D'ARCY MCGEE
(Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Grace Hughes McGee)
McGee was one of the first visionaries of a pluralistic Canada. his advocacy of multi-ethnic unity and multiculturalism which brought him assassination at his home in Ottawa by a fellow Irishman.
This popular work was very inspirational for the Irish Republican Cause.
He also had harsh words for the American Fenians which he published and these attacks were answered with his murder in Montreal in 1868. The Fenians assumed that since he had been an Irish radical patriot he would support their cause. However their indiscriminate violence and terror against anything British including Canada turned McGee’s pen against them. The American Fenians actually tried to mount an invasion of Canada in 1868 and a pitched battle ensued. They dealt with McGee in their classic manner.
Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Grace Hughes McGee was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was a Catholic Irishman who opposed British rule of Ireland, and worked for a peasant revolution to overthrow British rule and secure Irish independence. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, where he reversed his political beliefs. He became disgusted with American republicanism and democracy, and became intensely conservative in his politics and in his religious support for the Pope. He moved to Canada in 1857 and worked hard to convince the Irish Catholics to cooperate with the Protestant British (members of the church) in forming a Confederation that would make for a strong Canada in close alliance with Britain. His passion for Confederation garnered him the title: 'Canada's first nationalist'. He fought the Fenians in Canada, who were Irish Catholics that opposed the British and resembled his younger self politically. McGee succeeded in helping create the Canadian Confederation in 1867, but was thought to have been assassinated by Patrick J. Whelan in 1868.
