Before he made his mark on Canadian history by founding Elora, William Gilkison led an eventful life.
Born in Scotland in 1777, Gilkison had a liberal education but went to sea at a young age. He was a sailor on a merchant vessel that was captured by the French. He was imprisoned for almost a year before escaping.
In 1796 Gilkison emigrated to North America. He went to work for John Jacob Astor, the business tycoon who would become America’s first multi-millionaire. Through his contact with Astor, Gilkison became captain of a schooner transporting furs and trade goods for the North West Company, the Montreal-based rival of the Hudson’s Bay Company. His vessel plied the waters of Lake Erie between Fort Erie and Detroit.
In 1803 Gilkison made a politically and financially advantageous marriage when he wedded Isabella Grant. She was a daughter of commodore Alexander Grant, a Loyalist who had served in the Revolutionary War, made a fortune in shipbuilding, was a justice of the peace and prominent politician, and was soon to become the chief administrator of Upper Canada. Gilkison became involved in the management of Grant’s estate. He lived with his wife and children in Elizabethtown and then Prescott.
Relations between the United States and Great Britain became strained. The newly appointed civil and military administrator, Gen. Isaac Brock (1769 – 1812), anticipated war and began to strengthen Upper Canada’s defences. Gilkison served as Brock’s assistant quartermaster-general. When Brock asked Gilkinson if he would take a naval command, he didn’t hesitate to accept. In 1813, he went on an information gathering mission to Ogdensburg, New York. In November of that year, he participated in the Battle of Crysler’s Farm, where an Anglo-Canadian force defeated a much larger invading American army. Gilkison was the man who carried the flag of truce for the party that went out to speak to the leaders of the vanquished Americans.
After the war ended in 1815, Gilkison returned to Scotland where he believed his sons would get a better education than was available in Upper Canada. Isabella died in 1826 and several of Gilkison’s older sons went back to Upper Canada. He took a trip to Canada and the United States himself in 1830, and decided that he liked the way things were developing in “the colonies.” He went back to Scotland and began to make plans to emigrate to Canada a second time. He was financially secure through his own enterprises and he had inherited a considerable sum of money from his wife’s estate. That included parcels of land in Upper Canada. Gilkison was in a good position to establish himself as a developer.
In 1832, Gilkison returned to Upper Canada with his cousin John Galt, the man who had founded Guelph in 1827. After visiting his sons in Queenston, he went to Brantford where his brother-in-law resided. Gilkison purchased a farm there and called it Oak Bank after his old home in Glasgow. Then he began looking for potentially profitable real estate investments. He also petitioned the colonial government to grant him land as compensation for losses he’d had during the War of 1812.
Gilkison was a complex individual. He believed the settlements he’d seen in New York state to be superior to those in Upper Canada, but he chose to settle in British territory. He was not at all religious, but was nonetheless a close friend of Bishop Alexander Macdonnell, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Upper Canada. He detested the elitist self-righteousness of the staunchly conservative Family Compact who dominated political power in Upper Canada. But he liked the comfortable life and social standing of a well-off country squire, and he had no problem collaborating with high society on matters of business.
Gilkison was initially interested in property in Guelph. His son David had built a sawmill and store there, but those ventures had been short-lived. Gilkison considered rebuilding David’s failed establishments, but then became more interested in properties along the Grand River. After inspecting several sites, he acted on a friend’s suggestion and looked at land in Nichol Township – an area that was a township on the map only, because few people lived there.
Settlement there had been relatively slow. Settlers were attracted to more easily accessible farmland closer to towns like York (Toronto) and Queenston. In 1817 there had been an attempt to establish a grist mill at a 40-foot (12.192 m) waterfall, but with so few farmers to use it, the venture had been abandoned. It would not be viable until land in other areas was taken up, and homesteaders began to look deeper into the wilderness.
By the time Gilkison arrived with money to invest, Nichol Township was ready for development. The soil was fertile, and that waterfall looked like a promising place not only for a mill, but for a town. There was already a road connecting it to Guelph. It wasn’t a very good one, but it was passable for most of the year and it could be improved. Gilkison purchased the entire western half of Nichol Township – 13,816 acres (5,591 hectares) – for $1.50 an acre. He sold all of his other holdings so he could focus his efforts on his new property.
Gilkison had the land surveyed. On John Galt’s advice, he began planning a town that would be a central part of his settlement. Gilkison didn’t want to follow the British tradition of naming places after government officials or royalty. He would name his town Elora, after the ship Ellora, of which his brother John had been captain while engaged in trade with India. The ship had been named after ancient ruins near Bombay.
Gilkison didn’t intend to live in Elora, preferring his farm at Brantford. As fate would have it, that was not for very long. On April 23, 1833, William Gilkison died suddenly from a paralytic stroke at the age of 56. Not long before his death, he had written to his son Jasper, who managed the new town’s business, “You shall go to Elora and grow up with a fine and beautiful country and be an ornament and an example for the settlers to follow.”
