Canada -- Social life and customs; Ontario -- Description and travel
One more instance we must narrate before the indictment of the Family
Compact is complete. David Trull, a resident of New York State, and a
relative of the author, happened to come to visit his relatives about
Bowmanville and Newcastle in the fall of 1837. While here on this visit
the uprising took place, for the fight at Montgomery’s was on the 3rd of
December, 1837. His visit having come to an end, he started for home the
same way he came. On to Toronto, then, went David Trull, to get on board
a small steamer running from the Queen’s wharf to Niagara. As he stepped
upon the gang-plank a uniformed sentry presented a bayonet and cried
“Halt!” threatening to run him through. He turned back from the wharf,
frightened and amazed, proceeding to his hotel, which he had only that
morning left. Telling the hotel-keeper of his trouble the worthy
Boniface befriended him. He was warned that he must not on any account
whatever, as he valued his life, let any one know that he hailed from
the United States, for, said the hotel-keeper, “If you do they’ll put
you in prison and hang you.” He was further advised to put on working
clothes and act as hostler about the hotel, with a view of slipping away
on the steamer later, when suspicion had been allayed. For many days he
put in the time at watering and grooming horses for young would-be
military satraps, who ordered him about, and whom in his own country he
would have treated with contempt. But he got away on the steamer at
last, and almost vowed when once on United States soil never again to
set foot in Canada. Realizing, however, in after years that only a very
small portion of the Canadian people were disposed to misuse a guest, as
they had done in his case, he overlooked it, and came back on visits in
after years. To his dying day, however, he never forgot the arbitrary
treatment of the Family Compact, and his hate for them went with him to
his grave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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