Sermons

August 5 th, 2007
Celebrating Simcoe Day

Rev. Bill Bruce

This statutory holiday in Ontario, known as a ‘municipal holiday’, in Toronto is ‘Simcoe Day’. John Graves Simcoe was the governor of Upper Canada from 1791 to 1796, and founder of the town of York, later renamed Toronto. Terence Corcoran in the National Post this week proposed we rename this holiday ‘Victories Day’ in honour of our armed forces. After all, would this not just be an expansion from celebrating one Imperial soldier, to be more inclusive? I think not.

Simcoe lived 54 years, and 5 of those years, aged 39 to 44, he was posted to these Canadas. For which 5 year stint will you be remembered, and by whom? What is privileged, valorized, or taught by the ways we tell our stories, or his story? Peace, order and good government were the virtues highly valued by ‘Toronto the Good’, that WASP loyalist establishment formed in reaction to the American Revolution. Is that your heritage, and your celebration this summer?

Simcoe might instead tell us of his 5 year tour of duty, aged 25 to 30, with the Queen’s Rangers. He began as a Captain at Staten Island, New York and fought through the revolutionary wars. As an imperial officer, he trained and led local militia loyalists. He wanted to recruit freed slaves as regular soldiers, resisted by slave-owning fellow officers. Once, routing rebels in a clearing, he stopped his soldiers shooting fleeing men, crying ‘It’s not civilized to shoot men in the back!’ One of the fleeing officers sent a letter of thanks for the chivalry, signed ‘George Washington’. Simcoe’s military successes, though in a losing cause, had him promoted to Colonel.
Simcoe spent his 30’s, and the last 10 years of his life, in domestic life and civic duties in Devon. He was gentry, who owned land if not title, a successful and prosperous farmer and landlord. As a member of Parliament, he was a supporter of William Wilberforce, opposed to slave trade, but hardly an advocate of social equality for all. When the state of Vermont join the original 13 colonies in 1791, he lobbied people like Yonge and Nepean for support for the 8000 Loyalists settling in Canada, including some who had served with him before. He was not a reactionary, but a conservative committed to the duties that matched his privileges and his loyalties.
Simcoe planned to return from Toronto in 1796 as a Major General in his prime. A townhouse and seat in Parliament in London, and his estates and defence duties in Devon called him home. Over his objections, he was sent south to meet another revolution instead. Toussant L’Ouverture was leading a successful black republican uprising on the island of Hispaniola we know as Haiti. As the French revolution abolished slavery in France, and withdrew colonial claims, the British invaded in a futile reactionary cause. Simcoe arrived, held beachhead ports while castigating the local white citizens’ treatments of blacks, and in 6 months, sailed home, his domestic ambitions damaged by his refusal to pursue a futile racist imperial adventure without purpose or support.
Hosea the prophet spoke to Israel in affluent times, reminding them of their roots and their risks. Poised between the empires of Assyria to the north, and Egypt to the south, the rich were trading with both sides, playing both ends against the middle, making hay while the sun shone, profiteering in a moment when neither empire would anger the other by claiming Israel as theirs. Hosea begged the people to remember their roots as slaves in Egypt, of their days as Hapiru refugees, strangers in a strange land, a people being fed and taught to walk like baby by mother:
‘When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went form me: they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up in my arms: but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.”
Hosea was remembered after Israel fell to the Assyrians, and in turn fell Judah to Babylon, wherever people tried to make sense of how things go wrong. Hosea names the predictable if not preventable sins of affluence, which have their inevitable consequences in due course of empires. We always forget our roots as slaves, and refugees. We always forget we were slaves in Egypt. We always forget we were strangers in a strange land. And sure enough, we get greedy, and lose empathy for others, maximizing our own wealth now, without concern for the poor or the future.
Simcoe lived in times like those, and so do we. We are privileged, in Canada and in Toronto. Our economic activity is valorized and rewarded over those in the rest of the world and country. Some of us are making hay while this sun shines, and profiteering, not only locally but globally. But all of us start from a ‘social wage’ of social and economic security unheard of elsewhere. Have we forgotten our identity as slaves, refugees, and immigrants? Of course we have, again! Hosea’s message is repeated for 2800 years because we are always somewhere in this story.
Simcoe lived in revolutionary times, as privileged landed gentry, though not fully aristocratic. He was more affluent than most by far, but not ever quite within the inner elite circles of power. He was like a lot of United Church folks, middle class folks with professional skills essential to our economic success, identified with, but not within, the ‘establishment’, the ‘powers that be’. We can deny our privilege, or use it, or lose it. Simcoe used his, if in a series of losing causes, an example which might be far worthier of a statutory holiday than ‘Victories Day’.
Should this be Simcoe Day, Caribana weekend, or Victories Day? Who are we, or whose are we, as a people? Dismiss Simcoe as a WASP icon of colonialism if you will. Perhaps, as George Grant taught us in Lament for a Nation, the conservative loyalist vision next to the relentless progressive modernity of America was doomed from the start. But let’s not forget our roots.
On a holiday weekend, worshiping in two big old buildings with a remnant of a few folks, I kept asking those questions. The revolutionaries fought for life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, and beat Simcoe in America. The British who could not bear to concede the colonial crisis of a successful black republic sharing a Caribbean island with Haiti, sent Simcoe to lose that one too. Finally, The British appointed Simcoe the first commander in chief to go to India in 1806, to provide oversight so the East India Company could not claim unregulated rule of a continent. Simcoe died of lead poisoning from the fresh paint of the ship bearing him to that last duty.
Who are we, and whose country is this? Who gets to claim the wealth and privilege, the valorized economic leverage of Toronto? Who is it among us that builds moral, political, and financial capital, and who is it among us that spends and dissipates and wastes it? There were black faces in the loyalist ranks in 1777, and in Upper Canada and in muddy York. When my great great grandfather Bill Bruce arrived in Peel Township near Waterloo in 1840’s, the majority of residents in the county were black, loyalists and refugees like us Ulster Scots.
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But Jesus said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And Jesus said to them “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
Now those I worshiped with on Sunday are not rich. I am relatively far richer than they are. We are all tempted to share safe smug complacent assurances, echoing the old commonplace: ‘money isn’t everything’. None of us ever thinks she is rich – poll people with $1M assets and $100K annual incomes, and they say they are ‘middle class’. But ask the world, and they’ll tell you we are all rich, as Simcoe was, relative to most people. So listen to the parable as rich folk:
Then he told them a parable:
“The land of a rich man produced abundantly.
And he thought to himself,
‘what should I do,
for I have no place to store my crops?’
Then he said,
‘I will do this:
I will pull down my barns and build larger ones,
and there I will store all my grain and my goods.
And I will say to my soul,
‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years;
relax, eat, drink , be merry.’
But God said to him,
‘You fool!
This very night your life is being demanded of you
And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves
but are not rich toward God.”
Why didn’t Simcoe just stay home and prosper? Or at least, after he had made his name and rank in the American war, why not rest on those laurels? Or in turn, why return to the Canadas, or obey the order to fight in Hispaniola? Simcoe died of lead poisoning, in a fresh painted ship H.M.S.Illustrious, advising the Portuguese start of the peninsular war which would in turn kill his eldest son Francis. The India Board of Control and the army would oversee the East India Company, but Simcoe would never arrive to begin as Commander in Chief. The English occupied the Cape of Good Hope, and prohibited trade but not ownership if slaves in the empire.
Why did Simcoe not just say to his soul ‘soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry?’ Perhaps it would be better to ask ourselves, who all have enough: what makes us run? Is it enough to get a good rent geared to income apartment, or move from a ‘starter home’ barn to a bigger ‘dream home’ barn? When do you win, when you get the kids through college, or retire with a good pension? Simcoe lived out conservative virtues of public service, or civic responsibility, over and above his domestic business. What do you serve?
The congregations with whom I worshiped on Sunday enjoy lavish trust assets entrusted to their stewardship to serve our religious and charitable purposes. Too often, we are satisfied with the lull before the next storm, with the plans of some great new plan of redevelopment or tenancy. You fools – what if this very night it were over? What and whom have we served? Who does not claim too much control, assume too little burden, and enjoy too much benefit from it all? Whose inheritance are we wasting, and what next generation are we robbing?
Our denomination too often presents the faith as a ‘happily ever after’ exercise in heritage preservation, or worse, adopts a trivial cartoon or sitcom framework: ‘Have a Nice Day UC’. Daniel Berrigan, active in human rights, desegregation and opposition to the Vietnam War 40 years ago, acknowledged that his ministry was: ‘extremely unsettling to a society of believers that thought it contained and expressed the conscience of man, once and for all. However, he responded to his critics in the following terms:
Being a Christian needs redefining in every age; and every age hesitates between two great choices: that of insecurity in the world, and that of a security that merely draws on what has gone before, and remains on safe ground. The real effort, never really done with, is to discern what Christ is saying to us from within the real world….
All else is a morticians job, or child’s game.
There’s a piety abroad that always asks ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ For me, that’s wrong. Let Jesus be Jesus – messianism is a bad career choice, ending around age 33, even if you don’t start till you are 30. Your job is not to do what Jesus would do. The job is taken, and Jesus is doing it well. You job is to be a faithful human being in your own time and context, with your own gifts and opportunities. So I might ask as a more modest first step: what would Simcoe do?
I think he’d take care of the duties of his station in life, and discharge them honourably. I think he would not simply say to his soul ‘relax, eat drink, and be merry’ – but he would ask what he owed in return for all that was entrusted to him, in privilege and affluence. It’s not enough to seek ‘freedom 55’ – Simcoe died at 54! We owe much more, to become rich toward God. Within a year of Simcoe’s death, his party and parliament banned trade and transport of slaves. Within a decade of his death, his colony has successfully stopped an American invasion. Reinhold Niebuhr, another immigrant’s kid working in Detroit then New York, put it this way:
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.