Edmonton and the North-West Rebellion

In the spring of 1885, the Canadian Government officially took up arms against its citizens for the only time in Canada’s history. The violent, three-month-long North-West Rebellion in what is now the western province of Saskatchewan created widespread unrest right across the Prairies. Led by Louis Riel, many Métis and Indigenous peoples rose up to protect their land and rights against the Canadian Government's acquisition of the vast North-West landmass from the Hudson's Bay Company.

Louis Riel had led a similar resistance movement known as the Red River Uprising in what is now Manitoba fifteen years earlier in 1869-1870. He negotiated the creation of provincial status for Manitoba. Today, Louis Riel is quite rightly regarded as a hero in my home province of Manitoba and our personal Father of Confederation. (I previously blogged about him here).

I never thought about Alberta (where I now live) as having much connection to the 1885 North-West Rebellion because all the battles took place in next-door Saskatchewan. But it seems that there was indeed fallout here in Edmonton and throughout northern Alberta, which I just learned about at a recent exhibition at the nearby St. Albert Musée Héritage Museum.

[Photo © Debra She Who Seeks, 2026]

The most fascinating artefact in the exhibition was one of Louis Riel's journals dating from his years spent in exile in the United States as a wanted man after the Red River Uprising. Riel returned from the States to lead the North-West Rebellion. Following its failure, he was tried for treason and executed in Regina.

I also attended a lecture at the Musée Héritage Museum, advertised rather luridly (and anachronistically) as --

The lecture was specifically about how Edmonton reacted to the 1885 unrest. Named at that time "Fort Edmonton," it was still a Hudson's Bay Company fur-trading outpost with some additional white settlers rounding out its tiny population. Far away from any actual battles, Fort Edmonton was nevertheless rife with fear and rumours stoked by its local newspaper and its very real isolation -- a full day's journey from the area's only North-West Mounted Police detachment (forerunners of the RCMP). Supposed secret ambushes and a feared imminent Indigenous attack (completely unfounded) sent Fort Edmonton into a panic. All the settlers fled as refugees to nearby St. Albert. They stayed for a week, realized everything was okay, and then went home again. A citizens militia was formed and a few Canadian Government soldiers arrived by train in Calgary and rode north to Fort Edmonton. Apparently, one night a cat was fired upon as a suspected insurgent and that's as close to real danger as anyone got.