1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910808451403321

Autore

Stewart W. Brian

Titolo

A life on the line : Commander Pierre-Étienne Fortin and his times / / W. Brian Stewart

Pubbl/distr/stampa

[Ottawa, Ont.?], : Carleton University Press, 1997

ISBN

1-283-53116-X

9786613843616

0-7735-8487-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

xi, 218 p. : ill., port

Collana

Carleton library series ; ; v. 188

Disciplina

971.4/03/092

Soggetti

Politicians - Québec (Province)

Québec (Province) Politics and government

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

I The Commander and La Canadienne - II Fortins Ancestors and his Youth -- III Fighting Plagues and Mobs -- IV The Commander and His Domain -- V Sellout of the Gulf -- VI Magistrate and Policeman -- VII A Company Man? -- VIII The War of the Candle Snuffers -- IX Naturalist and Conservationist -- X Conservation versus Jobs -- XI "Our Rivers Taken from Us" -- XII Fighting with the Bureaucrats -- XIII Fortin, the Conservatives, and Confederation -- XIV A Constituency Man -- XV Final Days.

Sommario/riassunto

Pierre-Étienne Fortin led a life and plied a career at the heart of Canada's early history. He was an adventurer, an amateur scientist, an early (if ambiguous) conservationist and a Conservative politician from 1867 to 1888. He was a doctor on Grosse-Île amid the horrors of the 1847 typhus epidemic, led a mounted police troop during the infamous Montreal riots of 1849 and, as commander of the armed schooner La Canadienne, policed the Gulf of St. Lawrence from 1852 to 1867, when thousands of New Englanders and Nova Scotians swarmed over the fishing grounds. His official life as magistrate and mid-level bureaucrat often exemplified tensions of early nationhood: those between elites and colonists; and those arising from the nationalistic impulse to impose law and order on the wilderness. The interests, issues and



sympathies at work on Fortin in the founding period remain compelling today: job creation versus environmental protection, free trade with the U.S., the exploitation of Canadian fisheries, relations with aboriginal peoples, and the political status of Quebec within confederation.