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Reprinted from Riel: a Life of Revolution

There was still one other avenue of appeal that Riel’s lawyers would try–the judicial committee of the Privy Council in London, England.

Riel would have liked to engage in his own debate, but his jailers allowed no political writing at all to leave the prison; only letters to his family were permitted, and they were heavily censored. He did manage to smuggle one document out via his lawyer Lemieux. It was a petition “To His Excellency [Grover] Cleveland President of the United States and to His excellency’s Cabinet”, explaining the history of the Red River Resistance, the saga of his promised amnesty and the justification for his actions during the North-West Rebellion. He proposed that Métis and Indian territory be made one vast region under the protection of the U.S. government.

Louis must have known that an American invasion at this point was wishful thinking. A short time later, he sent the authorities a note requesting that, upon his execution, his body be given into the care of Father André and that it be sent back to St. Boniface.

Indeed, as his diaries reveal, he had become obsessed with death, in an eccentric love-hate relationship that seemed to horrify but comfort him at the same time.
Death has gained a day on me since yesterday.
Death is now busily taking today away from me.
Death is stealing my time as fast as the pendulum of
the clock can count the seconds. My God, help me to get ready.

Death hovers over me like a great bird of prey hovering
over a chicken that it wants to carry off.
Death keeps guard at the door of my cell.
Death peers at me behind my prison bars.
Death watches at my door like a Labrador retriever
keeping watch in front of the house.

September 17 was the second birthday of the Riels’ little girl and also the day Riel’s execution was postponed from the original date, September 18, to October 16. Louis wrote to his wife:
My little girl, Marie-Angélique, at two years old, can pronounce my name with a joyful smile of hope and contentment. Thank God for September 17, the birthday of your little Marie-Angélique. Thank God for the day when His Holiness deigns to bestow his grace so charitably; the day that was the eve of my death has been changed to a day of thankfulness. And you, my dear Marguerite; pray to the good Lord that he receives my thanks.

Louis must have been worried about his wife. She was having a difficult pregnancy and as a result had not been able to visit him. He did write her occasionally, but his letters were never passionate or very loving, although he may simply have been protecting her from embarrassment since she was illiterate and all his correspondence had to be read to her and read by censors, too. A poem written about this time, oddly in English, says a great deal about the relationship; he remained a combination father, teacher, messiah. How much he was the lover was only hinted at:

Margaret: be fair and good.
Consider the sacred wood
On which the perfect Jesus
Died willingly to save us.

Truly Christ will save us all
Believe it: and hear his call.
His spirit always teaches you
What your dear soul has to do….

The body dies: but not the soul.
Perhaps tonight death on its roll
Will in a sudden call our names
To stand before God with our shames.
Begin the work which is thine own.
Amongst your friends you are alone
If you miss god, by doing wrong.
Life is short: the next is long

Margaret! we be the prey
Of bad spirits? no let us pray….
Be sweet to my words: and listen
When I write you with a golden
Pen

The Riel family had not told Louis how ill his wife really was. Her ordeal at Batoche had taken a terrible toll, and Louis’s trial had also done its damage. On October 21, Marguerite would give birth to the couple’s third child, a little boy, but the infant lived for only two hours. Marguerite herself was near death. It was another shattering blow for Louis, and his letter to Henriette was full of anguish:
The pain that I feel at seeing my little, little one taken away from me, without my even being able to cover him with tenderness penetrates to the depth of my soul. At the same time, I thank God for having, in his charity, let the baby live a few hours just long enough to be baptized. The holy water on his forehead and the holy words on his very little soul made him a child of God.

At the instant of the baby’s death, Riel had a vision of him. “He appeared to me on earth for only a fleeting moment and only long enough for me to make the sign of the cross. The tragedy was almost too much for Riel. He scribbled in his diary: “Now, O my God, we need the benefit of Your paternal mercy; for my wife lies on a sickbed…. And as for me–O my God, I am condemned to death!”

As he waited out the long, lonely hours in his jail cell, Riel’s writings were his one comfort. Yet he included no entries in his diary during the month of September. Father André was visiting him frequently, and under his close scrutiny Louis may not have felt free to express himself. In the last entry for August, he wrote, “Circumstances make it preferable to do what I would prefer not to do,” and for weeks after he wrote nothing.

By October, though, he was back in full swing as the irrepressible prophet, all restraint forgotten.
October 2, 1885
God made me see that I was climbing the holy mountain step by step. Mankind was to help me ascend it. The things me were doing on my behalf put me in a joyful and encouraging state of mind. Although I was walking carefully, I was serene, not anxious. Gigantic forces were going ahead of me. Without appearing to do so, I was guiding them.

The rest of the diary is a melange of prophecies, revelations, parables. His dreams were full of people he had known. “My brother Charles is a famous jurist. His books are recognized everywhere. He dies of old age. His hair is white, but of a whiteness kind and pure.” “I saw Eastwood Jackson. The bed that I had made for his politics was rather hard.” The journal also contained a meditation on temperance, a lengthy game of renaming everything he could think of–”God wants the Big Dipper to be called the ‘Fabien Barnabé’, God wants the North Star to be called ‘Henriette’, God wants the planet Saturn to be called ‘Sophia’”–and a restructuring of the international order–”God revealed to me that He would be pleased to see the two Englands [Great Britain and the United States] enter into a legislative union to further their interests in commerce and world affairs.” What is lacking in these last entries is any terror of death, any pleading for his soul to be saved. Either he had reconciled himself to his Riel received word of a postponement of his execution to October 22; by then his lawyer Fitzpatrick was on his way to London to argue his application to appeal before the judicial committee of the Privy Council. It was a long, involved constitutional argument which didn’t seem to make much impression on the court. On October 22, leave to appeal was denied. The crown hadn’t even bothered to submit a brief.

The ball had now been bounced back into Sir John A. Macdonald’s court and he was forced to grant yet another postponement.

The jury in the Riel trial had done a great disservice, the prime minister felt, when they recommended clemency. It would have been so much more expedient if they had just decided to hang the man. The protest in Quebec had not died down as he had predicted. Petitions, telegrams, letters demanding Riel’s life be saved were flooding into his office daily. And they weren’t just from French Canadians; the bid to save Riel was now an international cause célèbre. Eight hundred people in Chicago appealed for the remission of the death sentence. From Holyoke Massachusetts; Nashua, New Hampshire; St. Paul, Minnesota; St Louis, Missouri came outraged telegrams pleading for the Métis. French intellectuals and German counts sent cables. Even Chinese revolutionaries sent protests.

But, of course, there was the other side, opponents of Riel who were vicious and threatening. The Orangemen of English Canada, remembering Thomas Scott, were adamant that Riel be hanged, and on schedule. Even before the trial, some had suggested that he be executed no matter what the verdict. If the government didn’t do the job, they’d lynch him. A letter from the Orangeman J.C. Gilroy to the prime minister was typical. If Riel was hanged, he wrote, “in a few months there will be the greatest rebellion, one of the mightiest struggles for freedom and liberty from French domination by the loyal, intelligent, Protestant people of Ontario that our beloved Dominion had ever witnessed.”

Riel had an opinion, of course, as to what Madconald should do (in English).
This
is
Sunday, eighteenth of october
Eighty five
If Sir John does not remember
that it is right to keep me alive.
If he does not let me go free;
If he does not open to me
The Hustings, to work and to speak,
He will become so sick and weak
that he will cease to be member
of the House, and he will have to eat
the bitter fruit of his defeat
Before any cucomber
Next summer can florish
For his dish.

Macdonald had never had any intention of saving Louis Riel’s life. He had been terribly embarrassed by the tiresome rebel during and after the Red River resistance. Now, seventy years old, exhausted from the prolonged battle to save the CPR, longing for retirement, he had run out of patience. Still, he had to somehow appease the outraged people of Quebec and the French-Canadian members of his party. The answer he finally came up with was the appointment of a medical commission to judge once and for all whether Riel was insane, whether he knew right from wrong–now, not at the time of the rebellion. It was a political farce. Macdonald, the great master of manipulation, fully intended to pull the strings of the two puppets he appointed. He wrote that the job shouldn’t take more than three or four days. He added that the doctors should interview Riel and others (as few as possible), until “you are convinced that Riel knows right from wrong and is an accountable being.” This would not exactly make for an Before the commissioners arrived, NWMP surgeon Augustus Jukes was invited to give his opinion, since he had been Riel held as a prisoner in a Mountie jail many times. He dutifully telegraphed on November 6 that the prisoner was eccentric but not insane. Jukes had grown to like Riel. “For my own part I confess I should be well pleased if justice and popular clamour could be satisfied without depriving this man of life….” But a few days later, Jukes suddenly changed his mind, and telegraphed that he now felt it essential that Riel’s writings should be studied by another commission before his sanity was decided on. Sir John A. ignored the second recommendation.

By this time the two physicians appointed to the commission were rushing to Regina.

Dr. Michael Lavell had been a professor of obstetrics but was now the warden of the Kingston Penitentiary. “You have under your charge criminal lunatics and are, therefore, an expert,” the prime minister said, justifying his appointment. What he didn’t write was that, as historians Bob Beal and Rod Macleod have pointed out, “Lavell was a staunch Tory from Macdonald’s own constituency who could be counted on to do the right thing.” Posing as a newspaper reporter, Lavell chatted with Louis. There was no doubt in his mind that the condemned man was quite sane. Riel, wrote the doctor, had “a manly expression of countenance, sharp eyes, intelligent and pleasing address. His conversational prowess was remarkable….”

It had been obligatory for Macdonald to include a French Canadian on the commission. Dr. François-Xavier Valade of Ottawa certainly appeared to be someone who was pliable. As Beal and Macleod concluded, “he had no special training or experience in cases of insanity; he was relatively young and could be expected to defer to the older Lavell; he was a protégé of Caron, Macdonald’s most loyal Quebec cabinet minister; and, best of all, he was on the government payroll, making over $1,000 a year testing food samples for the Inland Revenue Department.” But unexpectedly, he refused to play the role Macdonald had assigned him.

Valade also interviewed Riel without telling him he was a doctor, and he had long talks with Father André. His findings were quite different from those of his older colleague.
After having examined carefully Riel in private conversation with him and by testimony of persons who take care of him, I have come to the conclusion that he is not an accountable being, that he is unable to distinguish between wrong and right on political and religious subjects, which I consider well-marked typical forms of insanity under which he undoubtedly suffers, on other points I believe him to be sensible and can distinguish right from wrong.

Valade’s report could have created embarrassing problems for Macdonald’s government, if Lieutenant-Governmor Dewdney hadn’t simply deleted all the facts about not being able to distinguish right and wrong in political and religious matters. In his telegram Dewdney simply said that Valade’s and Lavell’s reports were essentially the same–both considered that Riel understood right from wrong–except for minor semantic differences. The House of Commons would see only the falsified report.

On Wednesday November 11, Macdonald’s Cabinet met. There was some debate; the French-Canadian members were hesitant, especially J.A. Chapleau, Riel’s old schoolmate. Now secretary of state in Macdonald’s Cabinet, he had stayed up all night composing his resignation letter, but at the last moment decided against presenting it because, he said, it might promote “a racial war”.

Rodrigue Masson, the son of Louis Riel’s old patron, was trying everything he could to save the Métis leader. Masson was now Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, and so could not make his feelings public, but he discreetly approached Sir John and pleaded with him to change his mind. “In this day and age the death penalty is not applicable to this kind of crime.” Masson warned Macdonald of the dire political consequences; he predicted that both Liberal and Conservative forces in Quebec would combine to form a nationalist movement. In fact what he foresaw was the creation of the Parti National and the obliteration of the Conservative Party in Quebec for the next hundred years. The Prime Minister of Canada would listen to none of this advice. He growled an answer that would echo down through history: “He shall hang though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour.”

The next day, November 12, a special messenger bearing the governor-general’s warrant for execution left Ottawa for Regina. Even Riel’s lawyers didn’t know the decision had been made. Lemieux sent Louis a telegram on Friday November 13: “If no respite is granted by Saturday then write … parting words…. Courage. FXL.”

Riel had already written his will–two versions of it. The first draft contained a list of political grievances against the state and argued that the government as his executioner had a financial responsibility to his family. If such money was forthcoming, he would ask that a chapel in honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another for the Sacred Heart of Mary be erected and he entrusted this task to his wife, his family and André. He also listed his debts to various people in Benton, Montana, and Montreal, including the $250 he still owed the long-deceased Father Fabien Barnabé; it was to go to his estate, meaning Evelina. All of this was missing in the second draft, which was simply the testament of a good Christian. He made peace with the Catholic church; he bade farewell to his “good and tender mother who loved me so much and who had such good Christian love for me”; and he insisted he bore no grudges or hatred against those “who persecuted me … who made a mockery of the process and who condem At seven p.m. on November 15, the messenger sent by Ottawa arrived at Regina. Riel was told immediately that he would be executed the next day.

Reprinted from Riel: a Life of Revolution, Toronto: HarperCollins, 1995. pp. 437-443.

 

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