Book on John A. Macdonald Revisits Violent Episode That Helped Spawn Canada

Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, in an undated photo. NFB/National Archives of Canada

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.