A recent string of political violence in the United States has unsettled many—and understandably so.
Attacks on political figures, commentators and protestors have served as a reminder that politics, even in our day, can turn lethal.
Times like this reveal how fragile civics becomes when violence invades politics.
Acknowledging past and present political violence that has occurred in the United States, many north of the border feel reassured that such things as a federal leader losing their life simply do not happen here (and cannot happen here).
Yet they have.
One Father of Confederation lost his life for his political stance.
It happened in April 1868. Confederation itself was barely a year old. Late one night (after a spirited debate at Parliament), Thomas D’Arcy McGee walked away from the government buildings to his boarding house. As he reached the door, a pistol shot rang out. McGee collapsed and died at the age of 43.
More than a century and a half later, his life and death carry lessons for us in a divided age.
McGee’s story began far from Ottawa. Born in Ireland, he came of age amid poverty, British colonial rule and steadily rising nationalist agitation. As a young man, he became a fiery and outspoken journalist in the Young Ireland movement. McGee consistently wrote passionately in favour of independence. After the rebellion of 1848, he fled to the U.S.
Arriving, he was impressed with the country. However, shadows unsettled him. He saw a country prone to mob violence, political extremism, and the potential for volatility—especially with the Civil War brewing. He saw a place where liberty was celebrated while restraint or responsibility fell to the wayside.
When McGee eventually moved north to British North America (today’s Canada), something shifted and morphed in his heart and mind.
He saw this place as a society that still carried deep tensions but had avoided the revolutionary fervour and civil war consuming other parts of the world. Scarred by Ireland’s sectarian divisions (and disillusioned by America’s volatility), he began to imagine a different possibility.
He imagined a country where diversity could become a source of strength rather than division.
That insight changed him.
The young revolutionary gradually gave way to the nation builder.
A young firebrand gave way to a statesman.
McGee entered politics and quickly became one of the most eloquent champions of Confederation and a country where people of different languages, faiths, perspectives, and backgrounds could share a common political home.
McGee thought that democracy required more than institutions—a shared civic identity tempered by pluralism.
He urged Canadians to think of themselves not as isolated sects or rival tribes but as members of a society (French and English, Catholic and Protestant, immigrant and native-born, us and them).
This was not a call for sameness. But for unity. A fabric woven from many strands.
Citizenship had to be larger than faction.
While he was a product of his era in some ways, he was also ahead of it.
McGee also understood the contribution newcomers could make to a young country. As an Irish Catholic immigrant, he rejected the idea that immigrants weaken national life. Instead, he expressed that they could enrich it. McGee’s example is a reminder that diversity need not undermine unity. Under the right conditions, it can strengthen it.
Yet his evolution also came with risks.
McGee had once supported Irish revolutionary movements including the Fenians. Over time, he broke publicly with them when they embraced violence as a political tool. He felt that violent nationalism would destroy rather than liberate the societies it claimed to defend.
That decision made him enemies.
In the early morning hours of April 7, 1868, those tensions reached the trajectory’s conclusion.
McGee was shot outside his boarding house after the Parliamentary debate.
Patrick Whelan (an Irish Fenian sympathizer) was arrested and executed for the crime (though historians still debate aspects). What is certain is that McGee was killed after rejecting extremism and choosing the slower path of persuasion and democratic compromise.
McGee’s funeral drew one of the largest crowds the young capital had ever seen. Even political opponents mourned him.
A country barely a year old had already paid a terrible price for its unity.
In the long sweep of Canadian history, McGee’s assassination remains an anomaly. Political violence has been rare in this country.
But the forces that took his life are not trapped in the past.
Rhetoric dehumanizes opponents. Movements flirting with violence. A slow corrosion of civic trust. Each of these are familiar features of modern politics.
When citizens see one another as enemies rather than neighbours, democratic life begins to crack.
McGee’s life and his example offer something different.
He reminds us that people and nations can evolve. They can move away from anger and instead toward reconciliation.
Above all, he believed that a shared national story was stronger than any grievance that might divide us.
The resonance of the tragedy in Ottawa teaches us that political violence does more than take life. It damages the fragile trust that allows our unity to endure.
McGee’s voice (carried across so many decades) still whispers a warning and a challenge.
In an age often tempted and animated by outrage and division, the harder task is still the one he chose:
To build rather than destroy.
This is the truth McGee so deeply understood that still stands: either we belong to one another and with one another or we do not belong at all.
