It was here that Marc had spent much of his time during the thrice-weekly visits he made to the home of the Law Society of Upper Canada, ever since Robert Baldwin, MLA and son of the famous Dr. William Warren Baldwin of Spadina, had agreed to serve as his principal and convinced his fellow Law Society benchers that his newest apprentice needed no entrance examination to test his mettle or determine his suitability for the most learned of professions. The benchers themselves provided the periodic lectures held in Lawyers’ Hall but otherwise left the students to their own devices. And a motley lot they were, though Marc no longer found himself shocked or even surprised to find himself elbow to elbow with the sons of farmers, physicians, greengrocers, bankers, surveyors, mill owners-a polyglot mix that would have made any self-regarding squire dyspeptic. But in this strange new world, anyone who could find thirty-seven pounds for a year’s room and board and pass the qualifying entrance exam was free to try his hand at lawyering. And if you happened to live in Toronto, as eight thousand people now did, or have a maiden aunt with a spare room on Peter Street, then so much the better.
When he was not studying or attending lectures at Osgoode, Marc would go down to the law offices of Baldwin and Sullivan on the northeast corner of Front and Bay. This splendid brick building, designed by the multigifted Dr. Baldwin, with its Doric columns and elaborate portico, served the Baldwin family as town residence and place of business. Here, in the four rooms to the right of the entrance hall, Marc had spent dozens of pleasant hours observing the work of Robert, Clement Peachey-a junior barrister and solicitor-their clerk, and three copyists. One of Marc’s more frequent tasks was to look up references in the Osgoode library pertaining to ongoing briefs, laboriously transcribing salient points and disentangling granny knots of legalese. A welcome change occurred whenever Robert or Clement Peachey was scheduled to plead a serious case in the Court of Queen’s Bench at the fall assizes.
Alas, such cases, outside of civil suits in the newly formed Court of Chancery, had been few and far between this past autumn, not because there were no murders, assaults, or treasons to prosecute-the aftermath of the rebellion had provided more than enough of these-but rather because Governor George Arthur had ordered the trials of the several dozen captured invaders and border raiders to be courts-martial, with most of them taking place in London, Niagara, or Kingston. Hence, the opportunity to see such cases play out in criminal court had been lost, not to speak of the healthy fees associated with same. It appeared that the actual military threat, however ineffectual or farcical, was now over. But the trials had been constant, with consequent public hangings, incarceration, transportation to Van Diemen’s Land, and the occasional acquittal. In some quarters, independent extralegal reprisals were still being carried out with stealth and undiminished venom.
Just three days ago in London, the first captives of the Battle of Windsor to be tried and found guilty had been hanged in the town square. And even though the majority of citizens, whatever their political stripe or country of origin, longed for peace and stability, such violent public events invariably stirred up emotions. Yesterday there had been a noisy demonstration and march to Government House, organized by Boynton Tierney, Toronto alderman and newly appointed leader of the Loyal Orange Lodge in York County. With penny whistles asquealing, thunderous drums and raggedy swagger, the Orangemen demanded the expulsion of all United States immigrants, severe restrictions on naturalized Americans, and a declaration of war upon the apostate nation to the south of God’s chosen country. Governor Arthur had listened politely before retreating to the sanctuary of his official residence.
This would not be the last of such disruptive and potentially ruinous demonstrations. There were a dozen trials still scheduled or under way in London. And closer to home, one case loomed large and portentous. While Lucius Bierce, commander of the incursion force at Windsor in December, had escaped, Major Caleb Coltrane had been captured by a unit under the direction of a staunch Tory, Lieutenant-Colonel Gideon Stanhope. The latter, while not immediately present at the capture, had adroitly taken credit for the coup. With his local reputation as the Pelee Island Patriot already established and a fresh (flesh) wound sustained at Windsor during hand-to-hand combat with bowie knife and bayonet, who was to deny him the pleasure of being lionized by his civilian neighbours and grateful townsfolk? A parade in his honour had already taken place on Yonge Street the week before Christmas, and the squirearchy of the capital was all abuzz about next week’s Twelfth Night Charity Ball at Somerset House, where the colonel would receive official civic and military recognition.
Marc and Beth would have found all this amusing if they had not, in a way, been personally connected to the events. Billy McNair and Melvin Curry had been hired by Beth to carry out the renovations at Smallman’s, transforming two adjoining shops on King Street near Bay into a single commercial space. One half of the establishment was now a large work area where the dress designs of Mrs. Rose Halpenny were executed by three young seamstresses chosen for their skill, enthusiasm, and neediness. The other half, connected by a door and with a rebuilt interior, contained the showroom, several fitting cubicles, and the millinery display. The workroom had been furnished with tables, shelves, and storage bins constructed to Beth’s exacting specifications. While Marc fussed and secretly fumed over the state of their unborn child, Beth worried about the state of the economy and the growth of her enterprise. One of the happier results of its founding had been the engagement of Billy McNair to Dolly Putnam, the most vivacious and accomplished of the seamstresses.
Billy and Mel, excited by the prospect of adventure, had been among the first to sign on with Stanhope’s Toronto regiment. The passage of four months saw them doing much more than strutting and preening in marches along Front Street. The war they had dreamed about had become suddenly real, and as Marc himself knew, there was no way to prepare oneself for its terror-inducing contingencies. Mel had not suffered these long. An hour after his first contact with the enemy, he was dead, his face blown away and unrecognizable. Billy had distinguished himself under fire and had brought Major Coltrane bound and bowed to his commander. But he had come home a bitter and disturbed young man. He refused to take part in the victory parade at the colonel’s side. He spurned the governor’s offer of a military medal and declined to be interviewed by the press. Worse, he became so moody and irritable that, in an uncharacteristic fit of pique, he had quarrelled with Dolly Putnam and broken off their engagement. Dolly’s unhappiness had become the principal subject of dinner conversation in the Edwards household.
Meanwhile, both Stanhope and Coltrane seemed, for better or worse, to have a gift for keeping themselves in the public eye. The colonel had stunned his admirers by offering to imprison the major at Chepstow, his grandiose estate at the far western end of Hospital Street. This gesture had followed upon two earlier decisions by the governor: first, the removal of some of the military prisoners (“war criminals” to the Tory press) to Toronto and Kingston because of dangerous overcrowding in the jails and the logjam of the dockets in the county courts; and second, an audacious proposal to have ringleader Coltrane tried as a common felon in a regular criminal proceeding here in the capital city. It was the kind of trial, Marc thought, calculated to unite the populace against the “real” enemy-American republicanism and its agents provocateurs-though more likely to incite than to appease. And even though the courts-martial had thus far proved to be efficient (at the expense of justice) and draconian, the governor apparently felt that the military courts were giving the miscreants more honour than their perfidy deserved. A message needed to be sent across the border to other so-called idealists bent on liberating the Canadian natives: armed incursions were acts of thuggery in the guise of military manoeuvres and would be treated as such.