Robert F. Gourlay 1778-1863

Photo by Alan L Brown - August 19, 2004

Plaque Location

The County of Oxford
The Township of South West Oxford
In Mount Elgin, on the SW corner of Highway 19 and County Road 18

Plaque Text

Gourlay was a radical Scot who crusaded for social reform in Britain in the early nineteenth century. His activities in Upper Canada sent shock waves through the province. He arrived in 1817 to examine property he owned just east of here and became interested in promoting settlement. To encourage immigration, Gourlay began compiling his "Statistical Account of Upper Canada" (1822). He soon decided that government favouritism and mismanagement were stifling growth. Gourlay challenged the authorities, organizing protest meetings and publishing colourful, heated attacks on office holders. Cleared of charges of seditious libel in Kingston and Brockville, he was charged under the Seditious Alien Act late in 1818 in Niagara, jailed for eight months, then banished.