Encountering Riel

Riel is the hinge figure of Canadian history: Métis leader, Manitoba's founder, and the man whose execution still shapes debates about Indigenous rights and federal power. Orr gives you the trial transcripts, the asylum years, and the politics without the textbook varnish. Read it if you think you know Canada's founding story—or if you've never been told the Métis side of it.

1. 1early chapters on the Red River Resistance

   Red River: the resistance that built a province

   In 1869 the Hudson's Bay Company transfers Rupert's Land to Canada, and surveyors arrive at Red River before anyone has consulted the Métis who live there. Louis Riel, twenty-five years old, organizes armed Métis patrols, turns the surveyors back, and seizes Fort Garry. He proclaims a provisional government and draws up a list of rights to take to Ottawa. The outcome is the Manitoba Act of 1870, which brings Métis land guarantees and French-language protections into Confederation—Manitoba enters Canada as a province shaped by the resistance that created it.

   The idea

   Manitoba exists because a young Métis leader refused to let a land transfer happen over his people's heads. The provisional government wasn't a rebellion against Confederation so much as a demand to be part of it on negotiated terms. What surprises readers is how much of the modern province—bilingual institutions, guaranteed land allotments—traces directly to the list of rights Riel's government drafted. The resistance succeeded on its own terms, which is exactly why the federal government spent the next decade making sure it could never happen again.

   Try this: Look up the Manitoba Act's land-grant clauses and compare them to what the federal government actually delivered to Métis families in the 1870s.

2. 2chapters on Riel's exile and the 1874 election

   The exile who kept getting elected

   After the execution of Thomas Scott in 1870, Riel flees Red River with a price on his head and a federal amnesty that keeps failing to arrive. He is elected to the House of Commons for Provencher in 1873, and again in 1874—while in exile. In 1874 he actually travels to Ottawa, signs the membership register in the Clerk's Chamber of the House of Commons, and then vanishes before he can be formally introduced, fleeing a warrant sworn out by an Orange opponent. He never takes his seat.

   The idea

   A man who could not safely stand on Canadian soil kept winning Canadian elections. The pattern tells you something about both sides: Métis voters in Provencher considered Riel their legitimate representative, and the political establishment considered him a fugitive murderer. The register-signing episode is the strangest moment—Riel technically fulfilling the forms of parliamentary citizenship while the machinery of arrest moved around him. It's the clearest picture of a country trying to have him both ways.

   Try this: Read the 1874 register entry and the warrant episode side by side and ask what 'representation' meant when the elected man couldn't appear.

3. 3chapters on Riel's confinement, 1876–1878

   Two asylums and a mission from God

   In 1876, friends and family maneuver Riel into Quebec, where he is committed under the name Louis David to an asylum in Longue Pointe near Montreal. He is later transferred to the Beauport asylum outside Quebec City, and stays until 1878. During these years he believes he has been chosen by God for a mission to the Métis people. He is released on the condition that he keep the peace, and he drifts to the American side, working in Montana as a teacher and agent of acculturation for the Jesuits among the Blackfeet.

   The idea

   The asylum years are the period Riel's enemies used to dismiss him and his defenders used to explain him, and both camps flatten what happened. Orr keeps the religious conviction and the political clarity in the same frame: the man who believed God had chosen him was also the man who understood land policy better than the officials sent to administer it. The Montana years matter too—by the time he returned north, he had spent years inside American institutions, teaching, translating, and watching how another government handled its Indigenous nations.

   Try this: Compare the two names—Louis Riel and Louis David—and trace which documents from 1876–78 were filed under which.

4. 4chapters on the North-West Resistance, 1885

   Batoche: the resistance that ended in six days

   By 1884 the Métis at Batoche, on the South Saskatchewan, have watched surveyors arrive and land titles stall, and they send for Riel, now living in Montana with his family. He returns, sets up a provisional government at Batoche, and drafts a petition of grievances for Ottawa. When the government responds with troops instead of negotiation, the Northwest Resistance begins in March 1885. The fighting ends in May at Batoche, where Major-General Middleton's forces overwhelm the Métis after a battle that lasts several days. Riel surrenders shortly after.

   The idea

   The second resistance is the one Canada remembers as a rebellion, but the sequence matters: petition first, troops second. Riel had spent a decade in exile watching the promises of 1870 erode, and the Métis at Batoche had watched survey stakes go in with no titles behind them. The six-week campaign was a last attempt to force the federal government to the table. When it ended in defeat at Batoche, it ended the Métis ability to negotiate as a collective political body—and set the stage for the trial that would turn a military loss into a legal one.

   Try this: Read the 1884 petition of grievances and count how many items had already appeared in the 1869 list of rights.

5. 5chapters on the trial, July 1885

   The Regina trial: a lawyer who wouldn't argue insanity

   Riel is tried in Regina in July 1885 before a jury of six, on a charge of high treason. His defence lawyers want to plead insanity; Riel refuses, insisting he is sane and that his actions were justified. The lawyers put forward insanity evidence anyway, and the jury deliberates for about an hour before finding him guilty—but recommending mercy. The judge, Hugh Richardson, sentences him to hang anyway. Riel addresses the court at length, defending his role as leader of the Métis people.

   The idea

   The trial is where the political question got converted into a medical one, and Riel refused the conversion. His lawyers thought an insanity plea was the only way to save his life; he thought it would concede the government's framing—that the Métis cause was the delusion of a madman. The jury's mercy recommendation shows the ambivalence in the room: six men willing to convict but not to kill. Richardson's sentence overrode that ambivalence, which is why the trial has never stopped being contested.

   Try this: Read Riel's address to the court at the end of the trial and note how many times he uses the word 'people' rather than 'I'.

6. 6final chapters on the execution and legacy

   The gallows and the afterlife

   Riel is hanged in Regina on November 16, 1885. In the days before, he reconciles with the Catholic Church, receives the sacraments, and writes final letters to his mother and his wife. His death sets off political shockwaves: Quebec nationalists treat him as a French Catholic martyred by English Canada, Ontario celebrates the verdict, and the Conservative government of John A. Macdonald survives the fallout but the question never goes away. Over the following century, Riel is reimagined—as traitor, as founder of Manitoba, as Métis patriot—and in recent decades provincial and federal bodies have moved toward formal recognition of his role.

   The idea

   The execution settled nothing, which is why the book doesn't end in 1885. Every generation since has re-tried Riel: the verdict of 1885 becomes a mirror for whatever Canada is arguing about at the moment—language rights, Indigenous sovereignty, the limits of federal power. What Orr makes clear is that the hangman ended a man, not a question. The Métis nation survived the gallows, and so did the argument about whether Canada's treatment of it was justice or expedience.

   Try this: Find the most recent official statement on Riel's legacy from the federal government and compare its language to the 1885 verdict.

Anyone who thinks Canadian history is boring, and anyone who thinks they already know the Riel story. Essential for readers of Indigenous history, legal drama, and political biography.

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