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| Louis Riel |
Interestingly enough there is a family connection to the day, as my husband's great, great grandfather was one of the North-West Mounted policemen that guarded him in the Regina prison where he was held prior to his execution in 1885.
Louis Riel was a Métis leader who led his people in resisting the government of the Canadian Northwest. He was born in the Red River settlement (in what is now Manitoba) and after studying variously to be a priest and then a lawyer, neither of which options he pursued as a career, he ended up as a political leader, fighting for the right of the Métis people.
He led a provisional government from 1869-1870 and negotiated the Manitoba Act, which established Manitoba as a province and included provision to protect French language rights. During this period he had executed Irish-born, Presbyterian Orangeman, Thomas Scott for his part in a failed rebellion against Riel's provisional government. This act led him to be exiled from Canada, but he eventually returned to what is now Saskatchewan at the request of the Métis people to present their grievances to the Canadian government.
Probably the most significant event in the life of Louis Riel for most Manitobans is the short-lived North-West Rebellion of 1885, of which Riel was indisputably the political leader and figurehead. Colonel Garnet Wolseley was dispatched from Toronto, Ontario with 1,000 men who took two months to reach the garrison at Upper Fort Garry at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, which is now the site of the Forks in the heart of Winnipeg. The expedition quelled the rebellion and arrested Riel, who was tried for treason and eventually hanged in Regina.
He remains one of the most enigmatic figures in Canadian history; to some viewed as a hero, to others a traitor, but in Manitoba he is commemorated not just on February 20th, but by statues at the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface, and in memorials in many other provinces of Canada. Act resolution passed by Parliament in 1992 declared Louis Riel the founder of Manitoba.
I suggest you read "LOUIS RIEL & GABRIEL DUMONT" by Joseph Boyden in the Extraordinary Canadians Series published by Penguin Canada, 2010.
ReplyDeleteJoseph Boyden is an extraordinary Canadian writer of Metis background who examines the roles of these two outstanding men, conflicted by their colonial religion in their desire for existence as an independent people.