only a few weeks longer than Eliza did. He died at the age of thirty-six.
He didn’t live to see the Family Compact lose their fight, or to see the man he’d once loved so dearly change the course of Canadian history.
It was just a matter of weeks after Eliza died that Robert Baldwin was dragged back into politics for the first time since his lost election. Bond Head arrived to take his post as lieutenant-governor and quickly appointed the respected Reformer to his Executive Council. Baldwin, still overwhelmed by grief, tried to decline, but was eventually worn down. And so, the series of events that would lead to Mackenzie’s rebellion were set in motion.
In the wake of the uprising, the British forced Upper and Lower Canada to unite as the “Province of Canada.” It was a naked attempt to stamp out French Canadian culture, which they blamed for the rebellions that had swept across both provinces. They assumed all the Anglophones would stick together and outvote the Francophones. But the new leader of the Reformers had a better idea. He saw an opportunity to lay the foundation for a new kind of multicultural nation.
Robert Baldwin cemented an alliance with the leader of the Quebecois reformers: Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine. By uniting all those who believed in responsible government — Anglophones and Francophones, Protestants and Catholics alike — they would have the power they needed to defeat the Tories.
Together, Baldwin and LaFontaine would accomplish what Mackenzie had been unable to do with an entire army at his back. In 1848, they ran on a platform demanding responsible government. They were elected by such an overwhelming majority that the British had little choice. The following year, for the first time in Canadian history, the governor general signed a bill into law, even though he and the Tories disagreed with it. With that stroke of the pen, he was acknowledging for the very first time that it wasn’t his will that should rule over Canada, but the will of Canadians themselves.
The Tories were so enraged, they burned down the Parliament buildings in Montreal. But when the riots died down, it was clear the Reformers had won.
There was still much more work to be done. It would be many decades before Canadian women were able to cast a ballot. Chinese Canadians would be stripped of the right to vote for decades beyond that. First Nations voters wouldn’t be allowed to cast a ballot without giving up their status under the Indian Act until the 1960s, which is when ballot boxes were finally brought to Inuit communities, too. But after decades of struggle, of violence, and of rebellion, a landmark victory had finally been achieved. Robert Baldwin had won. James Hunter Samson had lost. Responsible government was a reality. Canada really was a democracy.