D - D'Arcy McGee, Irish Rebel and One of Canada's Founding Fathers

Thomas D'Arcy McGee was born in a small village in Ireland in 1825 and grew up in a household with a strong Irish identify and no love for the British. At 17 McGee moved to Boston and got along fabulously with the equally British-hating Americans. He became a journalist and writer and became a famous figure among the Irish ex-pats in New England.

In 1845 at the start of the Potato Famine, McGee traveled in the opposite direction of most of his countrymen and returned home to Ireland where he fell in with a revolutionary Irish emancipation organization. After failed attempts to start revolutions in Scotland and Northern Ireland, McGee fled back to the US, his hatred of Britain redoubled. He went so far as to start preaching that the US should annex the Canadian colonies to prevent England from having any foothold on the North American continent.

“The United States of North America must necessarily in course of time absorb the Northern British Provinces,” he wrote. “A river like the St. Lawrence cannot safely be left in European hands. […] Either by purchase, conquest, or stipulation, Canada must be yielded by Great Britain to this Republic.”

The point is that the dude really hated Britain. But that's when this gets weird.

Turns out McGee didn't hate Britain so much as he just really loved the Irish (true, the two go hand in hand, but stay with me). He felt that his people needed to establish new communities in North America (they were leaving Ireland in droves, after all), and deduced that the more tolerant Canada would actually be a better home for them, especially after a rampant rise in US anti-immigration movements in the 1840s. (Seriously? You guys have been doing this for 170 years?)

He became so disillusioned with the US that in 1857 McGee moved to Montreal, started a newspaper and was elected to the legislature. He immediately started campaigning for Confederation, switching several parties until settling with the very British-friendly Conservatives. He toured the country and became well known as a speaker and helped sway the provinces, until Confederation officially made Canada an independent state in 1867. Prime Minister John A. MacDonald made McGee a member of his cabinet, as minister of agriculture, immigration and statistics. Wait, that seems like a weird portfolio...

This is the face of a guy who knew the difference between carrots and refugees.

McGee was assassinated less than a year later, allegedly by Irish nationalists who didn't like him buddying-up with the British. Ironically, he was killed by revolutionaries not much different than himself from his youth. The man tried and found guilty of his murder - a tailor named Patrick James Whelan - claimed he was innocent right up until his execution, and truth be told much of the evidence against him was almost too perfect (who keeps the murder weapon and Irish revolutionary materials in his house?), and the primary eye witness against him was completely discredited in court. Whelan still hanged, though. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the lawyers on both sides being Irish Orangemen...

Interesting side note: the assassination revealed to the new Canadian government that they probably needed to beef-up security, so the Dominion Police was founded in 1868 to guard the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. This was one of the forces that was later absorbed to create the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

A LOT of people showed up for McGee's funeral. Some were there to pay their respects, others just wanted to make sure he was dead.

You know the weirdest part of the story? There's a pub in downtown Ottawa today called D'Arcy McGee's, where they have on display a plaster cast of McGee's death hand. It was taken shortly after his assassination as a momento to his family, as well as a reminder of his great career as a orator. Apparently because that's the hand he wrote his speeches with? I guess we're lucky they didn't do a cast of his throat. Either way, you can enjoy the hand whilst sipping your pint and eating fish & chips on Sparks Street.

Creepy!

GUEST BLOG: Piper Morgan Makes a Splash by Stephanie Faris

In addition to my A-to-Z Challenge post (which you can find here), let me take a moment today to tell you about a great new book for middle readers...

Stephanie Faris and Piper Morgan are at it again! Actually, more correctly Piper's MOM is at it again, because now she's working at a local pool, so that of course leads to more shenanigans for her daughter. The woman has previously worked at a circus, an animal rescue shelter, and as a school principal. I think she should really look into seeing a career counselor. 

THE BOOK!

Piper Morgan tries her hand at acting in the fourth book of the charming Piper Morgan series.

Piper’s mom is helping out at a local pool shop, and the owner wants to shoot a commercial for his store. Piper thinks it’s the PERFECT opportunity to get in front of the camera and experience a little bit of showbiz. But will Piper’s contribution to the TV commercial make a splash—or will it go belly-up?

Buy it Now at: 

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | INDIEBOUND

THE AUTHOR!

Stephanie Faris is the author of the middle grade books 30 Days of No Gossip and 25 Roses, as well as the Piper Morgan chapter book series. An accomplished freelance writer, her work has appeared in Writer's Digest, The Writer, Pacific Standard, Mental Floss, and The Week, among many others.

THE LINKS!

WEBSITE | BLOG | FACEBOOK

TWITTER | INSTAGRAM

THE CONTEST!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

C - The Toronto Circus Riot of 1855

Okay, I know I wrote about this one before. But after the longer posts from yesterday and the day before, I figured I could keep it brief today. Plus, there's no way I couldn't mention this in a series on "Weird Canadian History."

You can click on the link to get the full story, but here's the short version: On July 12, 1855, the Hook and Ladder Volunteer Fire Department visited a brothel in downtown Toronto. Important things to know about the Hook and Ladder:

1. They were drunk
2. They were Irish
3. Two weeks prior they had got into a fistfight with a rival firehouse when both groups showed up to battle the same blaze

Needless to say, these guys were obviously spoiling for a fight, like, all the time. Guess who else was patronizing the brothel that fateful night? Mother-flippin' clowns from the traveling circus that just happened to be visiting town that week. Of course, one of the firefighters picked a fight with one of the clowns (as you would), but then hilarity ensued as the carnies proceeded to beat the ever-lovin' beejezus out of the firemen.

Instead of taking their beating with the shame that was so sorely deserved, the firefighters rounded up as many of their countrymen as they could and marched on the circus tents the next day. A violent riot resulted as the circus tents were burned and the carnies were run out of town. The police, themselves being made-up mostly of good Irish boys themselves, did nothing to stop the chaos. 

The only redeeming factor of the resulting brouhaha was that the city was forced to rebuild their highly corrupt protective services (they basically fired the entire police force), but nothing will remove the black, hilarious mark from the city's history.

The part I'll never understand: The circus had tigers in the show. TIGERS. Why didn't they turn them loose? I don't care how many Irishmen you bring, tigers trump drunken firemen every time.

The Battle of Beaumont-Hamel

So... not all of my posts are funny and weird. Didn't think they would start out on a bummer on day 2, but I promise they'll be less bleak in the future.

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July 1st is Canada Day, the anniversary of the founding of the Dominion of Canada, and generally accepted as "Canada's Birthday." It is NOT the same as Canada's independence day, which is a major misconception that I'll probably get to in another post this month. While this year marks the 150th anniversary of the Dominion of Canada, the province of Newfoundland did not join the country until 1949, and before that year we remembered July 1st for a very different event that took place during the First World War.

WWI was a pointless war. Archaic alliances and posturing lead to mass conflict between old countries that had no idea how to use new weapons and military technology. This was not the battles of armoured knights of old, this was battle with heavy artillery, machine guns, chemical weapons, but the powers behind it didn't seem to know what they were getting into. The ruling governments of the day maneuvered themselves into a massive, continent-spanning war that no one could win. In four years, it left 17 million dead and more than 20 million injured.

At the time, Newfoundland was a separate colony of Great Britain, completely independent of Canada. Even though Newfoundland hadn't maintained a standing army in nearly 50 years, like many other countries, we were required to send troops to Europe to defend the British interests. One thousand men from the small island volunteered, enough to form a dedicated Newfoundland Regiment. After short stints in Egypt and Gallipoli, the Regiment was moved to the front lines in 1916, near the village of Beaumont-Hamel in the North of France at the head of the Allied offensive for the Battle of the Somme.

The Battle of the Somme was a massive joint British and French offensive designed to quickly push back the German Empire. It ended up lasting five months, killing or injuring over one million men, making it one of the bloodiest battles in history.

The Newfoundland trench, just before the attack on July 1, 1916.

Photo credit: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/first-world-war/assets/img/articles/road-support-trench.jpg

The offensive began on July 1st after Allied forces spent a week bombarding the German front lines to weaken their forces. Tunnels were dug beneath their emplacements and huge explosives were set to go off in conjunction with the assault to cause further damage and confusion. Everything was in place for a strong Allied advance. Then everything fell apart.

The first British troops advanced as planned, but met with far heavier resistance than expected. It seemed the heavy bombardment did little to weaken the German emplacements, and intelligence reports were inconclusive as to what ground, if any, the first wave gained.

Instead of waiting for better intel, British Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow ordered the second wave - which included the Newfoundland Regiment - to advance and take advantage of the actually non-existent gains of the first wave. The mine that was supposed to cover their advance detonated early and only succeeded in alerting the Germans of their impending assault. Still they were ordered to press on.

When the Regiment reached No-Man's Land, they found it devoid of cover, having been flattened by the earlier Allied bombardment. They were completely open to German machine gun fire. Worse, the battlefield was so littered with bodies from the first wave that they troops were tripping over the dead. Those few that made it any distance discovered the German barbwire - which earlier recon had pointed out was still intact but the officers chose to ignore - blocking their final advance.

It was a massacre. Out of some 780 men who went over the top that morning, only 68 were able to answer roll-call the next day. The Newfoundland Regiment was no more.

Some choose to remember that day as the valorous sacrifice of courageous soldiers. Others remember it as a senseless loss of human life, ordered by incompetent commanders that gained nothing for the war efforts. Either way, Newfoundland remembers. It was the first great conflict experienced by the dominion, and the losses were felt by an entire generation on the sparsely-populated island. The severe post-war depression only compounded the heavy toll.

In 1921, Newfoundland purchased the land where the failed attack took place and established a memorial site that continues to be maintained by the province and Canada to this day. It is one of only two National Historic Sites of Canada located outside of the country.

Further reading: http://www.heritage.nf.ca/first-world-war/articles/beaumont-hamel-en.php

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My A-to-Z Blogging Challenge theme for 2017 is Weird Canadian Facts and History. To see more blog posts, click here.

Alert, Nunavut - Santa Claus's Next-door Neighbour

Alert is the northernmost permanently-inhabited location on Earth. It is just 800km (500 miles) from the North Pole. It is so far North that temperatures only increase above freezing for two months out of the year (and not by much - average August high is just 3 degrees Celsius or 39 degrees Fahrenheit).

Why do people live and work next door to Santa Claus? For both scientific and sovereignty reasons. Alert is a research station and military outpost, maintained and operated year-round by the Canadian government. There's lots of scientific information to be gleaned by poking at frozen oceans, and we constantly have to be watching for those pesky Russians to be sneaking into our hemisphere across the North Pole. This is actually a legitimate concern: the waters of the Arctic are contested by Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark and the US - or more importantly, the natural resources that potentially lie beneath the seabed under the waters are contested. Yes, we are so close to scouring our planet clean of gas and oil that we're looking to start drilling in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's back yard.

Environment Canada air chemistry observatory. Yup, scientists sit around in the arctic in the dark for months at a time observing the air. 

Stay in school, kids!

How far north is Alert, exactly? I have an anecdote to illustrate.

I work for a department that provides satellite communications services to the Canadian Government. Due to the vast size of the country, with communities located in very remote locations where no other form of communication is available, our satellite phones and modems are used regularly by police services, park rangers, medical personnel, search & rescue operations and the military.

Recently we had a meeting with a new satellite provider based out of the United States who was trying to sell us on their new devices and equipment. His products were interesting and he had a great sales pitch, but inevitably it came down to one question: "How far north does your satellite network reach?"

"Oh, it goes really far," he assured us. "You shouldn't have a problem," he said. We pointed out that we have a number of communities and organizations well above the 60th parallel. His confidence wavered a little there, but he still insisted that it should work "most of the time." Then we showed him a map of the Northwest Territories and Nunvat, and pointed out communities such as Iqaluit and Resolute, and research stations such as Eureka and Alert. He was gobsmacked. "You go that far north? Nothing goes that far north."

You know nothing, American satellite provider.

Canada is vast, far larger than most people realize, especially along the North/South axis. Alert is basically the farthest point North, and is 4,358km (over 2,700 miles) from Toronto. That's about twice the distance from Toronto to Austin, Texas, which itself is no small trip. Hell, the distance from Alert to Toronto is only slightly less than the distance from New York City to London, England. That's big, and that's really, really far North.

We had to invent a new unit of measurement called "really stupid far."

The station is named after the HMS Alert, a British/Canadian exploration sloop that wintered in the area in 1875-76. Yes, that kind of sloop. A wooden sailing ship, stuck in the ice in -50 below weather. For months. Between this and the Cremation of Sam McGee, it really seems like folks loved to die in the Arctic back in the 1800s. Oh well, I guess they didn't have Twitter.

Seriously, who do you have to piss off to get assigned to this job?

Not surprisingly, there have been a few tragedies around the station since it was established in 1950. The most famous of which was the crash of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules (a heavy duty military transport plane) in 1991 that killed 5 people and left the survivors stranded for 32 hours while search and rescue teams fought blizzard conditions to reach them. If that sounds like a movie it's because it is - it was dramatized in the made-for-TV-film "Ordeal in the Arctic" in 1993, starring Richard Chamberlain. Reviews were chilly. 

Sorry.

A-to-Z Challenge Theme Reveal 2017...

So, after skipping 2016, I'm back to give the A to Z Blog Challenge another go for this year. For those not up to speed, the A-to-Z is a blog hop through which bloggers attempt to post every day during the Month of April (minus a few Sundays) on a different topic based on the letter of the alphabet. You can get more info at their website here.

In previous years there was a handy Linkytool-list-thing that gave you a list of all the participating blogs in one convenient location. It made it easy to find other blogs and even sorted them by genre so you could find those that might interest you. This year you have to go to the A-to-Z website post each day to share your current day's post, which is another way to do it, I guess. I don't make these decisions.

Bloggers are encouraged to chose a theme to keep themselves focussed and to help readers find blogs that may interest them. I participated in the blog hop in 2014 and 2015. My topics are below:

2014: Stuff I'm Afraid Of

2015: Characters You've Never Heard Of (Because they're in books I haven't published. This was a stupid idea)

This year, I've got a (hopefully) more interesting topic, one that's topical and appropriate to the times.

Ready?

Okay, here goes...

Photo credit: FreakingNews.com

Weird Canadian Facts and History

Your first bit of trivia? This year, 2017, is the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of Canada in 1867, when the the British colonies of Canada were granted dominion as a semi-independent federal state. (Full independence didn't actually come until 1931, which is your free bonus fact of the day). Celebrations are taking place across the country all year long, and I'm going to have my own little party by sharing some of the bat-sh*t weird stories I've run into over the years about America's polite neighbour to the North.

Some of these stories may be relatively well-known among Canadians, but I'm hoping they're obscure enough that my readers from other countries won't have heard of them. I will admit up front that I'm not a historian so I probably won't always cite properly and I've been known to exaggerate for comedic effect, but this is supposed to be about fun stories, not a history lesson. And I do promise that they are all true.

So join me back here come April 1 when I will (hopefully) have a story for every day you drop by!

My First Time (#MyFirstPostRevisited)

#MyFirstPostRevisited was created by Sarah Brentyn at Lemon Shark, and I was tagged to participate (after some prompting) by Loni Townsend. It's an excuse to share your very first (hopefully terrible) blog post.

I wrote my first blog post six years ago. It wasn't at this blog, it was at a gaming blog called "Rule of the Dice" that I still write for occasionally. An acquaintance of mine was bumping up his game-related content and recruited a bunch of gamers to write for his site.

The post is not as embarrassing as you're probably hoping. I actually did write some REALLY embarrassing and obnoxious posts over there, but I'm not sharing those today. This was just an intro to me and my first time playing Dungeons & Dragons. Appropriately, this year is the 25th anniversary of me getting into role-playing games. This is amazing for two reasons:

1. I have wasted SO many hours playing those games over the years.
2. I am getting really f*cking old.

January 25, 2011

It was the summer of 1992. Super Nintendo was still all the rage, and Final Fantasy II was my favourite game (still is, actually). A bunch of artists from Marvel comics started their own upstart comic company, Image, which featured lousy stories but very pretty pictures. Batman Returns was in the theatres, though it was actually Basic Instinct that my 12-year old self wanted to see. Of course, being 12-years old, I couldn't get in.¹ I was about to go into Junior High, an awkward, pimply, unpopular kid with ugly glasses (why parents let their children wear ugly glasses, I will never know), and spent my afternoons hanging out on my friend's patio.

One day, one of my friends (I can't remember if it was Carl or Chris) pulled out these green-lined character sheets covered with arcane runes like "THAC0," "Bend bars/lift gates," "Constitution" and "Save versus Death." The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons logo was featured at the top. I had heard of D&D but really had no idea what it was. "It's like Final Fantasy, but you can make whatever kind of character you want," they explained to me. "Then you make up stories and adventures and stuff for them to go on."

F***ING AWESOME.

My 12-year old mind was blown. I immediately made a character, which I remember vividly (I think his name was Arik). He had 20 Strength, 20 Constitution, 20 Dexterity, 5 Intelligence, 5 Wisdom and 15 Charisma. He had 600 hit points (we all started with 600 hit points) and had a Sword of Elements, which could attack with whatever type of damage was appropriate at the time.

We obviously had no idea what we were doing. We had no rule book, no dice, very little idea of how the game worked besides a few hours one of the other guys had played with some older kids. All he had were those ugly green character record sheets. And we loved it.

Pictured: Gateway drug.

Most of our games looked like this:

DM: You meet an ogre.

Player: I hit it with my katana of destiny.

DM: How much damage do you do?

Player: Um, 500?

DM: It's dead. You find a potion, but it's not labeled.

Player: I taste it, does anything happen?

DM: It was poison. You die.

We played that for awhile, and then tried Marvel Superheroes, which was even more fun. You could make your own superhero? With whatever ridiculous powers you wanted? And I can beat-up Spider-Man??? Once again, we neglected to read the rule book, so that made it even better. It wasn't until Christmas that year when I got the D&D Basic Boxed set, and I sat down and realized that role-playing games actually had RULES. So many things suddenly made sense now, like: "Oh, so Turn Undead doesn't actually mean you transform into a zombie!" The box also came with a set of ugly polyhedral dice. I still have them, and though they really suck (I usually don't believe in luck affecting the probability of dice, but that stupid twenty-sider can't roll a 20 to save its goddam life), they hold a special place in my heart.

I'm now approaching 19 years playing table-top RPGs. Have I learned anything interesting or useful enough that people will want to read what I have to say? Probably not, but I still hope I can sufficiently minimize the suck so you'll stop by from time to time to read my ramblings. While you're here, leave a comment while you're at it. Tell us all about your first time.²

Join me next week when I'll tell you about the greatest RPG ever.

Later,

CDGK


¹ Which was probably for the best - even when I saw that movie years later, it still made no sense to me.

² Yes, I mean first time-time playing D&D. But if you want to tell me about other firsts, that's okay, too.

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Some things of note: I love foot notes, and used to use them extensively in my writing, but they really don't work very well digitally. No one wants to scroll down to the bottom in a blog post, and setting them up in an ebook is even worse. So sadly I don't use them much anymore.

I wrote lots more about roleplaying games on Rule of the Dice until I ran out of old stories, and had kids so I didn't have much time to create new ones. Then I started releasing my fiction and writing this blog, which I don't really have time for either but at least I can do it by myself, without having to schedule game days with other people.

If anyone wants to participate in the hop, the rules are below:

The Rules:

• No cheating. (It must be your first post. Not your second post, not one you love…first post only.)
• Link back to the person who tagged you (thank them if you feel like it or, if not, curse them with a plague of ladybugs).
• Cut and paste your old post into a new post or reblog your own bad self. (Either way is fine but NO editing.)
• Put the hashtag #MyFirstPostRevisited in your title.
• Tag five (5) other bloggers to take up this challenge.
• Notify your tags in the comment section of their blog (don’t just hope they notice a pingback somewhere in their spam).
• Feel free to cut and paste the badge to use in your post.
• Include “the rules” in your post.

Here are the folks I'm tagging to participate, if you're feeling up to it:

Philip Overby
CG Coppola

Birgit at BB Creations
Natasha Duncan-Drake
Stephanie Faris

Happy Blogging!

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