From Bloody Beginnings: Richard Beasley's Upper Canada.

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

This is family history as reconstructed by David Richard Beasley. The author slips into the shoes of his ancestor, Richard Beasley, to re-enact the story of his life, from its beginning along the middle reaches of the Hudson River in the years immediately leading up to and including the American rebellion, through the circumstances that rendered him a Loyalist émigré finding a place in Upper Canada. After settling on the Niagara frontier, he became commissary at Fort Niagara, continued the association with his cousin, Richard Cartwright Jr., and associated with Major John Butler and Chief Joseph Brant in the interests of the Loyalist cause. From 1783 to his death in 1842, he migrated from the head of Lake Ontario to York, took an active part in militia affairs during the War of 1812, dealt in land and land settlement, founded a mercantile business, and got involved in politics where his reform proclivities rendered him suspect by the members of the Family Compact. His libertarian instincts found an outlet in his defence of Robert Gourlay, William Lyon Mackenzie, and the campaign for a free press. He survived the Tory vendetta mounted against him and lived long enough to work together with the conservative John Beverley Robinson to bring about the Act of Union in 1841, the year before his death.

There are no generally accepted criteria by which to evaluate books of this kind, with their invented dialogue and bridging of black holes where the evidence is absent or skimpy. It is neither history nor historical fiction. In the realm of film, it might qualify as docudrama. In that of public history, it reminds one of a re-enactment, where close students of particular historical events recreate, often in vivid and accurate detail, the incidents associated with them. Perhaps it is sufficient to say that David Beasley respects the discipline of history, and that he writes well and with insight into the character and actions of his ancestor and his associates. He takes the freedom that his chosen genre provides and uses it responsibly.