Big Bear
Big Bear
ALSO IN THE EXTRAORDINARY CANADIANS SERIES:
Lord Beaverbrook
by David Adams Richards
Norman Bethune
by Adrienne Clarkson
Emily Carr
by Lewis DeSoto
Tommy Douglas
by Vincent Lam
Glenn Gould
by Mark Kingwell
Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin
by John Ralston Saul
Stephen Leacock
by Margaret MacMillan
Nellie McClung
by Charlotte Gray
Marshall McLuhan
by Douglas Coupland
L.M. Montgomery
by Jane Urquhart
Lester B. Pearson
by Andrew Cohen
Mordecai Richler
by M.G. Vassanji
Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont
by Joseph Boyden
Pierre Elliott Trudeau
by Nino Ricci
SERIES EDITOR:
John Ralston Saul
by
R
UDY
W
IEBE
With an Introduction by
John Ralston Saul
SERIES EDITOR
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First published 2008
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)
Copyright © Jackpine House Ltd., 2008
Introduction copyright © John Ralston Saul, 2008
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Wiebe, Rudy, 1934–
Big Bear/Rudy Wiebe.
(Extraordinary Canadians)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-670-06786-2
1. Big Bear, 1825?–1888. 2. Cree Indians—Prairie Provinces—History. 3. Cree Indians—Kings and rulers—Biography. 4. Cree Indians—Prairie Provinces—Biography. 5. Indians of North Amercia—Prairie Provinces—Biography. 6. Indians of North America—Prairie Provinces—History. I. Title. II. Series.
E99.C88B5 2008 971.2004’973230092 C2008-902622-5
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This book was printed on 30% PCW recycled paper
Dedicated to the memory of
See-as-cum-ka-poo (Little Stones on the Prairie) also known as Mary PeeMee
and John Tootoosis
and Duncan McLean
who told me Big Bear stories
And to Gil Cardinal, who made the movie
Introduction by John Ralston Saul
Map of the North-West Territories, 1885
6 Last Chief of the Free Plains Cree
John Ralston Saul
How do civilizations imagine themselves? One way is for each of us to look at ourselves through our society’s most remarkable figures. I’m not talking about hero worship or political iconography. That is a danger to be avoided at all costs. And yet people in every country do keep on going back to the most important people in their past.
This series of Extraordinary Canadians brings together rebels, reformers, martyrs, writers, painters, thinkers, political leaders. Why? What is it that makes them relevant to us so long after their deaths?
For one thing, their contributions are there before us, like the building blocks of our society. More important than that are their convictions and drive, their sense of what is right and wrong, their willingness to risk all, whether it be their lives, their reputations, or simply being wrong in public. Their ideas, their triumphs and failures, all of these somehow constitute a mirror of our society. We look at these people, all dead, and discover what we have been, but also what we can
be. A mirror is an instrument for measuring ourselves. What we see can be both a warning and an encouragement.
These eighteen biographies of twenty key Canadians are centred on the meaning of each of their lives. Each of them is very different, but these are not randomly chosen great figures. Together they produce a grand sweep of the creation of modern Canada, from our first steps as a democracy in 1848 to our questioning of modernity late in the twentieth century.
All of them except one were highly visible on the cutting edge of their day while still in their twenties, thirties, and forties. They were young, driven, curious. An astonishing level of fresh energy surrounded them and still does. We in the twenty-first century talk endlessly of youth, but power today is often controlled by people who fear the sort of risks and innovations embraced by everyone in this series. A number of them were dead—hanged, infected on a battlefield, broken by their exertions—well before middle age. Others hung on into old age, often profoundly dissatisfied with themselves.
Each one of these people has changed you. In some cases you know this already. In others you will discover how through these portraits. They changed the way the world hears music, thinks of war, communicates. They changed how each of us sees what surrounds us, how minorities are
treated, how we think of immigrants, how we look after each other, how we imagine ourselves through what are now our stories.
You will notice that many of them were people of the word. Not just the writers. Why? Because civilizations are built around many themes, but they require a shared public language. So Laurier, Bethune, Douglas, Riel, LaFontaine, McClung, Trudeau, Lévesque, Big Bear, even Carr and Gould, were masters of the power of language. Beaverbrook was one of the most powerful newspaper publishers of his day. Countries need action and laws and courage. But civilization is not a collection of prime ministers. Words, words, words—it is around these that civilizations create and imagine themselves.
The authors I have chosen for each subject are not the obvious experts. They are imaginative, questioning minds from among our leading writers and activists. They have, each one of them, a powerful connection to their subject. And in their own lives, each is engaged in building what Canada is now becoming.
That is why a documentary is being filmed around each subject. Images are yet another way to get at each subject and to understand their effect on us.
There has not been a biographical project as ambitious as this in a hundred years, not since the Makers of Canada series.
And yet every generation understands the past differently, and so sees in the mirror of these remarkable figures somewhat different lessons.
What strikes me again and again is just how dramatically ethical decisions figured in their lives. They form the backbone of history and memory. Some of these people, Big Bear, for example, or Dumont, or even Lucy Maud Montgomery, thought of themselves as failures by the end of their lives. But the ethical cord that was strung taut through their work has now carried them on to a new meaning and even greater strength, long after their deaths.
Each of these stories is a revelation of the tough choices unusual people must make to find their way. And each of us as readers will find in the desperation of the Chinese revolution, the search for truth in fiction, the political and military dramas, different meanings that strike a personal chord. At first it is that personal emotive link to such figures which draws us in. Then we find they are a key that opens the whole society of their time to us. Then we realize that in that 150-year period many of them knew each other, were friends, opposed each other. Finally, when all these stories are put together, you will see that a whole new debate has been created around Canadian civilization and the shape of our continuous experiment.
The full meaning of that continuity comes out with Big Bear. We have slowly convinced ourselves that this country can be explained through European traditions. It cannot. To do so is a betrayal of our own past. We cannot grow as a civilization by trying to push the Aboriginal reality to the margins. For example, I cannot think of another powerful leader in the history of Canada who so consciously and publicly lived by ethical decisions; the kind of ethical standards we would like to attach to our society today. Through all his dramas he never ceased trying to explain the difference between what today we would call the public good versus self-interest.
You can look upon his life as a long and tragic defeat. Or you can look upon Big Bear as an illustration of what is best in our civilization. An ethical leader who suffers tragedy and defeat will often become a model for those who follow.