The Riel Rebellion - 1885

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

Anyone who picks this book up because of its title will be in for a surprise, for it’s not just about the Riel Rebellion of 1885.

In fact, the book begins with a 30-page account of Riel’s Manitoba Uprising of 1869/70, and it is only in the second chapter that the story of the rebellion that gives the book its title is told. Frank Anderson, who wrote both chapters, has a breezy, journalistic style that suffers because of his penchant for putting in the names not only of key players but of supporting ones as well. Result: without an index one could lose track of what’s going on, a bit like missing the forest for the leaves.

To help clarify matters, the publishers have included some well-drawn maps and some well-chosen photos, both of which appear in appropriate places in the text.

To say that Anderson does not break new interpretive ground is true; indeed, he omits events that bear directly on one’s view of Riel, particularly those which occurred between the two rebellions. In 1876, for example, Riel managed to get himself committed to an insane asylum in Quebec for two years, an event surely relevant to his trial in 1885, in which the defense pleaded insanity.

But it would not really be fair to evaluate Anderson’s chapters as anything other than what they are. For a serious interpretation of Riel’s life, one must look elsewhere: to Thomas Flanagan’s Louis ‘David’ Riel: Prophet of the New World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), and to George Stanley’s still definitive Louis Riel (Toronto: Ryerson, 1973).

Following Anderson’s chapters is “A Soldier’s Diary,” written by Robert K. Allan, a civil servant from Winnipeg who joined up with General Middleton in 1885 and saw action at Fish Creek and at Batoche, where Louis Riel was finally bested. The main impression from Allan is that when the soldiers weren’t fighting, they were complaining about the food and general living conditions.

Allan’s diary seems a bit out of place in a series that seems to pride itself on avoiding serious documentation, but it is welcome nonetheless. Also welcome is a short conclusion which describes Batoche today, almost 100 years after the event celebrated in the book’s title.