The directory «Plots»

McGee Thomas D’Arcy
(1825—1868)

Canadian poet, 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.

In McGee’s poetry, the image of the True North gradually grows out of the Ulster of his birth ("The Man of the North Country") through the Northern United States of his refuge ("Freedom’s Journey") to the true freedom of Canada ("Along The Line"). McGee left a legacy of People’s Poems such as "Icebergs" (1867), "The Death of Hudson", "The Launch of the Griffin", "‘Our Ladye of the Snow!’", "The Arctic Indian’s Faith" "A Plea for the Poor", and the often anthologized "Jacques Cartier", that reconfirmed the bardic tradition in Canada, and set the later ‘Confederation Poets" in motion.

Canada, 1927, Tomas D'Arcy McGee