Once settled in, and no doubt using all of Buchanan’s contacts as well as his own, and realizing the opportunities to hand, he went to York (Toronto) to negotiate for land along the Ottawa River. Being granted this he could bring some of his clansmen over to Canada as settlers. He became friendly with the Governor-General of Canada, Sir Peregrine Maitland, who was attracted to his personality and manners. Maitland authorised a grant for eighty one thousand acres in the valley of the Ottawa River. The land under consideration had only recently been surveyed by the chief surveyor, Sherwood, and it bordered Fitzroy on the Ottawa River. MacNab without seeing the land eagerly accepted it and agreed to the Government terms to settle it with his clansmen in a similar fashion to the established settlements in adjoining Glengarry County along the St. Lawrence River. However, these neighbouring lands were government lands called Crown Lands and were rent-free. This fact MacNab kept to himself. His clansmen only found out about it by accident rather than by design and when they did, trouble brewed. They started questioning the reason why they had to pay a rent to MacNab.
MacNab who was a Justice of the Peace, had been given complete control over the land for eighteenth months at the end of which time the government representative would review the situation and determine how the settlement was working out. MacNab had the power to assign up to one hundred acres to any one family and he himself was granted twelve hundred acres. This would be increased upon completion of the settlement terms.
The settlers were to pay MacNab interest on any money expended for their needs. The surveyor, Sherwood, was given first choice of the land in payment for his services, but the remainder was entirely in McNab’s hands. In 1824 he wrote to Dr. Hamilton in Scotland requesting that twenty families should join him and that he would meet them in Montreal and bring them to the new land. In January of 1825 a bond was prepared by the Canadian Attorney-General and the following men with their families signed up: James Carmichael, Peter Campbell, Donald Fisher, Peter Drummond, James Robertson, Alexander McNab, James McFarlane, Duncan Campbell, James McDonald, Donald McNaughton, John McDermid, John McIntyre, Peter McIntyre, Donald McIntyre, James McLaurin, Peter MacMillan, James Storie, James McFarlan, Alexander Miller, Malcolm McLaren and Colin McCaul. In April of that year a party consisting of eighty four people boarded the “Niagara” and set sail from Greenock, and said farewell to the land of their birth.
After about five weeks on the Atlantic Ocean and up through the St. Lawrence River they arrived and were met at the Port of Montreal by MacNab, and his piper, James McNee. As it was not possible to sail through the Lachine Rapids they portaged to Lachine where they boarded flat-bottomed bateaux, and three days later arrived at Point Fortune on the Ottawa River. The new settlers then walked to Hawkesbury following the course of the river and were joined there by a man called McLachlin who had been awarded the contract to bring their baggage there by ox cart and sled. From Hawkesbury they embarked upon a riverboat called the “Union” and sailed for Hull. After two days and two nights travel they reached Chats Lake, now called Fitzroy Harbour, where they disembarked and proceeded through the woods following Indian trails and paths to MacNab’s settlement, known today as Arnprior. The journey from Montreal had taken twenty eight days.
Upon their arrival they pitched camp secure in the knowledge that their chief had promised to furnish them with whatever they required for a year. No one can imagine their surprise when they found out that he could not. Nor would he give them even the bare necessities of life, never mind the tools required to build shelters to survive the first winter. On occasion the temperature drops to 40 degrees below zero! Some, after locating their allotted land amidst the dense forestry they were forced to go to work for someone else in neighbouring townships in order to earn sufficient money to buy provisions. A few were employed by Thomas Burns in Fitzroy for harvesting, haying and potato digging, whereas others went as far as Murphy’s Falls, Beckwith County, some twenty miles away, to work often buying food on credit. The settlers at Morphy’s Falls, now called Carleton Place, Ontario, came from Comrie, St. Fillans, Lochearnhead, and the wider Perthshire community, so it was probable that some were family relations, and others friends.
To get to Morphy’s Falls from Arnprior was difficult and not without risk. To accomplish this journey to work one took a canoe or bateau following the route, Flat Rapids - down the Madawaska River to Chats Lake - up Chats Lake to the mouth of the Mississippi - up the Mississippi to Sneddon’s Inn at Ramsay, and then by Indian footpath to Morphy’s Falls. For the next three years small loads of supplies bought, or loaned, from Murphy’s Falls, were manhandled onto rough-hewn boats or canoes and carried on the backs of these men.
Early in their first year there, many, if not all, became aware that MacNab was engaged in some form of malpractice. As early as September 1825, just a few weeks after their arrival, he was sued by Harvey and Powell, who were mill owners in Pakenham, for non-payment of supplies bought, and money loaned. Documents and letters still extant in the museum in Perth, Ontario, attest to the fact that as early as February of that year he was in serious financial difficulty, and he was constantly trying to placate his creditors.
To try to make up these debts he continuously hounded his “beholden” clansmen in the hope that their contributions would alleviate them. These settlers were roundly abused by him at every turn. They adhered strictly to their positions with traditional clan allegiance, and the chief always came first. They were kept as formerly, as chattels or serfs, with no rights of their own, nor any government with which to appeal. Women and children were kept alive on subsistence rations of only potatoes or flour with a little salt added. All settlers had to ask his permission to take work from outside the settlement so that they could earn a little money which they had to turn over to him...and he did not always give the permission sought. This endurance to the whims of a Highland chief was borne in stoic fashion because, after all, that was what they had been used to in Scotland!
However, in their midst was a schoolteacher called Alex Miller, who would not jump to the Laird’s beck and call. An arrangement had been established by MacNab that all timber in the new township belonged to him, but Miller, believing this to be incorrect, sold some from his location to John Dill, a lumberman. When this came to light MacNab used all his influence with the governing powers to force Dill to pay duty on all the lumber he had bought. In 1826 Miller asked MacNab for permission to work in another township in order to provide food for his family. Because of the earlier transaction with the timber dispute Miller was refused permission and this began a series of persecutions which lasted for sixteen years before eventually MacNab was brought to justice and seen for what he really was, a cheat and a wastrel.
Miller had sufficient provisions for about six weeks and no other way of supplementing his income so he left the township. This led to the issuance of a warrant for his arrest and he was arrested “a capias” by order of the Laird for a debt of £80 and taken to the jail at Perth. These were the days when a person could be arrested for debts of forty shillings and kept in prison for months without redress and it was six weeks before his fellow settlers knew of his whereabouts. When they heard five men; John McIntyre, James McFarlane, Peter McIntyre, Donald McNaughton and James McDonald, travelled the sixty miles to the Perth goal and put up bail money with the result that he was freed.
They engaged a lawyer, James Boulton, to defend him but he was a member of the powerful Family Compact Household of York (Toronto) which then existed and each had to pay a fine of £50. The Compact found for MacNab who was a supporter of it, and although Miller was freed to become a teacher in Beckwith, nonetheless he was adjudged not to be innocent. In 1827 MacNab wrote to Lord Hamilton in Scotland asking that more settlers be sent from the old “sod” but was refused point blank because by this time his reign of terror and corruption had been reported and the information passed back to Scotland.
When MacNab visited Montreal or York he lived in the grand fashion entertaining in a lavish style as a result of his revenues from his so called timber rights. On one occasion in Montreal he met and persuaded some recent arrivals to join him in the Township on the understanding that each paid half a bushel of wheat per acre to him, and his successors, forever. He was so charming, hospitable and full of encouraging stories about life there that families named Hamilton, Wilson and David Airth set off at once. It has not been recorded what they families found when they got there, but no doubt, like most others, they would have been aghast at MacNab’s treatment of them and the others.
An anonymous letter was sent to the Governor-General complaining about MacNab’s tyranny, behaviour and treatment. The letter was forwarded to MacNab who assumed it had been sent by one of his clansmen, Alexander MacNab who had given him some trouble. Immediately he sent the following to Alexander:
Kinnell Lodge
13 March, 1829
“Alexander MacNab,
Degraded Clansman,- You are accused to me by Sir John Colborne of libel sedition and high treason. You will therfor compear before me at my house of Kinnell, and there make submission; and if you show a contrite and repentant spirit, and confess your faults against me, your legitimate chief, and your crime against his Majesty King George, I will intercede for your pardon. Your offended Chief,
MacNab”
Alexander, although he would be aware of MacNab’s abuses, had not written the letter, nor probably knew anything about it, protested his innocence, but to no avail. He was convicted by a court and thrown in jail. Upon his release he sought redress through the law, appealed his conviction, and was declared innocent.
Being a man of small mind MacNab never forgave an insult or injury whether real or imagined and the story is told of his detestation of a fellow MacNab, Sir Allan MacNab of Hamilton, Ontario. They both checked in to a hotel one evening in Hamilton at different times. MacNab signed the guest book as “The MacNab.” On seeing his signature when he checked in later in the evening Sir Allan wrote his name below it “The Other MacNab.”
Throughout the years in Canada MacNab continued to harry his settlers, hounding them for money and generally making their lives miserable. They, for their part, whilst they objected could make no impression on the powers then existing in the Family Compact including William Morris of Perth who, whilst sympathetic, did nothing. Eventually the numerous petitions were obvious to even the most blind, and Lord Durham and Francis Allan, the Crown Land agents, decided to act and established a full enquiry. A report was produced which showed beyond doubt the tyranny and despotism of MacNab and that it had lasted sixteen years. It was shown that all of the charges made by the settlers were in fact true and that MacNab could not produce one piece of paper which proved that he had laid out as much as a penny for, and on, the settlers.
