Louis Riel

Geoff Hamilton, a former columnist for the Queen’s Journal, is a
Toronto-based freelance editor and writer.

Louis Riel, a 19th-century politician, mystic, and cultural icon, was
“one of the most controversial figures to emerge from the Canadian
West.” This brief popular biography covers the major events in
Riel’s life, from his childhood to his involvement in the Red River
Resistance of 1869 and the North-West Rebellion of 1885, to his eventual
execution for treason by the Canadian government. The book includes a
political map of the Assiniboia region in 1882, a short list of sources
consulted, and an engaging series of sketches and black-and-white
photographs of key figures.

The Riel story is told here in a rather breathless pitch—“He
struggled against unremitting injustice throughout his entire [sic]
adult life”—with the heroic protagonist set starkly against his
demonized enemies. This bias extends to the fabrication of patently
improbable speeches: the preternaturally villainous Lieutenant-Governor
William McDougall, for instance, is credited with “ranting” the
following lines: “Can’t you damned savages see that I’m here to
help you—to lift you and your people out of the muck of barbarism? I
bring civilization! I bring law and order!” Knotty historical events
are glibly reduced to instances of “greedy exploitation” and
“heroic resistance” in this work, and little sense is provided of
the motivating forces behind the narrative’s key conflicts. Not enough
attention is given to Riel’s mental instability and religious mania.
The deep ambiguities of his contemporary status as a national hero are
hardly broached, and scant insight emerges, finally, into his enormous
complexity as man and icon. Younger students interested in an
accessible, (over)simplified introduction to Riel may find this work
useful.