Bloody Relations (30 page)

Nevertheless, I have already formulated a general plan for the future governance of the Canadas. It remains only for my associates—Wakefield, Turton, and Buller—to help me flesh it out. There will be a united parliament with equal representation from each province. The Baldwins may prove me wrong about the French way of life fading away or blending with the British to make something strange and new, but for now a single assembly ought to compel the leaders of the two races to say hello to each other across a parliamentary aisle every day: who knows what may happen then? My principal concern, as you know, has ever been to create some kind of legislative forum in which the people who live in the provinces and have a stake in its future will be given the opportunity to work out their own destiny.

Less optimistically, Wakefield assures me that the atmosphere in the Whig cabinet is now so poisoned that we shall be fortunate to get our report written and seriously considered by an indifferent and self-absorbed Parliament. Moreover, the chances of having responsible government—the linchpin of any scheme I propose—accepted are doomed from the outset. Of course this will not dissuade me from promulgating it loudly from any pulpit provided me!

On a more personal note, Handford has begun to recover from his ordeal. We offered to send him home to recuperate, but when he realized that Lady Durham is essential to me and my work and could not therefore accompany him, he chose to remain here. All in all, I think it was a wise
decision. Please write again and let me know how your law studies are progressing.

Yours sincerely,

John George Lambton

Earl of Durham

P.S. My congratulations to Mrs. Edwards on the blessed event you are anticipating next April. I hope your marriage turns out to be as fortunate as mine has been.

While
Bloody Relations
is wholly a work of fiction, Lord Durham and his brief governorship of the Canadas in 1838 are as well known as they are controversial. The particular speeches, opinions, and actions of the earl and his wife, Lady Durham, depicted herein are fictitious, but I have attempted to make their behaviour and personalities consistent with the historical record. In doing so, I have relied upon books like Leonard Cooper's
Radical Jack
and Chester New's
Lord Durham's Mission to Canada
. The same is true for the brief appearances of the other historical personages: Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Charles Buller, Thomas Turton, Sir George Arthur, and Robert Baldwin. Handford Ellice is an invented character, and the murder plot involving him is imaginary. Any resemblance between other fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

For the record, Lord and Lady Durham did visit Toronto for a day and a half in July 1838, their stay cut short by the earl's suffering a recurrence of his migraine and neuralgia. I have extended the visit to four days and based his dealings with the local gentry and politicians on the pattern he established while in Quebec. I transposed the “royal arrival” in Upper Canada—with all its official pomp and fanfare—from Niagara (where it actually occurred and was lavishly recorded) to Toronto harbour (though upwards of three thousand Torontonians did turn out on Queen's Wharf to greet
him). I have made Spadina House as described here an amalgam of several of the great houses of the period, including Davenport, Russell Abbey, and Moss Park. Areas like Irishtown did exist in early Toronto (the red-light district was north of Lombard Street in Devil's Elbow), but its depiction and location here are my own inventions.

Finally, lest the skeptical reader feel my portrayal of prostitution in 1830s Toronto to be an exaggeration, here is a contemporary view from the
Canadian Freeman
, May 26, 1831:

Houses of infamy are scattered thro' every corner of the town, and one of them had the hardihood to commence operations next door to our office, last week, in a house under the control of a Police Magistrate! So besotted are some of our would-be gentlemen—so lost to shame and decency—and so dead to every feeling of Christianity—that they crowded in at noonday, and some of them that we know visited it in open day, last Sabbath!—Young lawyers, and others of respectable standing. We had no idea before that such wretched and shameless depravity existed in our infant community—in any other place that we have lived, such men would be viewed as a walking pestilence and scouted out of all decent society. It seems to us that some of our authorities, and heads of families too, connive at debauchery of this kind, which, if not checked, will be sufficient ere long to draw down the wrath of God upon the town, as in times of old upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

I would like to express my gratitude to Jan Walter, my editor, for her wise judgement and scrupulous attention to detail. Thanks also to my longtime, faithful agent, Beverley Slopen, and to Alison Clarke and Kevin Hanson for their robust support of the Marc Edwards series.

OTHER MARC EDWARDS MYSTERIES BY DON GUTTERIDGE