The fate to be meted out to Riel was the burning
question. Ontario saw in him the murderer of Scott and an
ambitious plotter who had twice stirred up armed rebellion.
Quebec saw in him a man of French blood, persecuted because he
had stood up manfully for the undoubted rights of his kinsmen.
Today experts agree that Riel was insane and should have been
spared the gallows on this if on no other account. But at the
moment the plea of insanity was rejected. The Government made up
for its laxity before the rebellion by severity after it; and in
November, 1885, Riel was sent to the scaffold. Bitterness rankled
in many a French-Canadian heart for long years after; and in
Ontario, where the Orange order was strongly entrenched, a
faction threatened "to smash Confederation into its original
fragments" rather than submit to "French domination."
Racial and religious passions, once aroused, soon found new fuel
to feed upon. Honore Mercier, a brilliant but unscrupulous leader
who had ridden to power in the province of Quebec on the Riel
issue, roused Protestant ire by restoring estates which had been
confiscated at the conquest in 1763 to the Jesuits and other
Roman Catholic authorities, in proportions which the act provided
were to be determined by "Our Holy Father the Pope." In Ontario
restrictions began to be imposed on the freedom of
French-Canadian communities on the border to make French the sole
or dominant tongue in the schoolroom.
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