Louis Riel, the Métis leader hanged for high treason on Nov. 16, 1885 at Regina, was the driving force behind Manitoba becoming Canada’s fifth province and is thought of by many as to be the “Father of Manitoba,” the only Canadian province born in blood. Does that history matter today and what legacy has it left Manitobans? “Welcome to Winnipeg: Where Canada’s racism problem is at its worst,” Maclean’s, Canada’s national magazine, headlined its lead story Jan. 22.
Not all Manitobans, of course, share that view of Riel as victim of colonial racism by any means. But history has a way of refining our judgments and dampening or softening excessive passions. Thus, the 19th century’s traitor can be reasonably seen as the 21st century’s hero as we take a longer and more inclusive view of our collective history.
Up here in Thompson we apparently don’t have a race problem, although a regular-season hockey game last Sunday between the Thompson King Miner Midget “AA” and the Norway House North Stars was ended by officials with Thompson leading 4-2 with 8:53 left in the second period when the North Stars, who had already had a player and coach ejected, left the ice following an altercation between their goaltender and a Thompson player at the same time that a scuffle erupted in the stands, soon leading to a parade of RCMP officers in their cruisers escorting players from both teams safely out of the C.A. Nesbitt Arena at the Thompson Regional Community Centre (TRCC), after racial slurs may or may not have been uttered whiles moms and dads scrapped in the stands with their counterparts from the opposing team. Older guys in Thompson remembered decades ago similar incidents where they said they had to be escorted out of places like Norway House or Cross Lake in similar circumstances. Seventeen-year-old King Miner right winger Lucas Hanlon apparently self-identified himself as Métis to the Winnipeg-based Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN) in making two points: he didn’t think the Feb, 8 fracas in Thompson was about race, and, in any event, there are a lot of aboriginal players on the Thompson team.
Thompson is atop of the midget AA league standings, with a 13-4-3 record for 29 points, the same as the second-place The Pas Huskies, who have played one more game than Thompson. The King Miner’s next scheduled game is tomorrow when they are due to play the Split Lake Eagles in Split Lake.
“I am a Metis player myself,” Hanlon reportedly told APTN “We have a lot of aboriginal players on our team,” he said. “We have just as many people with aboriginal roots in our community as anywhere else.”
Hanlon said he didn’t hear any racial taunts hurled at the Norway House players. He said the Norway House fans called him “white trash.” He said racial slurs are hurled by both sides during games. “You get kind of used it from playing against those teams for so long. It happens both ways. I personally don’t because I come from both backgrounds,” he said.
A player for the Norway House North Stars team and two parents told APTN National News Feb. 10 that some “Thompson fans hurled racial epitaphs at the Norway House team.” They also said one player was confronted by three Thompson fans, two men and a woman, who used racial slurs, and claimed one Norway House player had his helmet cracked by a slash to the head.
Hanlon told APTN he “didn’t see anyone get slashed in the head with enough force to crack a helmet: that’s reassuring. However, he was very likely on to something – something that really matters to Thompson residents, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal, when Hanlon said many in the “Thompson hockey community are now worried the planned Rogers Hometown Hockey tour stop scheduled for the community on March 7 and 8 may be scuttled because of the bad press stemming from the weekend’s incident.” It was announced last September that Ron MacLean, who has played straight man to Don Cherry on Coach’s Corner for years, will be here in 3½ weeks as part of the Rogers Hometown Hockey Tour, presented by Dodge and Scotiabank, for a weekend of hockey festivities and to host a pre-game show followed by a viewing party for a March 8 Calgary Flames-Ottawa Senators game that will be broadcast across the country.
The tour, which began last Oct. 11-12 in London, Ont., is criss-crossing Canada, stopping in Manitoba three times – it was in Selkirk for its second broadcast and in Brandon last Nov. 30 – before making the late-season trip to Thompson.
Other activities leading up to the weekend-capping broadcast will include meet-and-greet sessions with NHL alumni and local hockey heroes, a Hockey Night in Canada viewing party, a KidZone with hockey-themed activities, skills and drills competitions and live performances by local musicians, as well as ticket and merchandise giveaways.
MacLean will host a half-hour pre-game show live from the Sportsnet Mobile Studio in Thompson prior to the broadcast, and will also make appearances in intermission and post-game shows. Included on the broadcast will be interviews with local guests and grassroots hockey stories.
Should Thompson residents be worried about bad press press from the Thompson King Miner Midget “AA” and Norway House North Stars game Feb. 8 jinxing the arrival of the Rogers Hometown Hockey tour March 7? Probably not, even given the fact there are a couple of inconvenient stories from APTN now circulating on television and online, including, “Manitoba RCMP escorted First Nation hockey team from rink after game took racial turn” at http://aptn.ca/news/2015/02/10/manitoba-rcmp-escorted-first-nation-hockey-team-rink-game-took-racial-turn/ and “Metis player disputes race played role in Manitoba hockey fracas” at http://aptn.ca/news/2015/02/11/metis-player-disputes-race-played-role-thompson-man-hockey-fracas/
But long before APTN broke its two stories, Tuesday, 48 hours after the game was over, there already had been hundreds of comments and a number of photos on the emerging story on social media, mainly Facebook, by Sunday at 7 p.m., just hours after the melee at the hockey game. “Facebook,” as former Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News columnist Donna Wilson, who is now the general manager of Thompson’s Quality Inn & Suites on Moak Crescent, but who also still writes for the paper occasionally, has observed many times since 2010, “is how Thompson gets its news.”
RCMP also seized video of the game from veteran Thompson Shaw TV producer Paul Andersen, who tweeted in his own inimitable style, “19 years of broadcasting hockey games, I have never had my footage become ‘exhibit c’ in the court of law,#norwayhousevsthompson.”
Louis Riel Day falls this year next Monday on Feb. 16. In 2008, the NDP provincial government invited Manitoba schoolchildren to name the province’s newest statutory holiday, commencing on the third Monday in February in 2009, and 114 schools responded with suggestions: of that number a dozen suggested Louis Riel Day or some close variation.
Other suggestions included Neil Young Day, Family Get Together Day, February Fun Day, (The) Polar Pause, Duff Roblin Day (Duff’s Day), Our Parents Need a Break Day and Magical Manitoba Monday.
Riel was born at Red River Settlement on Oct. 22, 1844 and educated at St Boniface. A Roman Catholic, he studied for the priesthood at the Collège de Montréal. In 1865 he studied law with Rodolphe Laflamme, and he is believed to have worked briefly in Chicago and Saint Paul before returning to St Boniface in 1868.
Without re-telling the entire history of the Red River Rebellion, or Red River Resistance, as it is also known, here or the North-West Rebellion in Saskatchewan 15 years later, the abridged version is that in 1869, the federal government, anticipating the transfer of Red River and the North-West from the Hudson’s Bay Company to their jurisdiction, appointed William McDougall as lieutenant-governor of the new territory and sent survey crews to Red River.
The Métis, worried about the implications of the transfer and wary of Anglo-Protestant immigrants from Ontario, organized a “National Committee” of which Riel was secretary. The committee halted the surveys and prevented McDougall from entering Red River. On Nov 2, 1869, Fort Garry was seized by the committee, which invited the people of Red River, however, both English and French- speaking, to appoint delegates.
When armed resistance, led by John Christian Schultz and John Stoughton Dennis followed, the federal government postponed the transfer planned for Dec. 1, 1869. Riel issued a “Declaration of the People of Rupert’s Land and the Northwest” and on Dec. 23, 1869 became head of the “provisional government” of Red River.
Meanwhile, a force of some of those who had escaped from Riel’s men earlier, mustered by Schultz and surveyor Thomas Scott, a Protestant Presbyterian Ontario Orangeman, gathered at Portage la Prairie, but were quickly rounded up by the Métis, who imprisoned them again at Fort Garry. Riel appointed a military tribunal, presided over by his associate, Ambroise Dydine Lépine, of St. Vital, to try Scott for treason. Scott was convicted, sentenced to death and executed by a firing squad in the courtyard of Fort Garry on March 4, 1870.
In Ontario, it was Riel, however, who was widely denounced as Scott’s “murderer” and a reward of $5,000 was offered for his arrest. In Québec he was regarded as a hero, a defender of the Roman Catholic faith and French culture in Manitoba.
Anxious to avoid a volatile political confrontation between Ontario Protestants and Quebec Catholics, never mind Manitoba’s Métis, Conservative Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald tried to persuade Riel, who had gone into voluntary exile in the United States, to remain there, even providing him with funds.
Instead, encouraged by supporters, Riel entered federal politics and won a seat in a byelection in October, 1873 and was re-elected in the general election of February 1874 and re-elected for a third time in the Provencher constituency in a September 1874 byelection. He was expelled from the House of Commons before taking his seat. Riel and Lépine were convicted of murdering Scott in October 1874 and sentenced to death, but Governor General Lord Dufferin commuted the sentences in January 1875 to two years imprisonment. A month later, Prime Minister Alexander Mackenzie’s Liberal government granted amnesty for Riel and Lepine, on the condition that both remain in exile for five years.
Early in 1885, then living in present day Saskatchewan, Riel seized the parish church at Batoche, armed his men, and formed a provisional government and demanded the surrender of Fort Carlton. The North-West Rebellion lasted from March 26 to May 12 before Riel surrendered at the Battle of Batoche and on July 6, 1885, he was charged with high treason.
Riel was convicted, and the federal cabinet, with Macdonald again as prime minister, declined to commute the death sentence imposed by Lt.-Col. Hugh Richardson, a stipendiary magistrate of the Saskatchewan District of the North-West Territories. Riel’s body was sent to St Boniface and interred in the cemetery in front of the cathedral.
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