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>From Freedom to Tolerance:
D'Arcy McGee, the First Martyr

by

Robin B. Burns

Thomas D'Arcy McGee has nor been usually associated with skill in politics. Orator, poet, visonary, dreamer, prophet and enthusiast have been the words generally ascribed to him: never politician. Those who have found Canadian politics unimaginative and distasteful described McGee as one "who shone with all the power of genius to convert the stagnant pool of politics into a stream of living water." To those who have been impessed with the finesse of a MacDonald, McGee was a naieve idealist and poet whose emotion and imagination outra common sense and practicality. He dreamed of British Norht American nationality but he could not provide for his family. He seemed to share that quality he once identified with the Irish, their habit of preferring "figures of speech to figures of arthmetic".


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