A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason Trials, and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion by Beverly Boissery (review)

156 The Canadian Historical Review Les deux chapitres suivants ressortent d'une approche plus ethnographique et se recoupent substantiellement. Le premier (chapitre 7) s'attache aux materiaux entrant dans la production, principalement le bois, important pour sa qualite et sa disponibilite, le fer et les metaux, de meme que les fibres vegetales pour les voiles et les cordages. Le second (chapitre 8) decrit les metiers qui transforment ces materiaux, soit leur contenu, leur portee, les outils et les techniques et, si possible, leur lieu de travail et de formation. Finalement, le dernier chapitre decompose la production par types de navires et en presente les differentes caracteristiques. Il s'interesse ensuite ala distribution de la production dans les ports des clients britanniques. Suivent des annexes interessantes comprenant des listes des navires construits (et enregistres) a Quebec avec les informations de base sur chacun, en plus d'une interessante presentation critique des sources sur l'enregistrement des navires. Une bibliographie plutot sommaire termine l'ouvrage. Malgre certaines limites de perspective, resultat de choix deliberes, cet ouvrage apporte une contribution tres utile a notre connaissance d'une industrie remarquable, en la decortiquant systematiquement dans ses elements les plus concrets et fondamentaux. Sur plusieurs questions (la classification et les types de navires, les installations, materiaux et metiers impliques), !'information est indispensable pour comprendre l'industrie avant meme d'elaborer des interpretations plus generales. S'il est finalement une contribution remarquable de cet ouvrage, c'est sans doute le nombre (241 illustrations) et la qualite exceptionnelle de l'iconographie, en particulier celle reliee aux techniques de production. MARC VALLIERES Universiti Laval A Deep Sense of Wrong: The Treason Trials, and Transportation to New South Wales of Lower Canadian Rebels after the 1838 Rebellion. BEVERLY BorssERY. Toronto: Dundurn Press 1995· Pp. xiv, 367, illus. $36.99 In governing Canada, the British were often insensitive and stupid. In their punishment of the benighted participants of the 1838 rebellions, Beverly Boissery shows them as vindictive and bloody-minded. While not a new lesson, these pages confirm their truly despicable repression of dissent and its fomenters in Lower Canada. Examples of infamy abound. Major-General John Clitherow, commander at Montreal, was appointed to preside over the military tribunal that judged the rebels. Especially insidious is the image of his bored brother officers, now judges, listening distractedly to defence arguments , doodling pictures of defendants hanging from the gallows. Book Reviews 157 Boissery describes the proceedings as show trials, a sop to blood lust and a travesty of justice. In a cast of villains such as Colborne, Clitherow , Christie, and a chorus of vengeful soldiery, venomous Englishspeaking editors, and hateful letter writers, the bogey man, Lord Durham, actually looks good. His treatment of the participants of the earlier 1837 rising seems generous; his foiled amnesty, wise. Boissery calls Durham's illegal Bermuda ordinance 'a stunningly creative solution .' In late 1838 and early 1839, such imagination, wisdom, and mercy were absent. The particular power of this book is its detailed description of the second rising and its consequences. The first part deals with the events at Chateauguay, Napierville, and Beauharnois, and the subsequent rout, arrest, imprisonment, and judgment ofthe rebels. The second recounts the fate of fifty-eight men judged guilty of treason, the grim process of transportation to Australia, their initial incarceration and subsequent assignment to private individuals on tickets of leave, and finally their heroic efforts to return home. Clearly a labour of love, this book is the result of a long and energetic commitment to justice. Noting an interest of more than twenty years, Boissery's familiarity with the subject is impressive. She even knows that the carpenter, Mr Bronsdon, inflated the costs for the gallows he built at the Montreal jail! Rarely faltering on detail, one surprising error is her belief that there was a bridge across the St Lawrence. In fact, no such span existed until 1860. Had the north and south shores been linked, the story of the rebellions would have been very different. Based on wide research of primary sources in both Canada and Australia, including government documents, trial transcripts, and personal papers, Boissery's reading of contemporary printed sources is also extensive. Though she...