by Glen Campbell and Tom Flanagan
University of Calgary
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The authors of this article were part of the team that edited The Collected Writings of Louis Riel, published by the University of Alberta Press in 1985.[1] Since then we have tried to keep Riel’s story current by publishing and interpreting his writings that were discovered after 1985.[2] We do not have new documents to present here, but we weave into the story of Riel’s life some new information that has come to light about the women that he loved.[3] The explosion of genealogy on the Internet in the intervening years has allowed us to discover new information and make new inferences about the women that Riel hoped to marry, and about the influence they exerted on him. The result is a significant addition to the story of his life.
Pioneering Canadian historians such as George Stanley and W. L. Morton wrote about Riel as a political figure.[4] Gilles Martel and Tom Flanagan then explored Riel’s prophetic and messianic religiosity.[5] However, even prophets have to make a living,[6] and they also may desire love and marriage. We will show that the five women discussed here had a major impact on the trajectory of Riel’s life. Marie-Julie Guernon, Evelina Barnabé, Louise-Anne Marion, Marie-Rose Marion, and Marguerite Monet are not well known historical figures; but during a period of some twenty years, these women, one after the other, played an important role in the life of the Métis leader. We will illuminate these relationships primarily by presenting pertinent passages from Riel’s poetry, which often display his emotional life in a unique way.
When he was 13 years of age, Louis Riel arrived at the College of Montreal to begin his studies with the Sulpician fathers. During school vacations, he often stayed with his aunt and uncle, Lucie and John Lee, at Mile End, St-Jean Baptiste Village, near Montreal. In the same village lived Joseph and Louise-Euphémie Guernon with their daughter Marie-Julie. City directories show several families named Guernon living in Mile End at the time. They appear to have been respectable tradesmen but not wealthy professionals or merchants. Joseph was a carter; other Guernon breadwinners included a butcher, shoemaker, and cabinetmaker.[7]
It was evidently during one of these sojourns at Mile-End that Louis made the acquaintance of Marie-Julie. In the months that followed, he fell in love with her. In a young man’s life, such an encounter would be the source of great joy. For Riel, however, this relationship triggered the beginning of a worrisome period, as we note in the poem, “Un jeune malade,” written most likely in 1864. In these verses, which are strongly influenced by 19th-century French Romanticism, the poet describes the feelings of a young man who undergoes the ebbing of his life forces and who succumbs to the sorrow that oppresses him, just as leaves expire in autumn’s bitter cold:
La nature est mourante
Quand viennent les frimas.
Et ma force expirante
Me parle du trépas!Nature dies
When wintry weather comes.
And my withering strength
Speaks to me of death![8]
Later, the lovesick young man begs his beloved to remember the tender moments spent together and the vows that they made to one another:
O toi que j’ai chérie,
Quand j’aurai clos mes yeux,
Fidèle et tendre amie!
Souviens-toi de nos voeux!Quelquefois sur ma cendre
Oubliant tes appas,
Viens te faire entendre
Et plaindre mon trépas!Oh you that I have cherished,
When I will have closed my eyes,
Faithful and tender friend!
Remember our vows!Sometimes on my ashes
Forgetting your charms,
Come and proclaim
Your pity for my demise.[9]
Is there an autobiographical prescience in these lines? Do they really allude to the imminent death of the young man, of our poet Riel? Was he in fact suffering from a serious illness for which there was no hope of recovery? In order to answer these questions and have a clearer understanding of the poem, we must remember that at this moment of his life, Riel was preparing himself for the priesthood. His family and the Bishop of Saint-Boniface, Alexander Taché, who had made the scholastic and financial arrangements for his period of study in Eastern Canada, were anticipating his return to Red River to become its first Métis priest. Falling in love with a young girl was not compatible with such a destiny. The inferred death is therefore not physical but rather spiritual, symbolizing the romantic dilemma of the young seminarian. Should he abandon his studies for the love of Marie-Julie? That is the anguished question that he poses. For the moment, at least, he decides to stay at the College.
During his early years in Montreal, Riel applied himself diligently to his studies. He usually ranked amongst the best students in his class.[10] In 1865, however, the situation had changed. The young collegian seems to have lost his desire to study. He frequently skipped classes; his marks showed this lack of interest. The following lines explain
why:
L’autre jour je dis à Marie:
Ah! Si vous vouliez mon bonheur!
Je serais pour toute la vie
Votre fidèle serviteur.
The other day I said to Marie:
Ah! If only you wanted my happiness
I would be for evermore
Your faithful servant.[11]
Riel’s love for Marie-Julie Guernon did not stop growing. In fact, as his poetry shows, Riel finally made up his mind to marry the young woman. In order to have enough money for their future needs, he began looking for work. That explains his frequent absences from his classes. But the administration could no longer overlook Riel’s disregard for rules of the College and found it necessary to expel him on 8 March 1865.[12] Farewell to the priesthood!
It would appear that Marie-Julie had responded favourably to Louis’s outpouring of love because on 12 June 1866, before Notary A.-C. Décary of Montreal, they signed, without Monsieur and Madame Guernon’s knowledge, a promissory contract of marriage and established the legalities of separation of property,[13] perhaps trying to assuage parental fears that the impoverished Riel would appropriate Guernon family property. But if everything was moving along smoothly between the young lovers, such was not the case for the parents. Madame Guernon tried to dissuade her daughter from marrying Riel:
Maman veut que je reste fille
Et que je vive sans amant.
Mama wants me to remain single
And live without a lover.[14]
Monsieur and Madame Guernon refused their consent to the marriage, which explains the furtive way in which Marie-Julie and Louis signed their contract. What was the reason behind Madame Guernon’s displeasure? The following lines offer a possible explanation:
Ma fille est trop tranquille
Pour avoir un bandit
Elle est bien trop gentille
Pour vous, sans contredit.
My daughter is too discreet
To marry a rogue
She is much too refined…
Consider yourself barred.[15]
The Guernons’ refusal to let their daughter marry the young Riel was categorical. And it seems, by the use of the word “rogue” (bandit) that their refusal might have been influenced by racial prejudice. They probably thought that there would never be a place for the Red River outsider in the more genteel society of Montreal.
On 19 June 1866, broken-hearted, Riel left Montreal. In the poetry that he composed before his departure, he stated that he was happy to be able to soon see his family and his homeland that he had left eight years earlier, but at the same time, his despondency was very much in evidence. The unhappy ending of his relationship with Marie-Julie left him distressed and deeply melancholic:
Voici que bientôt je vous laisse;
Je vais partir pour mon pays.
Si mon coeur est plein d’allégresse
Croyez qu’aussi j’ai des ennuis…
Maintenant lorsque je m’éloigne
L’amitié m’arrache des pleurs.
J’aime; et mon âme le témoigne…
Adieu! Adieu! ma fiancée
O c’est en vain que tu m’attends.
Je meurs; je quitte ma pensée
Aux bords du fleuve St Laurent.
I will be leaving you soon;
Returning to my homeland.
If my heart is full of joy
Know that I also have worries…
Now as I move away
Friendship has me in tears.
I’m in love; and my soul acknowledges it …
Farewell! Farewell! My fiancée
Oh! You wait for me in vain.
I’m dying; I leave my soul
On the banks of the Saint Lawrence River.[16]
These lines come from two of Riel’s poems that, we believe, were written in June 1866 during his final days in Montreal. The last four lines come from a poem describing two lovers, Isaure and Izard, poetic counterparts of Louis and Marie-Julie, who are about to be separated. Although the origin of the name Izard remains elusive, Isaure was a Roman Catholic female saint whose feast day was 17 June.[17] In Riel’s verses, curiously, Isaure is the young man who is about to depart while his beloved Izard waits for him plaintively on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River.
There may, however, be more to the story. Members of the Guernon family with whom we have had long conversations and correspondence believe that Louis and Marie-Julie had a love child named Ernest.[18] Apparently, the baby was kept at home until the summer of 1868, when Marie-Julie’s father Joseph Guernon died. Young Ernest was then given to Marie-Julie’s brother Edouard to be raised. The only documentary evidence touching on the family’s story is an entry in the registry of the parish church of Saint-Enfant-Jésus de Mile End for 25 December 1868, recording the baptism of Léon-Noël-Ernest Guernon, son of Edouard Guernon and Amanda Lefebvre.[19] The date is a problem because we know that Louis left Montreal on 19 June 1866. If he had fathered a child by Marie-Julie, it would have been born in late 1866 or early 1867. However, people were more casual about dates in the mid-19th century than we are today, and it is also possible that a sympathetic priest could have entered the later date as part of a story designed to make Ernest look like the legitimate child of Edouard. In the absence of further documentary evidence, comparative DNA testing with known relatives of Louis Riel may someday shed more light on the question. According to historical records, there was no other woman in Riel’s life until 1874. We can conclude that the Red River uprising of 1869–1870 and its follow-up so occupied his time that the Métis leader had no time for romantic thoughts. As for Marie-Julie, Riel made no further reference to her in his poetry, but we know that in 1872 she married in Montreal one Jean Malboeuf who was listed as a bailiff in a Montreal directory for 1880–1881.[20]
Riel once again displayed his sentimental side with the following love poem, dated 18 June 1874. It was addressed to Marie-Élisabeth Evelina Barnabé, sister of Fabien Barnabé (the exact name of the family was Martin-Barnabé), parish priest of Keeseville, New York. Louis had made the acquaintance of Father Barnabé during one of his visits to the eastern United States. Formerly from Québec, the priest had taken kindly to the exiled Riel and had invited him to visit Keeseville where he lived with his mother and sister Evelina. In the years that followed this first meeting, Riel often visited the Barnabé household, and it was not only Fabien’s friendship that attracted him there. In the following lines, where Riel is thanking Evelina for the gift of an inspirational book, we can detect the power of attraction of the young woman on him:
Plus d’une fois, je vous ai vue
Lire et prier, ce livre en main.
En vous voyant, mon âme émue
S’est dit: d’un grand amour divin
Ce beau petit livre s’inspire!
Autrement celle qui le lit
Pourrait-elle avoir le sourire
Dont Sa figure s’embellit.
More than once have I seen you
Read and pray, with this book in hand.
In seeing you, my soul, filled with emotion
Told itself: by a great divine love
Is this beautiful little book inspired!
Otherwise could she who reads it
Have the smile
That so embellishes Her face.[21]
Although Riel had given up the idea of becoming a priest, religious passions continued to dominate his mind, which explains why he was especially touched by Evelina’s piety. In this same composition, he speaks of her “pious heart” and of the “angelic and pure peace that shines in her.”
A sample of Louis Riel’s poems to Evelina Barnabé, date unknown.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, Louis Riel Collection, P5995/24
This was not the first time that Riel spoke of the importance of piety in a woman. In a poem composed during his final months in Montreal he had referred to qualities that one must look for in a future wife. He imagined a conversation between his grandfather Jean-Baptiste Riel and himself. Here the old man offers this bit of advice to his grandson:
Le ciel a fait présent d’ève à notre père Adam.
Mais comme Adam, si tu prends une femme
Reçois-la des mains de Dieu.
N’écoute pas l’aveugle flamme
De ces jeunes gens fous qui consultent si peu
La vertu dans leur choix. une fille pieuse
Econome laborieuse.
Est le plus précieux trésor.
Elle peut rendre heureux, ce que ne fait pas l’or.
Heaven offered the gift of Eve to our father Adam.
But like Adam, if you take a wife
Receive her from the hands of God.
Do not listen to the blind passion
Of these wild young men who pay little attention
To virtue in their choice. A girl who is pious,
Thrifty, hard-working
Is the most precious treasure.
She can make you happy, something that gold cannot do.[22]
Riel believed evidently that Evelina fulfilled all the conditions required of a wife because in the spring of 1878,
he asked her to marry him. She was 27, he 33. It is clear from these poetic texts that religious and moral convictions led Louis to become engaged to Evelina. In all of the poetic lines dedicated to her, spiritual references abound:
O bonne Evelina! Vous que je trouve aimable
Et pour qui je désire un sort vraiment heureux!
Si vous avez du goût pour la très sainte table,
J’implore du bon Dieu qu’il exauce mes voeux
En daignant nous unir, au plus tôt, tous les deux.
Oh, good Evelina, You whom I find desirable
And for whom I desire a truly happy lot!
If you have a liking for the most holy table,
I beseech the good Lord to grant my wishes
In agreeing to unite the two of us as soon as possible.[23]
Other lines allude to acts of a moral nature:
Ne cessez jamais d’être à couvert des grands blâmes.
C’est en prenant un soin jaloux de votre honneur
Que vous restez prudente et pleine de candeur.
Montrez-vous ferme et sage entre toutes les femmes.
Ayez soif tout de bon pour le salut des âmes.
Never cease to distance yourself from blame
It is in taking great care of your honour
That you remain cautious and ingenuous.
Appear steady and wise amongst all women.
Thirst in earnest for the salvation of souls.[24]
According to the poet, Evelina is the woman that he needs because “her inspired heart can understand his” and she will be “an enlightened mother.” He will need her virtue to guide him throughout life:
Plus votre vie est exemplaire,
Plus aussi savez-vous me plaire.
Moi je suis un homme de rien.
Je vaux à peine un peu de boue.
Je crains qu’au moindre choc ma vertu ne s’échoue.
Mais pour m’aider, je cherche une femme de bien.
The more your life is exemplary,
The more you also please me.
Me, I am worthless.
I am hardly worth a bit of mud.
I fear that at the slightest shock my virtue will fail
But to help me, I am looking for a worthy woman.[25]
For someone so self-confident and even moralistic, it is curious that Riel lowered himself so much in front of Evelina. Had he begun to consider his own life a failure? Was he criticizing himself for failing in his studies for the priesthood, for having fathered an illegitimate child (if that story is accurate), or having caused the unfortunate consequences of the Red River uprising by ordering the execution of Thomas Scott? Perhaps he thought he could redeem himself by marrying the sister of a priest.
For whatever reason, he placed Evelina on a high moral pedestal and he kept their relationship on a very chaste level:
Je vous embrasserais dix fois en un quart d’heure
Si chaque fois mon âme en devenait meilleure.
Mais les doux baisers sont des plaisirs enivrants
Qui peuvent faire choir les esprits les plus francs.
Le sage en jouit: mais il faut qu’il se modère.
La délectation peut renverser son coeur.
I would kiss you ten times in a quarter hour
If each time my soul became better for it,
But sweet kisses are intoxicating pleasures
That can cause the frankest of minds to fall
The wise man enjoys them but must show moderation.
The delight can upset his heart.[26]
In the fall of 1878 Riel left Keeseville for the western United States, with the avowed intention of establishing himself, then of returning to marry Evelina. He would, however, never see her again. What happened? We can’t say exactly what went on in his mind, but we do have some correspondence to guide our speculations.
When Evelina wrote to Louis in April 1879, she asked him not to speak of marriage in his letters to her “until your means allow you to afford a marriage.” She read Louis’s letters aloud to her family, she said, and then her mother would say things like, “You would be crazy to get married.”[27] Apparently Evelina was in poor health at the time, and her mother thought she was not strong enough for marriage. The next month Evelina wrote again about her doubts:
My dear Louis, you say you are arranging everything to come and get me…. [but] I would only be an embarrassment for you…. I fear you will regret your choice, for I question whether I have the qualities that you want to find in a wife. I’m a humble woman with little courage, so I will not be up to the position I should occupy if you succeed [in your political ambitions].[28]
Riel broke off his correspondence with Evelina, then moved further west to Montana and married Marguerite Monet, as described below. When Evelina learned of his marriage, she wrote to Riel on October 16, 1882, asking bitterly, “Would you be capable of such infamy?”[29] What had she been thinking in the two and a half years when she had received no letters from Louis? Did she really think he was still planning to marry her?
Riel drafted a response in early 1883. He probably sent it but we don’t know for sure. In it he referred to the doubts that Evelina had raised in her own letters, saying, “I concluded that my affectionate letters were no longer pleasing to you.”[30] Was it a case of miscommunication caused by a vast distance of separation? Would the lovers have grown apart if they could have stayed in closer contact? Who can say? Letters don’t always tell the whole story in situations like this.
Evelina had to move on. She returned with her mother to L’Assomption, Quebec, after her brother Fabien’s death in 1883, and married Jean-Baptiste Goyette, of Troy, New York, on 25 January 1892.[31] Troy lies about 200 kilometres south of Keeseville. We did not discover whether Evelina ever had any children, or when and where she died.
While heading towards Montana in 1879, Riel stopped for eight months in St. Joseph, Dakota Territory, where he spent a lot of time with the family of Édouard Marion. The Marion family was prominent in Red River. The French-Canadian founder, Narcisse Marion (1805–1877), settled in St. Norbert and became a blacksmith. One daughter, Cécile, was married to A.-D. Lépine, Riel’s adjutant in the Manitoba uprising. Another daughter, Elise, was married to Norman Kittson, a wealthy trader of the American Fur Company who had establishments in St. Joseph as well as St. Boniface. (Kittson had been born in Sorel and was bilingual.) A son, Roger Marion, worked as a trader in St. Joseph and in St. Boniface, then held government jobs in Manitoba, and later won several elective offices, including mayor of St. Boniface and MLA.[32]
Edouard, born 2 February 1834, was another son of Narcisse Marion.[33] The Red River uprising began in 1869 on Edouard Marion’s hay lot behind St. Norbert parish, where Louis Riel blocked the Canadian surveyors from carrying out their work. Edouard Marion was married to Eliza McDougall. One daughter, Marie-Rose, was born 21 November 1858, at the Assumption Mission Settlement near Pembina, Dakota; another daughter, Louise-Anne, was born 2 March 1860, in St. Norbert. The girls were about 20 and 18 years old when Louis Riel arrived in early 1879. Riel, therefore, was in St. Joseph and visiting with the Marion family in spring 1879, precisely the time when he received Evelina’s letters with the discouraging news about her health and the need for Riel to make some money before proposing marriage. Maybe the disappointing tone of Evelina’s letters caused him to look more closely at the Marion girls.
There are only four poems that remain from this period of Riel’s life, and they are addressed to Louise-Anne and Marie-Rose. In these texts, we find neither the tenderness nor the passion that Riel had shown towards Marie-Julie Guernon and Evelina Barnabé; but from what the poems tell us, he apparently wanted to court the young women just the same. Here is what he had to say to Louise-Anne:
Je promets que si je compose
Jamais pour vous une chanson
Je ferai mon possible, à cause
Que je vous aime tout de bon.Mais déjà mon esprit s’inspire.
Mon âme a besoin de chanter.
Et ma plume a besoin d’écrire.
Et cent voix vont le répéter.Votre nom est beau, Louise Anne.
Que vos parents en soient glorieux.
ah! Le soleil de la havane
Est moins reluisant que vos yeux.S’il est vrai qu’un joli visage
Marque un esprit bien façonné.
Vos traits sont un heureux présage
Que vous avez le coeur bien né.I promise that if I ever
Compose a song for you
I will do my best because
I downright love you.But already my mind is inspired.
My soul needs to sing.
And my pen needs to write.
And a hundred voices are going to repeat it.Your name is beautiful, Louise Anne.
May your parents be proud of it.
Ah! Havana’s sun
Shines less than your eyes.If it is true that a pretty face
Indicates a well-shaped spirit.
Your features are a good omen
That you have a noble heart.[34]
If this were the only poem that spoke of the Marion family, it would be simple to conclude that Riel was enamoured of Louise-Anne. But other compositions oblige us to probe more deeply. Here are a few lines where he speaks about Marie-Rose:
L’auteur de toutes choses
Est plus beau que le jour.
Il a créé les roses
Pour inspirer l’amour.The author of all things
Is more beautiful than the day.
He created roses
To inspire love.[35]
And in another poem he writes:
Et Marierose est polie.
C’est vraiment un coeur bien né.
Plus je la trouve jolie.
Et plus je me sens gêné.
J’avais écrit une letter
A ses chers parents, afin
Qu’ils voulussent me permettre
D’ambitionner sa main.
And Marie-Rose is polite.
She truly has a noble heart.
The more I find her pretty
The more I feel self-conscious.
I had written a letter
To her dear parents,
So that they would permit me
To ask for her hand in marriage.[36]
How can one explain this seeming contradiction regarding Riel’s fondness for both Marion girls? A letter that he wrote to his mother on 2 May 1879 throws light on this situation:
I’ve been invited several times to Monsieur and Madame Édouard Marion’s home. They have received the letter from Joseph [Riel’s brother]. They don’t dare answer because the two sisters are promised. But after what I’ve seen, Monsieur and Madame Marion don’t want to refuse Joseph. […] Madame Marion always invites me. Mademoiselle Marie-Rose is nice and doesn’t display any coldness or indifference concerning Joseph. All in all, given the circumstances, things don’t look bad.[37]
There might be two explanations to this puzzling situation: either Riel was interested in one of the two sisters then changed his love to the other, or more likely, the two Riel brothers were courting the two sisters at the same time, and Louis composed the poem to Marie-Rose on behalf of Joseph. That appears to be a reasonable hypothesis because Riel sometimes wrote letters for other people, though we know of no other case where he composed a letter of affection or courtship for someone else. And Métis lawyer Kerry Sloan has written that “Louis Riel unsuccessfully courted her great-great-great aunt Louise-Anne Marion,”[38] confirming that Riel had his eye on Louise-Anne and was approaching Marie-Rose on behalf of Joseph.
In spite of these months of romantic intrigue, neither Louise-Anne nor Marie-Rose would marry Louis or his brother Joseph. Another verse of this last poem to Marie-Rose is quite revealing:
Si j’avais su sa promesse
Et celle de son amant,
J’aurais caché ma tendresse
Pour jamais assurément.If I had known about her promise
And that of her lover,
I would have hidden my affection
For ever assuredly.[39]
We don’t know for sure how he felt about this, but Riel left St. Joseph for Montana in August 1879, not long after it became clear that his marriage plans would not succeed. For their part, the Marion girls went ahead with their wedding plans. Marie-Rose married Solomon Venne of St. Norbert on 5 July 1879, at St. Joseph (we don’t know whether Riel attended the wedding). They moved to Saskatchewan and homesteaded near Estevan. She died in 1906 and is buried in Estevan. Louise-Anne married Charles-Albert Grant on 7 January 1880, also in St. Joseph. Grant died young and Louise-Anne married a second time to Pierre Larocque in 1894, in what was now the state of North Dakota.[40]
As far as his affairs of the heart are concerned, we arrive at the fifth and last woman in Riel’s life, Marguerite Monet, whom he married and who bore his three children.[41] Marguerite, born in Red River in 1861, was the daughter of Jean-Baptiste Monet, also known as Bellehumeur, and of Marie Malaterre. Riel met the young woman when he was living with a group of buffalo hunters near Flat Willow Creek, Montana. Undoubtedly the loneliness, the long months spent in the hunting camps, drove Riel towards her.
Louis Riel’s marriage certificate to Marguerite Monet, 1882.
Source: Archives of Manitoba, P5995/1
There is very little poetry dedicated to Marguerite and if these few lines do not display the same intensity of passion seen in the texts to Evelina, they do reveal a certain joyfulness. The poem in which Louis announces his desire to marry Marguerite is really a song—perhaps composed and sung around the campfire—similar in structure and melody to another popular song, “Auprès de ma blonde”:
Tous les garçons du monde
Font choix de leurs amours.
Aussi moi j’ai ma blonde,
Je la vois tous les jours …Quoique l’on me jalousie
Si le bon Dieu le veut,
J’aurai pour mon épouse
La fille qui m’émeut.All the boys in the world
Pick their loved ones.
I too have my sweetheart,
I see her every day …Although others are jealous of me
If the good Lord so wishes,
I will have for my wife
The girl that stirs me.[42]
The same religious sentiment found in the poetry to Evelina figures also in the lines addressed to Marguerite. Riel believes that it is God who has chosen this girl for him:
J’ai prié durant quinze années
Le Tout Puissant de me choisir
Parmi les filles les mieux nées
Une femme de bon désir.Jean Baptiste Primeau, le Prêtre
M’a dit jadis que j’obtiendrais
De Dieu, le très aimable Maître,
Ce que je lui demanderais.Je me fonde sur sa promesse.
Oui, j’ai trouvé selon mes voeux
Le sujet de mon allégresse
La femme même que je veux.For fifteen years I have prayed
That the Almighty choose for me
Amongst the most noble girls
A desirable wife.Jean-Baptiste Primeau, the Priest[43]
Told me long ago that I would receive
From God, the very kind Master,
What I would ask of him.I rely on his promise.
Yes, I have found just as I wished
The subject of my joy
The very woman that I want.[44]
The verses relating to Marguerite speak less of the woman herself than of the situation surrounding the marriage. A worrisome matter for the very Catholic Riel was the fact of being obliged, due to the absence of the priest, of marrying the young woman “prairie style,” after the custom of the country. We note his anxiety in a poem dating from April 1881:
Je vis avec vous, ma promise
Mais je ne vous ai pas encore
Mariée en face de l’église.
Mais vous avez mon anneau d’or.Je vous ai mariée, ô ma fille
En dix huit cent quatre vingt un.
Au désert, près de la coquille
Devant Dieu par le droit commun.Aussitôt que viendra le prêtre
Nous nous rendrons ensemble à lui
Nous irons rencontrer peut-être
Jusqu’à Benton, son saint appui.I am living with you, my promised one
But I have not yet
Married you in the presence of the church.
But you have my gold ring.I have married you, oh my girl
In eighteen hundred eighty-one,
In the desert, near the shell [i.e., the Musselshell River]
Before God by common law.As soon as the priest comes
We will go to him together
We will go to meet him perhaps
In Benton, his holy parish.[45]
The moral uneasiness plaguing Riel was rectified on 9 March 1882, when Father Joseph Damiani sanctified their marriage. It would appear that Marguerite was a devoted wife and a good mother but, unlike Evelina, she never became a great source of poetic inspiration.
A striking pattern is evident in Louis Riel’s affairs of the heart. Three times he wanted to marry young women of a good family—Marie-Julie Guernon, daughter of a Montreal businessman; Evelina Barnabé, sister of a priest; and Louise- Anne Marion, daughter of a successful merchant and part of a leading Red River family. Undoubtedly influenced strongly by pressure from the women’s families, his marriage plans fell through three times. And each time he reacted by moving west. In 1866 he went from Montreal to St. Paul, Minnesota; in 1878 he went from New York to Minnesota and then on to Dakota; and in 1879 he left Dakota for Montana. His westward retreats stopped only when he finally married Marguerite Monet in Montana.
Martel and Flanagan have described how Riel suffered from a sense of guilt over abandoning his religious vocation and sought redemption in both political activism and religious revelation.[46] Repeated rejections from women must have also contributed to his sense that God was punishing him for his failings. Yet, though he was sometimes close to despair, Riel never gave up his belief that God would lead him to greatness. That was the backdrop to his departure from Montana in June 1884, accompanied by his wife Marguerite and their two children, to resume a life of political activism in the Saskatchewan valley. There he arguably achieved a moment of redemptive glory in the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
1. George F. G. Stanley et al., The Collected Writings of Louis Riel/Les écrits complets de Louis Riel, 5 vols., Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1985. Afterwards cited as CW.
2. Tom Flanagan and Glen Campbell, “Updating The Collected Writings of Louis Riel,” in Theodore Binnema, Gerhard J. Ens, and R.C. Macleod, eds. From Rupert’s Land to Canada, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2001, pp. 271–288; Glen Campbell and Tom Flanagan, “Newly Discovered Writings of Louis Riel,” in Christopher Adams, Gregg Dahl, and Ian Peach, eds., Métis in Canada: History, Identity, Law and Politics, Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2013, pp. 249–276.
3. While adding new information, we draw upon Glen Campbell, “Les femmes dans la vie de Louis Riel: une perspective poétique,” A. Saint-Pierre & L. Rodriguez, eds., La langue, la culture, et la société des francophones de l’Ouest IV, St. Boniface: Centre d’études francocanadiennes de l’Ouest, 1985, pp. 23–34.
4. George F. G. Stanley, The Birth of Western Canada: A History of the Riel Rebellions, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1936; Stanley, Louis Riel, Toronto, Ryerson Press, 1963; W. L. Morton, Manitoba: A History, 2nd ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967.
5. Gilles Martel, Le messianisme de Louis Riel, Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1984; Thomas Flanagan, Louis ‘David’ Riel: ‘Prophet of the New World,’ 2nd ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
6. Tom Flanagan, “Louis Riel’s Land Claims,” Manitoba History 21 (1991), pp. 2–12.
7. http://www.forgottenbooks.com/readbook_text/Lovells_Montreal_ Directory_for_1884-85_1000681977/681.
8. CW4, p. 14. All translations of poetry are by Glen Campbell. We would like to thank Eileen Lohka for her helpful comments.
9. CW4, pp. 14–15.
10. Stanley, Louis Riel, p. 26.
11. CW4, p. 17.
12. Stanley, Louis Riel, 30.
13. Archives Nationales du Québec à Montréal, Register of Notary A.-C. Décary, Contract 44.
14. CW4, p. 17.
15. CW4, p. 19.
16. CW4, pp. 82, 84.
17. https://www.journaldesfemmes.fr/prenoms/isaure/prenom-7065 . Her feast day was removed in the 1969 revision of the calendar of saints, but Riel would have been familiar with her in 1866.
18. The story was passed on by a daughter of Ernest, Gilberte Guernon, to her grand-niece, and through her to other family members.
19. Quebec, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621–1967, in Arbre généalogique de Guernon, https://www.ancestry.ca/familytree/person/tree/28264430/person/12024433942/facts.
20. Stanley, Louis Riel, 379; http://www.mocavo.com/Lovells-Montreal-Directory-for-1880-81-Microform-Containing-an-Alphabetical-Directory-of-the-Citizens-a-Street-Directory-an-Advertisers-Classified-Business-Directory-and-a-Miscellaneous-Directory-Corrected-to-June-11th-1880/198182/690.
21. CW4, p. 109.
22. CW4, pp. 79–80.
23. CW4, p. 209.
24. CW4, p. 215.
25. CW4, p. 215.
26. CW4, p. 219.
27. Evelina Barnabé to Louis Riel, 13–14 April 1879, quoted in CW2, p. 265,
n. 4.
28. Evelina Barnabé to Louis Riel, 16 May 1879, quoted in CW2, pp. 265– 266, note 6.
29. Evelina Barnabé to Louis Riel, 16 October 1882, quoted in CW2, p. 265, note 2.
30. Louis Riel to Evelina Barnabé, draft, 1883, CW2, p. 264.
31. https://wsslibrarypages.wikispaces.com/file/view/Evelina+Barnabe.pdf. Peter Charlesbois, The Life of Louis Riel, Toronto, NC Press, 1975, p. 113. Goyette was the son of Jean-Baptise Goyette and Marie-Louise Chalifoux, who had married in 1839 in Iberville, Quebec. Goyettepère died at Troy in 1874. http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Goyette-27#Biography.
32. http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/marion_n.shtml; also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Marion.
33. The father’s first name is wrongly given as Maurice in CW5, p. 304.
34. CW4, p. 225.
35. CW4, p. 227.
36. CW4, pp. 230–231.
37. CW2, p. 205.
38. Hans V. Hansen, ed., Riel’s Defence: Perspectives on His Speeches, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014, p. 319, in the notes on contributors. Sloan will join the McGill Faculty of Law in 2019, “Kerry Sloan to join the Faculty of Law as Assistant Professor in 2019.” https://www.mcgill.ca/law/channels/news/kerry-sloan-287401.
39. CW4, p. 231.
40. http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/METISGEN/2003-02/1044860871.
41. Jean, born in 1882; Marie-Angélique in 1883. The third child, a boy, died shortly after birth in October 1885. CW5, p. 116.
42. CW4, pp. 273–274.
43. Parish priest of Notre-Dame-des-Canadiens in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was Riel’s confessor and spiritual adviser in 1874–1875.
44. CW4, p. 276.
45. CW4, p. 275.
46. Flanagan, Louis ‘David’ Riel; Martel, Le Messianisme de Louis Riel.
We thank S. Goldsborough for assistance in preparing the online version of this article.
Page revised: 3 June 2021
