In the very early hours of April 7, 1868, Thomas D’Arcy McGee donned his overcoat, gloves, and white top hat and left the newly completed Gothic centre block of the Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. A full moon beamed down on him as he walked slowly back to his lodging house on Sparks Street.
The member of Parliament for Montreal West had good reason to be satisfied with his night’s work. His passionate speech on the spirit of Confederation, later described in the press as expressing “the loftiest sentiment of loyalty to the Crown and devotion to the country,” had earned him a standing ovation from his fellow parliamentarians.
As McGee turned onto Sparks Street, John Buckley, a House of Commons employee, bade him a cheery good night.
“Good morning,” quipped McGee. “It’s morning now.”
In a 300-word early morning dispatch to his newspaper, George Gregg, Ottawa correspondent of the Toronto Leader, described what happened next: “At half-past two o’clock this morning Hon. T. D. McGee was shot dead by an unknown assassin, just as he was entering the door of his lodging house, Thomas Trotter's, on Spark [sic] Street. The ball passed through his head and lodged in the door which he was just opening … The body, as I write, is still prostrate on the pavement, hardly yet cold in death.”
"The Fathers of Confederation (1864)," originally created by Robert Harris. (Baldwin Collection of Canadiana)
The nation woke to the shocking news that Thomas D’Arcy McGee — writer, politician, and brilliant public speaker — had been felled by an assassin’s bullet. Flags flew at half mast. The mayor of Ottawa posted a reward of $2,000 “for the apprehension and prosecution to conviction of the assassin,” and the federal government and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec together offered an additional $10,000 in reward money. More than 200 people were arrested in a police sweep.
In an address to the House of Commons that afternoon, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald (or Sir. John A., as he was called) could barely control his emotions, referring to his close friend and political ally as having “passed from among them, foully murdered. If ever a soldier who had fallen on the field of battle in the front rank of the fray had deserved well of his country, Thomas D’Arcy McGee had deserved well of Canada and her people.”
But McGee can hardly be described as a typical Canadian hero.
"Review Extra. Fenians are coming," by Brigade-Major Alex Patterson, 1866. (Baldwin Collection of Canadiana)
He was a Roman Catholic, born in Ireland in 1825. Both as a youth and after moving to Boston as a 17-year-old to work as a newspaperman, he entertained virulent anti-English sentiments. On his return to Ireland in 1845, he became so politically troublesome that the British issued a warrant for his arrest, forcing him to flee back to the States, reportedly disguised as a priest.
It was at this point that McGee’s views started to change — so much so that, in 1857, he moved to what was then the British Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec), where he started up the New Era newspaper in Montreal.
That same year, he was elected to the Canadian legislative assembly. Initially sitting as an Independent, McGee ultimately joined Sir John A. Macdonald’s ruling Conservative Party and was made minister of agriculture, immigration, and statistics in 1864.
McGee had become increasingly involved in the peaceable move toward Canadian nationhood.
An inspired public speaker, he fired up audiences with his vision for Canada. “I see in the not remote distance,” he said, “one great nationality, bound, like the shield of Achilles, by the blue rim of ocean. I see it quartered into many communities, each disposing of its internal affairs, but all bound together by free institutions.”
But he was man of action as well as a visionary. He became one of the Fathers of Confederation, playing a key role in the negotiations with Britain that led to the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.
More recently, though, his political star had been in free fall. Once the darling of Irish Canadians and instrumental in convincing them to embrace Confederation, he had been expelled from the St. Patrick’s Society, an organization promoting Irish interests, and declared a traitor to Ireland. Even though he scraped into office as the representative for Montreal West in the first election following Confederation, he was increasingly regarded as a liability to the Conservative government. Denied a Cabinet position, he decided to leave politics for a post in the civil service.
Unknown Stories: Fenian Invasion of Canada
Much of what triggered the rapid decline in his popularity revolved around his harsh criticism of an Irish separatist movement and secret society called the Fenian Brotherhood, founded in the United States in 1858. The Fenians plotted to violently overthrow British rule in Ireland and advocated the forcible takeover of Canada. In 1866, the organization launched two raids into Canada. Both ended in failure.
Fearing a violent reaction against the Irish in Canada, McGee lashed out. "Secret societies are like what the farmers in Ireland used to say of scotch grass," he wrote in the Montreal Gazette. "The only way to destroy it is to cut it out by the roots and burn it into powder." He threatened to publish “documents which would put in their proper position the Fenians of Montreal.”
That was when the death threats began. One anonymous letter, wrapped in a Fenian newspaper, featured a rough drawing of a gallows and a coffin.
In the aftermath of McGee’s assassination, suspicion immediately fell on the Fenians. Within 24 hours, police had arrested 28-year-old Patrick James Whelan, an Irish immigrant with suspected Fenian connections. He was charged with murder.
Funeral Procession of Thomas D'Arcy McGee in Montreal. (Wikimedia)
On Easter Monday, 1868, which would have been his 43rd birthday, Thomas D’Arcy McGee was given a state funeral — Canada’s first — in his home town of Montreal. Around 80,000 people, many of them perched on rooftops or dangling from windows, silently lined the funeral route as solemn military bands played Handel’s “Dead March.” McGee’s body was laid to rest in his family vault at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery in Montreal.
The trial of the man newspapers called “the tailor with the sandy whiskers” began in Ottawa in September 1868. On the eighth and final day, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and Patrick Whelan was sentenced to death by hanging. He vehemently protested his innocence. “I am here standing on the brink of my grave,” he told the court, “and I wish to declare to you and to my God … that I never committed this deed, and that, I know in my heart and soul.”
His lawyers launched two unsuccessful appeals against his sentence, and Whelan was hanged at the Carlton County Gaol in Ottawa on February 11, 1869. Heedless of a blinding snowstorm that blanketed the city, some 5,000 people turned up to witness the execution.
Whelan’s last words were “God save Ireland! And God save my soul!”
But was he guilty as charged?
There was strong circumstantial evidence stacked up against him: he was either a Fenian or a Fenian supporter; he had been stalking McGee for months, following him from Montreal to Ottawa; several witnesses claimed that they had heard him uttering threats against McGee; he was present in the House of Commons during McGee’s speech; he had no alibi for the period between 2:10 and 2:30 am on the morning of April 7; and, when arrested, he was carrying a loaded .32 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, which had recently been discharged.
On the other hand, several prosecution witnesses were caught out lying — greedy, perhaps, for a slice of that large reward.
More seriously, justice was not always seen to be done as the case moved through the courts. Sir John A., McGee’s intimate friend, sat next to Judge William Buell Richards during the trial, which could have prejudiced the jury’s decisions. Judge Richards, now chief justice, presided over both of Whelan’s failed appeals. Instead of stepping down to ensure the appeals would be unbiased, he cast a deciding vote in both.
Other troubling questions swirled around the case. Why was no effort made to track down a
Statue of Thomas D’Arcy McGee on Parliament HIll. (D. Gordon E. Robertson/Wikimedia)
mysterious man who had allegedly been sitting beside Whelan in the House of Commons on the night of the murder and made threatening gestures as McGee delivered his final speech? And what about reports of a horse and buggy seen speeding from the crime scene?
Most troubling of all was Whelan’s claim that he knew “the man who shot Mr. McGee,” but that he was not prepared to be an informer. Could it be, as suggested by McGee’s biographer David A. Wilson, that Whelan was not a lone killer but a member of a hit squad?
Interestingly, Whelan’s gun eventually found its way into the possession of Scott Renwick, an auto mechanic from Dundalk. New and improved ballistics tests in 1973 revealed that a bullet fired from the gun was very similar to the fatal McGee bullet. Although this did not prove conclusively that Whelan shot McGee, it did indicate that his gun might have been the lethal weapon.
Whether Whelan was guilty or not, this case is one for the record books.
McGee is the only Canadian federal politician ever to be assassinated, and his funeral, attended by upward of 80,000 people, was the first state funeral in Canada’s history.
Patrick Whelan was the last-but-one individual in Canada to be officially executed in a public space. Later in 1869, Sir John A. signed a bill that changed the rules. From the beginning of 1870, hangings would take place in private, with limitations on the number of onlookers allowed to attend.
Another fascinating first, as explained by G.B.Vanblaricom in a 1908 Maclean’s article, was that, through an accident of fate, George Gregg of the Toronto Leader was the only newsman on the spot when the assassination occurred. He immediately wired to his newspaper a series of reports that would explode like bombshells throughout Canada and far beyond, thus securing for the modest four-page, four-column publication what has been described as one of the biggest news scoops in Canadian history.
Sources: “The Assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee” (todayinottawashistory, October 18, 2014);“Assassin’s gun goes to auction” (CBC News, April 29, 2005); “The Biggest News Scoop in Canada” by G.B. VanBlaricom (Maclean’s, July 1, 1908); The Globe edition of April 9, 1868; Irish Nationalism in Canada edited by David A. Wilson (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009); “Thomas D’Arcy McGee” by Robin Burns and Niko Block (Canadian Encyclopedia, April 22, 2013); Thomas D’Arcy McGee: Vol. 2: The Extreme Moderate, 1857–1868, by David A. Wilson (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011); Thos. D’Arcy McGee: Sketch of his Life and Death by Fennings Taylor (John Lovell, 1868); and The Trial of Patrick J. Whelan for the Murder of the Hon. Thos. D’Arcy McGee by George Spaight (G.E. Desbarats, 1868).
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