Of all the members of the City Council for 1850, and up to 1852, John G. Bowes was the most active and most popular. In educational affairs, in financial arrangements, and indeed, in all questions affecting the city's interests, he was by far the ablest man who had ever filled the civic chair. His acquirements as an arithmetician were extraordinary; and as a speaker he possessed remarkable powers. I took pleasure in seconding his declared views on nearly all public questions; and in return, he showed me a degree of friendship which I could not but highly appreciate. By his persuasion, and rather against my own wish, I accepted, in 1852, the secretaryship of the Toronto and Guelph Railway Company, which I held until it was absorbed by the Grand Trunk Company in 1853.[23]

In the same year, rumours began to be rife in the city, that Mr. Bowes, in conjunction with the Hon. Francis Hincks, then premier, had made $10,000 profits out of the sale of city debentures issued to the Northern Railway Company. Had the Mayor admitted the facts at once, stating his belief that he was right in so doing, it is probable that his friends would have been spared the pain, and himself the loss and disgrace which ensued. But he denied in the most solemn manner, in full Council, that he had any interest whatever in the sale of those debentures, and his word was accepted by all his friends there. When, in 1854, he was compelled to admit in the Court of Chancery, that he had not only sold the debentures for his own profit to the extent of $4,800, but that the Hon. Francis Hincks was a partner in the speculation, and had profited to the same amount, the Council and citizens were alike astounded. Not so much at the transaction itself, for it must be remembered that more than one judge in chancery held the dealing in city debentures to be perfectly legal both on the part of Mr. Bowes and Sir Francis Hincks, but at the palpable deception which had been perpetrated on the Finance Committee, and through them on the Council.

While the sale of the $50,000 Northern Railway debentures was under consideration, Mr. Bowes as Mayor had been commissioned to get a bill passed at Quebec to legalize such sale. On his return it was found that new clauses had been introduced into the bill, and particularly one requiring the debentures to be made payable in England, to which Alderman Joshua G. Beard and myself took objection as unnecessarily tying the hands of the Council. Mr. Bowes said, "Mr. Hincks would have it so." Had the committee supposed that in insisting upon those clauses Mr. Hincks was using his official powers for his own private profit, they could never have consented to the change in the bill, but would have insisted upon the right of the Council to make their own debentures payable wheresoever the city's interests would be best subserved.[24]

It is matter of history, that the suit in Chancery resulted in a judgment against Mr. Bowes for the whole amount of his profits, and that in addition to that loss he had to pay a heavy sum in costs, not only of the suit, but of appeals both here and in England. The consequence to myself was a great deal of pain, and the severance of a friendship that I had valued greatly. In October, 1853, a very strong resolution denouncing his conduct was moved by Alderman G. T. Denison, to which I moved an amendment declaring him to have been guilty of "a want of candour," which was carried, and which was the utmost censure that the majority of the Council would consent to pass. For this I was subjected to much animadversion in the public press. Yet from the termination of the trial to the day of his death, I never afterwards met Mr. Bowes on terms of amity. At an interview with him, at the request and in presence of my partner, Col. O. R. Gowan, I told the Mayor that I considered him morally responsible for all the ill-feeling that had caused the cancellation of the first Esplanade contract, and for the loss to the city which followed. I told him that it had become impossible for any man to trust his word. And afterwards when he became a candidate for a seat in parliament, I opposed his election in the columns of the Colonist, which I had then recently purchased; for which he denounced me personally, at his election meetings, as a man capable of assassination.

Notwithstanding, I believe John G. Bowes to have been punished more severely than justice required; that he acted in ignorance of the law; and that his great services to the city more than outweighed any injury sustained. His subsequent election to Parliament, while it may have soothed his pride, can hardly have repaid him for the forfeiture of the respect of a very large number of his fellow-citizens.

[Footnote 23: I was offered by Sir Cusack Roney, chief secretary of the G. T. R. Co., a position worth $2,000 a year in their Montreal office, but declined to break up my connections in Toronto. On my resigning the secretaryship, the Board honoured me with a resolution of thanks, and a gratuity of a year's salary.]

[Footnote 24: The judgment given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council expressly stated that "the evidence of Ald. Thompson and Councilman Tully was conclusive as to the effect of their having been kept in ignorance of the corrupt bargain respecting the sale of the city debentures issued for the construction of the Northern Railway; and that they would not have voted for the proposed bill for the consolidation of the city debt, if they had been aware of the transaction."]