The Canadian Militia

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 23-30

23

Chapter 4

The Canadian Militia

To thee! high-hearted Drew,

And thy viorious band

Of heroes tried and true,

A nation’s thanks are due;

Defenders of an injured land —

Well ha thou taught the daard foe

That British honor never yields

To democratic inf‌luence low

The glory of a thousand f‌ields.

—   18381

O   the Navy Island invasion, Lieutenant-Governor

Head dispatched Allan Napier MacNab to command a mil-

itia tasked with confronting the insurgents. By then a mem-

ber of the Upper Canada elite, the thirty-eight-year-old MacNab had

fought along the frontier during the War of 1812, and then practised

law in Hamilton, becoming an important business f‌igure in the region

by the late 1820s.

Though an outsider among — and an economic competitor to —

the Tory Family Compact that controlled the province, he preferred

these Tories to Mackenzie’s reformers. Indeed, both before and

after his election to the assembly as a Tory in 1830, MacNab clashed

repeatedly with Mackenzie, and led ef‌forts to expel the reformer

from the assembly. He also opposed responsible government in Can-

ada, fearing it would degrade ties to Britain. Still, MacNab was more

independently minded than most of his party, a status that led to his

election as speaker of the assembly in 1837.

He had also maintained ties to the militia, reaching the rank of

lieutenant colonel in the Gore militia by 1830. And so, when Mackenzie