Date Published:
March 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Francis Collins

Collins, Francis (1801-1834), journalist, was born in Ireland in 1801, and came to Canada about 1820. He obtained employment as a printer on the staff of the Upper Canada Gazette in York (Toronto), and for a time reported the debates of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada. In 1825 he established the Canadian Freeman, a paper violently opposed to the "Family Compact"; and in 1826 he published a very early Upper Canadian political pamphlet, An abridged view of the alien question unmasked (York, U.C.). He ran foul of the government, and in 1828 he was found guilty of libel and subjected to fine and imprisonment. He died of cholera in Toronto in 1834. One of his daughters, Mother St. Maurice, of the Congregation of Notre Dame, died in Montreal in 1911.

Source : W. Stewart WALLACE, ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. II, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 411p., p. 102.