The Great Deception, Chapter 1: The Conflict that Defines Canada – Riel vs Scott
“God cannot alter the past, though historians can. it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.” – Samuel Butler
Me, Debunk a Canadian Myth?
“God cannot alter the past, though historians can. It is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.”
– Samuel Butler
Introduction: Historic Justice
One of the supposed paradoxes of Canadian politics is how prairie provinces can flip back and forth between parties that are supposed to be political opposites on the right and left – “Progressive Conservatives” - who are supposed to be fiscal conservatives - and the supposedly socialist, labour-affiliated NDP. The surprising answer is that Canada’s modern parties of the left and right came to power sharing extreme ideologies with radical religious movements that spawned them in Canada’s West a century ago. Then, together, they whitewashed their own histories.
Due to a few chance developments, during the pandemic, I was spurred into a doing a deep dive into Canada’s history, especially during political upheavals and changes in the 1920s and 1930s. One was simply a social media post to an article, pointing out that in 1929, the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan helped bring down the provincial government. I discovered a deeper political history of Canada that has not just been forgotten, but buried. It includes political parties collaborating with the Ku Klux Klan, eugenics being adopted and preached by churches and governments alike, and of national leaders doing everything they can to erase this history, while the same broken ideas continue to inform our politics.
For me, the question was personal as well as political. It is a matter of modern-day justice, as well as historical justice – because people are still being hurt today.
History matters, and so does justice. Either we’re going to try to be honest and fair and evenhanded in talking about history – including our political biases - or we’re not. If we can’t accept the documented facts around what happened 80 or 90 years ago – of deeds of people who are now dead - what hope do we have of achieving justice for the living in the present day?
Lord Acton famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely” and the quotation bears repeating, with its full context, because it certainly applies in this situation.
When Acton wrote “Power corrupts, absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely” to Bishop Mandell Creighton, he was asking Mandell not to whitewash history by absolving historical figures of their wrongdoing.
The sentence that follows “power corrupts” is usually forgotten – but critical to the quotation in context:
“Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.”
Acton is arguing against meting out punishment for the powerless while sparing the powerful – it really is no justice at all when only people who are easy to punish face consequences, and those who are tough to take on get a pass.
“I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.
There is no worse heresy, than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.
You would hang a man of no position, like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science.”
Ravaillac was an ordinary man who assassinated Henry IV of France. He was not just hanged – he was extensively tortured prior to being drawn and quartered, which quite literally meant he was pulled apart into “quarters” with a horse on each limb. Why, Acton asks, were Kings and Queens free to murder the same people – or to wipe out entire communities? That we overlook greater crimes when attached to greater names?
Acton’s call is one that is fundamental to justice, both in the present and in the past. The problem of impunity for the powerful and punishment for the rest is not new – but it is a violation of the fundamental principles of justice that no one should be above the law, that justice must apply equally to all. The fact that the world is an unjust place is not a reason to accept injustice.
It must also be said and continually repeated that justice is not just about punishment – it is also about forgiveness, mercy and amends.
The corruption of justice is that we do forgive some, and punish others, in ways that are totally unjust. We forgive powerful people and punish the weak when we need to be doing the opposite.
These are principles that the extremes of right and left have always rejected.
Extreme inequality leads to extreme politics, extreme injustice and extreme corruption, because as totalitarians, they cannot tolerate the division of powers – or a legal system that will keep them in check.
If you’ve got no trust, you can’t get justice. That’s why the truth and accuracy matters, too. For justice to be done, people need to trust their institutions: police, courts, politicians, government. When that falls apart, there is justice for no one.
It doesn’t matter whether people are conservative or liberal, left or right, if there is no trust in authority. For justice to be done – and for government to be effective, there has to be a certain level of credibility and trust in government.
We all need independent and responsible institutions who can maintain law and order in ways that people can see that justice has been done.
Injustice and corruption can only be reined in peacefully, politically, while respecting fundamental human rights. For justice to be done, it does require a “revolution” – in thinking and a revolution in political courage – not a violent overthrow, which will only perpetuate a cycle of recriminations and revenge.
If you can’t acknowledge the truth, justice can’t be done. So let us start with unearthing some buried truths.
1. The Conflict that Defines Canada: Riel vs Scott
The conflict that sparked the founding of Manitoba was a conflict about the kind of country Canada would be. In 1867, Canada was founded with “two founding peoples” – English Ontario and French Quebec, in an uneasy marriage, because of a continual expectation of British protestant supremacy, and Indigenous people being left out.
When Canada sought to expand outward to the West, there were already French Catholics, Métis and First Nations living there, as well as Scots protestants. The expectation in Ontario, especially among protestant Orangemen, was that the West would essentially be a colony of Ontario – British, Protestant, and English Speaking
Louis Riel has been called a rebel and painted as a violent revolutionary, which reflects the bigotries and entitlement of the day.
What happened in Manitoba in 1869-70 was not a Rebellion. It was not an uprising. It was an assertion of rights by people who were actually in favour of joining Canada but wanted to make sure they did so on their own terms, and that they weren’t simply rolled over.
It wasn’t Canada that was talking about democracy, voting, representation, and rights. It was Riel and the provisional government. It wasn’t Riel who had no authority or legitimacy in Manitoba – it was the Canadian Government. Riel and the Métis didn’t attempt a violent overthrow of the government – that was Thomas Scott.
Riel and the Provisional Government didn’t submit Thomas Scott to a political show trial resulting in his execution. That is what Sir John A MacDonald and the Canadian Government did to Louis Riel.
Riel believed in justice and was a devout Catholic. A rule follower, not a rebel – because Riel and Métis were looking to ensure there would be fair rules to govern them. He thought that the institutions of government and justice in Canada would work the way we say they will. They did not, and they do not.
When Riel sought to negotiate Manitoba’s joining Canada, it was also a debate about the kind of Canada we would have. The result of the conflict showed us exactly what kind of country Canada really was. A country that even fooled itself.
To this day, Louis Riel remains a pivotal and controversial figure in Canadian history. Born at Red River, he had trained to be a priest in Montreal. In 1869, he was the leader of a group of Métis – who were living at the Red River Colony who objected to the fact that the land they lived on was being sold out from under them without asking – from the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company to the Government of Canada.
200 years earlier, in 1670, the British Crown had granted a charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) – the North American equivalent of the East India Company, guaranteeing exclusive trading rights over the land that made up the Hudson Bay watershed, which makes up a huge part of modern-day Canada. It covers 3.2 million kilometers and includes all of Manitoba, and large parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, and the northern territories. The grant was a trading monopoly – not a contract for possession.
The history of the HBC is that two French explorers living in New France, Radisson and Groseillers, had heard there was a source of furs and trade deep within the continent. They had been told by First Nations that there was another way of reaching there without travelling by rivers, lakes, and streams across the Great Lakes. Instead, it was possible to sail in through the North – through what is now Hudson’s Bay.
The Governor of New France didn’t support their ambitions, and jailed them for trading furs without a license. They travelled to England instead where they secured an audience with King Charles II. The entire royal court had left London, which was a city ravaged by plague and by fire, and agreed to fund an expedition. Though one of the ships foundered off the coast of Ireland on the expedition out, the Nonsuch made it, overwintered, and once they successfully returned, the HBC Charter was signed.
200 years later, in 1870, the Government of Canada’s expansion into modern-day Western Canada involved a land transfer from the HBC, a British corporation headquartered in London, without any consultation with the people who lived there. Canada “bought” Western Canada from a company that never had title to it.
The people living at Red River wanted to make sure they would have democratic rights – the right to have their own government in Manitoba, and to send Members of Parliament to Ottawa to ensure they would be represented Federally.
Shortly after their successful and peaceful takeover of Red River, Riel’s provisional government issued a List of Rights, eventually revised several times, which finally made it into the Manitoba Act, which is the province’s constitution.
The specifics of history matter. At Red River in 1869, people were already preparing their opposition to Canadian plans. The idea that it was a “rebellion”, or an uprising can only be based in the concept of Canadian and British Imperial entitlement – that the Northwest was theirs for the taking. Not only were there people at Red River, but they had been there a long time – some of them, since time immemorial.
Philippe Mailhot writes:
“Upper Canadians had begun arriving in the Colony in the early 1860's as a vanguard who believed that the annexation of the Northwest to their province was both inevitable and imminent. While some had come simply to take up farms, others, especially the notorious Dr. John Christian Schultz, hoped to profit by arriving ahead of the flood of immigration which everyone realized would follow the establishment of Canadian jurisdiction…
The Métis were long familiar with the imperial attitudes expressed by Schultz and other Canadians within the Colony and beyond. William McDougall later advised Macdonald that the Métis had been read stories from the Toronto Globe which told of how “the half breeds would all be driven back from the river & their land given to others.”
Though the transfer from the HBC to the Government of Canada was to become official on December 1, 1869, plenty of people were staking claims and measuring up lots – including Canadian Government surveyors.
“A Canadian survey crew had arrived near Red River. The Métis insisted that until the 1 December ownership transfer, the crew had no official status and was trespassing. The Métis spokesperson was Louis Riel, who had just come home from Montreal, where he had studied to become a priest. Supported by armed men, Riel dramatically placed his foot on the surveying chain and ordered the crew to leave.”
That was on October 11. The Canadian Government was sending William MacDougall to take over Red River as the appointed Lieutenant Governor.
“On 25 October Riel was summoned to appear before the Council of Assiniboia to explain his actions. He declared that the National Committee would prevent the entry of McDougall or any other governor unless the union with Canada was based on negotiations with the Métis and with the population in general.”
McDougall was driving up from the United States – and roads, to say the least, were a challenge. At St. Norbert, on the highway that still runs from Winnipeg to North Dakota, the Métis created a barrier made from a flexible fence of birch trees, roped together across the entire road, now known as “La barrière.”
The Métis were armed but did not fire a shot. MacDougall and his team tried to charge the fence, but the Métis stepped up and grabbed his horses’ bridles, forcing them to turn back. A few miles to the north, near the forks of the Assiniboine and Red Rivers was Fort Garry. The Métis simply walked in, knocked on the door, and peacefully took over.
Riel ended up setting up a provisional government, with representation of French and English, protestant and Catholic, and drew up a list of rights for the purpose of negotiating with Canada.
The First List of Rights, from December 1869, stated that:
“1. That the people have the right to elect their own Legislature.
2. That the Legislature have power to pass all laws, local to the Territory, over the veto of the Executive, by a two-third vote.
3. That no act of the Dominion Parliament local to this Territory to be binding on the people until sanctioned by their representatives.
4. That all sheriffs, magistrates, constables, etc., etc., to be elected by the people.
5. A free homestead pre-emption law.
6. That a portion of the public lands to be appropriated to the benefit of schools, - the building of roads, bridges and parish buildings.
7. That it be guaranteed to connect Winnipeg by rail with the nearest line of railroad within a term of five years; the land grant for such road or roads to be subject to the Legislature of the Territory.
8. That, for the term of four years the public expenses of the Territory, civil, military and municipal, to be paid out of the Dominion funds.
9. That the military to be composed of the people now existing in the Territory.
10. That the French and English language to be common in the Legislature and Council, and all public documents and acts of Legislature to be published in both languages.
11. That the Judge of the Superior speak French and English.
12. That treaties be concluded and ratified between the Government and several of Indians of this Territory, to insure peace on the frontier.
13. That we have a full and fair representation in the Canadian Parliament.
14. That all privileges, customs and usages existing at the time of the transfer be respected.” [1]
There were multiple further drafts – some of which added, and some of which took away from these rights. It notably excluded First Nations from the right to vote – but it also asked that treaties be established with First Nations to ensure peace. It also specifically requested amnesty for the Métis.
That is because the Government of Canada, and the British Empire, framed the Métis demands as a violent rebellion – when it was seeking assurance of guarantees to rights and democracy as a condition of joining another country.
An example of Sir John A. MacDonald’s and the Conservatives’ phony posturing is that on December 6, 1869, “Macdonald had sponsored a proclamation by the governor general of an amnesty to all in Red River who would lay down their arms,” a proclamation that falsely positioned Riel and the residents of Red River as violent outlaws – when the Government of Canada and Canadian settlers were the violent outlaws.
It should go without saying – but nevertheless has to be repeated – that the protestant Orangemen from Ontario could be extremists. The kind of hatred that fueled centuries of bloody violence and death between protestants and Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland wasn’t watered down when it arrived in Canada.
Riel’s Provisional government faced the threat of violent overthrow. Many “Canadians” from Ontario were settling in Portage la Prairie – having rightly identified it as choice real estate. The Portage Plains are some of the richest agricultural soils in the world.
Incredibly, the two sides of the conflict were embodied by two people, whose dispute would be the spark that set off the powder keg.
One was Louis Riel – bilingual in French and English, had received instruction in Montreal to become a priest. He had taken control of Red River without firing a shot and was engaged in a democratic process to secure the democratic rights of the people who lived there, whatever their faith.
The other was Thomas Scott, a protestant bigot from Northern Ireland, via Ontario. In a storybook twist, Scott was part of the survey crew on the Dawson Road where Riel stepped on the survey chain. Scott was one of about 50 Canadians who set out from Portage la Prairie to Red River on February 12, 1870, with the phony pretense that they were going to “free prisoners.” When the prisoners were freed anyway on February 15th, the Portage gang’s intention was revealed – overthrowing the provisional government.
Andre Beauchemin caught wind of it and got word to Riel, though he had to travel to Red River through the bush. A militia was formed to intercept and arrest the Canadians. Scott spewed hate at his Métis guards, who tired of his of abuse and were about to work him over, to the point that Riel had to intervene to warn him to stop.
Scott was not just a bigot, and he was certainly not a freedom fighter – Scott was a terrorist who did not respect the authority of the government of the day, or the law. Many conservative historians have essentially sided with Scott as a victim, referring to the problems with the trial, because the charges were in French, and Riel translated into English.
It’s routine to mention the fact that Scott went out of his way to hurl racist slurs at his guards, calling the Métis cowards, generally setting up the impression that the Métis were angry and moved to execute Scott as a kind of payback.
The Quebec History Encyclopedia compares a few historians from different periods and their assessment. J. E. Collins in 1883; Thomas Flanagan, who is “recognized as the foremost expert on Riel amongst historians,” Lewis H Thomas, and George F G Stanley.
Not one of them mentions the fact that Scott threatened to kill Riel if he was released, which he did. [2]
The situation is routinely treated as a “political blunder” that suggests that Riel was hotheaded, that the guards were angry, that Riel felt the need to prove his authority – and that Riel chose to execute Scott as if it were politically motivated.
None of them addressed the fact that Scott was not only involved in a violent plot to overthrow a provisional government that was trying to negotiate rights and democracy, but he had also doubled down by promising to murder the head of government when released.
Imagine, for a moment – that a gang of 50 people went to your local legislature with weapons and tried to overthrow the government. 50 people caught attempting a violent coup, and when one of the ringleaders is arrested, he promises that if he is released again, he would assassinate the head of government.
If that happened today, those people would be recognized as violent, undemocratic extremists and terrorists who are committing treason and threatening assassination. In many countries, it would be considered treason and in many would result in life imprisonment or execution.
If 50 people had tried to overthrow Sir John A MacDonald, and promised to shoot him, they would have been arrested and executed.
The historian’s interpretation has been shaped by a bigoted political response – and they are essentially siding with Scott, not just out of sympathy, but with the belief, promoted by the Canadian government and its settlers, that Riel and the provisional government did not have any real authority – in part because of the racist attitude that only a certain class of people were entitled to rule – British Protestants.
There is a simple explanation for Scott’s execution, which is devoid of character analysis, armchair psychoanalysis or academics playing politics: Riel was enforcing the law.
It’s not just a question of whether people thought the Métis were credible authorities: the question facing Riel was whether there was going to be any law and order, or whether foreign invaders who attempted the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government would face consequences.
Scott didn’t think the law applied to him – because he was British, and he didn’t think he had to listen to people he thought were inferior.
That’s not how the law works. We need to consider the context of this so-called “political” mistake, and the character and politics of the people who exploited it – Orangemen, who spread inflammatory propaganda to justify an invasion of the new territory.
“Following the execution of Thomas Scott, an orchestrated campaign of indignation was launched in Ontario by a small group of influential individuals who styled themselves “Canada First.” Exploiting sensationalized versions of the martyrdom of Scott and the fiery speeches of Schultz and others, the movement sought to force Ottawa to refuse any negotiations and crush the “rebellion” with troops. It was feared that a peaceful settlement would alter the Territory's projected destiny as an annex of Ontario. As Schultz phrased it to one public rally.
“It was from Ontario this movement to add Red River to the Dominion commenced; it was in Ontario this expression of indignation was expressed; and it was to Ontario the Territory properly belonged.”
The CBC-produced a series called Canada: A People’s History, which is still archived on the internet, ignores that in this conflict, the extremists without respect for the law were the Canadians – including the Canadian Government.
“Riel's actions to date had been moderate, but with Scott he overreacted and appointed a military tribunal to try the prisoner for treason. On March 4, 1870, Scott was convicted, sentenced to death and executed by a firing squad in the courtyard of Fort Garry.
It was Riel's greatest miscalculation and an act that would cost him the moral high ground. Protestants in Canada's largest province, Ontario, reacted with anger. There were calls for Riel to be hanged and the Ontario government offered a bounty for his capture.”[3]
At that time – and regularly up until the present day, the central premise for judging Riel for being in the wrong had been coloured by the attitude that Canada was entitled to the North-West, and that he was out of line for asserting that the people who lived at Red River, the majority of whom were in favour of joining Canada - were entitled to determine the conditions under which they became part of another country.
The response to Riel “overreacting” and “losing the moral high ground” is that politicians from another country – Canada – put a bounty on capturing the appointed leader of what was essentially a foreign government, while citizens called for him to be assassinated without a trial – all for enforcing the law.
It’s clear, however, that the Canadian Government clearly still recognized and accepted Riel’s authority, and that of the provisional government, to continue negotiations. Abbé Noel Ritchot was the eminence grise behind much of Riel’s work and was Manitoba’s negotiator. It was Ritchot, in fact, who chose Manitoba’s name, choosing to write “Manitoba” on a map based on Riel’s two suggestions – Manitoba and Assiniboia.
Ritchot travelled to Ottawa through the United States, and when he arrived in Ottawa – which sits on the border between largely protestant Ontario and largely protestant Quebec – he was arrested, based on private charges sworn by Thomas Scott’s brother, Hugh Scott. A lynch mob had gathered outside the court.
As Mailhot writes, Ritchot had considerable political acumen. He telegraphed Bishop Taché in St Boniface not to be worried at news of his arrest.
“The bishop, and by extension the Provisional Government, was told that the Dominion was not a part of the situation and that no personal danger was anticipated. In a display of political astuteness, the delegate suggested that the “little persecution of some parties is more favorable than otherwise to the success of our mission.” Ritchot's words were prophetic.
The private legal harassment of the delegates soon began to have repercussions far beyond their own frustrating schedule of inconclusive court appearances. Sir John Young received a curt wire from London which read “Did Canadian gov't authorize arrests of delegates? Full information desired by telegraph.”
The response was immediate. In a cypher telegram sent the same day, Young told Granville that the charges had been laid by the brother of Scott and that the Dominion had nothing to do with the charges. In fact, Granville was informed, the defence counsel of the delegates had been secretly retained by the government.”
The officials of Imperial Great Britain recognized something that many Canadian historians have not – that arresting delegates from a territory was a more than a diplomatic faux-pas. It was a dangerous escalation.
Ritchot realized this – but also realized that he needed to prevent it from creating a matching escalation at Red River, though he didn’t know that Britain had sent a cable.
Later, when the charges were dropped, Ritchot dissuaded supporters from celebrating publicly. He told Irish and French Catholics, including Senators and Members of Parliament, that a public demonstration of support would “cause him pain”. He quite rightly recognized that it could cause a riot or clashes that could be used to smear his side.
It’s worth mentioning that at that time Canada and Ottawa were no strangers to sectarian political violence. Just two years before – on April 7, 1868, D’Arcy McGee, an outspoken Irish-Catholic Canadian politician, and father of Confederation, had been assassinated while walking home after a parliamentary debate that went past midnight. McGee had turned his back on the radical Irish Republicanism of his youth, which made him a political target. The person convicted was a young Catholic radical, Patrick J Whelan. The murder made global headlines, McGee had a state funeral attended by tens of thousands, and after Whelan was tried and convicted in February of 1869, his hanging attracted a crowd of 5,000. Ritchot arrived in Ottawa two years after McGee’s assassination, and a year after Whelan’s execution for the murder.
With Ritchot released, negotiations proceeded. MacDonald had been glib, and as Mailhot writes, it’s uncertain what the Canadian Government’s intentions were. MacDonald was in negotiations with the British – it appeared he wanted Imperial troops to go to Red River to take control, after which a Canadian police force could be established.
To MacDonald’s surprise, he received a telegram from London, where officials had run out of patience with his government’s dithering on negotiations. The Home Government said that if they were going to send troops, the Canadian Government would have to hand over the purchase price of £300,000 to the Hudson’s Bay Company, which it had not done yet, and “accept decision of H.M.'s Gov't on disputed points of settlers’ Bill of Rights.”
Ritchot proved to be a masterful negotiator in his meetings with MacDonald and Cartier and the Canadian government. They worked their way through the clauses, including the last one – the nineteenth - amnesty for all members of the provisional government.
“It demanded that all debts forced upon the Provisional Government by the “illegal and inconsiderate measures” of the Canadians in the Northwest be assumed by the Dominion. Furthermore, it insisted “that none of the members of the Provisional Government, or any of those acting under them, be in any way liable or responsible with regard to the movement, or any of the actions which led to the present negotiations.”
This puts the “conflict” between Riel and Scott – Riel as the law, Scott as the rebel – at the heart of the negotiations. Ritchot is clearly seeking amnesty for Riel personally, as well for everyone who was involved in the provisional government, all of whom would have very good reason to fear for their lives if the Canadian government retaliated or gave in to the bloodlust of protestant Orangemen looking for revenge.
The whole question is what kind of province Manitoba is going to be, and what kind of country is Canada going to be? Will it be Riel’s Manitoba and Canada – where people have human rights, where dignity and protection of civil rights enshrined in law – including access to justice and education in your own language, and protection of religious beliefs? Or will it be the Canada that expected Manitoba and Western Canada not just British, but to be a colony of Orange protestant Ontario?
This conflict between Riel and Scott, writ large, is the conflict over visions of Canada. Which is the Canada we have been told we are? Which is the Canada we hoped we would be? Would we allow for French Catholics to be a part of Western Canada? Or would they be driven out? Would other faiths and nationalities be welcome in this new part of Canada?
Mailhot continues.
“The Canadians took the position which they would maintain for years thereafter. They stated that the question of an amnesty was beyond their competence and was a matter for the Imperial or local authorities to deal with. Ritchot was told that the Canadian Government had no jurisdiction in the Northwest, and that Canada should itself be requesting the forgiveness of the settlers for having advanced into the region without authority and “made war” on the residents through their agents.”
This is an important admission from the Canadian government – that puts the historical interpretation of these events in a new light.
The Canadians’ own legal position was that it had no authority in the territory. This may have been a coy bit of positioning – if Riel and Ritchot said that Canada had no legal jurisdiction, who was Canada to disagree? From a legal position, it’s an interesting question as to whose laws apply to events that occur prior when one government with its own justice system assumes new authority over an existing territory. But the idea that it is for Imperial or local authorities to decide is clearly an evasion: they could have made the guarantee.
It's also an evasion on the part of the Government to distance themselves from the “Canadians” who sought to overthrow the provisional government. Propaganda emanating from Ontario gave license to a band of racist insurgents at Portage la Prairie to try to overthrow the provisional government, which included people who disagreed with Riel. By acknowledging that the government of Canada had no authority, it was in effect an admission that the insurrectionists were at fault and in fact waging war against Riel.
Ritchot was assured they would receive the amnesty, but it never happened. Sir Clinton Murdoch, who assessed the agreement, wrote a report objecting to the fact that it would give Riel amnesty for Scott. As the agreement was reached, the Canadian government was also sending its £300,000 to the HBC for possession of the territory, with a request for imperial troops to send to Red River.
In debates around the bill including questions over the size of the province – which at the time was called the “postage stamp”, but at the time did not reach Portage la Prairie. The lines would affect who got to vote, and of course who would be subject to the jurisdiction of the new government. Ritchot pointed out that the Government was ignoring the same request to move the boundaries from several Métis communities.
“During the course of the discussion Ritchot took advantage of references to clerical involvement to defend the role he and his colleagues played. He told the Englishmen that the clergy had remained in their stations and that it was not to play the “humbug” that they had left their own homes to work in the Northwest. Nor, he continued, did they create the principles which determined human behaviour. The clergy guided themselves and others according to principles of justice which they could not compromise to suit their own needs.”
This is worth highlighting, because it needs to be taken very seriously as a statement of principle from Ritchot: he is operating according to principles of justice. There are such people in the world, though we are so surrounded by people who are weak or corrupt they can seem vanishingly rare.
Riel, the people at Red River and Ritchot are all acting out of conviction and principle. You don’t have to be perfect or pure to do that. For some people, it may be the one time in their life they summon courage and stay true to a path. For others, it may be a lifetime of good works, peppered with the stumbles everyone makes.
These people who act out of conviction are important, because they stand up and they say the truth. They are uncompromising in their belief in justice, and the need for justice to be done. They do their utmost to live their own values. When they hear others profess those values, they expect them to live them too, and not be hypocrites or liars.
We cannot live without such people. They are what keep society from falling apart – either through their actions or through their inspiration. The hard part is that for justice to be done, others need to be willing to walk the talk. Citizens, lawyers, police, prosecutors, judges, and courts in the justice system must be as principled and uncompromising in their belief in justice as well. They aren’t perfect anywhere – but they can be better.
Very often, the people who take such a stand and demand justice end up dead. And often, they are not rebels but traditionalists challenging a corrupt system to live up to its own professed ideals of justice. They may expect and implore people not just to live by their word, and to be true to their own word and beliefs, only to be killed for it.
Riel was sitting on the porch of the Archbishop of St Boniface’s residence when he saw the Union Jack run up the flagpole at Fort Garry across the river. He had to flee the province he founded and was elected three times as Member of Parliament for Provencher, although he was not allowed to take his seat. In 1875, the Government of Canada offered Riel amnesty on the condition he leave Canada for five years.
In 1874, Sir Wilfrid Laurier defended Louis Riel, pointing out that he could not be given amnesty when he had never committed a crime.
“It has been said that Mr. Riel was only a rebel. How was it possible to use such language? What act of rebellion did he commit? Did he ever raise any other standard than the national flag? Did he ever proclaim any other authority than the sovereign authority of the Queen? No, never. His whole crime and the crime of his friends was that they wanted to be treated like British subjects and not to be bartered away like common cattle. If that be an act of rebellion, where is the one amongst us, who, if he had happened to have been with them, would not have been rebels as they were?”
Even on the point of the flag, Laurier is quite accurate. At one point, a group at Red River created a flag with Catholic symbols of the Irish Harp and the French Fleur-de-lys – (a poke in the eye to the Queen) and briefly ran it up the flagpole at Fort Garry. Riel ordered it lowered.
The government of Canada’s admission in negotiations that it had no jurisdiction calls into question its further persecution of Riel.
15 years after Riel set up a provisional government in Manitoba for the Métis, Métis in Saskatchewan sought him out in Montana to do the same for them. Once again, Riel asked for a bill of rights. The forces sent to defeat Riel and the Métis at Batoche were not just crushing resistance – they were operating out of revenge.
Riel’s trial should have been in Winnipeg – where, at least, the Government of Canada still actually had jurisdiction. Everything that can be said of Thomas Scott’s execution – that it was a political frame-up - was true of Riel’s trial and execution, but MacDonald is not accused of a “political blunder” because for him, it was politically popular. MacDonald “won” and Riel “lost.”
Really, it’s a way of saying Riel is to blame for his own fate, and sparing Canada the guilty conscience for its founding Prime Minister’s original sins.
The jury themselves pleaded for clemency – and had a better sense of the history on the ground than many historians and pundits since.
“The jury of six men deliberated Riel's fate for an hour. They filed back into the courtroom. The foreman, Francis Cosgrove, “crying like a baby” announced the verdict. “Guilty,” he said, and then added, “Your Honor, I have been asked by my brother jurors to recommend the prisoner to the mercy of the Crown.” Later, one of the jurors would write a letter to a member of Parliament expressing his mixed feelings about the verdict he helped render: “Had the Government done their duty and redressed the grievances of the Métis of Saskatchewan...there would never have been a second Riel Rebellion, and consequently no prisoner to try and condemn.”
On the night before his execution, Riel prayed, wrote letters, thanked jailers, and forgave enemies. Asked for a final request, he asked only for an extra ration of three eggs. Shortly after 8:00 AM on November 16, Riel was escorted from his cell. He prayed with Father Andre, renounced his heresies, and received absolution. When Father Andre began weeping, Riel said calmly, “Courage mon Père.” With the rope finally around his neck, Riel and Father Andre began reciting together the Lord's Prayer. When they reached “deliver us from evil,” the trap fell.
The response to the execution in Quebec was a massive protest. In Champ-de-Mars in Montreal, Wilfrid Laurier, spoke “to a crowd of nearly 50,000 and reportedly said, ‘If [I] had been on the banks of the Saskatchewan when the rebellion broke out ‘[I] would have taken up arms [myself] against the government.… Riel’s execution was a judicial murder.’
Canada’s Betrayal
The Canadian Government’s intention all along was to get the agreement, and then open the floodgates of immigration from Ontario and Britain so wide that Riel, the Métis, the French and the Catholics would be quickly outnumbered and outvoted, rendering the initial promises null and void, at least as far as following the constitution was concerned.
And that is what happened. The commitment to French education and services wasn’t just ended – teaching French in Manitoba was forbidden and outlawed. Schools secretly taught in French, and they would have to hide the French books when inspectors came by to look for them, and see if the children were learning proper English.
For a period, Winnipeg was one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Its population soared from 15,000 to 300,000 in just a couple of decades. It was the third richest city in Canada, with more millionaires than anywhere else. It was a mix of the railway and speculation. Everything passed through the city east, west and south. Freight to and from everywhere, because it was the “big city” for the whole Canadian West, bringing people and goods from the East – Canada, the U.S. Europe and Asia.
Winnipeg was positioned to skim a little off the top of all that everything. The national railway had been built; prairie farmers were creating a new breadbasket for the world. Winnipeg, at the very centre of the continent, seemed destined to be a hub. For anyone looking to trade with Asia to Europe and vice versa, Winnipeg was in a line you would draw straight across the North American continent as the quickest, cheapest way to buy or sell. After all, your other option to get cargo from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and back was to put it on a ship and send it around the southern tip of South America, which made it long, expensive, and hazardous.
A series of global events shattered much of that. The US completed the Panama Canal – ships could now move easily, cheaply, and fairly safely from Europe to Asia, stopping at ports along the coast in North America and elsewhere as well. The Canadian Railways went bankrupt. Winnipeg’s boom went bust.
The First World War was devastating, because so many lost their sons to the war. Throughout the prairies there are war memorials, and they exist in every small town, because the prairie provinces, especially Manitoba, sent the most volunteers. Some performed great feats of heroism. But the toll in the trenches and at home was terrible. The war left many on the prairie grieving for an incredible number of their lost fathers, husbands, boyfriends, sons, uncles, cousins.
The War ended as a global pandemic began, soldiers were coming home and there was domestic unrest as the economy was in turmoil.
Seeing the unrest that has occurred during the Covid 19 pandemic, it seems difficult to believe that Winnipeg’s General Strike was not driven in part by the same frustrations that come with lockdowns and public health measures (which were in place at the time).
While the Winnipeg General Strike has been treated as some kind of victory, it was a disaster for the workers. The mythology built up around it is that it is supposed to be a revolutionary moment that was suppressed, and its legacy is that the heroes of the strike went on to found the CCF, which became the NDP.
Workers lost the strike. They didn’t win any concessions - quite the opposite. People lost their jobs and lost their pensions, and the feelings were so bitter people hated each other for decades. The General Strike has been portrayed as a victory because it helped give people like J S Woodsworth street cred. He was a Methodist Minister and academic with multiple degrees, including from Oxford.
Economic boom and bust, a war, and pandemic, then, when the Depression hit, it hit western Canada harder than almost any place in the world. Fortunes had been made on a single commodity – wheat – which suddenly plunged in price.
But we need to be very clear that the people who claim modern day “western alienation” in Canada’s prairie provinces, are generally the people who wanted Riel dead. They still blame the same people who were being blamed all those years ago – Liberals, Quebec, the French, and Indigenous people.
Riel was not experiencing “Western Alienation” when he was betrayed and ultimately killed by the Federal Government. He was fighting for democracy, rights, and justice.
“Western Alienation” is usually a complaint by the people who wanted Riel hanged – because they had thought that that with Riel gone, they wouldn’t have to deal with any more indigenous, French or Catholics. They thought they were going to recreate Orangeville, Ontario in the prairies, only to discover a fair chunk of the population was French and Catholic. Then the Indigenous population started growing. And the Federal Government would elect French Catholics from Quebec, who were usually Liberals.
The fundamental conflict at the heart of the founding of Manitoba was about kind of country Canada would be. The conflict did that – it showed that Canada, as a country, would make promises and vote them into law with no real intention of keeping or respecting them – like the Manitoba Act. Legal, constitutional rights that the Federal Government had agreed to were ignored. It showed that Canada would seek revenge and bend the law and kill Riel in order to satisfy the bloodlust of protestant Orangemen in Ontario, and reverse accountability and responsibility for the entire story.
To ignore this history is to have a blind spot the size of the whole country.
For many years, there have been arguments and anxieties about the “Canadian Identity” which has been supposedly mysterious or based in “negatives” – that we are “not English” or “Not American.” It should be clear that part of the reason we have wrestled with a national identity is that we have been unable to come to grips with our own history. Events and outright extremism have been whitewashed, and political and historic narratives have so one-sided that they can only be described as partisan.
This is particularly the case for parties and politicians whose eugenic views became an embarrassment later in their careers – many of whom rose to national prominence, and whose biographies needed to be burnished after the fact. The CCF became the NDP, which has had majority governments in provinces across Canada. It is barely an exaggeration to say that, despite never having been in power at the national level in its existence, it is a party that seeks claim and credit for most progress in Canadian social history.
The fact that every founding leader of the CCF supported eugenics, and that Tommy Douglas was elected with the help of the KKK means that the “origin story” of these political heroes isn’t just untrue – it’s the opposite of everything they pretend to be.
The Progressive Party ended up merging with the Conservatives, and in Saskatchewan, both collaborated with the KKK. Many seek to justify this extremism as a reaction to tough times – but it must be said that the particular brand of Protestantism mixed a belied in eugenics, especially the inferiority of people of other “races” and religions was not a reaction to hard economic times in Canada, it was part of the core identity of settlers, as well as politicians and leaders in Ontario.
TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2
[1] https://www.metismuseum.ca/media/document.php/14525.Metis%20List%20of%20Rights.pdf
[2] https://www.canadahistoryproject.ca/1870/1870-06-scott.html
[3] https://www.cbc.ca/history/EPCONTENTSE1EP9CH2PA4LE.html