RIEL DEAL
Novelist explores Northwest Rebellion
Encountering Riel, the first novel by David Orr, is the story we live repeatedly — Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda. The story of imperfect noble men and women going off to fight and die in a war not of their making.
They march off to other lands, armed with the impracticality and gullibility born from the inexperience of youth, untested self-grit and idealism, yet unhardened by the vulgarities of life and the pragmatism of government, of those addicted to power.
This story differs in that the battle occurred in our country, against our fellow citizens, and on many levels the abrasion continues.
For anyone interested in a smart, well-written, historical fiction that is an honest reflection of the societal atmosphere of its time, Encountering Riel is the book to read. It is for anyone interested in an understanding of the Northwest Rebellion, or as it is known to many, the Métis Resistance.
Orr’s protagonist is a white Anglo Saxon Protestant named William Lorimer, a poetry student at the University of Toronto who fails in his obligation to resign his commission in the Canadian militia and is called up in 1885 to join the fight ‘out west’ against the rebel Métis leader Louis Riel.
Lorimer says goodbye to his fiancee and with all the hubris of youth and inept military skills, heads off for what most believe will be no more than a short jaunt.
The journey to the centre of the rebellion is long and arduous, and when the militia finally reaches the west, things go ruinously wrong.
Like many noble quests, the once-heroic cause becomes tarnished by the sneering requirements of politics, the unforgiving certainties of war and the indifference of both nature and those in power back east.
Encountering Riel contributes to our understanding of where Canada and its Métis have been, and thus potentially, a glimpse of where we are all going.
An echo of our time really, this book is well researched and Orr’s use of the point of view of a bunch of WASPs in red coats allows him to carefully map out part of the foundation for the constriction of the modern indigenous world. Orr presents a complexity that has been missing to date in the Métis narrative.
Fortunately, he does not take the easy road by tossing out to the reader one-dimensional cartoon portrayals of ‘white villains’ oppressing the Métis. Nor does he diminish the Métis by casting them as simplistic, yet virtuous, anti-European resistance fighters.
The characters in this novel are complicated, and like the militia sent out to subjugate the Métis, and the Métis themselves, flawed, without any option to withdraw from the course that destiny has cast them onto.
For those who have not read historical fiction before, this is a worthy and timely book to start with and tells us great truths much better than any tedious academic treatise, and as such can be a tool for change.
An essential part of creating change for all people is an appetite for fundamental change that doesn’t recede and then advance only in concert with the latest high-profile, impassioned mass media ‘Indigenous News’ cycle. Reaction to the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission report has created yet another surge of appeals and promises for transformative improvement of all indigenous people problems. Yet, this repeated ebb-and-flow cycle is merely an echo of what we saw after the Royal Commission of Aboriginal People call for change in their five-volume report released in 1996, and optimistically entitled the Renewing The Relationship. Does anyone under the age of 30 recall what RCAP is?
Like passion and rage, this novel reaffirms one’s instinctive understanding that reactive indignation rarely lasts, nor does it bring about any meaningful transformation. Orr doesn’t shy away from the controversial and often tortuous Métis events that now form part of the basis for what is becoming a feisty relationship between Canada and its Métis people.
Orr was born in Regina in 1946. He worked in that province as a store clerk, park custodian, library assistant, high school teacher, lawyer, and provincial court judge, a resumé that no doubt prepared him for the research undertaken for this book. He lives now in Sherwood Park. He is not the first author to tell of war from the perspective of a distasteful party.
American author Jonathan Littell’s novel The Kindly Ones is a historical fiction, published in 2006, told from the point of view a former SS officer who helped carry out the Holocaust.
Even so, Orr’s novel takes us along a path that is not well travelled.
Encountering Riel is not just a Métis story, nor is it cultural appropriation by a non-indigenous author.
It is an accurate portrayal of a chapter of Canadian and Métis history that ought to find its way onto any well-stocked shelf, and be given its due, notwithstanding that it tells the story from behind a red coat, from behind a bayonet being thrust into Métis.
Reviewer Bruce Barry is a Métis who lives on the Buffalo Lake Métis Settlement, a community activist, visual artist, filmmaker and screenwriter, graduate of the University of Alberta and the University of Windsor Law School. He is currently working on a series of short stories titled The Noncompliant Métis with expected publication date in early 2018.