John Graves Simcoe (February 25, 1752 – October 26, 1806) was a British army officer and the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada from 1791–1796. Then frontier, this was modern-day southern Ontario and the watersheds of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. He founded York (now Toronto) and was instrumental in introducing institutions such as the courts, trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure, and in abolishing slavery. He ended slavery in Upper Canada long before it was abolished in the British Empire as a whole – by 1810 there were no slaves in Upper Canada, but the Crown did not abolish slavery throughout the Empire until 1834.
Read more about John Graves Simcoe: Early Life, Marriage and Family, Military Career, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Later Career, Legacy
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“Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can.”
—William Gouge, Puritan writer. As quoted in The Rise and Fall of Childhood by C. John Sommerville, ch. 11 (rev. 1990)
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