Friday 10 May 2013

Battle of Batoche May 9 to 12, 1885

The Battle of Batoche ended the North-West Resistance of 1885 - and ended up with Louis Riel's surrender, and subsequent trial and hanging. It wasn't a pretty - or fair -  time to say the least. You can read more information about it here.

I love the original sources like Gabriel Dumont's own account of the battle of Batoche, as well as the battles at Duck Lake and Fish Creek which are rare - in this piece in the Canadian Historical Review the great western Canada scholar George Stanley annotates Dumont's account.

It's art though that maybe really finds the truest way of telling a story. Here is poet Bruce Rice's take based on artist Joe Fafard's clay sculpture of a Metis killed at Batoche from the Mayor's Poetry Challenge in April 2013. Watch the video poem, "Dead Metis at Batoche" which includes the sculpture here