Depiction of the Battle of Batoche during the North-West Rebellion in 1885, an encore to the Red River Rebellion of 1869. Public Domain
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Commentary
Louis Riel has long been called by some the Father of Manitoba. Though the province’s website is equivocal (saying only that he is “widely regarded” as such), last year Manitoba one-upped itself. Supposedly “correcting history,” Premier Wab Kinew declared Riel the province’s “first Premier”—a position that not even Riel imagined he ever held and that he was never sworn into.
C.P. Champion, Ph.D., is the author of two books, was a fellow of the Centre for International and Defence Policy at Queen’s University in 2021, and edits The Dorchester Review magazine, which he founded in 2011.
