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Métis community unveils hero's last English writings
The rope held no fear for Riel.
Little kids and grown-ups read those words Monday — as the final English verse by Métis hero Louis Riel was displayed to the public for the first time in Winnipeg.
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Indeed, it was a busy day in the city’s French quarter and the downtown, with events honouring Louis Riel on the second annual provincial statutory holiday named for him.
French Métis led a winding procession through ancestral streets in St. Boniface; one of Canada’s leading intellectuals, John Ralston Saul, visited Winnipeg to praise Riel as a patriot; and mild, sunny weather drew hundreds to Festival du Voyageur.
Vehicles stretched bumper to bumper from Provencher Boulevard to Fort Gibraltar overlooking the Red River where the festival is held annually. Across the river, strains of Métis fiddle music playing the tunes Riel would recognize echoed off Main Street where the Manitoba Métis Federation took his poetry out for public display.
Last November, the existence of four poems penned by Riel and passed down through the family of his death row jailer was first revealed.
Riel wrote the four religious verses in jail in 1885 while awaiting execution for treason. He wrote of the rope, his faith in God and his belief that someday he’d be vindicated for believing in a Métis nation.
The MMF won the bidding war at an auction, paying $32,000 for the poetry with help from Winnipeg charity groups. They brought the poems home, and they were unveiled Monday.
"These are the last English words written by Riel and rarely did he write in English," MMF president David Chartrand told a packed hall.
The leader beamed with pride, distinct in a blue and white handmade ribbon shirt he wore to mark the special occasion.
The historical artifacts were delicately bundled in white tissue paper and guarded by two uniformed Mounties in red serge. People crowded in to see the verse for the first time.
Beth Barton brought daughter Boada Barton-Bailey, 6, to give her a glimpse of history. Riel still isn’t taught a lot in school, even today, she said.
"We had never talked about the fact that Riel actually was a poet as well, he was always just known as the father of (Manitoba) or, until about 10 years ago, the traitor who was killed," she said.
"(Boada) needed to come and see that he wrote poems, which meant he was much more than just a two-dimensional figure — he was a thinker, he was a philosopher, he was an artist."
In elegant handwriting, the man once groomed for the priesthood expressed his faith in God in his final hours. And then Riel calmly resigned his life to the rope.
The four simple verses are held in two gently frayed, yellowed notebooks.
On Monday, leaders called the public reaction gratifying.
"It is a day of pride, of recognizing the founder, the father of Manitoba," Chartrand said. "He believed this was a place for all people. He was a man of vision."
Clement Chartier, Métis National Council president, said the effort to return the poetry to Manitoba renews the Red River as the historical cultural and commercial Métis capital.
"I’m happy the Manitoba Métis Federation took the initiative to make sure these treasured works stay within the Métis nation," Chartier said.
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
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