Mackenzie, William Lyon (1795–1861)

Canadian politician, born in Dundee, Scotland. He emigrated to Canada 1820, and led the rebellion of 1837–38, an unsuccessful attempt to limit British rule and establish more democratic institutions in Canada. After its failure he lived in the USA until 1849, and in 1851–58 sat in the Canadian legislature as a Radical. He was grandfather of W L Mackenzie King, the Liberal prime minister.

Mackenzie settled in Queenstown, where he became a journalist, and edited a newspaper entitled the Colonial Advocate, in which he took an extreme stand against the government and violently attacked the ‘Family Compact’, the system by which, in each colony, power lay in the hands of a small minority of wealthy and influential people. He was elected to the legislature, but was expelled for alleged libel. In 1834 he became first mayor of Toronto.