Macdonald’s daughter, Mary, 1893. Still in mourning for her father, this photograph fails to capture her happy personality.

       Courtesy of William James Topley/Library and Archives Canada/PA-025746.

      Macdonald’s binge-drinking erupted just as Canada was about to take a mighty leap to the Rocky Mountains. After negotiations in London, the Dominion purchased the territorial rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company (covering the future provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta), with the transfer date set for December 1, 1869. Aboriginal people were ignored in the deal. So too was the small Red River settler community. Half of its 11,000 population were French-speaking Catholic Métis, descendants of European fur-traders and Native women, known by the racist term “half-breeds.” The remainder were English-speaking Métis, plus about 1,500 recent arrivals, mostly from Ontario. Generally contemptuous of the Métis, the incomers were disruptive but too few to seize control.

      Ottawa’s first governor was William McDougall, a Reformer and Macdonald’s Cabinet colleague since 1864. He travelled through the United States, with orders to keep a low profile until he received confirmation of the December 1 transfer. On November 2, his route to the Red River was blocked by French Métis, and he retreated to the Minnesota border town of Pembina. McDougall’s communications with Ottawa were slow but, thanks to the transatlantic cable, the Canadian government could urgently contact Britain. When Macdonald learned of McDougall’s setback, he cabled London to delay the transfer: Canada would only accept the territory when Britain had pacified its inhabitants. However, McDougall knew nothing of this and, on December 1, acting on his own initiative, he proclaimed himself governor of the Northwest. Believing that he was filling a vacuum, MacDougall in fact created one, by prematurely proclaiming the end of the Company control without being able to assert his own authority. As Macdonald realized, under international law, the Red River people were now entitled to establish their own government — which the Americans might recognize. McDougall probably expected that the “Canadian party” would rally to his proclamation and install him as governor. In fact it was the francophone Métis who took control.

      In 1868, Macdonald had pacified 370,000 Nova Scotians. In 1869 he stumbled into a dangerous confrontation with a few thousand people at the distant Red River. Contrasting cultures explained the difference. Nova Scotians made speeches and passed resolutions; Métis armed themselves to hunt buffalo. Macdonald met with frowns in Halifax; McDougall was confronted with firearms. Macdonald had ruthlessly sidelined Nova Scotia’s Unionist minority; in the Red River, the “Canadian party” were both arrogant and inept. The dominant figure in Nova Scotia, Joseph Howe, was a veteran and skilled politician; his counterpart in the Red River was the twenty-four-year-old Louis Riel, catapulted into leadership because he had studied, unsuccessfully, for the Catholic priesthood in Montreal. Above all, Macdonald controlled policy towards Nova Scotia himself, travelling to Halifax when he judged the moment right to strike a deal. But the Red River was inaccessible, especially during the winter, and he had to work through William McDougall.

      Macdonald grumbled that the stand-off was “a most inglorious fiasco,” and he censured McDougall for exceeding instructions. But, as prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald was responsible for appointing someone notorious for outspoken inflexibility. In 1861, McDougall had controversially threatened to “look to Washington” to secure representation by population. He had called French Canadians “a foreign race” with an alien religion. Métis distrust was further aroused by his actions, as a member of Sandfield Macdonald’s ministry in 1862, in strong-arming the Ojibwa into allowing settlement on Manitoulin, the giant island in Lake Huron. McDougall was an obsessive expansionist, driven by a sense of mission: in the year before his appointment, he had survived a serious illness and the unexpected death of his wife. Although Macdonald assured McDougall that he had “every confidence in your prudence and tact” in managing the transition to Canadian rule, the truth was he had made a totally unsuitable appointment. Equally unfortunate was Macdonald’s failure to foresee the communications problem: arrangements should have been made to send coded telegrams to St Paul, Minnesota, and rush them by courier on to Pembina.

      Macdonald also blamed the “supineness” of the Hudson’s Bay Company officials. “They gave us no notice of any feeling of discontent at the change.” But everybody knew that Company rule had been somnolent for decades, and Macdonald had made little effort to find out about the Northwest. “We are in a blissful state of ignorance as to what the requirements of that country may be,” he remarked to a job-seeker early in November 1869 — remarkably casual preparation for the annexation of two million square kilometres. Indeed, Canada’s advance moves had been counterproductive: Métis suspicions were aroused by survey teams, sent to forestall claim-jumping squatters. Most bizarre was the appearance of Joseph Howe at the Red River in October 1869 on a personal fact-finding visit, his very presence a reminder that Nova Scotian discontent had forced concessions from the Dominion. Howe should either have been sent with an Ottawa welcome pack, or discouraged from travelling altogether. When trouble broke out, Macdonald called the Métis “these poor people … handed over like a flock of sheep,” but his own failure to engage with the Red River community had precipitated the crisis.

      Through the winter of 1869–70, there were almost too many negotiators shuttling in slow motion over two thousand kilometres between Ottawa and the Red River, sometimes on overlapping missions. Suddenly, Riel upped his demands, insisting that the eleven thousand people should become a full province — and so the Red River became Manitoba. The convoluted negotiations left one dangerous issue unresolved. Ottawa wisely signalled that a blind eye would be turned to the extra-legal activities of Riel’s provisional government. But how far could that amnesty extend? The issue was highlighted by the tragic