A Little Green

In Canadian Spy Story, David A. Wilson thoroughly and insightfully examines Canada’s struggle against the Fenians, nineteenth-century radicals also known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood. They recruited fellow Catholics who had fled to the United States and Canada to escape British misrule over Ireland. Cultivating a powerful sense of grievance, they called attention to the nearly one million killed by the Great Famine of the late 1840s, which they blamed on greedy landlords and a callous imperial government.

While some American Fenians targeted Ireland for subversion, most thought their native land too far away and too well guarded by the Royal Navy for invading with any prospect of success. Canada, a closer and more vulnerable target, offered a better opportunity for smiting the hated empire. Radicals hoped that their invasion would provoke a massive war between Britain and the United States to tie down redcoats and the Royal Navy, improving the...