Honouring 'One of the Great Forces of the Dominion': The Canadian Public Mourns McGee

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Honouring 'One of the Great Forces of the Dominion': The Canadian Public Mourns McGee
Abstract
Urban publics - the self-conscious interest groups that emerged to characterize much of the social and political climate of city life - claimed attention, contended for influence, and celebrated their values through performances of a wide variety of rituals in urban public space. The author focuses on one dramatic and important episode expressing the nature of public ritual in Confederation-era Canada: the memorialization of the Irish-born (April 13, 1825) Montreal journalist, poet and politician Thomas D'Arcy McGee, assassinated in Ottawa on April 7, 1868, and buried in Montreal. The author argues that in paying homage to McGee, urban publics in Montreal and across the Dominion seized an almost unparalleled opportunity to bear witness to their images of themselves, in the very particular circumstance of an intensely felt moment in time. He contends that the nature of this ritual allows us to explore one significant aspect of a social geography of the city that is otherwise not easily recoverable and often forgotten: the evanescent but powerfully signifying geography of behaviour in public space.
Publication
The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien
Volume
Vol. 41
Issue
no. 4
Pages
350-362
Date
December 1997
Language
en
Citation
Goheen, Peter G. “Honouring ‘One of the Great Forces of the Dominion’: The Canadian Public Mourns McGee.” The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien Vol. 41, no. 4 (December 1997): 350–362.
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