Voice of the Vanishing Minority: Robert Seller and the Huntingdon Gleaner, 1863-1919

Bruce Grainger is head of the Public Services Department, Macdonald
Library, McGill University.

This outstanding biography of Robert Sellar is important not only for
its illumination of the life and times of Sellar but also for its
relevance to the situation of the English-speaking minority in today’s
Quebec.

Sellar was a Scottish-born immigrant who worked at George Brown’s
Globe prior to accepting an invitation by reform politicians to
establish the Gleaner in Huntingdon in southwestern Quebec. Sellar
believed in free trade, the promotion of agrarian interests, and the
separation of church and state. He opposed Confederation on the grounds
that, separated from the Union of Upper and Lower Canada, the government
of Quebec would be dominated by clericalism. He was not disappointed.
Under the influence of an ultramontane Catholic Church, successive
provincial governments allowed education and social services to be
controlled by religious organizations. Sellar also believed the Catholic
Church directly contributed, by various means, to the steady decline to
minority status of English speakers in regions of the province where
they had been the original settlers. This claim remains a matter of
controversy among historians. For his opposition to clerical influence
and other positions he took as an active participant in the politics of
his county and province, Sellar “faced character assassination,
physical violence, legal harassment, arson, clerical condemnation,
disappointment and apathy in the dwindling community he was
defending.”

Although he married late, Sellar enjoyed a warm family life. As his
sons matured, he brought them into the business. In addition to his
newspaper writings, he published a noted history of the Huntingdon area,
various political tracts, poetry, and fiction. A plagiarized version of
his fictional Summer of Sorrow became a national bestseller in Ireland
in 1991. In addition to personal interviews, archival and secondary
sources, Hill has expertly used Sellar’s own diary and excerpts from
the Gleaner in constructing this biography. The result is an excellent
insight into the man and the political, economic, and social issues that
pre-occupied him and that still impact on the English-speaking
population in Quebec.