review of book on Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont

    'Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont' by Joseph Boyden, with an introduction by John Ralston Saul. Part of the series titled 'Extraordinary Canadians'. Penguin. 240pp.


     In Canada it seems some things never change. What turns on Quebec turns off the rest of Canada. And vice versa. Also First Nations people often squat at the bottom the Canadian mosaic. Take the story of Louis Riel, the sometimes  visionary leader of the Metis and his military assistant, Gabriel Dumont. The Metis are a part First Nations, part European people.
   In this  book ably told by novelist Joseph Boyden, Riel takes on the Canadian government, first in Manitoba in 1870, and then in alliance with Dumont, in Saskatchewan in 1885.
     Both face offs end in Metis defeats. "To the men in Ottawa," writes Boyden, "the mixed bloods are insolent and stubborn. The Metis represent two painful thorns in Canadian Prime Minister John. A. MacDonald's feet as he attempts his Anglo-Saxon stride to the Pacific."
     So MacDonald and the Canadian army sweep the Metis out of the way. Riel orders Thomas Scott, a fanatical anti-Cayholic, anti-Metis Protestant to be shot dead in the Metis revolt of 1870. Orangemen Protestants in Ontario freak out. Then in 1885, the Canadian army defeat Riel and Dumont's Metis soldiers at the Battle of Batoche. After a short, totally unfair trial, Riel is condemned to death. French-Canadians in Quebec and elsewhere, and many others around the world, plead for the Canadian government to scrap the death sentence.
    But Prime Minister MacDonald won't listen. "He shall hang," says MacDonald of Riel, "though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour." Once Riel hangs, the French Canadians go ballistic and rarely vote for MacDonald's party, the Conservatives ever again.
     Author Joseph Boyden wisely spends most of the book on the Battle of Batoche and the trial of Riel. As he points out, compared to the massive trench battles of the First World War, Batoche was a mere skirmish. At the battles of Vimy Ridge and Ypres during  World War One, thousands of Canadians were killed, sometimes in a single day. And at Batoche? Maybe five or six soldiers died. This was sad but not tragic.
      Dumont by the way survived and lived away from Canada for quite some time.
      Since this book came out, the Idle No More movement has surfaced . Also a recent court decision has ruled that the Meis and non-status Indians are Indians under the Constitution Act and so may be entitled to benefits paid to status Indians.
     Yet despite all of tthese hopeful signs, the French-English divide still slices through Canadian politics. In the last Quebec provincial election, the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois ended up as the government, and is still committed to taking Quebec out of Canada.And the majority of Canadians don't like the Idle No More movement or Chief Theresa Spence who fasted to force the Canadian government to listen to First Nations demands.
    As the motto of the London-based 'Times' newspaper used to say, "Times change, values don't."Boyden's book fills us in on  a turning point in Canadian history that explains much of the politics of to-day.