The years 1957 and 1958 are centenary years connected with the life of Thomas D'Arcy McGee. (1) His family came to live in Montreal in the month of August 1857; they came from the city of Brooklyn, New York state, (2) he came under the sponsorship of St. Patrick's Society of Montreal, (3) he was chosen as the representative for the constituency of Montreal West in the coming election in December 1857; and was elected with the largest vote of the six candidates presenting themselves for the three seats in Montreal, (4) on January 2nd, 1858, he issued the first number of his Montreal tri-weekly newspaper The New Era. When Mr. W. A. Higgs of the Thomas D'Arcy McGee Associates of Montreal wrote the newly elected Prime Minister of Canada, the Honourable Mr. John Diefenbaker, about the recently formed society and its purpose of doing honour to the memory of McGee and in particular of the society's hope of presenting Canada with an oil painting of McGee, he was welcomed quite warmly in a letter from Mr. Diefenbaker written from London and dated July 2nd, 1957. Later on in the summer of 1957, the McGee Associates were told about the agreement made with Mr. Bruce Mitchell, a Montreal artist, to paint the portrait of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, and at the same meeting Mr. Patrick Lynch offered to pay the fee the artist asked for his services. The McGee Associates are deeply indebted to Mr. Lynch's generosity. This occasion is not the time nor is this the place to go into a detailed account of McGee's very active life; he was born on April 13th, 1825, in the town of Carlinsford, Ireland, and on the night of April 6th of the year 1868, shortly after he had left the House of Commons, he was assassinated in Ottawa, Canada, and on the 43rd anniversary of his birthday he was buried in Montreal on April 13th, 1868. He left Ireland for the first time with his sister in April 1842 to visit relatives in Providence, Rhode Island. He became a writer for the Boston Pilot and attracted so much attention by his writings and speaking that the owners of the Freemans Journal invited him back to Ireland in August of the year 1845 to become connected with newspapers in Dublin and in London. His connection through Charles Gavin Duffy and the Nation newspaper was an important event in his life; through the Nation came the abortive rebellion of 1848, under the leadership of Smith O'Brien; its repression followed, and McGee's second departure from Ireland, disguised as a priest, with a price on his head by the British government, took place. The years 1846-48 are the years of the great famine in Ireland; the great migrations from the homeland to England and Scotland, to the United States and South America, to continental Europe, to Australia and New Zealand and to Canada-Quebec, Montreal, Toronto and Kingston. In Montreal in one large burying place at the western end of the Victoria bridge, there are six thousand dead of Irish emigrants who sought to make Canada their home in 1847-48. McGee reached Philadelphia on the emigrant ship, "The Shamrock", in 1848 and for the next ten years he was engaged in newspaper work in a number of American cities, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, New York, interspersed with many lecture engagements in the United States and Canada. In 1850, McGee founded in New York the newspaper The American Celt, which he later moved to Buffalo-soon he became known as one of the more attractive lecturers and came frequently to Canada and later on to Canada's maritime provinces where Archbishop Connolly of Halifax remained his constant friend until McGee's death. In the years 1856 and 1857, the Irish, who had been coming to Montreal in larger numbers for twenty-five years and more, stated through St. Patrick's Society their intention of naming and electing one of their own to represent them in one of the three seats which Montreal then held in the legislative assembly of Canada. As there were a number of aspirants for the honour, St. Patrick's Society decided to go outside of Canada and in the United States, they asked Thomas D'Arcy McGee to be their candidate for parliament. In August of the year 1857, McGee's wife and children moved to Montreal and took up residence on St. Antoine street, near Richmond square in the western suburbs of Montreal. The ministerial candidates for the three parliamentary seats which Montreal had in the 1857 election were Georges Etienne Cartier, Sternes and John Rose; the reform candidates were Antoine A. Dorion, Luther Holton and Thomas D'Arcy McGee; the polling days in Montreal were Monday and Tuesday, December 21st and 22nd; at the close of the election at 5 p.m. Tuesday, December 22nd, 1857, Dorion, Rose and

Thomas D'Arcy McGee McGee were elected and McGee led the poll; there was great excitement during the two days of the election. McGee continued to represent the constituency of Montreal West until his assassination in 1868. He ran four more elections in Montreal; in 1862 he was opposed by John Young and in 1867 was opposed by Mr. Barney Devlin. McGee won both these elections. Canada West and Canada East, now known as Ontario and Quebec, made up what was called Canada from about 1841 to Confederation in 1867. McGee took his seat in parliament for the first time in the first session of the sixth provincial parliament at its opening in Toronto on February 25th, 1858, one hundred years ago this coming February-the attorney general of Canada West, John A. Macdonald, and the attorney general of Canada East, Georges Etienne Cartier, were the two leaders of the government. Cartier in the 1857 election was defeated in Montreal but elected in Vercheres. McGee and Dorion were in opposition. The opposition party was called Reformers. Later McGee became a member of John A. Macdonald's government, but not for a year or more. McGee had an interesting time in Toronto. On St. Patrick's day of the year 1858 while his friends escorted him to his hotel, a section of the True Blue orangemen showered stones on his carriage. The time now is too brief to enter into all the details of McGee's public life. He became an anti-slavery defender in the United States in 1861; he was made president of the council in the Sandfield-Mac-donald-Sicotte ministry in 1862; chairman of the intercolonial conference at Quebec in 1862. In 1862 McGee announced his independence in parliament and was elected in Montreal West; his opponent was John Young; in 1863 he joined the Liberal-Conservative political party and toured the country with John A. Macdonald; in 1864 he became minister of agriculture, immigration and statistics in the Tache-Macdonald ministry. In 1864 he was a member of the Charlottetown conference that met in August and in October of the Quebec conference, where most of the clauses of the British North America Act were decided upon. In 1867 in the contest for Montreal West with Mr. Bernard Devlin, he won his last election by a majority of 250 votes. The following are some of his better known books: "O'Connell and His Friends" in 1845. "Irish Writers of the Seventeenth Century" in 1846. "Life and Conquests of Art MacMurrough" in 1847. "Memoir of Charles Gavin Duffy" in 1848. "A History of the Irish Settlers in North America" in 1850. "The Catholic History of North America" in 1853. "The Attempts to Establish the Reformation in Ireland" in 1855. "The Life of Bishop Maginn" in 1857. "History of Ireland" in 1863. "Federal Governments, Past and Present", published in 1865. "Campaign against Fenianism" in 1865. "The Irish Position in British and in Republican North America" in 1866. In the month of November 1869, about three hundred and fifty of Thomas D'Arcy McGee's poems were published by Mrs. James Sadler of Montreal and New York; explanatory notes were printed in the book, as was a splendid biographical sketch of McGee. Mrs. Sadler wrote in her sketch: It was in June 1842 when our young Irish poet McGee arrived on a visit to Boston from Providence, R.I. When the 4th of July came around, the roar of artillery and the gladsome shouts of the multitude, the waving of flags and the general jubilation of a people who had freed themselves, fired his youthful imagination. It seemed to him that which he saw that day was but the fore-shadowing of similar scenes in his own beloved land. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, at the time seventeen years old, addressed the people that day and the eloquence of the boy-orator enchanted the multitude who heard him there as the more finished speeches of his later years were wont to do. And oh it were a glorious deed To show before mankind How every race and every creed Might be by love combined: Might be combined yet still would show The sources whence they rose As filled with many a rivulet The lordly Shannon flows. It was close to two a.m. on the morning of April 7th, 1868, when the House of Commons in Ottawa adjourned; the house had heard one of McGee's speeches defending Canadian confederation. With the music of McGee's oratory in their ears the members of parliament sought their ways homeward. McGee was bending down to open the street door of his Sparks street boarding house when he was shot in the back of his head and died almost instantly. The government of Canada took charge of the funeral arrangements, arranged a pension for McGee's widow and the two surviving children and provided a tomb in Cote des Neiges cemetery for McGee's body.

Thursday, January 30, 1958

Second report of standing committee on external affairs.-Mr. White.