Upper Canada
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Main article: Upper Canada |
The first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, interpreted "Protestant clergy" to mean the clergy of Church of England only.[5] However, in 1823 the Law Officers of the Crown held that the Church of Scotland was also entitled to a share of the revenues under the 1791 Act.[6] Although Lt-Governor Maitland attempted to suppress the publication of that decision, the Legislature passed resolutions the following year that recognized that church's status.[7]
Complications in establishing leasing procedures prevented the reserve lands from being leased before 1803.[8] Until 1819, the reserve lands were managed by the Province, and in most years they earned revenues that were barely sufficient to cover their expenses.[9] After the Rev. John Strachan was appointed to the Executive Council of Upper Canada in 1815, he began to push for the Church of England's autonomous control of the clergy reserves on the model of the Clergy Corporation of Lower Canada, created in 1817. The Clergy Corporation, of which Strachan became the chairman,[10] was subsequently incorporated in 1819 to manage the clergy reserves.
The 1819 charter (drafted by Strachan's former student, Attorney General John Beverly Robinson)[11] provided for the Bishop of Quebec to become the perpetual Principal and Director (as he was for the Lower Canada body), who, with twelve other directors, constituted the Board. The Bishop's Official (named by the Bishop) and the rectors of Niagara and York could each serve as acting chairman.
Other perpetual directors were:[12]
- the incumbents at Kingston, Niagara, York, Cornwall, Grimsby, Ancaster and Hamilton; and
- the Inspector General and Surveyor General of the Province of Upper Canada.
Any two directors, together with the Principal or an acting chairman, constituted a quorum,[12] but, because of the poor network of roads, most clergy members were generally unable to attend Corporation meetings.[13] This effectively meant that Strachan (as rector of York), together with the Inspector General and Surveyor General, controlled the Board.[14] These three members were part of the Family Compact, of which Strachan was the leader.[15]
The reserves were allotted in lots of 200 acres (81 ha), generally intermixed with other lots sold to individuals within each surveyed township.[2] Except in the Talbot Settlement (where they were located off the main roads), they were generally arranged in a checkerboard pattern within each township,[16] and were a serious obstacle to economic development as they were effectively wasteland,[17] either being abandoned by lessees after the timber had been fully harvested,[8] or unattractive because of the availability of cheap freehold land.[8] This was recognized by the Legislative Assembly in 1817 when it passed resolutions that condemned the lands as "insurmountable obstacles" and called on the Parliament in Westminster to authorize their sale.[18]
Until 1827, no reserve lands were sold.[19] They were leased for terms of twenty-one years, with rents on a sliding scale:[19]
| Period | Granted before April 1811 | Granted from April 1811 | Area covered |
|---|---|---|---|
| First 7 years | 10s. | £1 15s. | per lot of 200 acres (81 ha) or less |
| Next 7 years | 20s. | £3 10s. | |
| Last 7 years | £1 10s. | £5 5s. |
Even with higher rates being charged from 1819, total annual revenues were still only £1200 in 1824, and only one-third could be collected without pursuing legal action.[19]
In 1826, the Canada Company was formed to sell off the remaining crown and clergy reserves in the province.[20] However, because of opposition from Strachan,[21] the Company received 1,100,000 acres (4,452 km2) in the Huron Tract, in substitution for the originally contemplated 829,430 acres (3,357 km2) of clergy reserve lands.[22] As the provincial policy of free land grants had come to an end, Strachan lobbied for and secured an Act from the British Parliament granting authority to sell up to one-fourth of all reserve lands, up to 100,000 acres (405 km2) each year,[23] from which there would be income sufficient to support 200–300 Anglican clergymen.[21]
In 1836, before Sir John Colborne was succeeded by Sir Francis Bond Head as lieutenant-governor, he created 57 rectories for the Church of England, with glebe land totalling 21,057 acres (85 km2).[24] This action created significant political dissent,[25] and was subsequently declared illegal in 1837,[26] but was later held in 1856 to have been lawful.[27][28] In the interim, it became one of the issues in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 (and subsequently identified as such in the 1838 report written by Lord Durham),[17] where William Lyon Mackenzie exclaimed to the crowd outside Montgomery's Tavern:
Stick true to the cause of Liberty, and you shall, every man of you, have three hundred Acres of Land and a piece out of the Clergy Reserves![29]
The Parliament of Upper Canada passed a bill to sell the reserves in 1840,[30] but the Governor General reserved the bill for consideration by the British government, which disallowed the bill.[31] The British then enacted the Clergy Reserves in Canada Act 1840 (3 & 4 Vict. c. 78) later in that year.[32] Although considered to be more favourable to the Church of England,[33] the Act as passed provided that only one-half of future sales would be dedicated on a 2:1 basis to the Churches of England and Scotland, with the remaining half being distributed to all other churches according to their respective strengths.[34] The administration of the reserve lands was transferred to the Crown Lands Department, where it was handled in a more professional manner.[34]
