Robert Gourlay was born in 1778 in Fyfeshire, Scotland. He was a Scotsman of good birth, and good education graduating from the University of St. Andrews. A landowner whose life should have followed a definite pattern of landowners of the day, but it didn’t. He was a pioneer visionary, a man far beyond his time. During his early years incScotland, he wanted open agricultural meetings with landowners and tenants. At that time business was not run that way between landowners and tenants. Consequently, he was thrown out for suggesting such a thing. He then moved to England to manage property for the Duke of Somerset. He wanted to start new kinds of agriculture but unfortunately in 1808, England was not ready.
Robert immigrated to Upper Canada where his wife inherited from her uncle had 800 acres, in Dereham Township, concession 4 and 5 lots 1, 3,4,5,7 in Mount Elgin and Norwich, Oxford County. Upon arriving in Canada Robert walked from Quebec, to Cornwall, to Upper New York, to Niagara then Burlington, thence inherited from her uncle to see his property. It was 1817 and he was upset that there were almost no roads to Oxford County. Robert’s vision for Upper Canada was to have a seaway along the St. Lawrence and he suggested the possibility of a cross-Canada railway and subways in Boston. He truly was a man before his time.
Roberts’s life was not easy, neither was his political career. In no time he ran up against the governing clique of Upper Canada 1817 the Family Compact. A network of men who dominated the legislative centers of power in upper Canada. If Gourlay had proceeded more diplomatically with his rules for settlers, something might have been accomplished however, Gourlay was a visionary and not a politician and eventually he was arrested for sedition on orders of the Family Compact. He was taken to prison in Niagara from January to August of 1818. He came out a broken man. There is more to discover about Robert Gourlay and his never give up life.