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(3. | REMEMBER ot ; Jim Bell OUR ANCESTORS UNITED EMPIRE LOYALISTS In last Friday’s issue of the Toronto Daily ‘Star, Ross Hark- ness, one of the paper’s staff writers, asks “Were the United Empire Loyalists hard-drinking incorrigibles?” I'd like to tell him that, in spite of all the stig- ma that Edwin C. Guilett has at- tached to them in his boows about the early Canadian pioneers, they were not. Evidently, Mr. Guilett has obtained a lot of his information from the lowest sources for, regardless of situa- tion, ancestry or education, you will always find a certain element drifting down. Like dead fish, they drift with the current until they end up in the slime of their own rottenness. — The majority of the United Empire Loyalists were of a bet- ter class. They were people with a conscience and an ideal. Had they not been, they would have just shrugged their shoulders at the end of the War of Independ- ence and made the best of it. 1 _ know of one man, an independent - plantation owner, one of 5 brothers, he — alone, joined the British forces under Lord Corn- wallis, became his Orderly Ser- geant and went through the whole war at his side. His estate was confiscated but his brothers bought it and at the end of the war, wrote him that if he would come back his estate would be returned to him without a cent of expense to him. His reply was, “T shall never break bread in the United States again.’’ He never did. \ The U.E.L.’s as a class were religious. Concrete evidence of that is the fully coroborated re- port that as soon as a few fami- lies settled in a district, they immediately arranged for relig- ious services to be held in the homes until a church could be erected. The visit of the circuit rider was a welcome event. The word spread rapidly and there was always a good congregation awaiting him. My grandfather, on my mother’s side, was a six} U.E.L. He used to set the tunes for the hymns on a tuning fork in the little log church that they attended. Of course, there were rough élements and much drinking but these two elements breed and grow where people congregate in larger masses, like little, old, muddy York and Niagara where the first parliament of Upper Canada was held. The Orderly Sergeant of whom I wrote was a member of this parliament. Drinking was indulged in, partly because it was very hard to get good drinking water and because whiskey was cheap. Very rarely, however, was drunkenness in evidence except in the lower class taverns where the owners were in business only for what they could get out of it rather than as a service to the public. My dad was an old-time framer. I can remember when, as a boy, being at one of his barn raisings. They had a keg of whiskey and a tin cup handy. The men drank it like water, yet not one of them appeared the least bit intoxi- eated. They perspired so freely that the potent liquor had no ap- parent effect on them at all. An old law governing taverns} |was that each one should have at} least three decent beds for the /service of the public and suitable accommodation for horses. The author of the books, referred to earlier, also speaks of land- grabbers and skeddlers. I have heard of them. There is no doubt that there were unscrupulous shysters in those early days as there. are to-day. The most of the people who “holler” (a word used extensively in early times) were those who would have done the same thing had not some one else beat them to it. This whole district was settled by United Empire — Loyalists. Joseph Keeler, the first settler, came from Rutland, Vermont, in! 1789. He went back in 1796 and returned with forty families, settling them in what is now Haldimand and Cramahe Town- ships. They contained the names of some of the finest families in the district and we are proud of them.