Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada: Mythic Discourse and the Postcolonial State

2: Canadian Myths and Canadian Identity

32 Controversy has dogged Riel and the rebellions for over a century, resulting not only in a dramatically diverse body of academic interpretation of their significance, but in their mythic deployment in the service of a variety of cultural agendas ranging from Francophone nationalism to Aboriginal rights. When Riel’s complete papers were published in 1985, J. M. Bumsted believed the project would provide scholars with a unique opportunity to study the man apart from the cultural images that had become associated with him; but he seriously doubted that such reinterpretation would have any impact on those various (often contradictory) images themselves.1 These simply run too deep. In French Canada, literary works began appearing within a few months of Riel’s execution, and in all cases Riel was thematically linked to AngloSaxon bigotry against French Catholics. This early literature consistently neglected the fact of Riel’s Métis ethnicity and subsumed him within the context of a broader Quebec cultural identity. Indeed, only one poem from the period immediately following his execution defied this tendency: George Lemay’s “Chant du Métis,” published in 1886, which clearly identified Riel with the Métis.2 The first two French plays involving Riel were written in 1886. Elzéar Paquin’s Riel: tragédie en quatre actes covered the period of time between the 1869 uprising and the immediate wake of Riel’s execution, spinning a narrative about anguish and deceit that ended with a conversation between Dumont and a number of other French Canadians in which the Chapter 2 Canadian Myths and Canadian Identity 33 canadian myths and canadian identity men discussed their hopes for ultimately seeing justice served. In the scene, one of the men addressed his friends in the following fashion: My dear friends, since the day we were so ignominiously insulted on the gallows of Regina, I haven’t ceased filling my newspaper with the most outspoken documents along with the most irrefutable arguments, together with the most categorical proofs, to demonstrate that the ringleaders of the disorders and uprisings—that the enemies of law and justice, of peace, prosperity and the glory of our country, between 1869 and 1870, and 1884–85—were the Federal ministers themselves and their subalterns in the North-West.3 In the play, Paquin presented Riel as a “martyred patriot,” and English Canadians as “fanatical,” “sanguinary,” and “francophobic.”4 Far less polemic than Paquin’s Riel was Charles Bayer and E. Parage’s Riel: drame historique en quatre acts et un prologue, which incorporated both relatively accurate and rather warped historical details alongside romance, humor, and action. Still, the play was an enthusiastic defense of the Métis and of Riel himself, who assumed heroic status. “If I am a victim of the dishonesty of my enemies,” Riel claimed at one point in the play, if instead of a pardon, it is the scaffold that awaits me, my martyrdom will be useful to our cause; it will serve to unmask their crooked politics, and my blood will be on their head. In all civilized countries no one is condemned without judgment. My acceptance will disarm my enemies. I will have my trial before impartial judges. The publicity of these debates, or the legitimacy of our revolt will be discussed, where all our grievances will be exposed, which will likely help our cause more than a desperate fight.5 French Canadian historians of the first few decades of the twentieth century generally assumed attitudes toward Riel that reflected established Anglo-Protestant and French-Catholic antipathies. George Dugast’s 1905 Histoire véridique, a work that was informed by the author’s own experience of having met Riel, portrayed the Métis leader as a martyr.6 Similarly, Jean Bruchési represented Riel as a casualty of ethnic bigotry in his Histoire du Canada pour tous (1940); and Lionel Groulx made use of the figure of Riel as a foundation upon which to launch denunciations of the narrow-minded 34 Chapter 2 attitudes of Anglo-Manitobans and their “destructive” public schools. The conception of Riel as an early champion of French and Roman Catholic interests was likewise foundational in works such as Adrien Morice’s A Critical History of the Red River Insurrection (1935) and Auguste-Henri de Trémaudan’s Histoire de la Nation Métisse dans Ouest Canadien (1936).7 Marcel Giraud (a historian from France) produced Le M...