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D'Arcy McGee

 
Irish Literature Companion: Thomas D'ArcyMcGee
 

McGee, Thomas D'Arcy (1825-1868), journalist and author; born in Carlingford, Co. Louth, and raised in Wexford, he emigrated to America aged 17. Returning to Ireland, he wrote for The Nation, to which he contributed many poems. Escaping in disguise after the Young Ireland Rising in 1848, he founded the New York Nation (1848). In 1862 he became Canadian Minister of Agriculture. He spoke against militant Republicanism on a visit to Wexford in 1865, and was assassinated in Ottawa after the Fenian raid on Canada. Besides Eva MacDonald (1844), a novel about the United Irishmen, he wrote A Gallery of Irish Writers of the Seventeenth Century (1846), A Popular History of Ireland (1862), and political memoirs.

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Columbia Encyclopedia: Thomas D'ArcyMcGee
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McGee, Thomas D'Arcy (məgē') , 1825–68, Canadian journalist and statesman, a leader in the movement for confederation, b. Ireland. He emigrated (1842) to Boston, where he became editor of the Boston Pilot, but in 1845 he returned to Ireland to join the staff of the Dublin Freeman's Journal. Later McGee transferred to the Nation, journal of the Young Ireland party. Implicated in the uprising of 1848, he fled to America. He edited Irish papers in New York City and Boston before settling (1857) in Montreal, where he started the New Era. Entering (1858) the Canadian legislature, McGee became president of the council (1862) and minister of agriculture (1864). His anti-British position had changed, and he lent his brilliant oratory to the cause of Canadian confederation within the empire. He lived to see it take place (1867), but the following year he was assassinated by a member of the Fenian movement, whose tactics McGee had denounced.
 
Wikipedia: D'Arcy McGee
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McGee in 1868

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, PC, (April 13, 1825April 7, 1868) was an Irish Nationalist, Irish-Canadian journalist, Father of Confederation, and, to date, the only Canadian victim of political assassination at the federal level.

Contents

Profile

Widely known as D'Arcy McGee, he was born on April 13, 1825 in Carlingford, Ireland and raised as a Roman Catholic. In 1842 at age 17 he emigrated to the United States where he found work as assistant editor of Patrick Donahoe's Boston Pilot, a Catholic newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts. A few years later he returned to Ireland where he became politically active and edited the nationalist newspaper The Nation. His support for the Fenians and his involvement in the Irish Confederation and Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 resulted in a warrant for his arrest. McGee escaped the country by steamship and returned to the United States.

In the US, he founded Irish-American publications in New York City and Boston, and generally supported the cause of Irish immigrants. In 1857 he went to Canada where he set up the publication of the New Era in Montreal, Quebec. Politically active, he advocated a new nationality in Canada, to escape the sectarianism of Ireland. In 1858, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada and worked for the creation of an independent Canada. A monument to him stands at Tremone Bay, in north Co. Donegal near the bay from which he escaped to America in 1848. (Beattie, Darcy McGee Commemoration, 1848, p.5)

Moderating his radical Irish nationalist views, McGee denounced the Fenian Brotherhood in America that advocated a forcible takeover of Canada from Britain by the United States. A faction of American Fenians sent an invasion force into Canada in 1866 that was repulsed by Canadian forces and arrested by the American authorities. Canadians, with Irish sympathizers in their midst, and spurred by numerous rumours of another, more massive invasion, lived in fear of the Fenians for several years.

McGee was elected to the 1st Canadian Parliament in 1867 as a Conservative representing the riding of Montreal West.

McGee funeral procession in 1868

Assassination

On April 7, 1868, McGee participated in a parliamentary debate that went on past midnight. He walked to the doorstep of his Sparks St. apartment afterward, and was assassinated by pistol shot. He was given a state funeral in Ottawa and interred in the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal. The Government of Canada's Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building stands near the site of the assassination.

Patrick J. Whelan, a Fenian sympathizer, was accused, tried, convicted, and hanged for the crime. Decades later, his guilt was questioned and many believe that he was a scapegoat. His case is dramatized in the Canadian play, Blood on the Moon. The Canadian folk music group Tamarack's song "The Hangman's Eyes" was inspired by Whelan.

Honours

There is a monument to him in his native Carlingford, County Louth, Ireland, unveiled during a visit by Brian Mulroney, former Canadian Prime Minister and his then Irish counterpart Charles Haughey.

On Sparks Street, in downtown Ottawa, the Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building is a prominent government-owned office building.

A pub bearing his name, "D'Arcy McGee's", is situated at the corner of Sparks Street and Elgin Street. Located within walking distance of Parliament Hill, it is a popular watering hole for many politicians. Other locations of D'Arcy McGee's Irish Pub exist in Bells Corners, Ontario and at the Ottawa International Airport, having opened on April 1, 2008 in the newly expanded domestic portion of the passenger terminal, and the first US location in 2008 in Tempe, Arizona.

D'Arcy McGee has several schools named in his honour including: l'École Secondaire D'Arcy McGee High School, sec III-V, Western Quebec School Board, Gatineau, Quebec; D'Arcy McGee Catholic School, Elementary, Toronto Catholic District School Board, Toronto, Ontario; and Thomas D'Arcy McGee Catholic School, Elementary, Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board, Ottawa, Ontario.

In 1986, a Chair of Irish Studies was set up in his honour at St. Mary's University, Halifax.

The Quebec provincial electoral district (riding) of D'Arcy-McGee is named in his honour, as are two villages in central Saskatchewan. One of these villages is named D'Arcy, the other McGee, and they are located approximately 20 kilometres apart.

References

Sean Beattie, Darcy McGee a Commemoration 1848, Carndonagh, 1998.

External links

Parliament of Canada
Preceded by
None
Member of Parliament for Montreal West
1867–1868
Succeeded by
Michael Patrick Ryan

 
 

 

Copyrights:

Irish Literature Companion. The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Copyright © 1996, 2000, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "D'Arcy McGee" Read more