Charles Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham

Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham, GCB, PC (13 September 1799 – 19 September 1841) was a British businessman, politician, diplomat and the first Governor General of the united Province of Canada.

Early life, family, education

Born at Waverley Abbey House, near Farnham, Surrey, Thomson was the son of John Buncombe Poulett Thomson, a London merchant, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of John Jacob. His father was the head of J. Thomson, T. Bonar and Company, a successful trading firm that had dealings with Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire and was a principal merchant house in the Russian-Baltic trade.

After attending private schools until age 16, Thomson entered the family firm at Saint Petersburg. In 1817 he came home due to poor health, and embarked on a prolonged tour of Southern Europe. He returned to Russia in 1821 and over the next three years travelled extensively in Eastern Europe. He established permanent residence in London in 1824 but frequently visited the Continent, especially Paris.

Political career

Thomson was returned to the House of Commons as MP for Dover in 1826. In 1830 he joined Earl Grey's government as Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy, an office he held until 1834. In November 1831 Thomson accompanied Lord Durham to Paris to negotiate a new commercial treaty with July Monarchy France, but the project was not accomplished. He was then President of the Board of Trade under Lord Melbourne in 1834 and succeeded Lord Auckland as president, and again between 1835 and 1839. A free-trader and an expert in financial matters, he was elected MP for Manchester in 1832, a seat which he held until 1839. He was continuously occupied with negotiations affecting international commerce until 1839, when he accepted the Governorship of Canada.After his appointment as a governor general of British North America, he persuaded the legislature of Upper Canada to consent to a union with Lower Canada, and framed the constitution of the united province. In 1832 he organised a special statistical department at the board of trade, and in 1837 instituted the school of design at Somerset House, in accordance with the recommendation of a select committee of the House of Commons made in 1835.

Governor General of Canada

Sydenham succeeded Lord Durham as Governor General of Canada in 1839. He was responsible for implementing the Union Act in 1840, uniting Upper Canada and Lower Canada as the Province of Canada, and moving the seat of government to Kingston. Upper Canadians were given a choice in the matter of union, which they accepted; Lower Canada had no say, and as a result, many French Canadians were opposed to both the union and Sydenham himself.

Later that year, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Sydenham, of Sydenham in the County of Kent and of Toronto in Canadaand was appointed "knight grand cross of the Order of the Bath".

Sydenham was just as anti-French as Lord Durham had been, and he encouraged British immigration to make the French Canadian population less significant. French Canadians referred to him as le poulet, the chicken. Realizing he had almost no support in Lower Canada (at this time Canada East), he reorganised electoral ridings to give the Anglo-Canadian population more votes, and in areas where that was infeasible, he allowed English mobs to beat up French candidates. Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine was one such candidate who suffered from Sydenham's influence; Lafontaine eventually left Canada East to work with Robert Baldwin in creating a fairer union for both sides. The new constitution, after being carried through the colonial parliaments and ratified by the House of Commons, came into force on 10 February 1841. It led ultimately to the great confederation of 1867.In addition to this measure he carried another for local government, and he set on foot improvements in the matters of emigration, education, and public works. Charles Greville, in his Memoirs wrote about Thomson:

In spite of his vanity he had many admirable qualities: tact, judgment, and prudence, firmness and decision, indefatigable and well-ordered application, and, above all, a disinterested devotion to the service of his country.

Sydenham also settled the Protestant land dispute over the clergy reserves in Upper Canada (at this time Canada West), which the Family Compact had interpreted to refer only to the Anglican Church. Sydenham convinced the legislators to pass an Act whereby half of the land set aside for Protestant churches would be shared between Anglicans and Presbyterians, and the other half would be shared between the other Protestant denominations.

Sydenham wanted to make Canada more financially independent, so that there would less danger of annexation by the United States. He had been working on this policy throughout the 1830s, when he was President of the Board of Trade in Britain, though he had little time to implement any economic reforms once he had arrived in Canada.

Death

After less than two years as Governor-General, Sydenham died in 1841, at age 42. He had been described as sickly and an autopsy revealed severe gout. Shortly before his death, he had resigned his position and was due to return to England within weeks. However, on 4 September, Sydenham was "riding a spirited horse near Parliament House, but could not, for a long time, get the animal to pass that building. After a severe application of spur and whip, however, the horse proceeded, but immediately after, put his foot upon a large stone... not being able to recover, fell and dragged his rider with him, fracturing the leg, and lacerating it above the knee." This apparently led to a deadly infection. For fifteen days, Sydenham was described as suffering extreme pain, then died the morning of 19 September 1841. As he was unmarried, his peerage became extinct. He was buried at Kingston.

Legacy

Owen Sound

Soon after its founding, the present-day city of Owen Sound, Ontario, was named Sydenham in 1842 in honour of the recently deceased Governor of Canada; in 1856, the community became a town and was renamed Owen Sound after the adjacent body of water. Sydenham is the name of the principal river that runs through Owen Sound. Sydenham was also the name of the former Township of Sydenham, which bordered Owen Sound to the east, and in 2001 amalgamated into the municipality of Meaford, Ontario. Sydenham Community School is in Owen Sound. For more than half a century, Owen Sound's main street was called Poulett Street; in 1909, the community's street names were renumbered on the New York City model, and Poulett Street became 2nd Avenue East.

Kingston

Sydenham Public School in Kingston, Ontario, which has operated as an educational facility since its construction in 1853 as the Kingston County Grammar School, was renamed in the 1890s in memory of Lord Sydenham. It is in downtown Kingston, and is an Ontario-designated heritage building.

Sydenham High School, Ontario, a regional high school, is in the village of Sydenham, Frontenac County, Ontario, northwest of Kingston.

Sydenham Street, in downtown Kingston, runs north-south, and is a two-section street. Its southern section runs from Court Street to Brock Street. Its northern section runs from Princess Street to Raglan Road. The two sections are separated by a block of buildings between Brock and Princess Streets.

Sydenham Road is also in Kingston, running from outer Princess Street northwards to Highway 401 and beyond, to the village of Sydenham.

Sydenham Street in Simcoe, Ontario is named in his honour.

Sydenham Ward, a municipal electoral district in Kingston, is one of twelve such districts in the city, and this designation has been used in Kingston municipal politics since the 1840s, albeit with its boundaries modified several times over the ensuing years.

The Old Sydenham Heritage Conservation District, in the southeastern sector of downtown, was formally designated by Kingston City Council on 24 March 2015.

Memoirs

His memoirs were published by his brother, G.J. Poulett Scrope, in 1844.