Out of the Shadows, page 3
“I’d like to believe you, Will,” the poker player said, frowning at his cards. “But I’m not so sure.”
“What about this fellow McDougall who’s on his way?” Emmerling asked.
“What about him?” O’Donoghue spit tobacco juice onto the floor, much to Emmerling’s annoyance. “We can run him out of town.” O’Donoghue paused and grinned. “If he gets here, that is.”
Then he lay down his cards. Three of a kind. He had won. Barely.
“Dutch, I think I’ll buy the table a round of whiskey. Make sure it's Irish whiskey.”
ST. VITAL, RED RIVER
Louis Riel rarely drank alcohol. The occasional glass, that was all. He sat in the small main room of his family home, southeast of Fort Garry, sipping tea and musing about the direction his life had taken and where it might be leading.
The modest white clapboard house hadn’t changed since his grandmother, the fearless Marie-Anne Gaboury, had decorated it. His mother’s mother, his mémère, was the first European woman to settle in Red River. She famously lived life on her terms, letting nothing stand in her way.
The home was full of family memories. Marie-Anne brought the crucifix above the bed from Trois Rivières along with the family cutlery and mementos. She sewed the placemat cushioning the teapot. It was weathered now, but precious. His grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière, was a fur trader, a coureur de bois. He chopped down the trees, framed the house, and sawed the now rutted plank floors. Riel assumed his pépère was better with a paddle than a hammer. Still, the building’s low ceilings and leaky woodstove kept out the northern chill.
His father was a Métis spokesman and leader. When Louis Riel Senior died it was the eldest son’s duty to, as the English expression went, fill his father’s shoes. But could he? While his father was resolute and sure of himself, he was pensive and prone to mood changes. One minute he would be at peace, imbued with the warmth of God’s love. Then, with a cold shiver, panic would strike, and his anger would flare.
Perhaps, he reckoned, it was his mother’s hot Gaboury blood.
Louis Riel was only twenty-five years old, of average height, and not as rugged as most Métis men. His complexion was lighter too; after all, he was only one-eighth Indigenous. The lines on his face were more from worry than sun or windburn. His thick brown hair seemed to have a mind of its own, and he would often brush errant curls from his dark brown eyes.
But people said he looked like a leader…his father’s son.
He sat back in the old wooden rocker mémère had brought from Quebec and savoured his cup of tea, a British custom he developed a taste for when he was a student in Montréal. His enemies never appreciated his interest in Great Britain. When he was at the seminary in Montréal, he had joined the crowds cheering for Queen Victoria’s son, the Prince of Wales. He admired the spectacle of the royal tour, although he knew it was a display of the Empire’s iron-fisted power.
He studied the British parliamentary system and Canadian federalism, which gave provinces control over education and language rights. That’s what he wanted. If he had a hero, beside his father, it would be George-Étienne Cartier who negotiated powers for Quebec that would have been impossible in the United States.
At the seminary, he trained to become a priest. It seemed a natural calling. His parents joked that his first words were “Jésu, Marie, Joseph.” But in Montréal, he fell in love with the beautiful Marie Guernon. No Servant of God should feel such desire for a woman, or such anguish when he was rejected by her family. The Guernons wanted nothing to do with a “country bumpkin.” With the loss of Marie, he lost the conviction to be a priest, but he never lost the certainty that God was guiding him.
Without God, he was alone; with God, he could lead.
At school, he confronted bullies and was loyal to his friends, but courage was not something you turn on like a tap. These surveyors were not schoolyard bullies. They had their own loyalties. And they had the power of Ottawa behind them.
His father never faced such challenges.
He gently placed his teacup on the table and looked up. The image on the wall of the Son of God suffering on the cross steadied him. He fell on his knees and began to pray.
Chapter 5
Toronto
Conor O’Dea’s mother died on the ship coming to Canada, one of countless Irish immigrants who fled rotting potatoes at home only to rot away themselves on a crowded, fetid ship. “Coffin ships” they called them. Before she died in his arms, Margaret O’Dea made her husband promise that their baby boy would get an education so that Conor would have a better chance in life than they’d had.
Thomas O’Dea honoured that vow. It wasn’t easy as an illiterate Irish labourer in a new and unwelcoming land. In the winters, he found back-breaking work in remote Ottawa Valley logging camps and in summers he tended bar in Ottawa’s seedy Lower-town. He ensured that along the way Conor received ragtag but effective schooling.
He hired the logging camp’s bookkeeper to teach Conor sums and arithmetic and urged visiting Oblate priests to instruct him on the rudiments of reading and writing. Though Thomas, embittered by his wife’s horrible death, discouraged religious dogma, the priests would tell Conor biblical stories and work on the catechism. Conor was enthralled by the parables and fascinated by the mystery. In the camps, Thomas paid a literate journeyman a small fortune to tutor his son. He worked with Conor on sentence construction, penmanship and grammar. And he encouraged him to think—think of his future, think of others and think for himself. Conor was a natural student: inquisitive and eager.
Thomas sent for books. Felled white pine logs tumbled down-river, and pages of knowledge were carted back on corduroy country roads. Conor devoured stories of adventurers, swashbucklers and conquerors. To his father’s sorrow, those heroes were primarily British. He also read books about English high society: fancy-dress balls, social intrigue and gentlemen’s clubs. It was a world he aspired to visit or even live in.
With each book he read, Conor was leaving his father further behind.
In the summers, Conor met businesspeople and politicians; two in particular, Thomas D’Arcy McGee and John Macdonald. They not only liked to drink in some of Ottawa’s more questionable establishments and spin stories with the locals, but they took an interest in this bartender’s precocious son. They introduced him to political philosophers, biographers and pundits.
For Thomas O’Dea, these friendships were worse than pushing a bruise. His past was too present. If the famine was God’s will, then to hell with God, and as for the British, hell was too good for them.
When Conor started to work for the Canadian politicians, Thomas fell into a downward spiral. He flirted with Irish rebels, the Fenians. After he hit rock bottom, his anger lifted—not fully, the pain would remain forever—but he recognized the cruel face of terror and the futility of hatred. He came to terms with living in British North America. Conor matured as well. He realized the source of his father’s anger and the depth of his sorrow. It took time—a Fenian madman and the assassination of Irish-Canadian politician D’Arcy McGee—for Thomas and Conor to reconcile.
Thank God, Conor thought.
Prime Minister Macdonald had actually invited Thomas O’Dea to be part of a Canadian diplomatic mission to Ireland, a bridge between the old world and the new. He was there now with his new love, the spirited Polly Ryan.
“Imagine that?” Thomas told Conor. “John Macdonald, the Orangeman, helping me out. Giving me a job.”
Orangemen were Protestant loyalists. Fanatics, some would say. They got their name from King William of Orange, who crushed the Irish Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. “Loyal true blue and orange,” the saying went. And there were a lot in Ontario saying just that, including Macdonald who saw political advantage in joining the voting majority. Thomas once hated Macdonald, and everything he stood for, but the prime minister—this Orangeman—had become a benefactor and a friend.
Thomas was across the ocean and happy now, and Conor was adrift in Canada.
Conor was ashamed of how he used to find his father’s uncultured ways embarrassing; he now recognized how selfless Thomas had been. And Thomas, who had been humiliated by Conor’s pretentious attitude, now understood that his son needed to shed the sounds and smells of the logging camps. They had to grow apart for Conor to succeed in this new world.
But succeeding was not easy.
Conor worked on his accent, losing the Ottawa Valley Irish twang; he shed the language of the working class, learning new words and idioms; he studied manners and practised deportment; and he became obsessed with clothes, even when he couldn’t afford them. For him, clothes defined one’s place in society. He could judge a man by the cut of his suit coat, the material of his waistcoat, and the age of his top hat. Meg used to tease him about his fastidiousness until she came to understand that, after a childhood of hand-me-down trousers and rough loggers’ sweaters, he had a right to want to look more Savile Row than Opeongo Line.
Conor wondered what they wore in the prairies. Warm, sensible garments, he assumed. And thick underwear. He shuddered at the thought.
He’d been renting a flat by the month in Corktown, a primarily Irish working-class community in Toronto’s east end. Most of Corktown’s men had jobs in the breweries, factories or brick-works, and many of the women served as domestics in the finer homes to the north. He had come to respect these hardworking, hard-drinking people—they reminded him of his father—but he wouldn’t dream of shopping for clothes in humble Corktown.
Mary Ann Trotter had mentioned a new store just north of the town’s main shops where one could buy everyday clothes at reasonable prices. He decided to give it a try. He walked west on King Street. King Street, Queen Street, Palace Street—this was indeed a royal city. St. James Cathedral heralded the town’s Anglican dominance, though the Roman Catholic St. Michael’s Cathedral was very impressive. Under their competing spires, the other buildings were dull and utilitarian. St. Lawrence Hall and the Opera House gave the city some flair, but overall “Toronto the Good” was a roll-up-your-sleeves and get-to-work place. No nonsense and no fun.
He turned north on Yonge Street, avoiding a speeding horse-drawn carriage and dodging the steaming horse shit. He found the store on the corner of Yonge Street and Queen. The Britannia House was the name of the building. Timothy Eaton’s was the name of the store.
He was greeted by Mr. Eaton himself. “What can I do for you, young man?”
Young man. Again. And this fellow was no more than ten or twelve years older than him. Before Conor could answer, Eaton continued, “Whatever you want, you’ve come to the right place.” Conor could see why Timothy Eaton’s store had a growing reputation.
“I am looking for some long underwear, to be frank.”
“Then you have indeed come to the right place. I have clothes that will keep you as warm as you need in our challenging and frosty climate.” Conor inwardly laughed. He was going to a place more challenging and far frostier than Toronto.
“Just so you know, there is no haggling here,” Eaton cautioned. “The price is the price.”
“Fine by me. If it’s a fair price.”
“Well put,” Eaton exclaimed. “That’s the kind of thing I might say.” Conor saw blazing ambition in this man, and he liked it.
“I’m going to Red River, and I fear it will be dreadfully cold.”
“Are you the man Mary Ann Trotter was telling me about? The one who got caught up in the D’Arcy McGee business in Ottawa?”
“Yes, I suppose so, but it was hardly ‘D’Arcy McGee business.’ I worked for Mr. McGee. He was assassinated, and I fear the wrong man may have hanged for the crime.”
“Yes, that’s you. Quick to the point and not afraid of trouble. I’m happy to dress any man Mrs. Trotter and her good sister think highly of.”
“Did Mrs. Trotter tell you about my relationship with her daughter?”
“Catholic-Protestant relationships rarely work out, I fear.”
“That wasn’t the problem.”
Conor was pretty sure Timothy Eaton checked each person’s religion when they met. Most people did. Eaton was an Ulster-man. His northern Irish accent shouted Protestant Orange while Conor’s lingering trace of Ottawa Valley Irish whispered Roman Catholic.
“I don’t see what religion has to do with me buying warm underwear.”
“You’re right,” Eaton responded contritely. “I was raised a Presbyterian, even taught Sunday school, but I turned to Methodism because it was more inspirational. That said, I would sell to you or anyone. I was just making conversation. So, let’s leave it at that.”
He led Conor over to the winter clothes section. “I want to keep you warm in the West, and when you return, I trust you’ll come back.”
He showed Conor some sweaters. “I sold a sweater like this to John Ross Robertson before he left for Red River. Reporting for The Telegraph.”
“I don’t know him. I’ll be there for The Herald.”
“Then you’ll be his competition. I suppose you’ll be writing the same story: denouncing this Riel character.”
“I’ll report what I see, not what I suppose,” Conor answered sharply.
Under his breath, Eaton muttered, “Hmm.”
Conor realized he had been rather rude. He softened his tone. “I think I will choose a warmer sweater than whatever Mr. Robertson bought.”
“Well done,” Eaton responded cheerfully.
“And some heavy winter boots.”
“I notice your shoes are perfectly polished, but a little tattered. Would you like to replace them too?”
Conor was mortified. “Just boots for now.”
When they had finished their transaction, which included not only boots and long underwear, but a sweater, wool cap and gloves, Conor could not help but ask, “Does everyone in Toronto know about Meg and me?”
“It’s a small town.”
“Why does anyone care?”
“Because…well, I don’t know. Romeo and Juliet, I suppose.”
“That was a tragedy.”
“Now don’t be melodramatic. I’m sure there is another girl for you.”
He firmly shook Conor’s hand. A good customer was an instant friend.
As Conor left the store, Timothy Eaton called out, “Stay away from trouble-makers like that Riel fellow.” Then he laughed. “Unless he wants me to fit him in a new overcoat.”
Chapter 6
St. Norbert, Red River
Just days after the confrontation at André Nault’s farm, the Métis Council gathered in Father Noël-Joseph Ritchot’s presbytery. Although Father Ritchot had been in Red River less than a decade, he was a powerful political force in the community. Broad-shouldered, with a mighty black beard, he cut a striking figure. He was almost twenty years older than Louis Riel but he had become his advisor, confidant and friend.
The priest watched proudly as the younger man took control.
“I accept that the territory was sold by the Hudson’s Bay Company to Canada, but it is still our homeland,” Riel asserted. “On doit leur montrer de la force. We need a way to talk to the federal politicians from a position of strength. That’s why I want us to form a wider committee, one that represents all the parishes.”
André Nault raised his hand. “A committee, what’s the point of that?” Nault was a quiet man who didn’t often speak up, so when he did people listened.
“To show that we have the people behind us, André. To negotiate.”
“Is that enough?”
“For now, yes. We need numbers to make Canada listen. We need them to understand that we are not poor, dumb driven cattle.”
“To hell with Canada,” William O’Donoghue flared. “Our future lies with the Americans, not the British.”
“I know what you think William, but I’m not so sure. As I said, The Hudson’s Bay Company sold the land and the Canadian government bought it. I don’t like it, but we can’t do anything about it. Sir George-Étienne Cartier helped work out the deal, and I have faith in him.”
O’Donoghue clenched his fists.
Riel admired William O’Donoghue’s dedication. The Irish Catholic didn’t just stand with the Métis, he urged them forward, but sometime, Riel worried, with too much passion.
“The Canadians have rights,” Riel cautioned him.
“So do we.”
“Of course we do, William. We have rights, we have manpower, and we have a just cause.”
Riel had thought through his newly hatched strategy. There was no way he could please the English-speaking surveyors and extremists who were taking root around Fort Garry. They were bit players anyway. He had to deal with the politicians in Ottawa. He was sure that George-Étienne Cartier, the powerful cabinet minister from Quebec, would be an ally. He’d seen Cartier speak when he was in Montreal and was impressed. The potential problem was the prime minister, the Scotsman John A. Macdonald. It worried him that Macdonald was an Orange-man, but he’d heard that he could be tolerant of the French language. He’d also heard that he could be stubborn. That’s why he needed to approach him with strength—leader to leader—to earn his respect and get his attention.
“We are a significant people who deserve to be heard,” Riel insisted. “This is our land as much as anyone’s. Canada has yet to claim it.” His eyes scanned the room. “I don’t see anyone named McDougall here. Do any of you?”
André Nault smiled—it was rare for Louis to tell a joke—then he asked, “If we’re seen as rebelling against the Queen, are we not putting ourselves in danger?”
Riel, who was often impressed how his soft-spoken cousin could cut to the heart of an issue, answered, “Not if we stay faithful to the Queen, André.”
