The Golden-Tongued Martyr

Thomas D’Arcy McGee was modern Canada’s first political martyr, shot in the head on Ottawa’s Sparks Street on April 7, 1868, shortly after delivering one of his hallmark passionate speeches in the House of Commons. McGee has been called “the real father of Confederation” (by the Honourable Edward J. McMurray), the “Irish Founder of the Canadian Nation” (by the Honourable William Davis) and, more modestly, “Confederation’s poet laureate” (by Richard Gwyn). He was certainly a unique voice promoting inter-ethnic cooperation and cultural development as the basis for Canada’s “new nationality.” Yet, despite his eminent role in shaping the ideology of this country, McGee has faded from public memory and is rarely celebrated or discussed.

In his day, McGee was a singular figure—a journalist, poet, author and popular leader. He rose to prominence during the golden age of oratory, when the ability to carry an audience without the aid of microphones was vital to political influence, entertainment and communication. McGee excelled in the art of public speaking and was widely recognized as one of the finest orators in the English-speaking world. In effect, he was much more than a politician: he was an educator, a moralist, a scholar and a community force.

McGee’s shifting moods and opinions were controversial, evoking both admiration and sustained hatreds. During his short life, he supported positions as diverse as liberal intellectualism and ultramontane Catholicism, constitutional reformism and Irish revolutionary militancy, American republicanism and classic conservatism. His years of social advocacy contributed to his intellectual evolution and, ultimately, to a political vision that profoundly influenced the development of the new Canada. Following his death, his funeral procession attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners, likely the largest event of its kind in Canada’s history. (His cortege was honoured with three church masses, one in Ottawa and two in Montreal.) Even in 1925, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, his views and writings were the subject of a lecture at Toronto’s Empire Club, receiving repeated applause from the audience. But in the years since then he has sunk into oblivion, as if memory of this assassination could not fit with our comfortable image of Canada’s peaceable kingdom.

Recently, there has been some rekindling of interest in D’Arcy McGee. His name identifies several schools, a federal constituency in Montreal and a government building located close to the site of his murder. A popular pub adjacent to Parliament Hill is named after him, reminding us that one of his favourite activities was also a dire weakness. McGee is featured in a new exhibition on historic personalities at the Canadian Museum of Civilization—with an eerily authentic waxwork of himself dressed in period clothing and displayed near the pistol that likely took his life.

From a scholarly standpoint, the most important step to recovering our memory of D’Arcy McGee is a new biography by David A. Wilson, professor in Celtic studies at the University of Toronto. Wilson’s intention in Thomas D’Arcy McGee is to provide a study worthy of the man, his character, his contributions and his era. This first volume, Passion, Reason and Politics, 1825–1857 is both elegant and mature, a biographical tour de force.

David Wilson’s book is not another political hagiography, the life of a 19th-century St. Thomas. He does not ignore the complexity of McGee’s views or their contradictions. His style is polished: the argument flows without frequent reference to research sources. The footnotes show intensive consultation of archival and published materials in England, Ireland and Canada. He also gives warm credit to previous authors, research associates and academic theses, but his narrative does not become obscure or didactic.

This first volume is structured in two parts, beginning with an extended essay on the evolution of McGee’s political, religious and cultural ideas. Wilson is respectful of the man and his complexity. He notes how past biographers have searched to identify the McGee they liked, thereby ignoring aspects of his activities that do not fit comfortably with their idealized hero. Wilson rejects this approach (“How do they know if they have the ‘right’ McGee?” he asks) and instead draws a more nuanced portrait of the person who blended ideas and experiences from Ireland, America, Britain and Canada to create a powerful vision for political action.

Ambition, psychology, myth and technique were at D’Arcy McGee’s core. His energy was boundless, even addictive. He was always on the move, speaking, writing, drinking and galvanizing. This hyperactivity was an outlet for his enthusiasm and raw emotions, leading at times to the edge of paranoia even while propelling listeners and readers to an optimistic sense of what they could achieve. McGee was no mere philosopher: “his own deep and terrible passions kept breaking through the carapace of reason and moderation,” Wilson tells us. McGee’s declamations on one issue or another could push him over the top, calling attention to his views but also enraging opponents and even some supporters.

At times, McGee appealed to a mystical sense of Celtic brotherhood to unite his followers with a sense of positive identity, contrasting them with the darker forces of the Anglo-Saxon world. But this notion of “Celticness” was loose and ill defined, providing an excuse for nationalist prejudice directed against other religions or peoples. Wilson argues that McGee applied his notion of Celtic identity in a vague manner, more as folklore than as a formal theory of ethnic identity. By contrast, McGee’s style in writing and oratory was masterful, full of metaphor, clarity and wit. He conveyed his opinions with poetic brilliance—whether in journalism, literary scholarship or public lecturing.

The main body of this book focuses on the breathtaking range of activities that marked McGee’s first 32 years of life. He was active in so many initiatives and associations, wrote so much and travelled so widely that Wilson has wisely chosen a disciplined chronological approach for this biography. Thus he has followed McGee across 15 years of the disputed terrain of Irish nationalism, trans-Atlantic immigration, the horrific Irish famine and worsening conflicts with Britain.

McGee’s movements are still breathtaking. In 1842, he began his first period in Boston and New York as a journalist, lecturer, fundraiser and editor. He then returned to Dublin, again as a journalist, an editor and a political organizer. He evolved briefly into an advocate of “physical force” militancy in the Young Ireland movement. He then began a second period in America, this time as a genuine exile. He engaged in debates with the Catholic church hierarchy—undertaking a form of spiritual journey. And then, in 1857, he and his family departed for Montreal.

Wilson has not simply recounted these episodes. He has examined the context, arguments and players at work in each situation. He has described the logic and emotion of McGee’s motivations, exploring why McGee’s positions evolved over time. In so doing, he has explained why McGee said or did certain things that have appeared to other writers to be inexplicable. For example, why did McGee state in 1845 that it was the manifest destiny of the United States to rule all of North America? The answer, Wilson suggests, lies in the Irish immigrant struggle against “know-nothing” nativism and anti-Catholicism; McGee and others lavished praise on patriotism-obsessed America in the hope this would appease its anti-Irish forces.

Some readers of this volume may feel over-whelmed by the minutiae of details on sectarian disputes within the Irish nationalist movements on both sides of the Atlantic. What I find remarkable is how often these early disputes were echoed in later periods by Irish, British and other European social movements. The arguments over moral force versus physical force, broad unity versus vanguard minority, religious adherence versus secular commitment, parliamentary versus direct action, immigrant integration versus diaspora mobilization—these essential debates are ably dissected and revealed in Wilson’s account.

The constant reference point when recounting the details of McGee’s 15 years is the man himself. Wilson’s focus is on the roles McGee played, his changing views and, most important, the construction of his charismatic political outlook. By the time of the Confederation debates, McGee had evolved into a political actor who was pro-British, vehemently anti–physical violence, moderately conservative, state interventionist in economic policy, culturally nationalist, a defender of Catholic rights, a defender of other ethnic minorities and, always, an outspoken Irish nationalist.

There is an interesting parallel here with our own age. McGee did not believe that a person who crossed the Atlantic would forget the values and travails of the homeland. Due to the powerful anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments of America at that time, it was impossible for an Irish immigrant to forget his or her origins. Most immigrants maintained strong elements of identity from their homeland so that disputes from the old country continued to be of interest. McGee’s own movements across the Atlantic and his contacts with community leaders on all sides were an outstanding example of the emotional relationship between homeland and adoptive land. In our times, with international communications being so accessible, one cannot be surprised when new generations of immigrants remain involved with their former homelands, whether for social, cultural, economic or political reasons.

David Wilson’s first volume ends in April 1857, the moment when McGee’s life becomes deeply enmeshed with the story of Canada. Although McGee had previously visited several of Britain’s North American colonies, delivering public lectures and meeting with political and community leaders, it was in 1857 that he and his young family moved to Montreal, accepting an invitation to edit a newspaper and promote the interests of the local Irish community.

The decade that followed D’Arcy McGee’s arrival in Montreal is without parallel in Canadian history. McGee soon played a significant role as a public figure and an elected politician. At times he was at the centre and at times on the periphery, but he spoke and wrote in a voice that commanded attention. Wilson’s central thesis is that McGee’s early years in America and Ireland moulded the public figure that emerged on Canada’s landscape. His experiences with diverse political movements and parties, his vehement opposition to the Irish Fenian militants, his dissatisfaction with American society and his contradictory yet loyal relationship with the Catholic church were blended into an idealistic, tolerant and nationalist approach to a new Canada.

It remains to be seen how Wilson’s second volume will handle many unanswered questions from McGee’s life. Was McGee merely Confederation’s poet (to use Richard Gwyn’s term), albeit a forceful one, or was he a genuine political force? Was he the effective godfather of the alliance that carried the Maritime colonies into union with Canada? Was he the author of the special treatment for Catholics within Canada’s constitution—promoting the accommodation of minorities that is the essence of contemporary multiculturalism? And finally: who were the individuals who carried out the assassination of D’Arcy McGee in 1868 and what did they hope to achieve?

General readers and specialist historians will not be disappointed with David Wilson’s first volume. Not only a biography of the young D’Arcy McGee, it provides insights into many of the ideas and voices that shaped Canada’s early consciousness. It is also a valuable reminder of enduring conflicts that raged across America, Ireland and Britain during the not-so-distant past.