Troublous Times in Canada

An odd little book about an odd little time in Canadian history.

The Fenian raids were part of the ongoing attempt by Irish republicans to liberate their homeland from the British empire. In 1866, realizing that they couldn't win in open warfare against the British, they decided to try to invade Canada, thinking that they could either ransom a conquered Canada back to Britain in exchange for a free Ireland, or they would just keep it and rename it New Ireland. Their plan might have worked, too, except that it was a horribly poorly thought out plan, carried out by incompetents who completely misunderstood the relationship between the Canadian colonists and Mother England. The fear caused by these raids was apparently one of the motivations behind Confederation, though, so I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it before now.

The book itself is oddly structured, too - MacDonald is clearly passionate on the subject of Canadian identity and loyalty to the crown, and doesn't hide that at all. He breaks up the narrative at times, though, with pages and pages of lists of the individual soldiers who fought in different engagements with the Fenians, with special mention of those who were wounded or died. I get that he wanted to show his respect to the fallen, but it created a really uneven reading experience.


PS: Not that John A MacDonald. A different one.