It was 200-years-ago today that the great Father of Confederation, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, came into this world. Born in Ireland, he came to North America as a young man and after living and working in the United States, moved north, crossing the line, and it was here that he saw endless possibilities if the different colonies of British North America answered destiny’s call and created, what he called, a “New Nationality.”
McGee challenged the leaders of his era to look beyond themselves and parochial interests and to come together “to welcome every talent, to hail every invention, to cherish every gem of art, to foster every gleam of authorship, to honour every acquirement and every natural gift, to lift ourselves to the level of our destinies, to rise above all low limitations and narrow circumscriptions, to cultivate that true catholicity of spirit which embraces all creeds, all classes, and all races, in order to make of our boundless province, so rich in known and unknown resources, a great new northern nation.” He also once said “Never was there for a northern land a grander destiny in store – never was there for man’s intelligence a worthier work than to accelerate and assure that destiny.”
Confederation was less than a year old when he took, unknowingly, to his feet in the Commons a final time. It was early April 1868 and MPs were occupied in a divisive debate. McGee told them to once again, look beyond region and consider the greater good. “I, Sir, who have been, and still am, its warm and earnest advocate, speak here not as the representative of any Province, but as thoroughly and emphatically a Canadian, ready and bound to recognize the claims, if any, of my Canadian fellow subjects, from the farthest east, to the farthest west, equally as those of my nearest neighbour, or of the friend who proposed me on the hustings.”
With that, he left the Commons and walked down Parliament Hill to his boarding house on Sparks Street. It was there he was felled by an assassin’s bullet, and entered history.
On this, the 200th anniversary of the birth of the poet of Confederation, and in the midst of an election campaign above which lurks the ever-menacing shadow of Donald Trump, re-dedicate ourselves, regardless of party view, to the greater cause called Canada for which McGee gave his life.
