Thomas D'arcy Mcgee

Thomas D'Arcy McGee lived three lives in forty-two years, and each one could have filled a lesser man's entire existence. Born into the fire of Irish nationalism, he escaped a British prison in 1848 and fled to America, only to find that the republic across the Atlantic offered neither the freedom nor the dignity he sought. In 1857 he crossed the border into Canada, and there, in the rough-and-tumble politics of the Province of Canada, he discovered a new calling: convincing Irish Catholics that their future lay not in rebellion against Britain, but in building a nation within the Empire. McGee became the great reconciler, the poet-politician who could make Protestant and Catholic, Englishman and Irishman, believe they shared a common destiny. His eloquent speeches helped carry Confederation over the finish line in 1867. Less than a year later, he was dead in an Ottawa street, assassinated by a Fenian bomber who saw him as a traitor to the Irish cause. This 1925 biography traces that extraordinary arc, from teenage revolutionary to Father of Confederation, and asks what might have been had Canada not lost its most passionate nationalist at the age of forty-two. For readers drawn to the making of nations, the price of conviction, and the tragedy of promises cut short.