thousands during the Camp Niagara days. British military officers and government officials during military campaigns or exploratory expeditions throughout the world often lived “under canvas” outfitted with specially designed campaign furniture.[1] The Simcoes’ canvas houses, however, were quite unique. Shortly after Simcoe’s appointment as Lieutenant Governor, he purchased at a sale of Captain James Cook’s effects[2] in England one or two canvas houses. The famous explorer had used these during his three circumnavigating expeditions in the 1760s and 70s. Sketches taken during these voyages illustrate the canvas houses in use.[3] By strange coincidence, at the British conquest of Louisbourg in 1758 John Graves Simcoe’s father Captain John Simcoe was commander of HMS Pembroke, under whom a young James Cook had served admirably as master.
An itemized account from a Mr. Nathan Smith lists upgrades to the canvas houses commissioned by Simcoe:
Improvements in the Canvas House … made in frames, 38 feet 4”long by 12 feet wide and 7 feet 2 inches high at the side with 6 glazed windows and a partition to each room, also a cosy iron stove, fender, shovel, poker, and tongs, the inside of the rooms papered complete, the outside painted in oil colour and properly packed, marked and numbered.[4]
A later invoice refers to camp tables and chairs “packed with the canvas houses.”[5]
The canvas was apparently applied over a wooden framework and could be boarded up from the outside when necessary for warmth.
Mrs. Simcoe recorded in her diary that upon their arrival in July 1792 they lived in three simple canvas tents, or “marquees,” pitched on the hill above Navy Hall that “command a beautiful view of the river and garrison [Fort Niagara] on the opposite side.”[6]
Mrs. Simcoe later recorded that the canvas houses finally arrived. After they were reassembled a partition was built so that one part was a bedroom, the other a “sitting-room.”[7] The other canvas house was apparently occupied by the “squalling children” and the servants. Such were the domestic arrangements for His Majesty’s representative during their first Upper Canadian winter, and quite a change from their forty-room mansion in Devonshire with its superb view across the Vale of Honiton.
Captain Cook’s Canvas Houses, Matavi Bay, Tahiti, April 1769, watercolour. Two of these canvas houses were occupied by the Simcoes at Navy Hall and later on the edge of Garrison Creek at York. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library, Toronto Reference Library, John Ross Robertson, JRR #4610.
Surveyor Joseph Bouchette[8] described the canvas house: “Frail as was its substance, it was rendered exceedingly comfortable and soon became as distinguished for the social and urban hospitality of its venerable and gracious host, as for the peculiarity of its structure.”[9] Also impressed was an American official, General William Hull, who was attending an Indian Council meeting held in Niagara,
On my account the Governor ordered supper in his canvas-house, which he brought from Europe … It is papered and painted, and you would suppose you were in a common house. The floor is the case for the whole of the room. It is quite a curiosity … Perceiving me so much pleased with the canvas-house, the Governor ordered breakfast in it.[10]
In the summer of 1793 one of the canvas houses was dismantled and transported across Lake Ontario to the site of York (future Toronto). Reassembled on a small knoll above the pristine shore of Lake Ontario, near the mouth of the Garrison Creek across from the chosen site for Fort York, the Simcoe family spent another cozy winter “under canvas.” Not all visitors to the canvas house were impressed. Bachelor Peter Russell reported to his half-sister, “you have no conception of the Misery in which they live — The Canvas house being their only residence.”[11] Eight months later the canvas house was back in Niagara on the edge of the Military Reserve/Commons and remained the official viceregal’s residence until the Simcoes returned to England in 1796. What became of Captain Cook’s well-travelled canvas houses is not known.
Chapter 4
A “Commodious Dwelling” on the Commons
Standing in the tall, wild grass in the middle of the Commons on the edge of a small creek,[1] it is hard to imagine that a fine Georgian estate stood there as early as 1793. “Springfield” was the home of Peter Russell, a veteran of the Seven Years’ and American Revolutionary Wars and an inveterate gambler. As the newly appointed Receiver General for the Province of Upper Canada, Russell arrived at Niagara in 1792 with his half-sister Elizabeth and a young Mary Fleming (possibly Peter’s illegitimate daughter).[2] The only accommodation they could find “near the Lieutenant Governor’s Residence at Navy Hall”[3] was a two-room “hut”[4] in the middle of the Military Reserve occupied by Widow Murray, for which Russell paid £70.[5] Lieutenant Duncan Murray had been an officer in the 84th Regiment of Foot (Royal Highland Emigrants), garrisoned during the early 1780s across the river at Fort Niagara.[6] While building grist and sawmills on his land grant on the Twelve Mile Creek[7] in 1786, Murray was killed by a falling tree. Perhaps in deference to her late husband, Widow Murray was allowed squatter rights in the middle of the reserve. Russell, realizing that the £70 purchase price was for Mrs. Murray’s improvements only, persuaded Simcoe to grant him a twenty-one-year lease for fifty acres, which included the Widow’s farm, at a nominal five shillings per year.[8] He also received an outright grant of 160 acres of prime land bordering the southern edge of the military reserve, along what is now John Street, that he would later sell for a very tidy profit.
Peter Russell (1733–1808), artist G.T. Berthon, watercolour. Russell, army officer, office holder, politician, and judge, was also the builder of Springfield on the Fort George Military Reserve/Commons. Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library, Toronto Reference Library, John Ross Robertson Collection, JRR #T34630.
Before winter set in, the Russells undertook extensive renovations to the hut. Peter complained of the “extravagant wages”[9] of the workmen, with carpenters demanding 7 shillings per day.[10] Within the first year they had already spent £400[11] and by 1796 Russell claimed to have spent £1200[12] on improvements, which included his governmental office on the premises. No exterior views of the house have survived, but a plan of the property drawn in 1797[13] reveals a full two-storey house, along with a coach house, stables, outhouses, root house, and cellars, as well as a formal fruit garden at the rear. Even a spring is shown on the plan. This may explain the name of Springfield, since the fields of the military reserve surrounded the estate. Despite much grumbling about the costs of their “Dear House” the little family seemed to have been very comfortable in their new home. In a letter to a friend in England, Elizabeth wrote:
We are comfortably settled in our new House and have a nice little farm about us. We eat our own Mutton and Pork and Poultry. Last year we grew our own Buck wheat and Indian corn and had two Oxen, got two Cows with their calves with plenty of pigs and a Mare and Sheep.[14]
Elizabeth’s fruit preserves became a much sought-after commodity amongst her fellow colonists. Even Mrs. Simcoe admired Elizabeth’s hobby of collecting and preserving botanical specimens gathered in the area.
Not interested in the whirl of social activities at Navy Hall, the Russells were content with small, intimate dinners at Springfield served on the family silver plate, accompanied by fine wines and followed by sonorous renditions given by Peter. This “little threesome” in the commodious house could not possibly have managed without help. The practice of slavery was still alive and well on the Commons in the 1790s. Peter had at least two manservants, Robert Franklin and Pompador. There were also at least two maids/cooks, including Milly and the “troublesome” Peggy. Russell’s attitude towards
