The father of a large family, one of his sons was Sam Steele, an officer in the early days of the North-West Mounted Police.

[2][3] Like two of his brothers, he joined the Royal Navy as an officer cadet in 1798 and served during the Napoleonic Wars rising to the rank of Lieutenant.

He settled on a large farm, 1,000 acres in size, in Medonte Township, north of Lake Simcoe.

With others, he signed a petition in 1839 advocating the development of a water route connecting the Bay of Quinte to Lake Huron.

In October 1839, Steele chaired a public meeting at Finch's Tavern in Toronto, called to discuss the proposals contained in Lord Durham's Report.

A Tory group, led by the sheriff of the Home District, William Botsford Jarvis, broke up the meeting, and one unarmed Reform supporter was killed.

Steele campaigned for better roads and improved military pensions, an attractive plank for the Simcoe area, where many settlers were veterans.

Steele's opponent was William Benjamin Robinson, who had been the member from Simcoe in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada for the previous decade.

In the first session, held in the fall of 1841, he voted in favour of the union of the two Canadas, and was a consistent supporter of the Governor General, Lord Sydenham, often on the other side of issues from the ultra-Reformers led by Robert Baldwin.

[3][6] Steele had accepted retirement from the Royal Navy in 1838, with the rank of Commander, after forty years on the rolls.

They also had six children, one of whom was Major-General Sir Samuel Steele, one of the first members of the North-West Mounted Police, and later a commander of Lord Strathcona's Horse in the Second Boer War.