Macdonald had planned to appoint him commissioner of patents, to provide him with spare time to pursue his literary work. The authorities suspected a Fenian conspiracy and swiftly arrested Patrick James Whelan. Whelan maintained his innocence throughout his trial and was never proven to be a Fenian. Nonetheless, he was convicted of murder and hanged before more than 5, onlookers on 11 February The service also provided bodyguards for government leaders and operated an intelligence service whose agents infiltrated the Fenian Brotherhood.
But his funeral brought an unprecedented crowd into the streets of Montreal. Held on what would have been his 43rd birthday, the funeral attracted tens of thousands of people. McGee is generally remembered as an early advocate for minority rights at a time when the politics of ethnic and religious identity were intensely fraught. By all accounts, he was a uniquely gregarious character on the political scene and a passionate advocate for Canadian interests.
By the end of his life, he had written 10 books. These included two works of fiction and several extended historical essays. He also wrote hundreds of poems in the Romantic vein, many of which were published in his lifetime. After his death, of them were collected and published by his friend Mary Anne Sadlier Madden. David A. From to , delegates from British North America met to share their opinions on union and, ultimately, to forge a new country.
Search The Canadian Encyclopedia. Remember me. I forgot my password. Why sign up? Create Account. Suggest an Edit. Enter your suggested edit s to this article in the form field below. Accessed 12 November In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published April 22, ; Last Edited November 12, The Canadian Encyclopedia , s.
Thank you for your submission Our team will be reviewing your submission and get back to you with any further questions. Thanks for contributing to The Canadian Encyclopedia. This pushed him towards revolutionary anti-British doctrine in his early years. In he visited home, and while sojourning with his father in Wexford, gave much offence to his countrymen in America by descanting upon the generally degraded condition of the Irish population in the United States.
In he was sent to Paris as a Canadian Commissioner to the Great Exhibition, and took the opportunity of making a general tour of the Continent. The same year he met his colleagues of the Canadian cabinet in London, to lay before the Imperial Government their plan of federation.
Indeed the grand project which united into the Dominion of Canada the scattered provinces of British North America was largely his own, both in conception and the carrying out of its details. His persistent opposition to the Fenian organization, and his bitter denunciations of the invasions of Canada, led to his assassination at Ottawa on the morning of the 7th April , aged 42, when returning alone from the Legislature.
But three weeks before, on St. Patrick's-day, he had been entertained at a public banquet at Ottawa. The assassin was captured, tried, and executed. McGee will be best remembered in Ireland for his Poems published in a collected form soon after his death , many of which are very beautiful — his early pieces being almost purely national, his later, purely religious. In the latter part of his life he evinced the most unswerving loyalty to the British Government, and entirely abandoned the revolutionary ideas and projects of his earlier years.
John Sadleir. From the moment of his arrival in Canada, he had preached the doctrine of "the new nationality"; and his eloquent advocacy did more than anything else to create the psychological basis for union. In , when the first cabinet of the Dominion of Canada was being formed, he stood aside, with Charles Tupper , in a spirit of rare self-abnegnation, in order that the claims of the Irish Roman Catholics and the people of Nova Scotia might be combined in the appointment to office of Edward Kenny.
In the first parliament of the Dominion, therefore, he was merely a private member of the House of Commons. But his claim to the title of having been the chief apostle of Canadian national unity was even then secure. Even before he came to Canada, he had begun to shed many of his youthful anti-British ideas; and in Canada he became a loyal subject of the Crown. In he condemned with vehemence the Irish-American Fenians who invaded Canada ; and in so doing he incurred the enmity of the Fenian organization in the United States.
As a result, he was assassinated at Ottawa, in the early morning of April 7, , by a Fenian named Whalen, as he was returning from a late session of the House. One of the most brilliant orators who have graced Canadian public life, McGee was also a writer and poet of no mean order. In connection with Confederation he published Speeches and addresses, chiefly on the subject of British American union London, Montreal, ; tr. Gladu, St. Hyacinthe, , and The mental outfit of the new Dominion pamphlet, He was also the author of Canadian ballads, and occasional verses Montreal , ; and after his death his poetical work was collected by Mrs.
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