October Gold

28 Thursday Oct 2021

Posted by michelinewalker in Canada's Great Ministry, Canadian art, Canadian Confederation, Métis

Tags

Gabriel Dumont, Great Ministry, John Ralston Saul, Joseph Boyden, Louis Riel, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, Red River Colony, Robert Baldwin

October Gold by Franklin Carmichael, 1922 (WikiArt.org)

Franklin Carmichael was a member of the Group of Seven (Art, Canada)

Dear Readers,

I have not published a post for several days. I was diagnosed with pericarditis earlier in the month of October and got better after taking anti-inflammatory medication. However, the diagnostic was not entirely correct. The pain came back. I therefore returned to the Emergency Room. The muscles of my rib cage and part of my left arm are inflamed. I can barely use my left arm. Doctors performed an electrocardiogram today. My heart is fine, but the inflammation is very real.

Posts

I had returned to the subject of Canadian confederation. Canadian scholar and thinker, John Ralston Saul, wrote an excellent book on the “great ministry” of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. The book is entitled Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. www.amazon.ca/Extraordinary-Canadians-Hippolyte-Lafontaine-Robert/dp/0670067326. The book was published in 2010. Other extraordinary Canadians are Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel. We have a post entitled A Métis Leader, Gabriel Dumont. Joseph Boyden wrote a book on Dumont and Louis Riel. Extraordinary Canadians: Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel.

Confederation played itself out around Winnipeg (the Earl of Selkirk’s Red River Colony). Louis Riel formed a government and intended for Manitoba to remain bilingual and multicultural. His government condemned to death a violent young man, Thomas Scott, an Orangeman, from Ontario. Louis Riel’s government would not be recognized. So, the execution of Thomas Scott would cost Riel his life. As for the Métis of Manitoba, many had moved west to Saskatchewan hoping they could build lots on each side of a river. Gabriel Dumont had moved west, but he and other Métis could not settle along a river. Dumont went to see Louis Riel, who then lived in the United States. He sought his help. Dumont did not know Riel.

Louis Riel’s view of Canada is not unlike to John Ralston Saul. Saul does not ignore John A. Macdonald, the main father of Confederation, but Canada was not born in 1867, when Confederation was signed. It was the product of the “Great Ministry” and that of a unified country longing for a responsible government, which it was granted in 1848.

John A. Macdonald sent Amerindians to reserves and their children to Residential Schools where many were molested and died. As for French-speaking Canadians, after Confederation, they could not be educated in their mother tongue outside Quebec. John A. Macdonald attempted to assimilate both Amerindians and French-speaking Canadians.

At the time of Confederation, the Red River Colony was bilingual and multicultural. It was a miniature portrait of what Canada could have been and became, officially, after the Official Languages Act of 1969. The Red River Colony, or Fort Garry, the future Winnipeg, had been bought from the Hudson’s Bay Company by the Earl of Selkirk, Thomas Douglas 5^th Earl of Selkirk. It was not part of Rupert’s Land. When Confederation was signed, half the people of Manitoba were francophones and the other half, anglophones. However, one hundred and two years after Canadian Confederation (1867), most Canadians living west of Quebec spoke English only. Fortunately, there are realities of the mind that override a seemingly more verifiable “reality.” There have been extraordinary Canadians. They shaped Canada.

John A. Macdonald wanted Canada to stretch from East to West and built a railroad. He was able to do so after Canada purchased Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company.

But Canada started earlier than Canadian Confederation. It started during the “great ministry” of Baldwin and LaFontaine and may have started earlier. In other words, there were extraordinary Canadians who took Canada forward despite colonialism and/or imperialism, and Confederation. French Canadian nationalism dates back to the early 1800s and it had English-speaking supporters. The Rebellions of 1837-1838 occurred in both Upper Canada and Lower Canada.

RELATED ARTICLES

The Métis in Canada (4 June 2015)
The Red River Settlement (30 May 2015)
Canada’s Amerindians: Enfranchisement (24 May 2015)
Residential Schools for Canada’s Amerindians (21 May 2015)
The Art of Kenojuak Ashevak (19 May 2015)
Inuit Art (17 May 2015)
Au pays des jours sans fin (16 May 2015)
The North West Rebellion, concluded (15 May 2015)
Aboriginals in Canada (14 May 2015)
A Métis Leader, Gabriel Dumont (10 May 2015)
From the Red River Rebellion to the North West Rebellion (8 May 2015)
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 (Indigenous Foundations) (6 May 2015)
The Métis in Canada (4 June 2015)
Louis Riel as Father of Confederation (22 May 2012)

Sources and Resources

Extraordinary Canadians: Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin : Saul, John Ralston: Amazon.ca: Livres
Extraordinary Canadians: Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont: A Penguin Lives Biography : Boyden, Joseph: Amazon.ca: Livres
Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine et Robert Baldwin – Saul John Ralston – 9782764621264 | Catalogue | Librairie Gallimard de Montréal (gallimardmontreal.com)

Love to everyone 💕

https://nationtalk.ca/story/featured-video-of-the-day-joseph-boyden-on-louis-riel-and-gabriel-dumont

Gabriel Dumont, a Métis Leader

10 Thursday May 2018

Posted by michelinewalker in Aboriginals, Canada, Métis

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Alexis André, Bison exterminated, British Columbia enters Confederation, Gabriel Dumont, General Frederick Middleton, Joseph Boyden, Louis Riel, The Battle of Batoche, The North-West Mounted Police, The Railroad

Gabriel Dumont, resistance fighter
Gabriel Dumont was a man of great chivalry and military skill, superbly adapted to the presettlement prairie life (courtesy Glenbow Archives). (Photo credit: The Canadian Encyclopedia)

We do not require a long post on Gabriel Dumont (1837 – 1906), not at this point. A synopsis will suffice.

Dumont, the Bison Hunter

What we need to know is that Dumont was famous as a bison hunter. “In the 1860s, Gabriel was the chief of the Métis bison hunters and commanded approximately 200 hunters.” (Virtual Museum of Canada). As noted in the caption above, below his photograph, he was “superbly adapted to the presettlement prairie life.” His life gives us an insight into the life of Métis before the bison disappeared. The bison/buffalo fed the Métis, prairie Amerindians (North-American Indians), and voyageurs.

I should also point out that Dumont was among the Métis who left the former Red River Colony at the time of the Red River Rebellion, hoping Métis could settle on river lots further west, in Saskatchewan or Alberta. They did, briefly. Gabriel Dumont operated a ferry service, “Gabriel’s Crossing,” and opened a General Store with a billiard table, on the South Saskatchewan River.

Father Alexis André

Once Métis arrived, so did a priest. Father Alexis André (1832 – 1893), an Oblate born in France, would minister to the Métis who had left the Red River. He helped Gabriel Dumont form a Provisional Government for the community he was founding, Saint-Laurent de Grandin. As you know, Gabriel Dumont, a linguist, could not write.

At times, Father André was a spokesman for Métis. For instance, he feared for their well-being as he saw the bison disappear. Father André and North-West Mounted Police commissioner George Arthur French “urged the federal government to exercise tighter control over these hunts so as to prevent the extermination of the bison.” (See Alexis André, Dictionary of Canadian Biography.) But the federal government had turned its back on petitions, which is why Gabriel Dumont sought Louis Riel’s assistance. Louis Riel was well educated and possessed charisma.

Louis Riel returns

Dumont is, in fact, best remembered for going to Montana to ask for Louis Riel’s help. Therefore, the two figures are inextricably linked. Riel was to be the political leader of the North-West Rebellion and Gabriel Dumont, its military leader.

But the Canadian government was pushing its way west not realizing that Métis and Amerindians could remain on their rectangular lots abutting a river. Petitions went unanswered. So, blood was shed. At the Battle of Batoche (9 – 12 May 1885), 250 Métis fought Major-General Frederick Middleton’s superior force of 916 regulars and militia. Dumont escaped, but, on 15 May 1885, Louis Riel surrendered. (See The Battle of Batoche, Wikipedia.)

Father André also tended to the spiritual needs of Louis Riel during the period Riel awaited his execution. Father André believed Riel was insane, but Riel left a good impression on Father André.

The priest spent hours in conversation with the Métis leader and was impressed with Riel’s sincerity, yet convinced of his insanity.

(See Alexis André, The Dictionary of Canadian Biography.)

Joseph Boyden on Riel and Dumont

Writer Joseph Boyden published Extraordinary Canadians, Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, a fine book on Riel and Dumont. The video below (click on the link) is short, but very informative.

Joseph-Boyden-on-Louis-Riel-and-Gabriel-Dumont-600x313

http://nationtalk.ca/story/featured-video-of-the-day-joseph-boyden-on-louis-riel-and-gabriel-dumont

A Mari usque ad Mare

As we know, moving west was a mere respite for Métis and the indigenous people of the Prairie Provinces. On 20 July 1871, a year after Manitoba entered Confederation, British Columbia also joined. A dream came true. Canada stretched from sea to sea: A Mari usque ad Mare. The people of British Columbia wanted a wagon road built between Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean, but Cartier offered a railway instead. Construction would begin without two years and be completed in ten years. Cartier/Canada also agreed to take over the colony’s considerable debt of almost $1.5 million and provide an annual subsidy of $216,000.

(See British Columbia Entering Confederation, A People’s History, CBC.ca.)

Hoping to attract white settlers to B.C., land commissioner Joseph Trutch refused to recognize Indian land rights in the 1860s. (Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada) (Photo credit: CBC.ca)

During the 1860s, B.C. refused to recognize Indian land titles and often usurped Indian land and gave it to speculators and settlers. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress) (Photo credit: CBC.ca)