John Graves Simcoe, 1752-1806: A Biography

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

John Graves Simcoe lived an exciting life in tumultuous times. Thrice
wounded in the American Revolutionary War, he is said to have been
“the finest commander of light troops in the British Army.” Later,
he was sent to what is now Haiti on an ill-fated mission to put down a
bloody slave uprising, and was subsequently put in charge of the army
garrison in Plymouth, where he plotted military strategy with Lord
Nelson and was in charge of organizing the defences (against France) of
all of western England.

In Canada he is most remembered for a nonmilitary role as the first
Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, and as the “father of Ontario.”
Some of his accomplishments endure: he established (but did not choose)
the site of Toronto as capital; he abolished slavery here decades ahead
of Britain; and he built military roads west and north (named for
patrons and partners Henry Dundas and George Yonge). He did not,
however, realize his dream of transplanting Britain’s stratified
society; he wanted “to create an aristocracy to control the lower
orders and set an example,” and was “appalled at the idea of town
meetings that meant sharing some control with ordinary folk.” Simcoe
died prematurely, unable to accept that “Upper Canadians were North
Americans who believed in upward mobility. They did not accept that each
person had a place in society, and should keep it.”

This jointly written biography by Christopher Dracott, a retired
Detective Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard who lives in Devon near
Simcoe’s burial place, and Mary Fryer, who has published biographies
of Simcoe’s son and his wife and works of military history, is a
well-documented narrative of Simcoe’s life. But it is curiously
bloodless; Simcoe’s activities are enumerated more than described.
“A great deal of vivid detail is usually inherent in the situation
itself,” historian Allan Nevins observed. “The truly imaginative
historian perceives this authentic detail, his more prosaic fellow does
not.” This is a prosaic biography.