Pre-Confederation Governor General Lord Metcalfe, died on this date in 1846 only two-years after his appointed as the Queen’s Representative in the United Province of Canada. He was an accomplished colonial administrator who served previously in India and Jamacia before accepted his Canadian assignment.
Sadly, he arrived here already suffering from cancer and his service was cut short due to his illness. Below you will find a description of Metcalfe’s final months in Canada and death written by Canada’s Lt. Col. J. Pennington Macpherson.
“During the rest of the winter (of 1846) and following summer, although living in darkened rooms, his cheek eaten through and through by the disorder, almost deprived of the power of mastication, and suffering agony from the ravages of the disease and the application of strong remedies used by his medical attendants, Lord Metcalfe refused to apply for his recall; and although the Colonial Secretary was aware of the suffering he was undergoing, he made no attempt to conceal the importance, in a public point of view which he attached to Lord Metcalfe's remaining in Canada, or the extent to which he considered the difficulties of the province would be aggravated by a change in the Executive.
‘ Above all,' wrote Lord Stanley on June 18, 1845, ‘you will not fail to impress on your Council, though such a suggestion would hardly come with propriety from me, the extreme risk which would attend any disruption of the present Conservative party of Canada. Their own steadiness and your firmness and discretion have gone far towards consolidating them as a party, and securing a stable administration of the colony; and it would be most lamentable if at a time when it is in the enjoyment of the highest prosperity, and when there is every appearance of the permanence of that prosperity, when no reasonable cause for dissatisfaction exists, dissensions on minor points between those who are labouring in common for the general good should again endanger the loss of these great advantages, and give an opening for renewed excitement and confusion; and probably for the temporary admission to power of men the most unscrupulous in its exercise, and quite ready to sacrifice all national, and above all, all British interests, to their own personal and selfish objects.’
As autumn deepened into winter it became apparent to all that it was impossible for Lord Metcalfe much longer to fulfill the duties of his office. This fact he was compelled to recognize and to communicate to the home authorities, who at once accepted his resignation with every demonstration of regret, and with a full and hearty recognition of the services he had rendered to the State.
Accordingly, he handed over the Government to Lord Cathcart and set sail for England, where, after nine months of terrible suffering, he died on September 5, 1846.”
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.