
Louis Riel and his councillors, circa 1869.
Source: University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, A13-5.
An early carte-de-visite photograph of Métis leader Louis Riel and members of his provisional government and other councillors, likely taken in 1869, recently returned to Winnipeg to be housed at the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections. The journey home was tortuous as the photo travelled from North America halfway around the world to Australia and back through auction and multiple dealers to Winnipeg. Considered one of the highest-quality copies of this famous photograph taken by photographer Ryder Larsen, it was part of a larger collection of photographs taken around the Red River settlement by James Penrose and Simon Duffin, among others. The photo returned just as the Federal Court has ruled that 200,000 Métis in Canada are "Indians" under the Constitution Act and fall under federal jurisdiction. This ruling will no doubt be the start of many years of negotiations. Louis Riel arrived just when he is needed.
Featured in the photo are: (back row, L-R) Pierre Delorme, Thomas Bunn, François-Xavier Pagé, André Beauchemin; (middle row) John Bruce, Louis Riel, William B. O'Donaghue; (front row) Hugh F. O'Lone, Paul Proulx.
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“Red River Revisited”
This special issue of Manitoba History contains papers delivered at a symposium organized by the MHS in May 2012 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the arrival of the Selkirk Settlers at the Red River Settlement. Publication is made possible with the financial support of the Bicentenary of the Red River Selkirk Settlement Committee.
Red River’s Vernacular Historians by Lyle Dick
Rooted in Mobility: Metis Buffalo Hunting Brigades
by Brenda Macdougall and Nicole St. Onge
Conservative Visions of Christianity and Community in Early Red River, c1800-1821
by
Tolly Bradford
The Fork in the Road: Red River, Retrenchment, and the Struggle for the Future of the Hudson’s Bay Company by Scott Stephen
Peguis, Woodpeckers, and Myths: What Do We Really Know? by Donna G. Sutherland
Ocean Crossings: Hudson’s Bay Company Seafaring in a Northern North Atlantic World by Norma Hall
Book Reviews
P. G. Downes, Distant Summers: P. G. Downes' Journals of Travels in Northern Canada, 1936-1947 (Vols. I and II), edited by R. H. Cockburn
by David Finch
Frances W. Kaye, Good Lands: A Meditation and History on the Great Plains by Simon Evans
Joyce McCart, On the Road with Captain Palliser, 1857-1860 by Simon Evans
Neil S. Forkey, Canadians and the Natural Environment to the Twenty-First Century
by C. J. Taylor
Reinhold Kramer and Tom Mitchell, When the State Trembled: How A.J. Andrews and the Citizens' Committee Broke the Winnipeg General Strike by Greg Thomas
Cool Things in the Collections:
Red River Records: Highlights of the Archives of Manitoba’s Holdings Related to the Red River Settlement, 1812-1870
by Rachels Mills and Joan Sinclair |