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Rebellion on the Red

Broadcast Date: Jan. 28, 2001

Just two years after Confederation, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald is looking westward. In the spring of 1869 his government negotiates the purchase of the vast territory of Rupert's Land from its current owners, the Hudson's Bay Company. Neither party considers how the region's inhabitants, many of them French-speaking Métis, will react to the transfer. But they can't ignore the Red River settlement when a young, educated Métis named Louis Riel stands up for his people.

Macdonald doesn't want a territory populated mostly by francophones. To ease the path for throngs of eager English-speaking settlers, he sends Canadian land surveyors to the Red River region before the transfer is official. CBC's Canada: A People's History dramatizes the Métis rebellion that follows as the long-time inhabitants of the Red River settlement struggle to preserve their culture, their language and their land.

In short order, Riel and his supporters take over Fort Garry, the Hudson's Bay fort. They set up a provisional government to run the settlement and elect emissaries to negotiate the terms of the territory's entrance into Confederation. Riel's government must also deal with a violent and vocal group of anti-Catholic, anti-French settlers led by a group called the Canadian Party. After the Métis imprison many of them during the rebellion, a tribunal finds one opponent, Thomas Scott, guilty of treason. His penalty: death.

On May 3, 1870, the Canadian Parliament passes a bill establishing the province of Manitoba. Riel has attained many of his goals for the new province and its people, but he has not won amnesty for his part in the rebellion. Macdonald sends out a contingent of Canadian soldiers to ensure a peaceful transfer. But many of them are itching to avenge the death of Thomas Scott, and Louis Riel flees the province fearing for his life.

Rebellion on the Red

• Louis Riel was born in the Red River settlement on Oct. 22, 1844, to Jean-Louis Riel and Julie Lagimodière. He was the first of 11 children born to the couple; two children died as infants.
• Marie-Anne Gaboury, Riel's maternal grandmother, was one of the first white women from Quebec to venture west of Ontario, known then as Upper Canada. In 1994 there were an estimated 20,000 direct descendents of Marie-Anne and her husband, Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière.

• In Riel's time the Métis were people descended from French-speaking voyageurs and the native women they took as wives.
• Riel was Métis by way of his great-grandmother, a Chippewa woman named Marie-Joseph LeBlanc. All Riel's ancestors on his mother's side were white. Riel was, therefore, one-eighth native.
• In 1858 Riel was one of four boys from the Red River settlement chosen by Bishop Taché of St. Boniface to further his education in Montreal.

• Riel spent six and a half years at the Collège de Montreal, a school run by an order of Sulpician priests. The curriculum consisted of Latin, Greek, French, English, mathematics and philosophy and a dash of physics, chemistry, astronomy and botany.

• In 1866 Riel signed a marriage contract with a Montreal girl named Marie-Julie Guernon. But her parents refused to allow the marriage on the grounds that Riel was of mixed blood.
• After his schooling, Riel found work as a clerk in a Montreal law office. When Marie-Julie ended their relationship, he left Montreal to seek work in Chicago and then further west in St. Paul, Minn.

• In 1868 Riel returned to the Red River settlement to help on the family farm. His father had died four years earlier.
• At about the same time, the vast buffalo herds of the plains — the traditional livelihood for Métis — were dwindling. Many Métis were turning to farming, but they feared losing their traditional lands to white settlers heading west from Ontario.

• Despite Riel's young age — just 24 — the Métis saw in him a leader. He was educated, understood the Canadian political system and spoke fluent English. Most importantly, he identified with the Métis people and their cause.

• After the Red River Rebellion, Louis Riel continued to administer the provisional government in Manitoba while others negotiated in Ottawa for provincehood. Riel was awaiting an amnesty that would never come. On Aug. 24, 1870, as Canadian troops under Col. Garnet Wolseley approached, Riel fled for St. Joseph in the Dakota territory.
• Riel returned to Red River in the summer of 1871, but was forced to leave again when the Ontario government put a $5,000 bounty on him.

• Riel was elected by acclamation to Parliament in the Manitoba riding of Provencher three times in 1873 and 1874, but never took his seat. The bounty was still on his head, and the government in Ottawa announced Riel would not be granted an amnesty in Manitoba without fulfilling one of two conditions. He could be banished to the United States for five years or serve two years in a Canadian prison. Riel opted for exile.

• Riel then lived with friends in Montreal and upstate New York. In 1876 he suffered a mental breakdown and was committed in insane asylums for two years.
• In 1878 Riel was released. He took on U.S. citizenship and moved to Montana, where he met and married Marguerite Monet dit Bellehumeur. The pair had two children, Jean and Angélique.
• When Riel was approached in 1884 to help the Saskatchewan Métis, he and his family packed up all their goods and moved north to Saskatchewan.

Rebellion on the Red

Medium: Television

Program: Canada: A People's History

Broadcast Date: Jan. 28, 2001

Narrator: Maggie Huculak

Duration: 10:13

Last updated:
Nov. 16, 2004