1824 Mackenzie removed to Toronto, but he had little capital; his paper appeared irregularly, and was on the point of suspending publication when his office was attacked and his type thrown into the bay by a number of the supporters of his opponents. In an action against the chief rioters he was awarded £625 and costs, was thus enabled to set up a much larger and more efficient plant, and the Colonial Advocate ran till the 4th of November 1834.
In 1828 he was elected member of parliament for York, but was expelled on the technical ground that he had published in his newspaper the proceedings of the house without authorization. Five times he was expelled and five times re-elected by his constituents, till at last the government refused to issue a writ, and for three years York was without one of its representatives. In May 1832 he visited England, where he was well received by the colonial office. Largely as the result of his representations, many important reforms were ordered by Lord Goderich, afterwards earl of Ripon, the colonial secretary. While in England, he published Sketches of Canada and the United States, in which, with some exaggeration, many of the Canadian grievances were exposed. On his return in March 1834 he was elected mayor of Toronto. During his year of office, the heroism with which he worked hand in hand with his old enemy, Bishop Strachan, in fighting an attack of cholera, did not prevent him from winning much unpopularity by his officiousness, and in 1835 he was not re-elected either as mayor or alderman. In October 1834 he was elected member of parliament for York, and took his seat in January 1835, the Reformers being now in the majority. A committee on grievances was appointed, as chairman of which Mackenzie presented the admirable Seventh Report on Grievances, largely written by himself, in which the case for the Reformers was presented with force and moderation, and the adoption of responsible government advocated as the remedy.
In the general election of June 1836 the Tory party won a complete victory, Mackenzie and almost all the prominent Reformers being defeated at the polls. This totally unexpected defeat greatly embittered him. On the 4th of July 1836, the anniversary of the adoption of the American Declaration of Independence, he began the publication of the Constitution, which openly advocated a republican form of government. Later in the year he was appointed “agent and corresponding secretary” of the extreme wing of the Reform party, and more and more openly, in his speeches throughout the province, advocated armed revolt. He was also in correspondence with Papineau and the other leaders of the Reformers in Lower Canada, who were already planning a rising. Early in December 1837 Mackenzie gathered a mob of his followers, to the number of several hundred, at Gallows Hill, some miles to the north of Toronto, with the intention of seizing the lieutenant-governor and setting up a provisional government. Misunderstandings among the leaders led to the total failure of the revolt, and Mackenzie was forced to fly to the United States with a price on his head. In the town of Buffalo he collected a disorderly rabble, who seized and fortified Navy Island, in the river between the two countries, and for some weeks troubled the Canadian frontier. After the failure of this attempt he was put to the most pitiful shifts to make a living. In June 1839 he was tried in the United States for a breach of the neutrality laws, and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment, of which he served over eleven. While in gaol at Rochester he published the Caroline Almanac, the tone of which may be judged from its references to “Victoria Guelph, the bloody queen of England,” and by the title given to the British cabinet of “Victoria Melbourne’s bloody divan.” He returned to Canada in consequence of the Amnesty Act 1849. A closer inspection had cured him of his love for republican institutions.
In 1851 he was elected to parliament for Haldimand, defeating George Brown. He at once allied himself with the Radicals (the “Clear Grits”), and, on the leadership of that party being assumed by Brown, became one of his lieutenants. He was still miserably poor, but refused all offers to accept a government position. In 1858 he resigned his seat in the house, owing to incipient softening of the brain, of which he died on the 29th of August 1861.
Turbulent, ungovernable, vain, often the dupe of schemers, Mackenzie united with much that was laughable not a little that was heroic. He could neither be bribed, bullied, nor cajoled. Perhaps the best instance of this is that in 1832 he refused from Lord Goderich an offer of a position which would have given him great influence in Canada and an income of £1,500. He was a born agitator, and as such tended to exaggeration and misrepresentation. But the evils against which he struggled were real and grave; the milder measures of the Constitutional Reformers might have taken long to achieve the results which were due to his hot-headed advocacy.
The Life and Times by his son-in-law, Charles Lindsey (Toronto, 2 vols., 1862), is moderate and fair, though tending to smooth over his anti-British gasconnade while in the United States. An abridgment of this work was edited by G. G. S. Lindsey for the “Makers of Canada” series (1909). In The Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion by J. C. Dent (2 vols., Toronto, 1885), a bitter attack is made on him, which drew a savage reply from another son-in-law, John King, K.C., called The Other Side of the Story. The best short account of his career is given by J. C. Dent in The Canadian Portrait Gallery, vol. ii. (Toronto, 1881). (W. L. G.)
MACKENZIE, a river of the North-West Territories, Canada, discharging the waters of the Great Slave Lake into the Arctic
Ocean. It was discovered and first navigated by Sir Alexander
Mackenzie in 1789. It has an average width of 1 m., an average
fall of 6 in. to the mile; an approximate discharge, at a medium
stage, of 500,000 cub. ft. per second; and a total length, including
its great tributary the Peace, of 2,350 m. The latter
rises, under the name of the Finlay, in the mountains of British
Columbia, and flows north-east and then south-east in the
great intermontane valley that bounds the Rocky Mountains
on the west, to its confluence with the Parsnip. From the
confluence the waters of the combined rivers, now called
the Peace, flow east through the Rocky Mountains, and then
north-east to unite with the river which discharges the
waters of Lake Athabasca; thence to Great Slave Lake it is
known as Slave river. Excluding the rivers which enter
these lakes, the principal tributaries of the Peace are:
Omineca, Nation, Parsnip, Halfway, North Pine, South Pine,
Smoky, Battle, and Loon rivers; those of the Mackenzie are the
Liard (650 m. long), which rises near the sources of the Pelly,
west of the Rocky Mountains, and breaks through that range on
its way to join the parent stream, Great Bear river, which drains
Great Bear Lake, Nahanni, Dahadinni, Arctic Red, and Peel
rivers. The Mackenzie enters the Arctic Ocean near 135° W. and
68° 50′ N., after flowing for 70 to 80 m. through a flat delta,
not yet fully surveyed. With its continuation, Slave river, it is
navigable from the Arctic Ocean to Fort Smith, a distance of over
1,200 m., and between the latter and the head of Lesser Slave Lake,
a further distance of 625 m., there is only one obstruction to
navigation, the Grand Rapids near Fort McMurray on the
Athabasca river. The Peace is navigable from its junction with
Slave river for about 220 m. to Vermilion Falls. The Mackenzie
is navigable from about the 10th of June to the 20th of October,
and Great Slave Lake from about the 1st of July to the end of
October. All the waters and lakes of this great system are
abundantly stocked with fish, chiefly white fish and trout, the
latter attaining to remarkable size.
MACKEREL, pelagic fishes, belonging to a small family, Scombridae, of which the tunny, bonito, albacore, and a few other tropical genera are members. Although the species are
fewer in number than in most other families of fishes, they are widely spread and extremely abundant, peopling by countless schools the oceans of the tropical and temperate zones, and approaching the coasts only accidentally, occasionally, or periodically.
The mackerel proper (genus Scomber) are readily recognized by their elegantly shaped, well-proportioned body, shining in iridescent colours. Small, thin, deciduous scales equally cover nearly the entire body. There are two dorsal fins, the anterior near the head, composed of 11–14 feeble spines, the second near
