Shamrock in the snow: the story of a Canadian hero: Thomas D'Arcy McGee.

The basic facts of Thomas D'Arcy McGee's life are well known to any student of pre-Confederation Canadian History. Born in Carlingford, County Louth, Ireland, in 1824, he emigrated to America at the age of seventeen. Except for several return visits to his homeland, including three years in Dublin writing for the Freeman's Journal and the Nation, he spent the rest of his life first in the United States and then in Canada, working for various newspapers in Boston, New York, Buffalo and Montreal. During his all too brief and tumultuous life, McGee was a man of prodigious literary output as well as a political survivor, whose beliefs concerning the future of Ireland and her relationship with the British Empire evolved from dangerous naivete to hopeful realism.

Self-taught, McGee earned his living as a journalist, editor, historian and poet. He lectured extensively and was widely regarded by his Irish contemporaries as the most brilliant orator of his generation. In a volatile world of political opinions, he was a typical nineteenth-century Romantic, a chameleon who changed his stripes often and without shame. He began his political career as a Young Ireland revolutionary with a price on his head. Exiled to Boston for a second time, he became an ardent exponent of the American Republic and the annexation of the Canadian colonies. By 1857, however, he had grown tired of American nativist bigotry against Irish Catholics and had moved to Montreal at the invitation of the St. Patrick Society, which supported him as their political candidate and continued to do so until the first Dominion election.

It was one thing to theorize about politics but quite another to be a politician beholden to the electorate and party politics. McGee, the Montrealer, underwent two more changes of heart. First, he reconciled himself with the Church, abandoning his European-style liberalism and support of anti-clerical and anti-papal movements. Second, he took to the Canadian way with all the fervour of a recent convert and championed the idea of a new Canadian nation with a constitutional monarchy and its own version of the British parliamentary system. In both instances, he was sincere and as passionate as ever.

McGee was a Father of Confederation, a relentless defender of minority educational rights in both Ontario and Quebec, and a fierce opponent of the Fenians. For this man there was no temporizing, no back- room compromising. He was also the first Canadian politician to be assassinated. He died of a single bullet wound late in the evening of 7 April 1868, as he was returning from the House of Commons to his rented rooms on Sparks Street.

What then are we to make of Michael Leo Donovan's A Shamrock in the Snow? It is a curious work on many levels. Donovan is an accomplished television scriptwriter, with at least twenty-five credits to his name. It is little wonder, then, that his historical novel reads like a script for a TV movie. The dialogue is authentic and effective. The chapters are short and spare, creating atmosphere more than action, and the author's perception of McGee's private life, which is generally shrouded in mystery, sounds uncannily correct. This is the power of intuitive imagination at work on a historical figure. Consider, for example, Donovan's concise characterization of McGee when he was barely 21, yet a seasoned journalist:

"But he was already more than a confident man with eyes black as a starless night and a quick, disarming smile. The maturing D'Arcy was a man of energy and enthusiasm, a tangle of wit and wisdom. His irrepressible charm was reflected in the faces of those who addressed him."

This is fine writing. And there is plenty more of it when Donovan details the intense love between McGee and his wife, Mary Theresa Caffrey, and their doting affection for the children, only two of whom survived into adulthood. In addition, Donovan is extremely perceptive in pointing out the classic paradox of Canadian parliamentary politics: the struggle to balance the big picture of Canada with the parochial demands of one's constituents. For McGee, the struggle took the form of standing up for a new and united country while trying to satisfy the nationalist concerns of his Irish constituents. In the end, they shunned him for condemning the Fenians and he became a political liability for the Conservative party.

However, Donovan is less successful in his treatment of McGee's bouts of depression and hard drinking. He skirts around the issue. Escapism, according to McGee's biographer, Robin Burns, was another less savoury aspect of Romanticism. Whenever a crisis occurred in McGee's life - and there were many - he took to the bottle with a vengeance. At one point, Sir John A. Macdonald told McGee that there was not enough room in his government for two drunks! Before McGee died, he renewed his pledge to abstain from drink. It was a pledge he had originally taken from Father Theobald Mathew himself, the famous temperance preacher.

But the failure to deal with McGee's escapism is not the biggest fault of Donovan's historical novel. The reader should be aware that many events have been compressed or neglected and that certain historical figures appear at places and times wholly inaccurate.

Also, the entire work is driven by Donovan's use of James McGee, D'Arcy McGee's younger brother, as a convenient foil. Our knowledge of him is very sketchy, but Donovan would have us believe that he was a Fenian who had trained James Patrick Whelan, the man tried and hanged for McGee's assassination. It keeps the story going and makes for a good plot twist, but such blatant fictions crowd out the historical in what is supposed to be a historical novel.

Genuine Canadian heroes are a rare breed, especially among politicians. A Shamrock in the Snow is a celebration of the life of Thomas D'Arcy McGee. This is Donovan's greatest accomplishment: his novel keeps McGee alive in the popular consciousness. We have much to learn from his life. He was an Irish immigrant who put the future and fortunes of Canada ahead of his own ambitions and desires and those of his fellow Irish, at a critical juncture in our nation's history. His vision for our country was broad, inclusive and generous. It extended even to our Native peoples, who McGee thought should have an entire province of their own. And nothing informed that vision more than his sturdy Catholic faith.