William Lyon Mackenzie was born near Dundee, Scotland, on March 12, 1795. Both grandfathers had been Jacobites, followers of Bonny Prince Charlie, who fought for the English throne in 1745. William's father died when he was only three weeks old and so he and his mother lived without much money for the early part of his life. He, however, managed to get a good education, and he even put aside enough money to open a small store in nearby Alyth. The store included a circulating library, indicating his life-long interest in reading and writing. This first venture, however, was not successful.

In 1820 he left Scotland for Quebec and then York (Toronto), where he started a business with John Lesslie. After a disagreement with Lesslie, Mackenzie moved to Dundas, where in 1822, he married Isabel Baxter. His house in Dundas is still there.

Mackenzie house in Dundas

Next he moved to Queenston, where he started the Colonial Advocate in May 1824. The Mackenzie house in Queenston is a reconstruction of the original house except for the trees in front, which were planted by Mackenzie.

Mackenzie Printery in Queenston

In the Advocate, Mackenzie wrote about the abuses of the system of government. Upper Canada at that time was governed by a lieutenant-governor with supreme power. He was officially advised by an appointed Executive Council and an elected Legislative Assembly. In fact, the Lieutenant-Governor could and did ignore the Legislative Assembly as he felt necessary. The Executive Council was more effective but was drawn from the upper ranks of society. This "upper crust" regarded any so-called reforms as disloyal and to be resisted at all costs. Mackenzie's newspaper then and later was not characterized by restraint; he did not hesitate to attack the system or the people who were part of the system.

In November, 1825, he moved the Colonial Advocate to Toronto. He attempted to get a copy of the newspaper buried in the first Brock Monument, but the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, had part of the monument torn down to retrieve the newspaper. The Family Compact, as the "upper crust" were known, made a mistake when they attacked Mackenzie's printing press. Mackenzie had decided to close it down just before it was attacked. Instead, Mackenzie sued for damages and received enough money to keep the newspaper running.

Next, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly. There he made an enemy of Allan Napier MacNab, an up-and-comer from Hamilton. Several times Mackenzie was expelled from the Assembly, mostly due to the urging of MacNab, but each time he was voted back in again. In 1832, he went to England and received a hearing by the Colonial Office. In 1834, he became Toronto's first mayor. In 1835, the Reformers, including Mackenzie, won control over the Assembly and promptly sent a report of grievances to Britain. The Colonial Office decided to replace the lieutenant-governor with someone they hoped would be more tactful. What a mistake they made! They appointed just about the worst person for the job, a stubborn, opinionated, malicious nincompoop named Sir Francis Bond Head.

Head appointed three reformers, Robert Baldwin, Dr. John Rolph, and John Dunn to the Executive Council, then ignored their advice, so they and the rest of the Executive Council resigned. The Assembly then withheld supplies, and so Head prorogued Parliament. However, he was smart enough to use the loyalty weapon; he accused anyone who opposed him as being disloyal to the mother country. Now reformers were in a fix: if they criticized him, they were disloyal; if they didn't criticism him, they were virtually on his side. This split the reformers. Many important people who wanted some reform did not want to appear to be disloyal to the Crown, and so they felt unable to support Mackenzie. This effectively caused the failure of the rebellion in Upper Canada in 1837.

The rebellion itself was a shambles. One swift blow by militia led by Col. James FitzGibbon was enough to shatter the mish-mash of non-soldiers assembled by Mackenzie to overthrow the government. Even so, Head nearly managed to make the rebellion a success. At first, when told by FitzGibbon of the uprising, he refused to acknowledge it. Only FitzGibbon's prompt action in posting Sheriff Jarvis and his men near College and Yonge Streets saved Toronto from a band of rebels that was advancing down Yonge Street. The rebels, seeing Jarvis and his men, fired at them. The front row of rebels, having fired, lay down for the second row to fire over them. But the rebels at the rear, seeing the front row fall down, thought they had been shot and immediately panicked and ran away.

Finally, Head came to realize there was a problem. He organized an army of militia, but then, instead of giving command to his Adjutant-General of Militia, FitzGibbon, a professional soldier, hero of the War of 1812, and senior commander, he gave command to Mackenzie's archrival MacNab. MacNab, to his credit, refused the command, which then went to FitzGibbon. Despite being miffed, FitzGibbon then organized the army and led it up Yonge Street to Montgomery's Tavern, where resistance melted away.

Mackenzie escaped by back roads, across the Humber River on a small footbridge, to Streetsville. Pursued by soldiers, he managed to reach Wellington Square, now Burlington. From there he rode by horse to Ancaster, where he changed horses and carried on. At one point he was arrested as a horse thief. When taken to the local magistrate, he found that the magistrate was in favour of reform, so he decided to reveal who he was. The magistrate then decided to let him go. Still pursued, he managed to reach Smithville. There he met Samuel Chandler, who guided him across the Welland Canal and the Chippawa Creek to Captain Samuel McAfee's house on the Niagara River. The next morning, Mackenzie had a narrow escape when, just before he was to sit down for breakfast, he looked out the window and saw a posse of militia approaching. McAfee, Chandler, and Mackenzie darted out of the house, pulled a rowboat across the road to the river, and rowed off as fast as they could. Mackenzie always felt that someone in the militia saw them but decided to keep silent.

Mackenzie finally made his way to the US. There he found enough support that he could try again, this time by setting up a base on Navy Island. A steamboat, the Caroline, was engaged to supply Mackenzie's troops on the island. Colonel MacNab was not amused by this. By now in charge of all forces in Upper Canada, he decided that the Caroline had to go. He ordered Captain Drew to take a raiding party to get rid of the steamboat. This they did by putting the Caroline's crew ashore, towing her out into the river, then setting fire to her. The Caroline did not go over the Falls as shown in some illustrations; she burned and broke up in the river, and only small parts of her eventually went over the Falls.

Mackenzie's fortunes did not get better after that. He was imprisoned in the US for 18 months for violating the neutrality laws and the conditions in the prison destroyed his health. After his release, he worked with little success as a journalist in the US until 1849, when a general amnesty allowed him to return to Canada. From 1851 to 1858, he was a member of the Legislative Assembly for United Canada, defeating George Brown, the founder of the Globe newspaper, in the process. But he was never the same force. Plagued with health and debt problems, he died on August 28, 1861.