The
growth of the Methodists and Baptists in the United States after
the Revolution, however, made its mark on the neighboring
country. The first Methodist class meetings in Upper Canada, held
in the United Empire Loyalist settlement on the Bay of Quinte in
1791, were organized by itinerant preachers from the United
States; and in the western part of the province pioneer Baptist
evangelists from the same country reached the scattered settlers
neglected by the older churches.
Nor was it in religion alone that diversity grew. Simcoe had set
up a generous land policy which brought in many "late Loyalists,"
American settlers whose devotion to monarchical principles would
not always bear close inquiry. The fantastic experiment of
planting in the heart of the woods of Upper Canada a group of
French nobles driven out by the Revolution left no trace; but
Mennonites, Quakers, and Scottish Highlanders contributed diverse
and permanent factors to the life of the province. Colonel Thomas
Talbot of Malahide, "a fierce little Irishman who hated Scotchmen
and women, turned teetotallers out of his house, and built the
only good road in the province," made the beginnings of
settlement midway on Lake Erie. A shrewd Massachusetts merchant,
Philemon Wright, with his comrades, their families, servants,
horses, oxen, and 10,000 pounds, sledded from Boston to Montreal
in the winter of 1800, and thence a hundred miles beyond, to
found the town of Hull and establish a great lumbering industry
in the Ottawa Valley.
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