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History of the County of Perth, 1825-1902
William Johnston, 1903
pp.546-7
John McINTYRE was born at Lismore, Argyleshire, in 1788. At an early age he entered the navy as midshipman, taking part in several engagements during that distracting period extending over the first fifteen years of last century. On his retirement at the close of the Peninsular was he became a resident of Paisley, then the centre of Radicalism in Scotland. The impetus given to democratic principles by events transpiring and arising out of the French revolution had aroused the Scotch. The terrible depression succeeding the Napoleonic wards had stirred the inhabitants of manufacturing districts to a verge of action against the corn laws and parliamentary representation. Radicalism, with its sister principle Chartism, was rampant, and Mr McIntyre in such an elemental maelstrom was soon drawn in to the vortex. Paisley was for a time almost under martial law, and certain speeches he had delivered in the cause of freedom rendered it necessary for his safety that he leave his native land forever, and seek in Canadian woods that liberty of thought and action which was denied him in his own native Scotland.
In 1820 he arrived in Dalhousie, County of Lanark and took up the burden of pioneer life. He was a fine specimen of the intelligent backwoodsman - an ideal white chief of the forest; energetic, honest, with strong reflective powers, and of more than ordinary ability. As might be expected, he soon became prominent in the new settlement; was a magistrate, and on one occasion a candidate for parliamentary honours.
Meg Fuller Perth County Coordinator
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