Freedom of Peaceful Assembly Freedom of Peaceful Assembly Freedom of peaceful assembly and association have long been recognized and enjoyed by the people of Ontario.
Unions are but one group of people who have actively assembled to be heard.
Concerned that their work was being downgraded to the level of unskilled labour, these men formed the York Typographical Society. The Society would later become the Toronto Typographical Union. The union was founded to represent printers and bookbinders. At the first annual meeting of the new Union, William Lyon Mackenzie delivered a long and impassioned speech. In 1837, a group of people led by Mackenzie, a Toronto newspaper editor and radical reformer, led a rebellion demanding responsible government.