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Unfortunately, after the elections of 1836, the Reform Party completely distrusted the Governor, Sir Francis Bond-Head. Bitterness increased and the local farmers began to carry out raids upon each other, seizing guns and fighting with the new Orange families who settle on the Lakefront lots of William Allan, the Gormleys, Gordons and James Griegs. (Ref. Mrs. Mary Fair, and Deed to former Greig farm held at present by W. A. McKay.) During the summer of 1837 the Brock Road Loyalists formed a sort of homely local militia, with practises held on Barclay's farm. When the ill-fated call came from MacKenzie, Matthews collected a large number of followers (Wood claims in "Past Years in Pickering" that four hundred men marched from Pickering but probably three hundred would be a more accurate number). (Ref: William Allan, Shaw Papers, Toronto Reference Library.) The tragic march to Toronto on December 6th, 1837 and the disorganized action so easily quelled on December 7th, are known to all. Peter and David Matthews led their large company of rebels to Montgomery's Tavern and the next day, sixty of them were sent to burn the Don bridge on the Kingston Road, and to seize the mails from Montreal. The men did not burn the bridge but did burn a house nearby and Dent, in his history of Toronto, says that Matthews and his Pickering men were seized at Duncan's farm on the present Steele's Avenue, after several days of wandering in the Rosedale ravines. After the loyalist men captured the rebels, many were taken to jail, including William Dunbar and his son. Barclay was among those sentenced to Van Dieman's Land and whose sentence was later commuted. It is very sad to Pickering people to feel that they suffered for the rebellion much more than the rebels of Toronto who all escaped to the States. Matthews, who had all his life done so much for the community, who had helped to provide the first school, the roads, a church, and who was always pro-British, was condemned to death for treason, with Samuel Lount. Since they had both taken part in the rebellion, they could not honestly plead against their sentence, although the Governor could have commuted this sentence in view of the petition of eight thousand names handed to him, including the names of many prominent Anglicans. Doctor Scadding says, in his History of Toronto,: "A gentle commiseration has ever since been felt for their fate, for they were certainly less culpable than others who suffered no legal punishment at all, and they appear to have been men of kindly disposition and high personal character. They both left large families behind them, who underwent great physical as well as mental suffering from being thus deprived of their stay and support. In these cases, clemency would have well become those whose prerogative it was to exercise it." The rebellion was miserably, a military failure and has left the stigma of disloyalty upon all political parties who tend to oppose the Tory party when it is in power. But Lord Durham, in his famous report, clearly recognized the legitimate grievances of the rebels. The fact that so many of them were solid, honest landowners, not merely transient, replub-lican-minded agitators, weighed heavily on the side of reform. The death of Lount and Matthews shocked the British Colonial Office into sending to Canada for the first time in many years, brilliant and dedicated Governors, Lord Durham and Lord Elgin. They analysed the difficult constitutional situation and laid the foundations for responsible government carried out under moderate, peaceful reformer, Robert Baldwin. Melba E. McKay, February 6th, 1959. The writer wishes to thank all the many kind friends who supplied her with family photographs, documentation and their support in this section. The work, over the past three years, has become a labour of love. Without the help of all the families interviewed, many of them strangers, the section "Pioneer Days and Pioneer Families", would have been impossible.