Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Thomas D’Arcy McGee was an Irish-Canadian member of parliament, known for being a compelling orator, and a man of profound loyalty to the British crown, much to the chagrin of Fenian elements in Canada. He would be assassinated by those elements a couple years after taking up office.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee was an Irish-Canadian member of parliament, who was known for being an impassioned and compelling orator who was known to be able to convince parliament to put aside their party biases for the good of Canadians. He was also, it seems, an embattled individual, with two failed assassination attempts on his life in Montreal and Quebec, and a third, successful, attempt in Ottawa. McGee’s life was ended on April 7th of 1868 after he had finished giving one of his rousing speeches to the house of commons. The scrapbook postulates that McGee’s assassination was the result of his insistent and firm opposition to an organization known as “Fenianism” (which seems to have been an extreme form of Irish nationalism) . McGee’s big position was that Canada should not be the one to deal with Ireland’s grievances, feeling that Canadians had fought for the same thing the Irish wanted: responsible government, and should therefore not be antagonized by Irish activists’ efforts.

What makes McGee’s story especially fascinating was that there was this whole conspiracy around his death, with the man who was executed for it, Whelan, claiming that while it was his gun that killed McGee, it was not he who pulled the trigger. However, the conspiracy went so deep that he knew he would never be safe if he ratted out his conspiracy-mates, so he took the fall for the murder. McGee was born on April 13th, 1825, and immigrated first to America in 1842, then back to Ireland to partake in what seems to have been a nationalist literary movement, then back to America, then to Montreal in 1857, where he would be elected to represent west-Montreal until his death. He had also held a couple ministries, one of which being the ministry of agriculture in the Cartier-MacDonald ministry, until the Dominion ministry took over. According to his memorials preserved by Mrs HJ Friel, he was a decently well-liked individual and an Irish nationalist, who sought Irish independence. The memorial (page 55) details how he went to America and saw how its democracy was super corrupt, and that imposing such a republican system on Ireland would apparently be worse than Britain’s control over the nation at that time. He saw that Canada had it better than the Americans, as Canada was deriving “nothing but advantages” from its relation to Britain, getting a “far greater amount of…well-secured liberty.” (page 55). Thus, he became a British loyalist, gathering great influence over other Canadians, and using it against all manner of dissatisfied elements with the British crown. He had thus seemingly renounced his Irish nationalist ways, claiming he was wrong to be a rebel against the crown, and committed himself with profound zealousness to making sure he did not fall down that path again. Based on his funeral procession, he seems to have been Christian (since that was the way in which he was mourned, though this connection might be a stretch). The reason for McGee’s assassination, I would argue, was his shift from Irish nationalism to British loyalism, something that the Fenian elements in Canada did not take too kindly to, if the three different attempts on his life are anything to go by.