Temperance Verse for New Year's Day

The Montreal Witness, 3 January 1894

THE PLEBISCITE VOTE IN ONTARIO, 1894

It was 1894, ere the New Year's Day was o'er,
     Noble Temperance workers gave a telling vote;
"Prohibition right away," was the watchword of the day,
     For the country's weel they knew it would promote.

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.

While the people's voice is heard be the whole Dominion stirred,
     Deal destruction both to Licence and Saloon;
Full two hundred thousand strong join the great triumphant song,
     Oh, the better time is surely coming soon!

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.

By the tens of thousands dead, by the tears of living shed,
     We adjure you to secure the boon we seek!
For the rulers can't refuse if you all your ballots use.
     They must harken to the people when they speak.

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.

Grateful then to gracious Heaven for the signal victory given
     We will never cease to work and plead for more:
Strong in union, toil and pray for the dawning of the day
     When the traffic shall be swept from every shore.

          Joy! Joy! Clear the way before us,
          High, high wave the banner o'er us.
          From Atlantic's dashing roar to the far Pacific shore
          Sound the joyous Temperance triumph evermore.


Words of joy – Joy! Joy! – from Archibald McKillop, "The Blind Bard of the Megantic", inspired by the successful, though entirely ineffective, Ontario Prohibition Plebiscite of 1 January 1894.

We twenty-first century Canadians know that rulers rarely "harken to the people when they speak."

Archibald McKillop
"The Blind Bard of Megantic"
 1824 - 1905
Author of
Rhymes for the Times
Temperance Odes and Miscellaneous Poems
and
The Flood of Death; or,  The Malt that Lay in the House that Jack Built

Related posts:

A New Year

Immature Verse for the New Year

An Old Poem for the New Year by Arthur Stringer

Poet Names Newspaper Editor as Lucifer's Heir

The New York Times, 28 March 1875

John J. MacDonald's hate for Charles Chiniquy spreads. Here the target is John Dougall, whose paper the bigoted Montreal Witness, published the the former Catholic priest's lectures.

For the Editor of the 'Montreal Witness' Let unscrupulous liars here gather and weep For the child of the devil who here is asleep; And if justice will govern when Lucifer dies, He’ll inherit the title of “father of lies.” But such honor might more than his deeds recompense, For although he was willing he had not the sense That would carry his purpose to such an extent; He could only retail what the rest would invent.

Related posts:

A Mildly Eccentric Man Turns Nasty

A Prudish Poet's Struggles with Stays

Drowning by the Dock of the Bay

Poems of James McIntyre (Ingersoll, ON: Chronicle, 1889)

It seems they were forever fishing bodies out of Toronto Bay in the 19th century. Here's a small sad story from the 29 June 1886 New York Times in which authorities dragging the bay for one man found another.

The next day the paper used the the very same headline in reporting the death of a third man.

James McIntyre's young Montrealer of genteel form and dress may have been Henry Jaques, eldest son of Great Lakes shipping magnate G.E. Jaques, whose body was found floating in the harbour in May of 1873. Though initial reports drew attention to head and facial wounds as evidence of foul play, a coroner's jury found otherwise. According to the 28 May 1873 Montreal Daily Witness, his "features were much swollen and discolored from immersion in water", not as "the result of violence." Blame was instead placed upon the dangerous state of Toronto's Hamilton Wharf, from which, it was presumed, Jaques fell.