Red River Rebellion and Louis Riel

I'm about to teach a unit on the Metis, so naturally Louis Riel is going to come into play. He's an interesting player in Canadian history; he appears appears as number 11 on the list of the "100 Greatest Canadians" (a television special on CBC some time ago), three spots below John A. MacDonald, the man who chose to allow his execution for treason. At least he ranked higher than Avril Lavigne and Pamela Anderson... *sigh*. I wish I was joking, but yes, they appeared on the list. That's the problem with internet and call-in polls, huh?

The information I'm getting this from is, hold the laughter please, predominantly from a grade seven textbook. Now, I know that sounds silly, but lets be honest here - how many of you can really, honestly give a full, detailed explanation of the events of the Red River Rebellion(s)? Can you tell me why he was executed? How about what the rebellions were even about? I know a fair few would, and honestly anyone interested enough to read an internet history blog would likely already know, but... screw it, I'm doing it anyways. Now without further ado...

A modern depiction of Winnipeg.

Riel was born into a time of the first significant Metis population. Situated mostly in and around Red River Valley, close to where Winnipeg is today, the Metis were mostly of French and Native birth, meaning they weren't really a part of either group. Neither really wanted them as they weren't really pure, leaving them in some sort of weird cultural limbo. Nevertheless, they had a significant population in and around the area, and were starting to form their own way of life that took pieces of both parent cultures and morphing it into a new breed of their own, much like some sort of beautiful child, representing the whole idea of Canada as a whole. But don't forget, they were still pretty unwanted.

Meanwhile in Scotland, for one reason or another one Lord Selkirk was booted off his farm. Having no place to go, he set shore for Canada and purchased a great plot of land for him and his neighbouring displaced countrymen from the Hudson's Bay Company, the ones heading this whole "Canada" thing that was all the rage. Unfortunately for Selkirk, and, well, the Metis also, he purchased land that was most definitely already in use. The Metis had already quite settled in, but Selkirk had quite legally purchased the land. They both had a claim, and naturally, tempers ran high - just high enough to cause a bit of a kerfuffle in the Battle of the Seven Oaks. A fair few settlers were killed in the skirmish, as well as a couple of Metis on a battlefield that we can only assume was dotted with a few trees now and then.

Eventually tempers settled down, but it certainly didn't cure the problem much. The result was a fairly large Metis migration west, but their population was still fairly high. Meanwhile, Canada was looking to move out west, and they set their sights on Red River Valley. This idea led to a few notable problems; it caused the Metis to worry they were going to be assimilated into a British way of life, Canada knew they needed to step in and take the land, as the United States were keeping their eye on it as well and they have a tendency to take things. As well, the U.S. had been really amping up the trade, with the fact that a number of Americans were immigrating north as well adding fuel to the fire. Canada had to move quickly, and they sent a few surveyors to take a gander at the land, see if it's hospitable, see the people already on it, and declare it empty.

The man had hair as wild as his ideas.

The Metis were understandably worried. They were worried about the influence the government would have on their livelihood - they would likely have to change the manner in which their farms were planted (abolishing the distinctly French seigneurial system), they may be displaced, and possibly lose their newly created, distinct Metis language. It was a time of uncertainty; they had no idea how they'd even be seen in the government, as being neither fully white nor fully native. So when these surveyors arrived, here enters Louis Riel. Riel was one of few who spoke English, and he promptly told them to get off his lawn, Grand Turino style. For all his courage and determination, he was elected as the leader of a provisional government over the area. Suddenly it has appeared that the Metis have had just enough of being displaced and lorded over, and would really just like to settle in and have their own place. It was an honourable stand which out of context sounds hilariously akin to the plight of a sixteen year old rebelling against their parents. As a metaphor, it holds up - they are a newly born population rebelling against the fathering culture. Neat.

With his newly found power, Riel issued a Metis Bill of Rights and sent his demands to the Canadian government. However, this wasn't a fully backed by the entirety of the populace, and a schism occurred between the pro-Metis rights side and the newly created anti-provisional government "Canada Party." The Canada Party turned violent, and a number of them were thrown in jail, most notably Thomas Scott. Scott became belligerent, and either through a direct order from Riel or an unfortunate misunderstanding, he was executed. Shortly after, the government responded to the Bill of Rights and accepted a pretty fair deal; they would be able to have French and English classes in schools, a two school system for Catholics and Protestants, the Metis would be awarded a great chunk of land, they would send representative to the House of Commons, and Riel would be pardoned for the death of Thomas Scott. So there's some pretty swell stuff going on, and both sides seem to be pretty happy. Naturally, that's when the crap hits the fan - and it hits it with a vengeance.

John A. Macdonald - in what was probably an honest and reasonable move, I would bet - sends 1,200  troops to keep the peace and protect the newly situated frontier from American takeover. Unfortunately, a number of these soldiers were under the impression they were on a mission to beat the crap out of Riel and any Metis that happened to get in the way. A number of Metis are beaten quite badly, others sent to jail. Riel manages to escape to the States temporarily, but in a show of support, the provisional government continues to elect him as leader despite his obvious absence. After the smoke cleared, Riel returned, and set up his own government, issuing another Bill of Rights. This one went largely unanswered, and really set Riel off. General Dumont, a Metis General, worked with Riel to rally the outnumbered Metis into the Northwest Rebellion of 1885, a violent but brief uprising that focussed on attacking police stations. The army, in retaliation, sent thousands on the newly constructed Canadian Pacific Railroad to quell the insurrection, and after just three days, 200-300 Metis and their native allies surrendered. Fifty three from Ontario and thirty five native or Metis died.

Kind of an awkward looking execution of Scott. At least
put him against a wall or something, sheesh.

Here's where the story of Riel becomes somewhat polarizing. Riel was tried for treason, and sentenced to hang. Since the Metis have always been much closer to the French than the English (having many of the same customs, sharing a religion, language, etc.) the Francophone population desperately hoped for Riel to survive. The English, however, were naturally quite upset over the deaths of their men as well as the death of Thomas Scott from earlier. It became a rather politically charged decision, Macdonald having the ability to stop the execution. The fight for another term literally became of life and death. Having more votes coming from the English side of Canada, Macdonald chose to hang him as a traitor, much to the dismay of the French.

Famous Historical Figures Say the Darndest Things!

1. "Riel shall hang though every dog in Quebec shall bark." Macdonald's fears of French Canada's reaction to Riel's execution. 
2. "I am more convinced everyday that without a single exception I did right. And I have always believed that, as I have acted honestly, the time will come when the people of Canada will see and acknowledge it." The words of Riel himself. As it turns out, he was right - perceptions have changed drastically on Riel, likely due to the change of attitude on individual civil rights and tolerance that has marked the past several decades. 
3. "I have nothing but my heart and I have given it long ago to my country." This is an important quote in that Riel did not hate Canada - he just wanted change. He may have went about it in a way that got a whole wack of people killed, but... when maintaining his identity as a national hero that many people wish to do, that can get glossed over. 

Operation Mincemeat

Operation Mincemeat is one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" stories. Here we have a successful soldier who doesn't exist, used for a plot by men that worked with the creator of James Bond, a corpse-spy that fooled Hitler and his best men, and a British plot that saved countless lives by misinforming the Nazis to pave the way for one of the largest invasions of all time. If it were a movie and not a true story, it would be deemed too unrealistic. It's a tale of sheer luck, expert planning and dressing up the corpse of some poor Welshman. 

Now, for the background. The Allies wanted to attack Germany through initially landing in an invasion in Sicily, believing it to be what they called the "soft underbelly" of the Axis forces. However, the Nazis had this nasty tendency of defending their positions and killing everyone, a frustrating issue for the Brits. Obviously the borders to defend are massive, but that was largely a non-issue. Between any number of spies, wire-tapping and all sorts of espionage, it was darn near impossible to send a full invading force without the enemy finding out about it prior to the landing, giving them time to set up defences, move troops, and go all 300 on the attackers and hold the line. To trick the enemy, there had to be a plan of absolute sheer genius. Aaaaand enter Operation Mincemeat. 

The ID card of Major Martin. He lived by the motto
"live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse
...that can be used to trick Nazis".

Two men spearheaded an idea of tricking the Nazis into believing the attacks would not land in Sicily, but elsewhere close by, likely in Greece. Their plan was an audacious one - find a corpse, plant enough important (although faked) documents to make an enemy spy wet himself with glee, and hope it gets passed up the chain of command until it becomes fact, causing the enemy to move his pieces in all the wrong places. While on paper it sounds like a sound plan, there are an almost endless number of ways the plan would fail; the corpse wouldn't wash up on shore, it wouldn't be believable, it wouldn't be passed up the ranks, or worst of all, the Germans would read it, see it as a ruse, and prepare all the more in the Sicily believing it to be a faint. And then of course there's the matter of finding a corpse... that's not as easy as it sounds, unfortunately.

The dead man that was chosen was a poor Welsh guy with little family to speak of, meaning they could slip past the awkward "would you be so kind as to let us borrow the corpse of your son" conversation. As for the man, he died from accidentally killing himself with rat poison. He lived an uninspired life, with not much to make note of - in a way it's rather sad how his accomplishments in death, through no choice or decision of his own, far surpassed what he had done in life; heck, they blew out of the water the accomplishments of what most people would do with theirs, so maybe it's not depressing at all but morbidly inspiring. That or the most likely conclusion, being it's simply an interesting anecdote and I should continue on with the story.

Charles Chomondeley, a man who
from this picture alone you can tell put on
a quality, British, cracking good show.

Unfortunately for the masterminds behind the operation (Ewan Montagu and Charles Chomondeley) getting the body was only half the battle. If they simply put the corpse in the water with a number of battle plans the Nazis would pick it up as a fake faster than a blitzkrieg through Poland. Their job was to create a life for a dead man; they had to falsify documents, make up a personality, give him family, friends, an attitude, a rank in the military, bank dept, and every number of things that can not only be used to make him look like just an everyday military man but also things that can be completely verified. Montagu and Chomondeley slaved over letters to fill his pockets, trying to make him sound like a real man without forcing an air of honesty that would come across as unrealistic. After countless attempts and interference from higher-ups, they came to their finale - Major Martin was born from the corpse of an Welshman. The newly created Major was placed in obituary papers, had a sweetheart back home, money issues with his wealthy father, and an ID card with his photo taken (the photo was actually a separate man as the corpse was not particularly cooperative in the act of looking alive). He was also fitted for military dress, which involved the unseemly task of temporarily unfreezing his feet (he was frozen to prevent rotting) in order to remove his shoes to put on the tight military boots he needed to look authentic. I sincerely doubt Montagu had that particular moment on any future resume.

The New York Times listed him in their list of casualties.
The book noted it was the only time a fake man was listed in the
obituary pages of the newspaper. I thought this was an unnecessary thing to mention.

Now that the body was prepared (as well as a capsule to transport the corpse that was so notoriously difficult to sink and took so many gunshots when trying to dispose of the evidence it almost ruined the mission) they had to drop the body off in a place where they knew it would get picked up with the documents read and sent up the chain of command. The chosen location was neutral Spain - in particular, a part of Spain that had a large number of German sympathizers, as well as a prominent and high quality German spy. The hope was they would pick up the body, delay the attempts of the British to recover it, pass along the documents and return them untouched. Britain's plan would be to feign casual interest in retrieving the documents (too much interest would be showing their hand too much in the importance of the body, too little would mean it's obviously a fake) and eventually get them back to continue with their plans. The documents themselves stated an attack on Greece was imminent, 

with a feint to distract the Germans through an attack on Sicily - of course, it was entirely the opposite. 

Through a series of chance, the ideal people on the German side to pick up the documents and believe them (namely an expert spy to get them and an incompetent official to believe them so willingly), and absolutely ingenious planning from the Brits back home, the plan worked perfectly. The faked invasion plans made it all the way up the line to Hitler himself. On landing on the shores of Sicily some weeks later, they were met with just a fraction of the defences they had anticipated, the German army set up far, far away unable to reinforce. The Allied army crushed through the weakened line in an absolutely massive military campaign, with so much of the thanks going to a poor Welsh lad who killed himself while trying to bump off a few rats. 

Famous Historical Figures Say the Darndest Things!

1. "The German in Sicily is doomed. Absolutely doomed. He won't get away." Words from British WW2 General Montgomery upon the successful invasion of Sicily. 
2. "Joy of joys to anyone, and particularly a Jew, the satisfaction of knowing that they had directly and specifically fooled that monster." Ewan Montagu, one of the leading ideas men of Operation Mincemeat.
3. "In that case, we shall have to get the body back and give it another swim." Winston Churchill on the worries of the corpse not making it to the shoreline in Spain.
4. "Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin." The words on the gravestone for the created agent, buried in Huelva. 

The Dionne Quintuplets

They made the cover of Time. I told
you they were a big deal.

I was initially going to argue that the Dionne Quintuplets lived one of the few truly unique lives in all of history. In a remote town in Ontario these five identical twins were born, and equally shocking, managed to survive, defying math and medicine all the same. However, that only scrapes the surface on their one of a kind lives; they were taken from their parents by the government, put on display, and became one of the greatest tourist attractions of the world as the closest thing to a freak show without actually being, you know, freakish looking. What a unique life, yes? It made sense in my mind to say so, until I realized the one obvious flaw. 

There were five, so... it's inherently not unique. Really freaking rare, yes, and I guess if you judge them as one entity... ah, whatever.

Having quintuplets is kind of like winning the lottery, except the prize is crippling financial debt in place of extreme, sudden wealth. Having them born all the same gender is like also winning some sort of bonus "play again for free!" prize at the bottom of the same ticket. Having them all survive is like taking your replay and winning all over again. The statistics on this really are mind boggling; at the time the book was written (1970-something) there had been only a handful of cases of this kind of birth in recorded history. A quick wikipedia search shows a lengthy list of multiple births which would seemingly nullify the idea that this is such an anomaly, but note the dates - they're almost exclusively after 1960, the vast majority being post-1970. The reason is fertility drugs really messed with nature, so these births are considerably more common. The Dionne Quintuplets? They were well before - 1934 to be exact. 

Then there's the fact that they survived. These babies were so shockingly tiny that the altruistic work-for-often-nothing country physician, one Dr. Dafoe, that delivered them described them as "rats" in the media due to how inhuman their size was. Immediately they were put under incredibly intensive care; a change of only a few degrees would cause their lips to turn blue or their cheeks to flush, and in such a fragile infant, that could very easily spell death. They were miracle babies, through and through, but what happened afterwards is where the story goes from a stoke of incredible chance to absolutely bizarre. And kind of tragic. There's a touch of tragic in there.

I'm wondering just how many pictures were taken
of them individually throughout their lives... their entire
family photo album must be full of pictures of them
lined up as if to say "no, seriously, they're the same looking!"

The quintuplets - Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie and Marie, in order from barely oldest to barely youngest -  quickly became one of the largest tourist attractions in the world, right here in Canada. Because of this, naturally, money was going to play a huge role in their lives. The government quite quickly snatched them up from their parents, claiming it as an attempt to save their lives from germs and kidnapping. Their solution was to hold them in, as the author described it, a "plush jail" where they spent the entirety of their young lives. They saw no other children, did not leave the facility, and were under the supervision of doctors and nurses exclusively, with almost no intervention from their parents. They were not to be close to anyone that had the possibility of making them sick. They were, however, seen by massive numbers of people. Tourists would flock to this middle-of-nowhere town to see the kids, waiting an hour and a half in line just to see these five identical twins frolic around and play with toys. It was essentially a zoo, and the province was pulling in tourism dollars left right and centre. They weren't the only ones either; that country doctor that frequently would work for no pay? He toured all over the States talking about the Quints, making thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, their fame rose. Dolls were made with their likeness, they endorsed products, and all the while having thousands stream through the "human zoo". Their height was, oddly enough, during the depression, and they served as a message of hope and good news amongst frequently nothing but bad. People would leave their viewing with tears streaming down their eyes, apparently quite easily moved as they were born before the days of television. Their main doctor became one of the most well known general practitioners in the world. Honestly, they were about as big of a celebrity as you could be in that time. They were everywhere.

At the age of eighteen, they were returned to their parents. This was where I expected the book to take a turn for the better (the name of the book being The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama) but if anything it got considerably worse. They had a terrible relationship with their parents, understandably as they would surely have no social skills whatsoever. The father was incredibly protective and stifled the girls, but he had no real choice in the matter; they needed protection. When the girls would go out together, and they typically would as they were all they knew, they would be ogled (but not in the stereotypical construction worker way when he sees a woman pass by on the street) and stared at, which didn't help the fact that the girls were, understandably again, tremendously shy. Eventually they separated almost entirely from their parents.

Here they are a little older, where you can see that
they really are identical and not just similar looking babies.

Social issues were not the only ones, either; financial problems plagued the sisters as well. They were gifted large sums of money from the government but they often squandered them on gifts, failed business ventures or otherwise. Eventually they took simple jobs, sometimes as clerks at a food store. This they did separately, and fell into obscurity. They went from being watched nearly all the time to being a faceless member of the crowd. The psychological toll their childhood must have taken surely would have left them completely unable to fend for themselves. 

The first quintuplet too pass away, Emilie, died in her twenties. She had a condition that caused the occasional seizure, which required her to be under constant supervision. She was working in a nunnery at the time, and when the nun she was with went to mass she had one of these episodes and all alone she died suffocated by her pillow. Marie died of a blood clot during a heavy episode of drinking, as she was in a terrible mental state. Yvonne, the eldest, passed away from cancer in her sixties. The two remaining survivors live together still. 

I can't tell what this story is meant to be. It began as a miracle turned world-wide sensation. Then somewhere along the way it became messy, fuelled with greed, and ultimately disastrous. The result was five girls incapable of living a normal life after having seen nothing of the sort. Regardless, I put their story in this blog because it was a major event of the 1930s in North America. Plus, it was really freaking interesting, for good or for bad.

The Dionne Quintuplets were often told they would form a relatively effective indoor soccer lineup if they could find a proper keeper.

Famous Historical Figures Say the Darndest Things!

1. It's a shame I returned the book to the library as it was riddled with interesting quotations. I snagged this one from CBC's website, and it's the best I can do. The government said they would care for "all their normal needs for the rest of their lives." I just have to wonder what they would consider to be normal.