|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
Date of birth: Place of birth:
Calling:
|
Photo : The Metis Nation of Ontario |
||
|
Louis Riel was the son of
Louis Riel Sr and Julie Lagimodière, both
intensely devout Roman Catholics. In 1858, Msgr
Taché sent the young Louis to Montreal to
continue his education, with the hope that he would
become a priest. But Louis opted instead to study
law with Rudolphe Laflamme, and then found work in
Chicago and in St Paul, Minnesota, before returning
to Saint-Boniface in 1868.
At the time, some 10,000
Métis were living along the Red River, most
of them French-speaking and Roman Catholic. The
descendants of unions between coureurs de bois and
Amerindian women, they lived by hunting and by
farming the fertile land. In 1869, the Canadian
government decided that the Métis farms
would be a good place to install English-speaking
settlers from Ontario, and without regard for the
rights of the Métis, Ottawa sent out
surveyors, who treated the local people with great
arrogance. Faced with this threat, the Métis
decided to resist. They set up a provisional
government for the territory they called (at the
suggestion of Louis Riel) Manitoba, based on the
principle of tolerance and equality among cultures.
The provisional government elected Riel as its
President. He decided to take over Fort Garry
(Winnipeg), and published a list of Métis
rights, to emphasize to the federal government the
importance of negotiating with them Manitoba's
entry into the Canadian Confederation. The
government of Sir John A. Macdonald was willing to
negotiate, but the discussions ran into a brick
wall in the spring of 1870 when the federal
authorities learned of the execution of Thomas
Scott, an Ontarian, by Riel's Métis.
Canada's English-speaking majority was never to
forgive Riel for the execution. On July 15, 1870,
the Manitoba Act made Manitoba the fifth Canadian
province. Ottawa refused to recognize Riel's
government, but agreed to most of its linguistic,
religious and territorial demands. Riel was
strongly advised to go into exile, and he left for
the United States.
During the 1870s, large
numbers of Métis sold their farms to move
farther west, to the banks of the Saskatchewan
River. But in 1882 federal surveyors once again
descended on them, and treated them just as
contemptuously as they had done in 1869. Outraged,
the Métis appealed to Riel, who was still
living in the United States. He returned to form a
government and organize resistance. This time the
Métis had the support of the Plains
Amerindians, who also saw themselves threatened by
the encroachment of settlers from the East. The
federal government refused to negotiate. It decided
to send troops against the rebels. The combined
forces of the Métis and the Amerindians
could not hold out against the better armed
soldiers, who were brought in by train. In the
spring of 1885, the uprising was brutally
suppressed. Riel was imprisoned and charged with
high treason.
The trial of Louis Riel split
the country's francophones and anglophones. French
Canadians, who had generally supported the
Métis cause, called the whole trial a
mockery and demanded that he be acquitted. He was
tried in Regina before an exclusively
English-speaking jury, and hanged on November 16,
1885. The people of Ontario, who wanted revenge for
Scott's death in 1870 and who regarded the
Métis as rebels, greeted the news of Riel's
hanging with satisfaction.
Even today, this is a
powerfully emotional issue. In early 1999, in
response to a favourable survey of federal Members
of Parliament, MP Denis Coderre introduced a bill
in the House of Commons to pardon Louis Riel. The
pardon would rehabilitate him in the eyes of
history and give him the honour he deserves as a
champion of the rights of the Métis and the
Amerindians.
|
|||
Province:
