Saturday, April 7 marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of one of the Founding Fathers of Canada – the Honourable Thomas D’Arcy McGee. In 1868, when McGee was assassinated, the Dominion of Canada was less than a year old, and rocked by his death.
Since McGee was a prominent Irish-born Montrealer and a member of the St. Patrick’s Society of Montreal, the society plans to honour him.
This Saturday, at St. Patrick’s Basilica — the church McGee attended and where his funeral service was held — the St. Patrick’s Society will hold a memorial service with a celebratory mass and speeches, followed by a wake at Hurley’s Irish Pub.
Almost all of Montreal turned out for the late Thomas D’Arcy McGee’s funeral procession on Easter Monday, April 13, 1868. Photo: James Inglis. Source: Library and Archives Canada, C-083423.
The day of McGee’s funeral, Easter Monday, April 13, 1868, was declared a day of public mourning. It would have been McGee’s 43rd birthday.
In freezing temperatures, at a time when about 100,000 people lived in Montreal, 80,000 turned out for the funeral procession. At least 15,000 marched in the procession itself to St. Patrick’s Church, led by members of parliament, senators, and other dignitaries.
St. Patrick’s Basilica, Montreal, Quebec. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
McGee was elected to Parliament in 1858 as one of three representatives from Montreal with the help of the Irish of west Montreal. He had been instrumental in convincing the Irish population to support Confederation, which they had initially viewed as similar to the despised English rule of Ireland.
Shortly before his death, McGee was expelled from the St. Patrick’s Society, but was reinstated as a member, posthumously, on June 19, 2012. Today, the society helps maintain McGee’s burial site at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery on Mount Royal.
To honour McGee, doors at St. Patrick’s Basilica will open to the public at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday for the memorial service. A piper will lead a procession of dignitaries and invited guests into the basilica at 12:30 p.m. Mass will follow immediately.
At 1:30 p.m., lectures will be delivered by McGee’s great-great-great-grandson D’Arcy Quinn and Mark O’Neill, president and CEO of the Canadian History Museum.
The wake will take place from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. at Hurley’s Irish Pub, 1225 Crescent Street, with hors d’oeuvres, live music, readings. Toasts to Ireland, Canada and the Honourable Thomas D’Arcy McGee will begin at 4:00 p.m.
You might be interested in my novel Man in the Shadows which was published in 2014 by HarperCollins. It is built around D’Arcy McGee’s assassination.
Terry Fallis wrote: “Gordon Henderson has written a cracking yarn that grabs you by the lapels and never lets go. I have friction burns on my page-turning fingers. History, mystery, thriller and the birth of a nation: Man in the shadows has it all and then some.”
Thanks for sharing. I must take a look for it.
Very interesting post. One quibble — I believe that “Founding Fathers” is the term the Americans use, whereas in Canada, the term is “Fathers of Confederation”.
You may be right. I used term text provided by the St. Patrick’s Society in their promotional material.
And McGee was called “The Prophet of Confederation.”