A Declaration of Independence Is Issued at Toronto to Imitate the 1776 American Declaration of Independence

He began to reprint Tom Paine's Common Sense, which had sparked the movement for independence in 1776. At the same time he set forth in great detail a scheme for local reform organizations, some features of which had distinct military overtones. One of his subscribers reported finding a note from Mackenzie folded in his paper, asking him to accompany the editor to Lower Canada "to assist the french" and then return and conquer the upper province. At the end of July he met with a group of radicals in Doel's brewery in Toronto to adopt a Declaration closely modelled on the famous document proclaimed at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. It ended by asking the reformers of Upper Canada to make common cause with Papineau and his colleagues, to organize political associations and public meetings, and to select a convention of delegates to meet at Toronto "as a Congress, to seek an effectual remedy for the grievances of the colonists." A Committee of Vigilance was named, with Mackenzie as agent and corresponding secretary.

--Gerald M. Craig, Upper Canada: The Formative Years, 1784-1841, Wynford Project (Don Mills: Oxford University Press Canada, 2013), 244-245.