- Louis Riel was born in Red River and was educated in St. Boniface before being sent to the Petit Séminaire de Montréal. He returned to Red River around 1868 and soon came to lead Métis hostility to the prospective Canadian annexation of the settlement. His direction of the Red River Rebellion as president of the provincial government was marred only by the execution of Thomas Scott, which allowed the Canadian government to name him an outlaw. He was later elected to Parliament from Provencher on several occasions but was expelled. In June 1884, he was asked by a group of settlers in Saskatchewan to lead them in protest against the Canadian government. The protest turned to violence in 1885, and the Métis and indigenous peoples led by Riel were quickly and brutally suppressed after military defeat at the Battle of Batoche. He was tried for treason, rejecting a plea of insanity advanced by his lawyers, and was hanged at Regina on 16 November 1885.
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Archives & Special Collections
Archives & Special Collections is a department of the Libraries and is located in Room 330 on the third floor of the Elizabeth Dafoe Library. Since its establishment in 1978, the Archives' mission has been to acquire, catalogue and preserve university records and special research collections which further the educational aims of the University of Manitoba, and to promote and provide wide access to them. The Archives' wide-ranging collection mandate includes the acquisition of the records of the University of Manitoba, Canadian Prairie Literary Manuscripts, the Archives of the Agricultural Experience and rare books in the areas of western Canadiana, early Arctic exploration, early Native language syllabics, spiritualism, church history and philosophy, and agriculture among others.