tach£
428
tach£
north, going as far as Great Slave Lake, where he es-
talilished a mission for the benefit of another Dene
tribe. Then, as his diocese was becoming too large for
one man to administer, he had one of bis priests.
Father Vital J. Grandin, O.M.I., appointed his coad-
jutor. Between 1860 and 1S61 Mgr. Tache resumed
his journeyings among the natives, and, nine miles
from Edmonton, decided upon the site of a new mis-
sion which Father Lacombe was to establish under the
name of St. Albert. Returning to St. Boniface, he
learned of the destruction by fire (14 December, 1860)
of his residence and the cathedral, the latter, whose
bells have been sung of by the Quaker poet Whit-
tier, was the pride of the settlement. He then passed
into Canada, as the East of the present Dominion was
called, and, by his appeals, secured the means of com-
mencing a new and more modest cathedral. He even
went as far as Europe, and procured the erection, in
the most northern part of his immense diocese, of a
new vicariate Apostolic which was entrusted to the
care of Bishop Faraud.
This division enabled Mgr. Tach^ to give more at- tention to the home, or southern, missions and the embryonic parishes of what is to-day Manitoba. This territory, then called Assiniboia, was peopled by a mixed population under the paternal rule of the Hudson Bay Company, assisted by a legislative body of which the Bishop of St. Boniface was a mem- ber. A restless aUen element, hailing mostly from Ontario, was at that time striving to change a politi- cal regime which was satisfactory to all classes of the local society, French and English, Catholic and Prot- estant. When the provinces of the east had been united into a confederation, one of the first cares of the new power resulting from the 1867 Act was to obtain from the Imperial Government the transfer, in consideration of £300,000, of Assiniboia and sur- rounding regions which had previously belonged to the Hudson Bay Company. Not only were the in- habitants of those territories not consulted as to the advisabiUty of this transaction, but the emissaries of Ottawa in the valley of the Red River acted so rashly and in such a domineering way towards the French and Catholic part of the population, at a time when the Federal authorities whom they represented had not as yet any jurisdiction over the country, that the discontent they cau.sed culminated (11 October, 1869) in open revolt under Louis Riel.
The Federal authorities begged Tach(5, who was then attending the (Ecumenical Council of the Vati- can, to come and intervene in the interest of peace. On his way home the prelate had interviews with the governor-general and his ministers, and was assured by them of a full amnesty for the metis in arms if the latter would only send delegates to Ottawa to treat of the matters in dispute and would not oppose the coming of the military expedition that was dispatched to Red River under Wolseley. In the meantime the Provisional Government, regularly formed there by the properly elected representatives of both portions of the population, had found it necessary to execute a troublesome character named Thomas Scott. The bishop's arrival (9 March, 1870), five days after the execution, was timely, inasmuch as Riel had mani- fested his intention of resisting the progress of the Anglo-Canadian troops. After Tachd s intervention, which was based on the promise of an amnesty re- ceived at Ottawa, the mi5tis could no longer be relied on to pursue an aggressive policy. Delegates were sent to the Federal capital, their efforts resulting in the Manitoba Act.
I'lifortunatcly, the authorities took the execution of Scoti , a rabid Orangeman, as an excuse for refusing the amnesty to which they had solemnly pledged themselves. This was a great blow to Mgr. Tache's prestige among his people. For years he laboured to secure for the leaders in the movement of resistance
against the unwarranted aggression of the representa-
tives of Ottawa that meed of justice to which he
thought they had aright. He would probably have been
more successful had he shown himself less confident
in their honesty in his dealings with pohticians, and re-
quired written assurances when it was scarcely possible
to refuse them. It was not till the end of October, 1874,
that a partial amnesty was proclaimed, but not before
one of Riel's lieutenants, A. D. Lepine, had been con-
demned to death, asentenoe which Algr. Tache had had
commuted into eighteen months' imprisonment.
Tach^ had been appointed Arohbishiip of ,St. Boniface
on 22 September, 1871. Thenceforth his efforts were
mo.stly directed towards bringing in CathoUe immi-
grants to the new ecclesiastical province and found-
ing new parishes within his own archdiocese. In the
midst of these labours the Saskatchewan Rebellion of
1885, under the same L. Riel who had directed the
legitimate rising of 1869 (see S.\skatchew.\n and
Alberta), took place. Tach^ wrote (7 Dec, 1885) a
little pamphlet, "La Situation", a masterpiece of its
kind, in which he deplored the rebellion, yet remained
to the end svmpathetic to his former prot^g^. The
latter had paid with his life (16 Nov., 1885) for
excesses that were due to good intentions rend-
ered ineffective by the failure of an overworked
brain. From 13 to 24 July, 1889, were held at St.
Boniface the sessions of its First Provincial Council.
But soon after this joyful event the separate schools
which were guaranteed by the provincial Constitution
were ruthlessly abolished. The archbishop made
numerous attempts to obtain redress, pubhshing sev-
eral letters and pamphlets to show the injustice done
his people; he also had appeals taken to the various
courts, but the findings were contradictory, and there-
fore futile, until the Privy Council of the Empire
acknowledged the reality of the grievances and
pointed out the Federal Parliament as the party which
had power to redress them (29 Jan., 1895). Tach6
did not Uve to see this tardy justice. The anxieties
of the last few years had accentuated the ravages of a
malady which carried him off, to the regret of friends
and foes alike. Apart from the respectful tributes of
the press, some 15,000 Protestants publicly testified
after his death their recognition of his worth.
Archbishop Tache had to a considerable extent shaped the destinies of the Canadian West. He was a writer of no mean order. His hterary productions have a special aroma of delicacy and, at times, quiet wit, which denote the well-bred gentleman, and his French is remarkably piu-e and free from foreign elements. Of his first book, "Vingt Ann6es de Mis- sions" (Montreal, 1866), 15,(X)0 copies were sold, and it is now very rare. A short time later he pub- lished his "Esquissesur le Nord-Ouest de I'Amfri- que", almo.st a classic on the subject; besides a second edition, it had the honour of an English trans- lation. The harassing school persecution which began in the year 1890 was responsible for several public documents of Archbishop Tacho's, prominent among which is "A Page of the History of the Schools in Manitoba"; this document was published in English and French, and is regarded as a model of close dialectics and irrefutable logic.
David, Monseigneur Alexandre-Anlonin Tach6 (Montreal, 1883); Harqrave, Red River (Montreal, 1871); Hill. Manitoba (Toronto, s. d.); HuiX)T, De V Atlantique au Pacifique (Paris, 1888) : JoNQUET, Monseigneur Grandin (Montreal, 1903) ; Benoit, Vie de Mgr Taehl (2 vols., Montreal, 1904); MoRicE, Diet, hia- torique des Canadiens et des MHis Francois de VOuest (Quebec, 1908) ; Idem, Hist, of the Catholic Church in Western Canada (2 vols., Toronto, 1910); SAVAi:TE, Vers I'Abtme. VII (Paris, 1910); RouTHiER, De Quibec d Victoria (Quebec, 1893); Lamotbe, Cinq mots chez les Francois d'Amirique (Paris, 1879).
A. G. MoRicE.
Tach6, Etienne-Pascal, statesman, b. at St. Thomas (Montmagny, Province of Quebec), 5 Sept., 1795, son of Charles, and Genevifive Michon; d. 30 July, 1865. Through his grandmother, he was a de-
