The Firebrand; William Lyon Mackenzie and the Rebellion in Upper Canada

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 1960. Reprint. Second Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good in poor dust jacket. Ink notation on rep. DJ has wear, soiling, edge tears and chips.. Kilbourn, Rosemary. xv, [1], 286, [2] p. 24 cm. Endpaper maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Notes on the text. Index. From Wikipedia: "William Morley Kilbourn, CM, FRSC (1926 1995) was a Canadian author and historian in Toronto, Ontario. Kilbourn's topics cover history, biography, religion and the arts, with a focus on Toronto; he penned over a dozen books. Killbourn in 1984. Born in Toronto, Kilbourn was educated at Upper Canada College and the University of Trinity College in the University of Toronto. Following this he completed degrees in modern history at Oxford and Harvard universities. He later taught at McMaster University and Harvard. Kilbourn served for five years as the first chairman of humanities at York University, seven years on the Toronto City Council, and as an alderman. He was also founding chairman of the Toronto Art Therapy Institute and the Toronto Distress Centre, a member of the Toronto Historical Board, the boards of the Toronto General Hospital and Young People's Theatre, and served as chairman of the Toronto Arts Council. Kilbourn was also a member of the executives of the Canada Council and the Canadian commission for UNESCO. Kilbourn was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1980." From Wikipedia: "William Lyon Mackenzie (March 12, 1795 August 28, 1861) was a Scottish-born Canadian and American journalist and politician. He was the first mayor of Toronto, Upper Canada and was a leader during the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion. In 1848, the Province of Canada (which had been formed out of Upper and Lower Canada in 1841 upon the recommendation of Lord Durham) received responsible government, with Lord Elgin being the first Governor General of the Province of Canada to accept the Legislative Assembly's advice as to whom to appoint to the Executive Council and hence the cabinet, instead of appointing the cabinet himself. In the elections for the 3rd Parliament of the Province of Canada, the Reformers won, and Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine became Joint Premiers of the Province of Canada. The Baldwin-Lafontaine ministry enacted sweeping reforms in the Province of Canada, which included an amnesty act for the rebels of 1837, which passed the Legislative Assembly in February 1849. Mackenzie wrote to his old friend James Leslie, who was now the Provincial Secretary, asking to be included in the amnesty. Mackenzie immediately went on a cross-country tour from Montreal to Niagara Falls, though he insisted at the time that he didn't want to move back to Canada and was happy to be allowed to visit. He even briefly accepted a position as the New York Daily Tribune's correspondent in Washington, D.C. By April 1850, however, his desire to return to Canada was too great, and he moved back to Toronto in May 1850. Mackenzie continued to write for the Tribune, and for the Niagara Mail and the Toronto Examiner (owned by James Leslie) and attempted to collect money that he believed he was owed for his public service in the 1830s. In response to the Indian Mutiny, Mackenzie initially wrote in support of the rebels. He argued that the inhabitants of Hindostan were as capable of civilisation as the Celt or Anglo-Saxon, but not the woolyhaired African. Later he became more even handed writing that [t]here is cruelty on both sides and asked Which has the most reason to be cruel? The strangers who seek to trample India for gain, or the natives whose home is there? Mackenzie took advantage of his notoriety to resume a career in politics. He ran in a by-election for the seat of Haldimand County in the 3rd Parliament of the Province of Canada. He won the election, defeating George Brown, the owner of the Toronto Globe, partially because Brown's well-known anti-Catholic views did not play well in a riding with a large number of Catholics. For the next seven years, Mackenzie was the loudest advocate in the Assembly for the cause of "true reform". This involved a resumption of several of his political stances from the 1830s, including opposition to the clergy reserves and to state funding of religious colleges, and calls for.