by Karen Robinet for the Sarnia Observer
(2003) “I have always held those political opinions which point to the universal brotherhood of man, no matter in what rank of life he may have taken his origin.”
Alexander Mackenzie, Canada’s first Liberal prime minister and editor of the Lambton Shield newspaper, had every reason to sympathize with the common man. Born in Scotland in 1822, Mackenzie had been forced to cut short his formal education at the age of 13 to help support the family. Throughout his life, he embraced self-education, studying literature, history, science, philosophy and politics. While still in Scotland, Mackenzie was attracted to the reform movement and his passion remained unchanged after emigrating to Canada, following his sweetheart, Helen Neil.
Mackenzie went to work in Canada as a stonemason, and one of his first jobs was to build a stone arch at Fort Henry in Kingston. Other notable projects included the Welland Canal, the Episcopal Church and bank in Sarnia, along with courthouses and jails in Chatham and Sandwich.
Historians have portrayed Mackenzie as a staid and practical man with temperance leanings, but one insight into his younger days paints a different picture. While spending a winter cutting stone on Wolfe Island, Mackenzie crossed the ice every Saturday night to visit Helen, then living with her parents in Kingston. One Saturday night, Mackenzie arrived soaking wet and half-frozen. But even an unexpected plunge into frigid waters wasn’t enough to stop him from making the visits for the rest of the winter. After their marriage in 1845, the Mackenzies had three children two of whom died in infancy. Mary, born in 1848, was the couple’s only surviving child.
In 1852, Mackenzie’s beloved Helen died. The same year he found an outlet for his liberal political convictions as editor of The Lambton Shield.
The rival Observer, even before it began publishing in 1853, had drawn Mackenzie’s wrath. Observer publisher J.R. Gemmill wrote in that first edition: “The Shield honors us with a kind of left-handed compliment in his last issue. This, as we have been led to understand, is not the first sly hint which he has aimed at the character of the proprietor of The Observer. Nothing else could be looked for. It is an old saying, and although very vulgar, is nevertheless a very truthful one, that ‘You can’t expect anything from a sow but a grunt.’ Our friend can therefore grunt on. He is scarcely worthy of any other notice.”
In the impassioned style of the day, both newspapers printed vitriolic attacks on the other, and eventually, Mackenzie brought a lawsuit down on himself which ended his newspaper career and saw the end of the Shield.
In 1853, Mackenzie married Jane Sym, but no children resulted from that union.
Mackenzie served as Lambton’s M.P. from 1861 to 1882. He was also elected a member of the Ontario legislature in 1861, and for six months served as acting premier and treasurer of Ontario. Mackenzie became leader of the new Liberal party in 1873, the same year the Liberals revealed evidence of bribery involving the Conservative party and the contractors engaged in building the government’s Pacific Railway. The scandal which erupted forced Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and his Conservatives to resign, and the Liberals, under Mackenzie, took over. A general election the following year gave him the mandate to govern. He served in that capacity for five years before the tables turned and Macdonald was reinstated, remarking that Canadians preferred “John A. drunk to Mackenzie sober.”
Mackenzie died in 1892 but wasn’t officially recognized in Sarnia until a monument was created on the waterfront in 1968. In 1994, a plaque was unveiled at his gravesite in Lakeview Cemetery, with several members of the Mackenzie family on hand for the event. At the urging of MP Roger Galloway, Mackenzie’s deteriorating gravestone at Lakeview was meticulously restored, befitting his place in Canadian history.