Commentary
One could contend that a brief skirmish gone wrong on a snowy field near Duck Lake, in present-day central Saskatchewan, helped Canada become a country. This momentous, yet little-known, episode in our history is insightfully chronicled in the book “Sir John A. Macdonald & the Apocalyptic Year 1885” by Patrice Dutil (Sutherland House), a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.
March 26, 1885:
A North West Mounted Police (NWMP) trooper—despatched from nearby Fort Carlton to secure supplies from a government “store” near Duck Lake—happens, unseen, upon a mounted detachment of about 300 Métis and Cree, led by Gabriel Dumont.
The trooper, aware of brewing land-rights claims by Métis leader Louis Riel, quickly retreats to Fort Carlton.
NWMP superintendent Leif Crozier assembles a company of 90 men, and they return to the scene.
Tempers quickly flare. Someone fires a gun. Bullets start flying, and after a 30-minute or so exchange of deadly fire—during which 12 NWMP men died, five under Dumont—Crozier orders a retreat.
Riel, who partook in the exchange of fire, inexplicably calls off pursuing the Crozier men back to the fort.
The so-called Duck Lake Resistance becomes Canadian history.
The word apocalyptic in the book’s title is striking. As armed hostilities go, a brief—albeit deadly—clash on a remote field some 2,900 kilometres west of Ottawa might not ignite popular passions. But when news of the death of Crozier’s men was telegraphed to the Macdonald government, and hence bruited to newspapers across Eastern Canada, the reaction was, well, apocalyptic….