The myth and the man

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This article was published 14/09/2024 (729 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Louis Riel’s metamorphosis in Canadian history and culture from villainous traitor to paragon hero is extraordinary.

But the current laudatory depiction of Riel is as false and misrepresentative as the prior negative one, according to University of Alberta professor emeritus of comparative literature and English Albert Braz.

Both the book’s title, positing Riel’s reputation as problematic, and its subtitle’s reference to a “resistant hero” allude to the fact that, as Braz puts it, the historical Riel “can be as much of a problem for Métis as for Canadians in general.”

Louis Riel’s righteous conduct in defence of Métis rights and landholdings in Manitoba is unarguable. It was precipitated by the Canadian government imperiously sending surveyors to Red River to re-stake Métis family lots.

But there was a dark side to the man this province celebrates via Louis Riel Day on the third Monday of every February, and who just this past December was proclaimed Manitoba’s honorary “first premier.”

Braz offers a cerebral yet raw and honest survey of Riel in both popular and academic historical treatments and the arts (fiction, plays, opera, poetry, sculpture). He weaves past and present via textual and plastic-arts analysis. He also presents an accurate historical record of Riel’s conduct and, critically, draws heavily on Riel’s own written record.

The major stain on Riel’s legacy is the execution of Thomas Scott at what was then the Red River settlement.

Scott was a member of the Canadian Party, a settlers’ group that challenged the authority of the 1869-1870 Riel-led Métis provisional government. Captured and imprisoned by the Métis in 1870, he was executed by firing squad at Upper Fort Garry on March 4, 1870.

Never formally charged with any crime, let alone a capital crime, Scott was executed for allegedly being abusive to, and getting into fights with, his guards.

Worse, “besides not being provided with a lawyer, Scott is not permitted to speak at his own trial… since his presence is ‘not necessary in a hunter’s court’,” writes Braz. “This is a peculiar rationale, given that the proceedings do not take place in the middle of the plains but at Fort Garry and under the jurisdiction, not of a hunting party, but of the supposedly duly constituted provisional government.”

Even Riel latterly came to see Scott’s summary execution as a fatal blunder to his cause, but temporized, calling it merely a “political mistake.”

Contrast this with Riel’s 1885 trial in Regina on charges of high treason for his role in the North-West Rebellion, also known as the North-West Resistance.

Riel was defended by a crack team of four lawyers, led by prominent Quebec lawyer and future chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Charles Fitzpatrick, and equally prominent Francois-Xavier Lemieux, later chief justice of the Superior Court of Quebec.

Riel’s defence team presented a defence of not guilty by reason of insanity — a position widely credited today by most historical and legal scholars as supported by available evidence.

By 1885 Riel had twice been committed, by his friends, to Quebec institutions for the insane, messianically proclaimed himself “Prophet of the New World,” denounced the Catholic church of his upbringing, started his own rival “Catholic” church and advocated for a Canadian pope. One of his oddest god-anointed aims, writes Braz, “was to relocate the Holy See from the Vatican to his hometown of St. Vital.”

Riel objected to his defence counsel’s insanity-defence strategy at trial, proclaiming his sanity at every turn. It proved his undoing, and led to his conviction and execution.

In addition to examining works about Riel, Braz meticulously mined Riel’s published five-volume Collected Writings (letters, diaries, speeches, declarations and poetry).

One of the hits to Riel’s exalted reputation his own writing discloses, Braz underlines, is his aversion to identifying the Métis as an “aboriginal” people — a position contra to Canada’s 1982 Constitution Act, which defines “Indian, Inuit and Métis” as aboriginal peoples, and a position also contra to claims for his being a pan-Indigenous leader.

The book is published by an academic publishing house, University of Alberta Press. Perhaps for that reason, Braz unfortunately felt compelled to adhere to an academic protocol that requires every sourced reference to be credited by lengthy parenthetical insertion right in the body of his text, instead of via footnotes.

This makes for unnecessarily long and cumbersome sentences and paragraphs, impairing the natural flow of his thesis. Which is doubly unfortunate because, absent this, Braz is a lucid and crisp writer.

Stylistic quibbles aside, this is a fresh and erudite consideration of Riel that separates the man and the mythos.

Douglas J. Johnston is a Winnipeg lawyer and writer.