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Queenston
In 1807, the deputy postmaster-general of British North America, George Heriot, toured the Niagara area and noted that
Queenstown is a neat and flourishing place, distinguished by the beauty and grandeur of its situation. Here all the merchandise and stores for the upper part of the province are landed from vessels in which they have been conveyed from Kingston…. Between Niagara and Queenstown the river affords in every part a noble harbour for vessels, the water being very deep, the stream not too powerful, the anchorage good, and the banks on either side of considerable altitude.2
At first Queenston was the more important of the two. Situated at the immediate base of the escarpment, it became the terminus of a key portage around the falls and the gorge. Beginning at the end of navigation on the Niagara River above the falls, at Chippewa, the portage struck inland and followed a winding route, descending through the buried gorge to the head of navigation of the lower Niagara River, namely Queenston. To this day, Portage Road in Niagara Falls follows much of that early trail.
Named by Upper Canada’s first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe (who introduced Anglo-centric nomenclature to most of his domain), Queenston quickly attracted the shipping business of local industrialist Robert Hamilton.3 Here, in the dying years of the eighteenth century, he built wharves and storehouses from which he shipped flour, guns, and other necessities, offloading them from schooners and placing them onto wagons for the tiring trek up the escarpment.
But the Americans were never far away, and neither was their ambition to bring England’s remaining North American colonies into their rightful fold, namely as part of the now-named United States of America. To their surprise, most of the Loyalist inhabitants of Upper Canada didn’t share that goal. Thus began the War of 1812. Battles raged back and forth. York was burned in 1813; in retaliation, Washington was put to the torch, although private businesses and homes were spared. It is said that the White House was so named following a whitewashing to remove the smoke stains on the building. After the British took Fort Detroit, the Americans launched a series of raids throughout southwestern Ontario. One of the more decisive battles took place early in the war at Queenston Heights.
Because of Queenston’s strategic importance as the terminus of the vital Niagara portage route, it was defended by General Isaac Brock and a force of British troops. Its significant location was also the reason that the Americans wanted it. On October 13, 1812, American troops slipped across the river and surprised the British, killing Brock early in the battle. At first seeming victorious, the Americans then had to face a Native force. Although small in number, the warriors, led by Major John Norton,4 bottled up the Americans until General Roger Sheaffe arrived from Fort George with reinforcements. Fearing the chilling battle cries of the Iroquois, the remaining American forces refused to cross the river, and the invaders were put to flight.
As commander of the British forces in Upper Canada, and being provisional lieutenant governor, as well, Brock in death warranted a special monument. After having been completed to a height of 14.5 metres, construction on the first Brock Monument was halted in 1824 when a cornerstone was found to contain a rendering of William Lyon Mackenzie’s rebellious Colonial Advocate newspaper. A second monument on the same site was completed in 1828, but was destroyed in 1838 by a suspicious explosion attributed to rebels sympathetic to Mackenzie. Finally, the monument that stands on the site today was completed in 1853. It soars fifty-six metres into the sky, and the cut-stone structure is inlaid with carvings of lions and the four figures of Victory. From its apex, Brock’s sword points north down the Niagara River, and can be seen on those rare clear days from the shore of the lake.
The little-known building to which Brock’s body supposedly was carried still stands in Queenston as the Stone Barn at the rear of 17 Queenston Road. So does the only Anglican church in the world dedicated to a layman, the Brock Memorial of St. Saviour, located at 12 Princess Street. It was completed in 1879.
Another hero was Queenston resident Laura Secord, who, after overhearing American soldiers billeted in her home talking of a pending assault on the British, undertook a gruelling hike, guided in part by aboriginal allies, to the headquarters of Lieutenant Fitzgibbon where she delivered her warning. Her actions on that muggy night in 1813 helped the British to repel the American assault. While her home has been restored, the headquarters used by Fitzgibbon is but a ruin.
Over the years, there has been remarkably little change to the built heritage of the main street of Queenston.
William Lyon Mackenzie, too, has a link with Queenston, for it was here that he initially published his anti-establishment Colonial Advocate newspaper. After moving to York (now Toronto) in 1824, he went on to become the very first mayor of that city in 1834. Mackenzie pushed for a more representative form of government, the upshot of his actions culminating in the ill-fated rebellion of 1837 for which he was exiled. But villains can just as easily become heroes and, following his return to Canada, Mackenzie once more became involved in politics.
His Queenston printing office deteriorated until, by 1935, only the walls remained. Although restored between 1936 and 1938, it served as little more than a municipal office until 1958. Finally, in 1991, shortly after the 200th anniversary of the Niagara Portage Road, thanks to the Niagara Parks Commission and the Mackenzie Printery Committee, old-style printing presses were installed, and today the building houses the hands-on Mackenzie Newspaper and Printery Museum and the lithography studio of Canadian artist Frederick Hagan. Meanwhile, in Toronto, Mackenzie’s Bond Street home (once thought to be haunted) contains his original presses and is also open as a museum of his exploits.
Following the war, Queenston resumed its importance as a transportation route around the Niagara Falls. An important road followed an early glacial beach ridge at the base of the escarpment, west to the village of Ancaster — another key pioneer settlement at the head of the lake. In 1839, Queenston became the terminus of Ontario’s first railway operation. Known as the Erie and Ontario Railway, it was a simple horse-drawn tram that rocked along on wooden rails covered with only a strip of iron. This new mode of travel linking Queenston with Chippewa effectively eliminated the old portage trail. From Queenston, passengers would be shuttled from the rail station to the wharf, where they could board a steamer to Toronto, while from Chippewa, travellers could sail to Buffalo.
Soon after the line was opened, William H. Smith, compiler of the Canada West Gazetteer, visited Queenston. “Before the opening of the Welland Canal,” he wrote in 1846, “Queenston was a place of considerable business, being one of the principal depots for merchandise intended for the west … which now finds its way by the Welland Canal.”7 The railway, he noted, was “commenced in 1835 and completed in 1841 … which passes close to and above the falls of Niagara, and during the summer the cars run daily and steamboats from Buffalo meet the cars at Chippewa.”8 At Queenston “during the season, boats ply here regularly from Toronto, and stages run from Hamilton to meet the boats.9” In 1846, he also noted that “a horse ferry-boat plies across the river from Queenston to Lewiston.”10
Six years later he would add in Canada: Past Present and Future that “a suspension bridge is now nearly completed across the river…. It is supported by wire cables, ten in number carried over stone towers … the total length is twelve hundred and forty five feet (and) is supposed to carry a weight of eight hundred and thirty-five tons without breaking.”11
By 1886 the Illustrated Historical Atlas of the Counties of Lincoln and Welland was noting that “the bridge which gave way to the more convenient one at Clifton (now Niagara Falls) had its cable wire stays broken by the
