The York Riots of March 23,1832

The rapid rise and increasing militancy of the Reform party in Upper Canada in the late 1820s inevitably resulted in the rallying of those conservative forces who believed their own way of life to be threatened, or felt that the maintenance of the British connection was endangered.... After the Reformers' brief period of power in the House of Assembly from 1828 to 1830, this opposition began to coalesce more rapidly, goaded on by William Lyon Mackenzie's constant barrage of resolutions. By 1832 the two factions were on the verge of a head-on collision aross the province. York — or Toronto, as it was soon to be renamed—was the scene of a major confrontation on Friday, March 23, which took place at a public meeting called by Mackenzie. There both groups fought for ascendency and the town was shaken by a series of riots, which, for the time being at least, left the Tories politically in control.

--Frederick H. Armstrong, A City in the Making: Progress, People and Perils in Victorian Toronto (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1988), 79.