Sydenham succeeded
Lord Durham as Governor General of Canada in 1839. He was responsible for implementing the
Union Act in 1840, uniting
Upper Canada and
Lower Canada as the Province of Canada, and moving the seat of government to
Kingston. Upper Canadians were given a choice in the matter of union, which they accepted; Lower Canada had no say, and as a result, many French Canadians were opposed to both the union and Sydenham himself. Later that year, he was raised to the peerage as
Baron Sydenham, of
Sydenham in the County of Kent and of
Toronto in Canada and was appointed knight
grand cross of the
Order of the Bath. Sydenham was just as anti-French as Lord Durham had been, and he encouraged British immigration to make the French Canadian population less significant. French Canadians referred to him as
le poulet, "the chicken". Realising he had almost no support in Lower Canada (at this time Canada East), he reorganised electoral ridings to allow Anglo-Canadians to elect more members (such as by hiving French sections of Montreal out to outlying counties and reducing ability of property owners to cast plural votes). Where that was not feasible, he allowed
Orangeman mobs to beat up French candidates.
Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine was one such candidate who suffered from Sydenham's influence. Montreal and Quebec city elected a clean sweep of English members in the first election in the united province. Lafontaine soon left Canada East to work with
Robert Baldwin in creating a fairer union for both sides. A new constitution uniting the two colonies was carried through the colonial parliaments and ratified by the British House of Commons. It came into force on 10 February 1841. It led ultimately to the great confederation of 1867. Sydenham also settled the Protestant land dispute over the
clergy reserves in Upper Canada (at this time Canada West), which the
Family Compact had interpreted to refer only to the
Anglican Church. Sydenham convinced the legislators to pass an Act whereby half of the land set aside for Protestant churches would be shared between Anglicans and
Presbyterians, and the other half would be shared between the other Protestant denominations. Sydenham worked to make Canada financially viable so that there would be less danger of annexation by the United States. He worked on this policy throughout the 1830s, when he was President of the Board of Trade in
Britain. But he did not implement any economic reforms once he arrived in Canada.
Death After less than two years as Governor General, Sydenham died in 1841, at age 42. He had been described as sickly and an autopsy revealed severe
gout. Shortly before his death, he had resigned his position and was due to return to England within weeks. However, on 4 September, Sydenham was riding a spirited horse near Parliament House, but could not, for a long time, get the animal to pass that building. After a severe application of spur and whip, however, the horse proceeded, but immediately after, put his foot upon a large stone ... not being able to recover, fell and dragged his rider with him, fracturing the leg, and lacerating it above the knee. This apparently led to a deadly infection. For fifteen days, Sydenham was described as suffering extreme pain, then died the morning of 19 September 1841. As he was unmarried, his peerage became extinct.
Sydenham High School, Ontario, a regional high school, is in the village of
Sydenham, Frontenac County, Ontario, northwest of Kingston. Sydenham Street, in downtown Kingston, runs north-south, and is a two-section street. Its southern section runs from West Street to Brock Street. Its northern section runs from Princess Street to Raglan Road. The two sections are separated by a block of buildings between Brock and Princess Streets. Sydenham Road, also in Kingston, runs from outer Princess Street northwards to Highway 401 and beyond, to the village of Sydenham.
Sydenham Ward, a municipal electoral district in Kingston, is one of twelve such districts in the city, and this designation has been used in Kingston municipal politics since the 1840s, albeit with its boundaries modified several times over the ensuing years. The Old Sydenham Heritage Conservation District, in the southeastern sector of Downtown Kingston, was formally designated by the city council on 24 March 2015.
Rest of Ontario Sydenham Street in
Simcoe, Ontario, is named in his honour. Sydenham Street in
London, Ontario, which runs between Wellington and Talbot Streets, north of Oxford Street, is also named after him.
Dixie was once named Sydenham.
Memoirs His memoirs were published by his brother, G. J. Poulett Scrope, in 1844. ==References==