It has been coming though no-one thought it would-not even its leaders
The 1834 election, with its platform of ’the elective principle’ sent Papineau and his Patriote party to a landslide victory. The result struck terror in the hearts of the English minority and the feeble British governor. Then the Legislative Assembly refuses to vote the supply bills. Buoyed by their power in the Assembly, the Patriotes refuse to make any concessions, pass revolutionary resolutions that infuriate both the moderates and the British colonial government. With famine on the rise and law and order breaking down, crime rises, gangs of political thugs parade in the city streets, and inflammatory rhetoric creates an explosive atmosphere in the colony.
Niall’s personal life is equally fraught. To save the Neilson’s favourite daughter, the beautiful Agnes from shame, he behaved as a gentleman, only to have his friends misjudge his motives and call him a fortune-seeker. Julie, the love of his life, repents her choice of the conventual life, but too late for him. Niall suffers another loss as Julie and Ovide turn to each other, and Niall must watch his friend court the woman he has never stopped loving.
As the political situation deteriorates, so, too, does Niall’s private life. When the governor prorogues the Assembly, sending its infuriated members out to their constituencies, Neilson family relationships decay to the point that Niall resigns from the Quebec
Gazette. As a freelance reporter, he joins the front lines, reporting from the battle grounds as words give way to bullets.
Once again, Jan Morgan sticks closely to the facts by weaving the reports from the governors, private letters of leaders of the rebellion, newspaper accounts, and many more original sources into a spellbinding account of Lower Canada’s rebellion. She gives us a street-level view through the voices of the people on the scene of the heart-wrenching tragedy that tore the country apart and still leaves scars.
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