John Strachan

Born 12 April 1778, Strachan was the youngest of six children born to the overseer of a granite quarry in Aberdeen, Scotland. He graduated from King's College, Aberdeen, in 1797. After his father died in an accident in 1794, Strachan tutored students and taught school to finance his own education.[2]

He emigrated to Kingston, Upper Canada, to tutor the children of Richard Cartwright. He applied to the pulpit of a Presbyterian chrurch in Montreal but did not receive the position. He then became an Anglican minister and became a minister for a church in Cornwall, Ontario.[4]

Strachan taught at a grammar school which was attended by the Upper Canadian elite.[5] He married Ann McGill née Wood, widow of Andrew McGill, in 1807.[6] Together they had nine children, some of whom died young.[2]

After the war, he became a pillar of the Family Compact, the conservative elite that controlled the colony. He was a member of the Executive Council of Upper Canada from 1815 to 1836 as well as the Legislative Council from 1820 to 1841. He was an influential advisor to the Lieutenant-Governors of Upper Canada and the other members of the Councils and Assemblies, many of whom were his former students. The "Family Compact" were the elite who shared his fierce loyalty to the British monarchy, his strict and exclusive Toryism and the established church (Anglicanism), and his contempt for slavery, Presbyterians, Methodists, American republicanism, and reformism. Strachan was a leader of anti-American elements, which he saw as a republican and democratic threat that promised chaos and an end to a well-ordered society.[13] In 1822 he was appointed an honourary member of the Bank of Upper Canada.[14]

Strachan invented the "militia myth" to the effect that the local militia had done more to defend Canada than the British Army, which has been rejected by Canadian historians.[15]

Strachan supported a strict interpretation of the Constitutional Act of 1791, claiming that clergy reserves were to be given to the Church of England alone, rather than to Protestants in general. In 1826, his interpretation was opposed by Egerton Ryerson, who advocated the separation of church and state and argued that the reserves should be sold for the benefit of education in the province. Although Strachan long controlled the reserves through the Clergy Corporation, he was ultimately forced to oversee the selling off of most of the land in 1854.[16]

The bust of Strachan in the Trinity quad, Trinity College, Toronto

Much of Strachan's life and work was focused on education. He wanted Upper Canada to be under Church of England control to avoid American influence. He tried to set up annual reviews for grammar schools to make sure they were following Church of England doctrines and tried to introduce Andrew Bell's education system from Britain, but those acts were vetoed by the Legislative Assembly. In 1827 Strachan chartered King's College, an Anglican university, although it was not actually created until 1843.

In 1839, he was consecrated the first Anglican bishop of Toronto alongside Aubrey Spencer, the first Bishop of Newfoundland, at Lambeth Palace August 4. He founded Trinity College in 1851 after King's College was secularized as the University of Toronto.

In 1835, he was forced to resign from the Executive Council, and he resigned from politics in 1841 after the Act of Union. He continued to influence his former students although the Family Compact declined in the new Province of Canada. Strachan helped organize the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in 1867 but died that year before it was held. Strachan was buried in a vault in the chancel of St. James' Cathedral. He was succeeded by Alexander Neil Bethune.

Strachan was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1846.[17]

Strachan was concerned with the Natives and called on people to embrace the "sons of nature" as brothers. He claimed that the United States desired Upper Canada primarily to exterminate the indigenous tribes and free up the West for American expansion. Strachan defended the autonomy of the Natives, the superiority of British governance, and the centrality of Upper Canada in the theatre of war against the US. He rejected the prevalent assumption at the time that Natives were simply pawns in the contest and gave an original and influential explanation of why Upper Canada was vital to both Native and Imperial concerns.[18]

Strachan was intensely devoted to the promotion of the Anglican position in Canada. He was born a Presbyterian in Scotland, but he never fully accepted it and first received communion at an Anglican church in Kingston. He was strongly influenced by the high-church bishop of New York, John H. Hobart. Strachan preached that the Anglican Church was a branch of the universal church and that it was independent of both pope and king.

Strachan defended the Church of England from opponents who wanted to reduce its influence in Upper Canada. He published a sermon that said a Christian nation needs a religious establishment, referring to the Anglican church as the establishment.[19] He rejected the notion that clergy reserves were intended for all Protestant denominations and appealed to the Colonial Office to maintain that Anglican Church's monopoly on these plots of land.[20]

Like most Protestants of the era, he denounced the Roman Catholic Church for corruption. He rejected the revivalism of the Methodists as an American heresy and stressed the ancient practices and historic liturgy of his church. While a high churchman, Strachan's view alienated many of his clergy and laity who were drawn from the ranks of Irish Protestant immigrants of more low-church persuasion.[21]

Strachan wanted more funds disseminated to build church infrastructure in rural Upper Canada.[20] While fundraising in England his trustworthiness was challenged when he created an Ecclesiastical Chart of the religious statistics of Upper Canada that contained numerous errors.[22] He actively promoted missionary work, using the Diocesan Theological Institute at Cobourg to train clergy to handle frontier conditions. Much of his effort after 1840 was undermined by theological disputes in the church, such as between high-church tractarians and low-church evangelicals. He also faced external attacks from political reformers and rival denominations.[23]