Historical / Reference Notes:

This poem came about because of two genealogical hobbyists Brian Jones and Al Lewis having found my genealogy page contacted me.

My poem is based upon family folk lore - family names have been omitted - the drunken fools who conspired to assassinate mc gee it is said belonged to a branch of my family - there is no tangible evidence to prove this - and people will be upset at halving their family name dragged into what they refer to as the mud - only my memories of stories told by people now dead walk the corridors of my mind. For myself there is the belief that all families are all composed of dark, light and gray sides - to deny this reality is to deny being human.

Much has been written concerning the fairness of Whelan's trial. The fact that the prime minister sat beside the presiding judge and that Whelan continued to proclaim his innocence refusing to name others who may have assisted him contributed to this historical sense that there is more to the story.

The irish fenian plan - an idea more than a plan - was to capture the government thus taking control of Canada and holding it as ransom to be exchanged for ireland.

On with the story. Both sides of my family came from ireland and settled in bytown before confederation. I was born in 1939 and raised in lower town. Family members talked of the fenian conspiracy and of those who were active and those who were sympathizers. They talked of a local family of whom it was said to be burdened with the McGee curse for allowing Whelan to die for their actions.

Yes it was rumored that Whelan had been imported from montreal by local fenians to kill McGee but it was also rumored that he failed the task . Whelan never implicated others - three factors may influenced this - his family would pay the price of his disclosure - secondly as a catholic he would have believed the harboring of sinful thoughts was is the same as acting on them - even if he did not actually kill mc gee he was guilty in the eyes of god because he thought of killing him - a third factor enters the equation : he could have been told that his death at the hands of the hated british would spark the revolution that would save ireland .

The irish were as some modern analysts term "bog irish" - extremely superstitious - in this superstition is born the Mc Gee Curse upon that particular family which it is said flows down the generations into my blood - my ancestors were definitely unsophisticated in the thinking department.

Naturally as a young man I studied the rules of the curse and decided it was superstition and therefor did not apply to me - on with the story.

They filled the local taverns with drunken words churned in hatred and megalomania morphing themselves into heros and rulers of their beloved ireland. What their drunken minds imagined became reality and reality became fiction.

When one of these fools assassinated McGee on April 7, 1868 the government immediately responded as though a full fledged insurrection had begun.

All of the drunken fenian planning was based upon the idea that in reality an enormouse army of organized committed patriotic irish americian fenians were waiting for the call to invade canada.

These irish fenians never entertained the idea that if an organized dedicated army of irish americian fenians did exist and were successful in conquering Canada the United States army would take control and immediately annex Canada to become part of Contenental United States. They would never win their objective of trading Canada for Ireland no matter what happened. They were simpleton pawns to americian imperialism desiring to extend itself over all of north america.

After McGee's assassination and once macdonald realized the emotional mood of the irish leaders was the opposite of what he had expected - and he may have figured out that the americian army was not going to officially invade - and there were no irish americian fenians moving accross the border - and he may have further realized the problem could be contained - thus he sprung into action - got his sacrificial lamb - ended it all quietly

Macdonald did not want to open an inquiry into a conspiracy - that would be messy and involve thousands of irish in an activated conflict between irish catholic and Protestant communities - many irish did not want a self revealing inquiry which would lead to a religious conflict - so he sat beside the presiding judge to make certain nothing would be said that would aggrivate the two groups into action - his sacrificial lamb would end it all.

Whelan was a product of his time and culture - the old saying is that you are judged by the company you keep - Whelan may not have actually done the deed but he was in the wrong place at the right time and sometimes that's all that matters.

History has named Macdonald a father of our nation - but what of Whelan? Would anyone have fit the role of sacrificial lamb? The assassin was gone (according to my family folk lore and never returned to Canada) - to bring closure someone had to hang - Whelan was as I said before in the wrong place at the right time. Is it not said that some men have greatness thrust upon them? Did he not in his own way unknowlingly save the nation from a civil war? Has Macdonald made Whelan an unwitting father of our nation? Would Macdonald's sacrifice of Whelan to the gods of peace order and good government set the stage for another sacrifical lamb by the name of Riel to those very same gods ?

The ethnic and religous conflicts of europe bubbled in the cauldron of early Canadian history - no place for a squeamish leader - Macdonald was no squeamish leader.

Unfortunately our history sanitizes the ugly decisions of our historical leaders to the point of unrealistic purity which removes from them everything they can teach us about real life decisions - we have been robbed of our historical leaders and their history - we have if I may use a modern term - soccer mom history filled with soccer mom leaders - boring and sanitized to the point of tasteless mush - we have no real history - thus we can never learn from history for we deny its true existence.

keith o'connor