The following is excerpted from “A Century of Western Ontario” by Orlo Miller, Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1949. Optical character recognition was used to create a digital version of Chapter IX for historical and genealogical purposes.
A Century of Western Ontario
The
London Free Press has passed into the hands of Mr. Josiah Blackburn, and Mr.
Sutherland, the late editor, assures his readers that "the course hitherto
pursued in the editorial conduct of the paper" will be continued by the
new regime.
—From
The Toronto Globe, January 18th, 1853.
THE
"new man"—thin, intense, twenty-nine-year-old Josiah Blackburn—moved
into the London journalistic field with the caution of a Highland Scot smelling
out the possibilities of a free drink. He had inherited from his predecessor a
collection of stale political feuds and personal animosities, along with
Sutherland's old type faces, his hand press and his debts. Blackburn retained
them all. So imperceptibly did the change in ownership affect the policy of the
paper, the district Reformers could detect no difference.
The
new owner was feeling his way. The test of strength would come later.
* * * *
*
If
Josiah Blackburn had printer's ink in his veins, as was suggested at a much
later date by an admiring contemporary, it was there by transfusion from a
younger brother. There was nothing in the family background to suggest a
continuous tradition of journalism.
Josiah
Blackburn was born in London, England, in 1823, the son of a Congregationalist
minister and his "county" wife. The Reverend John Blackburn occupied
the pulpit of a London church for some thirty five years and for many years was
secretary of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. His wife was Sarah
Smith, daughter of Robert Smith, a landed proprietor of Essex.
The
Reverend Mr. Blackburn seems to have made every effort to give his family of
eleven children (of which Josiah was the third son) every opportunity for
education and advancement that his somewhat slender means could afford. In the
case of Josiah and his younger brother, Stephen, this extended as far as
grammar school and a commercial apprenticeship. Stephen chose the printing
business, a choice that was to have a far-reaching influence on the life of his elder brother. At the age of twenty-three
Stephen set up business as a printer and publisher in London, England, as a partner of the firm of Blackburn
& Burt.
In
addition to their formal education, the Blackburn boys undoubtedly received the
polishing process common to all sons of gentlemen then and for long after—the
"Grand Tour" of the Continent. The reaction of the sons of the Congregationalist minister to the gaieties
and immoralities of the European
capitals must have been much like those of a younger sister who visited Paris in 1855. Miss C. E. Blackburn records in her diary on
Sunday, May 16th, her charming dismay at the dissoluteness of her life in the French capital:
This
morning I felt half dead after the excitement of last evening and shame to say it, I passed
a most unprofitable morning. I was too tired and excited to read or think quietly and could only write home to tell them of the pleasures I
have had. . . . After dinner we were all a very little tipsy with drinking champagne at dinner and laughed and talked in a way that made my
conscience rebuke me when I remembered dear Papa who was preaching....
It
might be pleasant to conjecture whether "dear Papa" had made the "Grand Tour" in
his youth.
* * * *
*
It
is difficult to say what inner promptings turned Josiah Blackburn's footsteps
towards Canada. It may have been the wilderness wanderlust that affected so many young Englishmen in
that expansive age, but it was more likely
that his move was influenced by a family contact with Canada. According to Harry Gorman, later of Sarnia, one of Josiah Blackburn's
earliest employees at The Free Press, Josiah's brother, John Blackburn, owned the weekly newspaper,
The Star, published at Paris, Canada.
It was to the staff of that paper that Josiah went, immediately on his arrival in Canada, late in
1850. In addition to his
fraternal interest in the printing business of Blackburn & Burt, he had apparently done some
writing professionally so his choice of a Canadian career was a natural one.
There
was nothing startling or novel in the way he handled his editorial stint with The
Star, although it was evident from the first that the young man had a fine flair for writing, particularly political writing. Indeed, he grasped the
fine points of the somewhat confused Canadian political picture
with almost phenomenal rapidity and his editorials were soon being picked up and reprinted by many of the newspapers of Canada West,
including the paper he was so soon to own, The Canadian Free Press.
After
one year with The Star, Josiah felt he knew enough about the conduct of a weekly
newspaper to take over one of his own. The chance meeting with James Daniell at Woodstock provided the opportunity
and by January 1st, 1853, he was installed as editor and proprietor of The Canadian
Free Press, office Talbot Street, London, C. W.
* * * *
*
In
his final editorial, William Sutherland had assured his readers that "the course
hitherto pursued in the editorial conduct of the paper" would be continued by the new
owner. That was the new man's policy— a policy of caution, a policy of
"wait-and-see-and-then-we'll-show-'em." Josiah Blackburn's caution was not that of a stupid
man or a timid man—it was the caution of an
expert mountain climber, who tests each foothold before he puts his weight on it and scales, at last, the
menacing peak. Josiah Blackburn had
big plans for the future of his new paper, but for the time being he was content to follow carefully
in the steps of his predecessor
waiting for the proper moment in the progress of his adopted town to launch The Canadian
Free Press on the career he was mapping for it.
The
moment was approaching rapidly—from the east, along the slowly-snaking rails of the
Great Western Railway.
With
the word that the long-awaited railway would reach London towards the end of 1853, a
new spirit of civic aggressiveness seized the entire peninsula. A new word sprang to the lips of
the people—a magic
word, holding
forth prospects of unlimited grandeur and unbounded prosperity.
The
word was "metropolis."
Blenheim
was to be a metropolis. Paris, Brantford and Gait were to be metropolises. London
was to be a super-metropolis—when the railway came. The map of the western peninsula broke out into a rash of black dots, each
representing an embryonic metropolis. Every town, village, hamlet and crossroads shared in the madness.
It
was a real estate boom—the first the peninsula was to experience. though by no means its last.
Property along the right-of-way of the G.W.R. suddenly assumed
fantastic values. Other property, not on the railway but in areas where it might reasonably be expected feeder lines would be constructed later,
also zoomed in value. The speculators appeared on the scene. Property began to change hands with dizzying speed and frequency. Fortunes
were made overnight—on paper. In hardly any case was the full amount of the purchase price laid on the line. A small down payment
would hold a lot until the purchaser could sell it for a handsome profit to still another speculator who in turn
would sell it to another speculator
for a fat profit, and so on. A single piece of property might change hands as much as ten times in a year.
No
one was immune to the gambling fever. Anyone who could scrape together five pounds
was in the game. It was margin buying on a scale equaled only once since—in the hectic days preceding the stock market collapse of
1929.
The
fever reached its most insane heights in London. Wild-eyed promoters commissioned the
survey of suburban building lots as far west as the village of Komoka, fourteen miles from the western-most limits of the town. Still
other promoters laid out suburbs five miles to the north, ten miles to the east and the same
distance to the south. If their
dreams had materialized it would have required a population as large as modern Detroit to
adequately people the physical framework of London the Gargantuan. Their predictions were a long way out. Nearly one hundred years
later, the total population of the metropolitan area of London is under one hundred thousand and
Komoka is still
fourteen miles
away.
As
an example of the inflated values placed on real estate, it is necessary only to cite the
case of the gullible London businessman who bought a building lot on the eastern fringe of the present downtown shopping district during the
boom. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he paid cash, in full. For the ensuing fifty years he paid city taxes on
the lot and the building he had
erected on it. Finally, in 1905 he sold the lot and the building. He got what was then considered a good price— it lacked a dollar of what he
had paid for the lot alone a half century before!
Like
all such artificial booms, this one collapsed eventually and in its collapse carried
thousands of investors, speculators and common people alike into black ruin. But of this, more in
good time.
December
15th, 1853.
In
the gathering gloom of a slushy winter evening, a crowd of more than a thousand
people mill about on the rawly-new, dirty planks of the unfinished Great
Western Railway station in the heart of London. The planks quiver under the
stamping of feet as the throng tries to restore its frost-chilled circulation.
Most of these people have been here for hours. The first railway train into
London is late. It was due in nearly two hours ago.
An
old farmer mutters to his neighbour:
"It's
probably gone off the tracks an' killed the whole lot. It ain't safe—travellin'
thirty miles an hour. Ain't natural!"
In
the van of the crowd, alongside the tracks. Mayor Edward Adams takes off his
knitted gloves and blows on his numbed fingers. Drawing his muffler closer
about his throat, he turns to Reeve William Barker:
"You
don't suppose anything has happened to the train do you, Barker?"
"No,
no!" says Barker who, as the owner of a telescope and a local reputation
as an amateur astronomer, is looked upon as the town council's scientific
expert. "It's the weather ... the rails are probably slippery . . . make
them cut down their speed."
At
this moment a cry goes up from the crowd. Someone, with sharper eyes than the
rest has spotted a distant plume of smoke.
"It's
coming! It's coming!"
Soon
the little engine comes in sight, the huge inverted bell of its smokestack
belching sparks and pungent wood smoke. The pistons thrash furiously as they
drive the big wheels around at a speed close to twenty-five miles an hour. Ah,
this speed-mad age! Now the driving wheels run free and sparks sputter along
the right-of-way as the brakes are applied. Several nervous people in the
crowd, seeing the mass of iron and
smoke rolling at them, push against those behind them to get out if its way.
Someone breaks through the outskirts of the throng and tears up Richmond
Street, his face a mask of fear.
The
engine and its attendant car groan to a puffing, snorting halt. Out of the cab,
grimed with smoke and mud to the knees, steps the engineer. He is greeted by a
roar of welcome from the crowd, who hail him as a hero for riding the steel
monster all the way from distant Hamilton.
Out
of the single, tiny, springless coach pours high-hatted officialdom, representatives of the
G.W.R. and the City of Hamilton. High hat goes to meet high hat and elevating platitudes cleave the air in a dozen directions at once.
Mayor
Adams clears his throat and those near enough to hear him hush those behind them until
the whole assembly stands in soggy-booted silence. The mayor removes his hat and reads his prepared address. Only a few hear it, but everyone
cheers wildly at its conclusion.
After
a few more speeches, the officials go off together to a banquet, where the guests with great
gusto tell of the six-hour-long ride from Hamilton, the derailments (crew and guests alike standing in the thick mud to heave the engine back
on the rails), the delays and hold-ups.
The
hoi-polloi drift off to their homes and belated suppers, to tell and re-tell to the
stay-at-homes the story of the biggest day in London's history to that time—December
15th 1853—the day the railway came to London.
* * * *
*
Midsummer,
1854.
West
of London, near the village of Mount Brydges (named for the superintendent of the
railway, C. W. Brydges) the work gangs are rushing rails of the Great Western
Railway on to Windsor, sweating in the sun, cursing the heat in the soft brogue of Ireland.
On
Richmond street, in London, a block from the line of the railway, another gang
of workmen slaps timbers into place as the frame of a fine new public building
rises on the eastern edge of Covent Garden Market. This is the new city hall, being rushed to completion in time for the big ceremonies that,
six months later, will mark the incorporation of the one-time bush town as a city.
On
Dundas street in the heart of the city-to-be, still other gangs of workmen are hoisting into
place twenty-one light standards. No longer will the belated Londoner stumble along in the pitchy-blackness of a moonless night, his path lit
only by sporadic gleams from the occasional open grog shop, or by his own flickering lantern. Before many months have passed London, like all
the world's big cities, will be lit by gas, supplied by the city's own gas company.
On
Covent Garden Market, in the old town hall, Mayor Marcus Holmes, London's premier
wagon-maker, and his twelve councilors are sweating over a financial statement, London has more than doubled its population in these last six
hectic years. In 1848, when the building in which they are now sitting was completed and opened for use as a municipal
hall, five thousand people lived in this sprawling backwoods community; now it's a
bustling city of more than eleven thousand.
It's
a vastly different matter conducting the finances of a railway city to balancing the books
of a happy-go-lucky village council. The councilors, most of whom remember those easy days, are finding this out the hard way.
William
Barker, a veteran of the village days, runs his eyes down the page to the total at the
bottom, and his lower jaw hangs loose.
"Total
debenture debt, ninety-four thousand four hundred pounds, eleven shillings, sixpence!
Great heavens, where does it all go to?"
Town
Clerk James Parley, himself a veteran of the old days, answers the question by
reading mechanically from the list in front of him:
"To
consolidate old debts, £5,000; for drains on King and Dundas streets, .£5,500; for
enlargement of Covent Garden Market, £2,000; for Firemen's Hall, £900; for erection of city hall and
market house, 120,000; for the London Gas
Company, £2,500; for drains on—"
"I
can read!" Councilor Barker cuts in testily. "I have the figures here! It's the amount that
stuns me. ... It seems only yesterday that Jack Dimond, Philo Bennett and I were sent around to see Jim Hamilton at the Bank of Upper
Canada. Do any of you remember that? A note of ours on the Bank of Montreal had come due and the Council had no money. We were nearly
frantic. Dimond, Bennett and I practically grovelled at Hamilton's feet. When
he agreed to loan us the money I've
never known such relief. It saved the council from bankruptcy. And do you know how much the
amount was? Four hundred and fifty
pounds!"
"That
was in '48," murmurs Parley reflectively. "I remember it well."
"And
now, six years later, we're talking in terms of thousands of pounds, not hundreds!
Ninety-four thousand pounds! It's incredible!" Barker fidgets. "I
don't like it!"
"It's
the price of progress, Barker," says Councilor James Moffat, languidly, as he flicks a
speck of dust off the sleeve of his jacket.
"That's
right," says young Robert Wilson, councilor from St George's Ward and assistant
headmaster of the Union School, "that's right. London's no longer a town—it's a great, growing city. A
generation, two generations from now the council of that day will be talking ui terms of hundreds of
thousands of pounds, perhaps millions!"
"Shall
we let the future look after its own and get on with our business?" asks Mayor
Holmes.
"Right!"
says Clerk Parley briskly. "Now about this debenture for drains on Richmond
Street. ..."
* * * *
*
Over
on North street, in village days the northern boundary of London, on that section of
the street now, ninety-five years later, known as Carting street, Mel Dawson, compositor on the staff of The Free Press, mutters
rebelliously to himself:
"What
a hell of a day to be moving machinery!"
Carefully
he sets a heavy piece of metal down on the plank sidewalk, slowly straightens his back
and mops his forehead. For the moment he is alone. All the rest of the apprentices and compositors are inside the building, struggling to fit
together the pieces of the new Northrup power press.
Power
presses, new type faces, new building—Blackburn must have big plans for the paper!
Must be costing him a lot of money. This building for instance. . . .
Slowly,
Mel Dawson's eyes travel up the three stories of the new brick building, which towers
above its one-storey neighbours. There, just above the level of the first-storey windows, a new sign stretches across the width of the
building. The paint is still fresh and new—it was put up in the spring of this year, just after the
office was moved from the
little brick building on Talbot street.
THE FREE PRESS
Blackburn
must have decided to drop the "Canadian" from the paper's title. It's still
used on the masthead, but it's been dropped everywhere else.
Dawson's
eyes travel to the second storey. Who's that with his back to the window? Oh, it's
Harry Gorman, the apprentice. What's he doing in the job printing department? He must be mitching. He should be downstairs, working
on the press with the rest.
The
third storey. Two of the windows are open, and the curtains flutter idly in a breeze that
comes from nowhere, lasts only a second or two. The Blackburns must be housecleaning or the windows wouldn't be open like that. Windows
should be closed in summer, to keep the cool in and the heat out.
One of the curtains moves back, purposefully, and a
women's head appears. The woman looks up
at the sky first, then down at the street below.
Oh
Lord! Mrs. Blackburn!
Hurriedly,
with the woman's eyes on him, Mel Dawson stoops to his piece of metal. He can't
say that he likes this idea of the proprietor and his family living in the same building with the
business. A fellow's under
their eye all the time.
As
he stoops to get his hands under the metal, his eye catches a movement down the street. A
door opens and closes at The London Times office, diagonally across the street from The Free Press, at the southwest corner of Talbot
and North streets. It's Joe Morey, foreman of The Times' composing room. Come out to see what we're doing no doubt.
"What's
the matter, Mel? That chunk of second-hand iron too heavy for you?"
Mel
is about to shout a retort when he remembers the woman at the window. He contents
himself with a grunt of contempt as he straightens, with the heavy metal cradled in his arms. A subdued chuckle drifting down from
the third storey flushes his face with embarrassment.
He
is almost to the front door, when the woman's voice comes down to him.
"Mr.
Dawson! Mr. Dawson!"
Mel
cranes his neck back. Mister Dawson! It's formal, but it makes a fellow feel sort of
important. She always calls us Mister.
"Yes
ma'am?"
"Mr.
Dawson!" There's excitement in the voice now. "I think the eclipse is about to
begin! Tell the others!"
"Yes,
ma'am!"
With
alacrity Mel unceremoniously dumps his burden on the sidewalk and rushes into
the building to get his piece of smoked glass and to tell the others. He'd
forgotten all about the eclipse!
In a
few minutes they all came pouring out on to the sidewalk— Jim Sisterson, Pat Brennan,
Charlie Ross, Pat Corcoran, Harry Gorman, the boss himself—each with a piece of
specially-smoked glass in his
hand.
Josiah
Blackburn is in his shirt sleeves and his face is smudged with ink and sweat. He's been
working with the rest, trying to get the Northrup in place and working in time for this week's edition. His mind's so full of the paper,
it's hard to focus his attention on the impending solar phenomenon. With this
new press, it'll only be a matter of months, perhaps weeks, before we can launch our daily. A daily newspaper! This is the thing
Josiah Blackburn has been working towards ever since that January day a year
and a half ago, when he took over
The Free Press. The town is big enough now to support a daily. The time is ripe.
Someone
tugs his elbow.
"It's
starting now, Mr. Blackburn."
"Oh!
Thanks, Mel, I was thinking of something else."
Josiah
Blackburn raises the smoked glass to his eyes, stares upward as the shadow of the moon
cuts blackly into the glaring disc of the sun.
* * * *
*
On a
back street, in a hot, humid little room, a sick man tosses fretfully. His forehead is
covered with great globules of perspiration, his fingers as they pluck at the bedclothes are
shrivelled and black. On the
thin arms the veins are flat black lines. The mouth hangs open in hideous, silent supplication.
As
the moon's shadow slides across the sun, the light streaming in the window takes on a
greenish, sickly colour. The face of the man in the bed looks putrescent in its glow. The light dims
and a premature
twilight races
across the room.
Suddenly,
the body of the sick man contracts violently, his back arching off the bed. Spasm
after spasm follows as the bed groans under his convulsions. He screams—once, twice, endlessly. . . .
In
the next room a haggard-faced woman shudders and covers her ears.
"What
can I do. Doctor? What can I do?" she moans.
"There's
nothing any of us can do. He won't suffer long."
"What
is it Doctor?"
The
doctor snaps shut the clasp of his bag. Like an echo of its metallic click, his voice
crisps out a word:
"Cholera!"
Suddenly
the shadow lifts from the room. A flood of sunlight chases it into the comers.
Outside, a rooster crows nervously.
There
is no sound from the sick room now.
"I
must inform the Board of Health," the doctor mutters as he picks up his bag.
The
woman is silent.
"I—I'm
sorry I couldn't do anything for—" The doctor stops and looks at the woman.
"Good
day!" he says harshly.
The
door closes behind him.
* * * *
*
West
of London, near the village of Mount Brydges, the workmen on the line of the Great
Western Railway pick up their mauls and spikes and go back to work. As they drive the rails on their way towards
Windsor, they talk in their soft Irish brogues about the eclipse.
On
Richmond street, in London, the carpenters pick up their hammers again and smash in
the rails that hold up the beams that hold up the first floor of London's new city hall.
On
Dundas street the creak of a winch is heard again as London's tenth gas-light standard
sways slowly into place and one of the workmen wonders if he can wangle the
position of official lamplighter from the city council.
On
Covent Garden Market, in the old town hall, the mayor and his councilors leave the
windows and go back to estimating the cost of putting in drains on Clarence street.
On
North street, Mel Dawson and Harry Gorman stagger into The Free Press building with
the last piece of equipment for the new Northrup press. Joe Morey stands at the front door of The Times office across the street
staring at his rivals' plant with a look of sour concentration on his face.
On a
back street, a haggard-faced woman mechanically pins a bonnet into place, her
eyes dead black holes.
On
King street, John Jarmain whistles as he pounds the last nail into a plain white coffin. He
doesn't know it yet, but this is going to be a big month for the undertaking business.
East
of London, a puffing, wood-burning G.W.R. locomotive lets out a startled squeak from
its whistle as it begins to slow down for the station at London, Canada West.
Midsummer,
1854.