Selected Verse Of Thomas D’arcy Mcgee (Picas Reprint Edition)

An Irish rebel who fled to freedom in the U.S., he found slavery instead and so moved north to Canada. McGee was a practical idealist of astounding energy. He created crusading newspapers in three countries, and became an ardent Canadian patriot — convinced that equality between races and sects had at last found a home. His best verse, as well as being technically superb, simmers with indignation. His attacks on privilege, his defence of the poor, and his vision of Canada as a champion of Peace, have recovered their timeliness today.

Seán Virgo’s introduction places McGee and his work in the context of their time, and re-evaluates the verse itself.

Thomas D’arcy Mcgee 1825–68, Canadian journalist and statesman, a leader in the movement for confederation, b. Ireland. He emigrated (1842) to Boston, where he became editor of the Boston Pilot, but in 1845 he returned to Ireland to join the staff of the Dublin Freeman’s Journal. Later McGee transferred to the Nation, journal of the Young Ireland party. Implicated in the uprising of 1848, he fled to America. He edited Irish papers in New York City and Boston before settling (1857) in Montreal, where he started the New Era. Entering (1858) the Canadian legislature, McGee became president of the council (1862) and minister of agriculture (1864). His anti-British position had changed, and he lent his brilliant oratory to the cause of Canadian confederation within the empire. He lived to see it take place (1867), but the following year he was assassinated by a member of the Fenian movement, whose tactics McGee had denounced.