The Canada Company

The Canada Company

 The Canada Company was a large private chartered British land development company, incorporated by an act of British parliament on July 27, 1825, to aid the colonization of Upper Canada. 

Canada Company assisted emigrants by providing good ships, low fares, implements and tools, and inexpensive land. Scottish novelist, John Galt, was the company’s first Canadian superintendent. The government of Upper Canada sold the company 10,000 km² of land for 341 000 pounds. Slightly less than half of the land that was purchased comprised what would become the Huron Tract, located on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, the remainder, located in other areas of Upper Canada, became Clergy reserves under the control of the Clergy Corporation. 

John Galt selected Guelph, Ontario as the company’s headquarters. The company surveyed and subdivided this massive area, built roads, mills, and schools and advertised it to buyers in Europe. The company then assisted in the migration of new settlers, bringing them to the area by means of a boat, which the company also owned, on Lake Ontario.

John Galt was dismissed and recalled to Great Britain in 1829, for mismanagement, particularly incompetent bookkeeping and close alliance with the Tory elites, known as the Family Compact. The Company was dissolved on December 18, 1953.

In 1833, his colleague William "Tiger" Dunlop took over as Superintendent of the Company and continued Galt's work for a short time before resigning.[13]

The company’s mismanagement and corruption, and its close alliance with the Tory elites, known as the Family Compact (see below).

By 1938, the Canada Company held just over 20,000 acres (81 km2) acres of unsold land, while the company shares were valued at 10 shillings. It had become a land company in the process of liquidation. Source: Wikipedia

The Huron Tract:

The Huron Tract is a large area of land in southwestern Ontario bordering on Lake Huron to the west and Lake Erie to the east. The area spans the counties of Huron, Perth, Middlesex and present-day Lambton County, Ontario in the Province of Ontario.

The Huron Tract was purchased by the Canada Company, an agent of the British government, to be distributed to colonial settlers of Upper Canada. Influenced by William “Tiger” Dunlop, John Galt and other businessmen formed the Canada Company. The Canada Company bought one million acres (4,000 km²) of land west of the then London district and called it the Huron Tract. The Canada Company was the administrative agent for the Huron Tract.

Huron Centennial Tract by Brian Wendy Reis

This is not of Stratford itself, but The Canada Company and its activities, that include surveying this part of the country, and laying out farm lots, town sites, and roads, is very definitely a big part of Stratford's  early history. This was all accomplished at the urging of "Tiger" Dunlop,  that the Canada Company bought the "Huron Tract," comprising 1,100,000 acres, most of which is now southwestern Ontario (the present Perth, Huron, Middlesex, and Lambton Counties). On Labour Day, Sept. 3 of 1928, on the centennial of the Huron Tract, a special centennial celebration was held, and a cavalcade of cars started out near Fryfogel's Inn, east of Shakespeare. As you can see from the poster, it travelled through Stratford, stopping for lunch with veterans in Queen's Park, and then continued out the newly paved Huron Rd. to Seebach's Hill for the dedication of a cairn, honouring Andrew Seebach, the first settler in Ellice Township, who settled there in 1829. The photo of that cairn dedication shows, on the left, South Perth member of the Provincial Legislature, Nelson Monteith, and on the right, Louis Seebach, grandson of Andrew Seebach. How many times have we passed that cairn and never thought of its significance? The cavalcade continued on to other cairn dedications and ended in Clinton in the evening.