THE PATHFINDER

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 36, 11 August 1927, Page 11

THE PATHFINDER

A CANADIAN POET

passing of chaeles mair

(From "The Pwt's^ R»pres«ntatlve.) VAtfOOTJVEB, 14th July: Canada mourns, in the death at Victoria of Charles Mair, poet and author, at the age of 92, one of her western pathfinders, who saw vigorous aotive service in both Kiel rebellions and escaped from gaol and Kiel's vongeauce while his cell-mate, Thomas Scott, was brutally murdorod by Biel—one of the crimes for which Eiel paia tho penalty with his own life fifteen years later.

In the summer of 1860 Mair wont to the West, as paymaster of the first expedition sent to tho Northwest by the Canadian Government, after tho taking over of tho Hudson's Bay Company's great territories. During the strenuous subsequent years the letters of a Red Eivor correspondent in tho Toronto "Globe" and Montreal "Star" aroused widespread interest. The halfbreds. had become restless. They had not been consulted regarding the transfer of the Hudson's Bay lands, and were fearful of their rights. Biel played on this restlessness, which led to the first rebellion in 1869. Mair and his bride and Dr. (afterward Sir John) Schultz, one of Manitoba's. Governors, were captured when Fort Garry fell to the rebels. They wore confined in tho fort for three weeks. Mrs. Meir was allowed to leave, but Mair, Schultz, and other influential prisoners were singled out for execution. Both escaped on ,1 bitterly cold night with other prisoners. Mair made several trips to : Ottawa to plead with tho Government to make concessions to the Indians to save bloodshed. When the second rebellion broke out in 1885 he enlisted with the Governor-General's Foot Guards. Four years later ho was appointed English secretary to tho Scrip Commission Treaty with tho Indians.

He lived to see his prophecy of tho Wost fulfilled, for in 1869 ho wrote in one of his articles, which first drew attention to the fertility of tho Prairie:—"What would the young Canadian farmer, ploughing and cursing among his rocks, say if he were told that, where I write, he could run a furrow for miles through a vegetable loam^ two feet deep? Minnesota's prairie is as sand compared with this."