Up the Gatineau! Article
This article was first published in Up the Gatineau! Volume 23.
Tax Showdown Up The Gatineau
Grant Maxwell
Tax resistance is nothing new, but a nineteenth century Canadian tax boycott that lasted at least fifteen years was certainly unusual, if not unique. Some of my ancestors were right in the thick of it. November 1995 marked the hundredth anniversary of that long-ago siege up the Gatineau. In the end, you guessed it — the tax objectors lost and government won. But not before a potentially violent showdown in West Quebec about 60 kilometres north of Ottawa.
In the 1890s the picturesque Gatineau township of Low (Lowe was the accepted spelling then) numbered about 1,400, almost all of them farm families. Most households made a frugal to modestly comfortable living from crops and livestock, plus winter logging jobs further north. In 1837 Caleb Brooks IV of Boston, one of my great great-grandfathers, his second wife and three children had been the first family to settle at Low. Twenty years on, the predominantly Protestant town of Low was prosperous compared to the nearby communities of Fieldville and Brennan’s Hill, where Catholic immigrants from Ireland began farming in the 1840s and ’50s.
To this day there are different versions as to exactly when and why the 1895 tax squabble began. By 1880, or perhaps earlier, county taxes were being levied irregularly, but rarely collected. Tax arrears steadily increased into the 1890s. Then, without advance notice, nearly a dozen men — county officials and provincial police from Hull — arrived in the township. They demanded immediate payment of back taxes. Otherwise, delinquents would face confiscation of livestock, chattels and land. With few exceptions, ratepayers ignored this ultimatum — at first.
When word of the showdown reached Ottawa, the three daily newspapers hurried reporters up the Gatineau Valley. There the competing scribes sent back lurid reports, writing as if they were war correspondents. Yet not one shot was fired in conflict. No more than a few noses were bloodied, and perhaps a few heads or behinds were clouted with a broom or kitchen pan.
Here are sample headlines from the Evening Journal and the Daily Free Press, two of Ottawa’s three dailies then:
| Nov. 15: | CRUSADE IN LOWE. MOB GATHERING BLOOD WILL SURELY FLOW |
| Nov. 16: | POLICE ARE POWERLESS IN LOWE HOT-HEADED FARMERS WILL NOT HEAR OF COMPROMISE |
| Nov. 18: | TROOPS IN LOWE. 100 VOLUNTEERS IN SERVICE ULTIMATUM: BRENNAN’S HILL GIVEN LAST WARNING |
| Nov. 19: | SIGHT OF SOLDIERS BRINGS LOWE FARMERS TO TIME TWO THIRDS OF THE KICKERS HAVE SETTLED ARREARS |
| Nov. 20: | EVERYTHING IS SATISFACTORY AND THE TROOPS WITHDRAW |
(Somehow copies of the Ottawa Citizen for mid-November 1895 went missing and have never been found, the paper’s archives office acknowledged when I inquired. I've since been told that in November 1995 the Citizen did not make any mention of the 100th anniversary of the tax revolt.)
One hundred years ago the only real skirmish was the so-called Battle of Brennan’s Hill. The Evening Journal reported that a noisy crowd of Irish Canadians “followed the (enforcement) officers from house to house, and finally began to threaten them.” Another story had it that the collectors were first locked in a cellar for some hours. Eventually county officials and constables retreated to safety in Low, contacted Ottawa and pleaded for army support.
By the next day a special train of armed militia, horses and ammunition was ready to leave for Low. An account of the emotional scene at the Ottawa station that Sunday was preserved by Miss Barbara Potter, in a scrapbook now held by the Historical Society of the Gatineau’s archives, along with some other information cited here. The station saga, as described by an Ottawa scribe, is from the Potter scrapbook:
The general (Major General Gascoigne) walked up and down the ranks, inspected almost every man separately, enquired as to their clothing and equipment, and spoke with a soldierly interest that fairly warmed the boys’ hearts. He advised them to take every precaution against the damp and cold weather.
There were many of the gentler sex present to witness the departure and not a few were unable to conceal the anxious expression of their faces, and, while they hoped for the best, expressed their fear that if “Jack” or “Will” didn’t get hurt, “they would catch colds sufficient to lay them up anyway.”
The general expressed regrets at the apparent serious turn that affairs had taken in Low... The most important part of his short address was on the duty of the men, should the worst result. If actual firing was necessary, he pointed out the danger of firing over the heads of a crowd to frighten them. This often results in wounding or killing women or innocent individuals who might be in the distance and have no part in the fight. If firing were necessary, it should be steady and aimed to have effect. He also gave practical advice as to keeping cool under provocation and acting with proper deliberation and purpose.
Stories of what happened during the Battle of Brennan’s Hill before and after the arrival of the troops are well preserved (and no doubt somewhat embellished) in the oral memories of some Fieldville elders. One such is Norman Mahoney, whom I interviewed several years ago. Norman’s grandfather was one of the protesters who chased the tax collectors. The grandfather described this adventure to his son, who years later passed on the story to his son, Norman.
“Grandfather, and all the Fields, the Brennans, Sullivans, Driscolls and others went up to Brennan’s Hill when the bailiffs arrived to force people to pay taxes,” Mr. Mahoney recounted. “Our people went up with forks and axes and turned them back. The bailiffs didn’t expect the likes of that.”
“When one of the bailiffs was ready to auction off a cow to make up for Bill Brennan’s taxes, old Harry Field, a big tall man, hit the fellow and knocked him kicking. All the rest of our people turned their heads away so they wouldn’t see what happened. That way they wouldn’t have to tell a lie if forced to give witness.”
The local farmers won that round but their victory was short-lived. Army units set up camp in Low and waited for orders to march on farms. The order never was given because land holders hurried into Low to pay the levies they had long refused to pay.
The presence of the militia certainly was a factor in this capitulation. So was the intervention of Fathers Foley and Blondin who urged their Catholic parishioners to pay back taxes peacefully. Another likely factor was the embarrassment some dissenters must have felt when Ottawa published the names of 150 families on the original list of “delinquents.” Prominent “established” Protestant households in Low, for example would have wanted to erase that memory quickly.
By late November only two hold-outs had still to pay arrears. The total back taxes collected amounted to something less than $1,000 — a small sum compared to the taxes Canadians pay nowadays. Of course, a century ago incomes and living expenses were much less. Some Ottawa prices then: a bag of potatoes cost 50 cents; 15 cents bought a dozen eggs; and 30 to 50 cents purchased a whole chicken — dead or alive.
In reporting the tax showdown, Ottawa journalists condemned Fieldville and Brennan’s Hill farmers as the main culprits. News stories described them as “the mob,” “ruffians” and “filthy Stag Creek kickers” (so named after the Stag Creek bridge crossing that still divides Low farmland from Fieldville properties).
Dr. C. M. Gordon, Ottawa, defended the “kickers” in a letter to the Evening Journal: “Their honesty is proverbial; their word is better than the bond of most men; their hospitality to the stranger and kindness to the distressed is unequalled.”
Dr. Laurel Doucette, Gatineau native and authority on folklore, suggested in a 1986 letter that family memories of harsh English rule in Ireland helped account for the Irish-Canadian opposition to taxation. Besides, in their homeland the Irish had never been allowed to experience self-government.
Gatineau resident and local historian Gunda Lambton agrees. Writing in the 1981 edition of Up the Gatineau!, she observed: “Old people among the settlers... remembered the terrible times in Ireland, when they were tenants and the tax they paid was not for land they owned . . . (but) went to feudal landlords. Now that they owned their land this would never happen again.”
The Gatineau tax revolt was big news on both sides of the Ottawa River for a short time in November 1895. To this day the incident is occasionally recalled in song and story.
For example, a musical titled Up the Gatineau, written by Brian Doyle and co-produced by a “Clark, Parry and Doyle” trio, played at Glebe Collegiate, Ottawa in May 1984. In June that year two performances were given in the Brennan’s Hill Hotel. News reports said capacity audiences attended all performances and enjoyed the lively, good-humoured production.
Here’s a typical verse from the musical’s title song:
Up the Gatineau; up the Gatineau
No big government to make the rules.
We're absolutely free, the way we want to be
And we don’t pay attention to the fools.
But, as we know, in the end the tax evaders did “pay attention.”
In July 1984 The Low down to Hull and back News reported that Brian Doyle also was “working on a novel” about the tax crisis of 1895. Twelve years later, in December 1996, Doyle published the promised novel, Uncle Ronald, a story about a boy and his mother in Low during the tax crisis.
If I had been a journalist in the 1890s and had been sent to report on the Gatineau tax revolt, I would have faced an awkward conflict of interest. Three of the families implicated in the squabble were great grandparents: William and Betsy (Brooks) Maxwell, John Pierce and Ann (McPhee) Smith, and Henry and Mary (Coogan) Field. All three families were well known in their churches and elsewhere in the township: William Maxwell was a Methodist lay leader and his family well-known hymn singers. John Pierce Smith was a resolute member of the Church of England (an Anglican in today’s terms), while Ann was a staunch Roman Catholic. Henry and Mary Field were equally determined “Micks.” Henry Field was better known locally as “Harry” — the same Harry who was said to have been the pugnacious ringleader in the “Battle of Brennan’s Hill.”
As far as I know, this was the only time these ancestors made headlines in daily newspapers. Perhaps it's just as well.