The Roy Press is currently owned by The Niagara Parks Commission and has been displayed at several prominent locations, among them, the Provincial Legislature, the Royal Ontario Museum, Upper Canada Village and the Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa.
This press is historically significant by its connection to John Graves Simcoe and his administration in Upper Canada. Before leaving England in 1791, Simcoe recognized the essential need for a printer. To organize a society in the wilderness, to promote settlement, communications and trade in the interests of the King, Simcoe engaged the services of one Louis Roy of Quebec to be the first King's printer for the new province. Roy brought his type and press with him, and on April 18, 1793, Roy issued the first number of the Upper Canada Gazette, at Newark (Niagara-on-the-Lake), the provincial capital.
As settlement grew, the new province had to make its own "rules of the game" for pioneer life and the government had to send out copies of these rules for all the players to see. Being the King's printer, Roy published pamphlets, usually laws or Simcoe's speeches, broadsides (posters), regulations and legal notices, along with whatever local and international news that could be gleaned from his sources.
In October 1798, the capital moved from Newark to York (Toronto) and the press and government printing office was relocated there as well. The early printers changed frequently - Roy himself had returned to Quebec in the late summer of 1794. The government was an exacting task-master and paid poorly, and the drudgery and isolation of pioneer life was not attractive to everyone.
The Roy Press, as it has come to be known, survived the sack of York in 1813 and continued to be used by the King's printers until it was superseded by faster, neater iron model presses. This wooden press (now restored) fell to odd job work. It was acquired by the Toronto Telegram and passed on to the Royal Ontario Museum. The Commission acquired the press during the 1940's and had it on display at Fort George until 1959 when it was placed on loan with Upper Canada Village (St. Lawrence Parks). Most recently, the press was on display at the Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa.
In 1992 the press returned to the Mackenzie House, the site of which the rebel printer William Lyon Mackenzie, issued his first newspaper, the Colonial Advocate in 1824. One might say that Mackenzie used his newspaper not to organize society, but to reorganize it!
The Mackenzie Printery & Newspaper Museum is pleased to have the Roy Press form the centrepiece for its Museum.
