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The recently released Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Volume 2 by David A. Wilson is a compelling and comprehensive biography of Thomas D'Arcy McGee's political career in Canada.
Psychologically, McGee was on the run when he arrived in Montreal in 1857. After escaping from Ireland as a failed revolutionary in 1848, he became a prominent Irish-American Catholic advocate. But disillusionment followed. Not only was the United States rife with what he saw as anti-Irish discrimination, it was also a place where Irish Catholic immigrants were likely to go astray.
To him, Americanism became tantamount to Protestantism. And as McGee’s Catholicism was the paramount thing in his life, homogenization into that kind of society just wasn’t on. So he looked north for somewhere which might provide the social and political space to nourish Catholic values. Separate schools were a big part of the attraction. (…) All in all, McGee’s story is a gripping one. You won’t be bored.
Read the full Troy Media review
In the concluding lines of Wilson's epic study of McGee – a Montreal MP often described as the only victim of a political assassination in Canadian history – the author reflects on the modern echoes of his subject's "insistence that immigrants and ethnic groups should not inject old hatreds into their new environment." (…) On that front, Wilson writes, "the legacy of 11 September, the rise of radical Islam, and the persistence of revolutionary elements in some of Canada's ethnic groups is likely to call forth the McGee who took an uncompromising stand against militants within his own ethnoreligious community."
Read the full Postmedia review
The book contains more rich detail about McGee’s life than can be covered here. To take only one example: Wilson gives a fascinating account of the rise of Fenianism in North America. While some historians consider the group’s plans to invade Canada foolish, Wilson successfully argues that the fear they engendered within the colony played a key role in the acceptance of Confederation. This is especially relevant in the life of McGee, both because he fought so hard to prevent the Fenians’ ascendance, while also using them to prove that Confederation was necessary, and because it was a Fenian sympathizer who was responsible for making McGee the victim of Canada’s first political assassination.
Read the full Quill & Quire review
A just-published biography of the famed 19th-century MP from Montreal sheds fresh light on McGee's murder 143 years ago in Ottawa, floating the theory that Patrick James Whelan – the man hanged for the crime – was part of a "hit squad" of Fenian radicals who targeted McGee, and may not actually have pulled the trigger.
Lingering doubts about Whelan's guilt have made the McGee killing (…) one of the country's most enduring whodunits. And while McGee biographer David Wilson concludes Whelan was certainly involved in the assassination, he argues that armchair coldcase sleuths should take a second look at Whelan's friend and fellow Fenian James Kinsella, a "bit player" in the original investigation and trial but quite possibly the man who held the smoking gun over Mc-Gee's dead body.
The author, David Wilson, will embark on a book tour this November:
November 6 and 10 – The McGee Band, featuring David A. Wilson, will be touring Ontario East to celebrate the publication of his book.
November 17 – Public lecture: David A. Wilson on his new book at Concordia University.
To order Thomas D'Arcy McGee, Volume 2 online, click here.
To arrange an interview with the author, contact MQUP Publicist Jacqui Davis.
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