Church Bells at St. Thomas on a Sunday Morning

Hear the church bells ringing at St. Thomas Anglican Church in Montreal, October 2016.

On the 144th Anniversary of Thomas D'Arcy McGee's Death

On this day, 13 April, in 1868, Thomas D’Arcy McGee was buried from St. Patrick’s Church in Montreal. This is the 144th year since McGee was assassinated in Ottawa and, a week later, his funeral in Montreal. There are two recently published accounts of the night McGee was assassinated on 8 April 1868 outside his rooming house near Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

The first is from Richard Gwyn’s Nation Maker, Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times, volume two: 1867-1891 (Toronto: Random House, 2011). Both volumes of Richard Gwyn’s best-selling biography are fascinating and bring to life this important Prime Minister and the age in which he lived. The second is from David A. Wilson’s Thomas D’Arcy McGee, The Extreme Moderate, 1857-1868, volume two (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011). Professor Wilson brings to life an important figure in Canadian history, someone who formed a vision of Canada that is still applicable to our own time. These books are highly readable and I recommend both of them for anyone interested in Canadian history.


Richard Gwyn's account is deeply moving; he writes of that evening:

All day, Agnes Macdonald had experienced a sense of foreboding. Macdonald didn’t get home until after two in the morning. Waiting up for him, she wrote later, “a sort of dread came upon me, as I looked out into the cold, still bright moonlight, that something might happen to him at that hour coming home alone.” But then she “heard the carriage wheels & flew down to open the door for my Husband.”

Shortly afterwards, Agnes heard a frantic knocking on the door. “Springing up I threw on a wrapper & ran into my dressing room, just in time to see John throw up the window & to hear him call out, ‘Is there anything the matter?’” "McGee is murdered, lying in the street, Shot thro’ the head,” the messenger shouted back. Macdonald, accompanied by Hewitt Bernard, immediately raced into town by carriage, where they found McGee still lying where he had fallen outside the boarding house. Macdonald cradled McGee’s head in his arms until a doctor arrived to confirm that he was dead. Only then did Macdonald and the others carry his body to a couch inside. Back home, his overcoat sodden with blood, Macdonald collapsed. As Agnes wrote, “He was much agitated, for him whose self command is so wonderful…his face a ghostly white. (p. 57-58)

David Wilson writes of that same evening:

He (McGee) was in a good mood when the House adjourned shortly after two o’clock in the morning. He had completed his letter to the Earl of Mayo about the Canadian example for Irish reform; he had written to Charles Meehan and Charles Tupper about his literary pursuits; and he had spoken to “great applause” in the House about the spirit of Confederation. By way of celebration, he had bought himself three cigars, lit one of them, and left the House with his fellow MP Robert MacFarlane. It was a surprisingly mild night for early April, and the moon was full. A few yards behind them was a group of four men, employees of the House of Commons. One of them, John Buckley, called out, “Goodnight Mr. McGee.” “Good morning,” he replied. “It is morning now.” He turned off by himself at Sparks Street, walking slowly with the help of his cane; his lodgings, in Mrs. Trotter’s boarding house, were a hundred yards away.

Mrs. Trotter was still up, waiting for her thirteen-year-old son Willie to come home from the House, where he was working as a page. Suddenly, she heard “quick steps passing the dining room window,” followed by “a noise as of some one rattling at the hall door.” A she opened the door, she thought someone had set off a firecracker; then she saw a figure slumped against the right-hand side of the doorway. She rushed back into the hall, reached for a lamp, and realized that her doorway was spattered with blood; she saw the slumped figure fall to the ground and knew immediately that he was dead. His face was unrecognizable.

Detective Edward O'Neill was awoken sometime before three o'clock in the morning. He was well known within Ottawa's Irish Catholic community and was well placed to ask the right people questions. Among other people, he questioned Patrick Buckley (John's brother), who had been chief marshal at the recent St. Patrick's Day parade and was a doorkeeper at the House of Commons and a sometime coachman for both George Brown and John A. Macdonald. At first, Buckley refused to talk. "My God, do you want to ruin me, and have my house burned over me?" he asked when O'Neill started questioning him. As O'Neill kept pressing him for information, Buckley told him to "go to Eagleson's and arrest the sandy whiskered tailor there." Eagleson's was a tailor's shop on Sussex Street; its owner, Peter Eagleson, was one of the leading Fenians in the city, and he had visited the scene of the assasination between four and five o'clock in the morning, when very few people knew about it. All this made him an early object of suspicion; he was the first person arrested in connection with the murder. (p. 341-342)

P.S. 22 September 2018:

McGee's assassination was reported in the Montreal Gazette on 7 April 1868; it states that McGee was killed at 2:30 a.m. just after he left Parliament. The Gazette's account was written at 4:20 a.m. and also states that Sir John A. Macdonald was present soon after McGee died. So, between McGee's death at 2:30 a.m. and when the newspaper report was written at 4:20 a.m., Macdonald was told of McGee's assassination and arrived at McGee's rooming house. How long did it take Macdonald to get to McGee's residence after hearing of his death? Perhaps forty-five minutes, around 3:15 a.m. When did the newspaper reporter arrive at the crime scene? Perhaps at 3 or 3:15 a.m.? Time enough to see Macdonald respond to seeing his friend's body in the street and to help carry him into the rooming house. See my short video on this: