[riddell] upper CANADA A CENTURY AGO 3 



St. Clair and was succeeded by Anthony Barclay of Nova Scotia. 

 The American Commissioner was General Peter Buel Porter of 

 Niagara, who had made a good lecord as a soldier in the war of 1812-14 

 and was later to be Secretary for War in Adams' Cabinet. They 

 made an award at Utica, June 18, 1822, which was carried into effect. 

 The Commissioners had not agreed; but the British Govern- 

 ment gave Barclay specific instructions to give up to the United 

 States Sugar, Fox and Stony Islands in the Detroit River as the 

 price of an immediate amicable determination of the boundary under 

 the Treaty of Ghent — -the United States giving up all claim to Bois 

 Blanc. ^ 



The Utica Award settled all difficulty as to the United States 

 boundary to the Neebish Channel; and the Convention of October 20, 

 1818, fixed a line from the most northwestern point of the Lake of the 

 Woods to the 49th Parallel, N.L. The Ashburton Treaty of 1842 

 fixed the line from the Neebish Channel to the most northwestern 

 point of the Lake of the Woods. 



*See letter Anthony Barclay to Sir Peregrine Maitland, Lieutenant-Governor 

 of Upper Canada, dated from Utica, June 21, 1822, Can. Arch. Sundries, U.C., 1822. 



The Utica Award, "Treaties and Conventions, etc.," pp. 407-409. 



It is foreign to my subject to more than refer to the dismay and resentment of 

 many in the Province at the Award to the United States of Barnhart's Island, 

 near Cornwall, now part of Massena Township in St. Lawrence County, New York. 

 The Legislature of Upper Canada made a strong representation to the Crown 

 expressing inability to conceive on what grounds a boundary was assented to which 

 gave to the United States "the only deep and safe channel" and asserting that it 

 was "wholly impracticable for rafts of timber, staves and other lumber, which are 

 among the principal exports of Upper Canada, to descend to the only market . . . 

 open to them by the shallow, dangerous and intricate channel on the north side of 

 Barnhart's Island." 



The matter came up very frequently in the House during 1823 and 1824 — see 

 11, Ont. Arch. Rep. (1914), pp. 269, 272, 274, 275, 276, 280, 458, 472 (where Barn- 

 hart's Island is first specifically mentioned, November 27, 1823), 473, 474, 476, 

 480 (an answer by the Lieutenant-Governor that that part of the boundary had 

 undergone a careful survey and examination by the Commissioner of the Navy, 

 who had made a Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, December 1, 

 1823), 538, 614, 615 (Resolutions of Assembly, January 6, 1824), 623, 624, 666, 667 

 (Address to the Lieutenant-Governor, January 16, 1824), 674, 676 (Address to the 

 King, January 17, 1824), 683. 



In the Legislative Council, 12 Ont. Arch. Rep. (1915), pp. 240, 241, 245, 247, 

 262, 265, 266, 271, 278, 279, 280. (The indexing to these volumes is very 

 unreliable, being the only serious defect in this otherwise admirable series.) 



The Ashburton Treaty of 1842 by Article VII made the channels on both 

 sides of Barnhart and Long Sault Islands open to ships, etc., of both parties. 

 "Treaties and Conventions, U.S., etc.," pp. 432 sqq. 



