The Stone Circle

The grounds of Saint-Boniface Cathedral Basilica, Winnipeg

Many years ago, a little girl with straight brown hair and brown eyes stood deep in thought before an imposing granite headstone; your headstone, Louis Riel. The details of that little girl's visit are very fuzzy now that she has left her childhood far behind her. She cannot really remember the circumstances of her visit to your grave, whether she came with her parents or on a school trip, as she was very young at the time. However, she definitely knows she lingered in front of your gravemarker and wondered why you were executed. Somehow she knew within herself that at your core you were a good and honest man.

I was that little girl and at that time living in Saint-Boniface where you were born and raised. At the foot of Coté Street, the intersecting street to Archibald Street where my childhood home is located flows the Seine River, the river where your father managed a gristmill with your Uncle Benjamin Lagimodière. I have no doubt Archibald Street is named after Adams G. Archibald, the lieutenant-governor who was sympathetic to you. Saint-Boniface is now part of the greater Winnipeg area with the Francophone and Métis cultures still very much alive on the east bank of the Red River and made up of the greatest concentration of French-speaking people outside of the province of Quebec. The former city of Saint-Boniface greatly enhances the cultural mosaic of the greater Winnipeg metropolitan region, a region comprised of many races and nationalities in this present day.

In June of 2004, I stand at your gravesite again and observe the stone circle that now surrounds your grave. This circle evokes your aboriginal heritage in that it is reminiscent of an Indian pow-wow circle, acknowledging your one-eighth Chipewyan-Montagnais ancestry.

Another difference to your grave is your portrait on the front of the headstone. That likely was added in 1992 when the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and the Parliament of Canada jointly passed a bill formally recognizing your contribution to the development of Canadian Confederation and your role as the founder of Manitoba.

The seasons come and go to teach men gratitude. The seasons have certainly manifested their cycle around your gravesite, Louis. The soft white flakes of snow in winter and the cold wind scurrying those flakes around your headstone; the fragrant spring breezes and soft spring rain; the hot sun of summer and crickets chirping in the velvet darkness of summer nights; the varicolored hues of fall have all played their part in embellishing the grounds of Saint-Boniface Cathedral Basilica in which your grave is situated. You have slumbered on with your loving wife and your two older children, those three souls you loved so well. They made you a happy and contented man if only for a fleeting time. Your third child, little Joseph, never knew the benefit of your fatherly love. His very brief journey on earth was measured by two hours and he is buried with you also. Your father and grandparents lie not far from you. They greatly influenced you, by bequeathing you their beliefs and sense of values.

In the century since your execution, many persons of all races and creeds have come to your grave, the greater number of them being Métis and aboriginal. Many of them have left floral offerings providing a splash of brilliant color, which softens the austere outline of your gravestone. Every November 16th on the anniversary of your execution, the Lieutenant-Governor of the province you brought into Confederation comes to your gravesite and addresses your people gathered there to pay tribute. He speaks glowing and appreciative words about your life and accomplishments.

By your work and activism, you wanted to ensure that all groups of people in the Red River colony were treated equally and fairly by the Canadian government, not just the Métis. You wanted a fair system of government, for the people and by the people. The city of Winnipeg which you knew as a rough frontier town with its muddy streets is now a cosmopolitan and bustling city of over seven hundred thousand people, "the Gateway to the West". This is the city in which I grew up and proudly consider as the home of my childhood and a small part of me will always remain there.

You are still a contentious subject of debate. You felt on the day of your execution that you had failed in your mission, and that once deceased, you would be forgotten and relegated to the murky shadows of past history, but that did not happen. Certainly, you still have your critics, but I believe that many people are looking at you in a different light now. Sensing the calibre of man you were and the intricate facets of your personality, however; you would still remain true to yourself, your resonant faith, your controversial theological ideals, and your people, the Métis, the people who were the foundation of your identity.

I am finding the exercise of writing about you to be very fascinating and absorbing. And as I meditate at your gravesite, I know a great deal more about you, based on my research and the reading of various books written about your life. In spite of your rebelling against the ordered authority and having to live in exile because of allowing the execution of Thomas Scott, you were a very engaging and human individual.

I fully comprehend the reasons why you evolved into a rebel; like you, I believe in proper justice and equality between the races making up a diverse society. Racism and exploitation has always been repugnant to me. We are all equal in the eyes of God. In an ideal world, such equality between all persons would exist.

Only God is perfect in his sovereignty and dominion; He is everything you perceived Him to be Louis, and much much more, a Being who cannot be adequately described by mere mortal intellect. You knew that first-hand during the course of your life as you experienced a very personal relationship with Him, much deeper than most; a man who felt with his soul.

Your dreams for the Métis were ahead of your time in so many ways, but those in authority at that time did not understand, and sadly, some do not understand even today in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, more people are becoming knowledgeable as to your aspirations in light of our present multicultural society.

Many would like to rewrite history as far as you are concerned but that cannot be done, history is not a revisionist exercise. You were tried and executed according to the laws of your century, a century inherent with political intrigues, undercurrents, and dissension between the races, all of this played out on the vast stage of the Canadian Northwest. Your life summarized in a very unique way the tensions of being Canadian: English versus French, native versus white, East versus West, Canadian versus American. You have come to stand for many things and represent many ideals to all people depending on their outlook as to issues and events embodying the turbulent times in which you lived.

The fact that you were a revolutionary in breaking the laws of Canada at that time cannot be glossed over. However, you had no choice in the matter given the duplicity and hidden agendas of the government you were forced to deal with. Those in charge in Ottawa committed many errors; there was a decided lack of communication and many misunderstandings on both sides. One author has persuasively argued that you were assassinated by the government because you were holding up land development in the West, a fact that rings uncomfortably true today in light of ongoing Métis and aboriginal land claims.

You were outstanding in your ability to bridge two very dissimilar cultures, native and white, in your idealistic vision of a just relationship between the two. You also represent the concept of western alienation and the upholding of French and Métis rights. You continue to hold relevance to a Canada that perhaps only now is coming to understand the uniqueness and importance of our native and founding people. Your life's meaning is broad enough to appeal to the type of society Canada has become. That Canadians may one day achieve your vision remains your legacy.

With each generation, your name has taken on different and varying nuances; as long as Anglo-Saxon domination prevailed, and the disdain of cultures other than the British and European, your name was belittled. Your assumption that native people and Métis could have a distinct place in North America was widely ridiculed. Those holding such views saw you as a traitor and misguided insurgent and fully believed you deserved the hangman's noose.

About seventy years after your death, the perception of you gradually changed; but it was still not very complimentary. You were called a "messianic prophet" and even likened to Hitler, someone with egomaniacal theories of religion and nationalistic fervor. You were accused of leading a primitive and ill-educated people astray for your own self-aggrandizement and self-seeking agenda.

What really is the truth about you? We will never know. You have left to posterity many writings, the product of a brilliant and complex mind. How your writings are interpreted depends upon the reader.

I would like to think that in the twenty-first century, the discovery will become evident that Métis and native people have their own unique worth, a worth that stands in sharp contrast to a world slowly spoiling itself through pollution and the merciless abuse of natural resources.

Many Canadians have now discovered in the manner in which you lived your life a return to a kinder way of living in which nature is honored and worshipped and the rights of all men are respected, a legacy from your Métis roots. With this realization will hopefully come progress towards your exoneration.

Throughout your all too short but dramatic life, you also personified a great spirit of defiance and sense of fair play to address issues in which you believed so very strongly. It would have been so much easier to cringe and endure injustice; however, mediocrity and passive acceptance was not your way. And I know you wouldn't have lived your life any differently, Louis Riel, if you had your life to live over again.