A Walk With Mr McGee

THOMAS D'ARCY MCGEE - an editor, politician, and poet, born at Carlingford, County Louth, Ireland, 13 April, 1825 and assassinated in Ottawa, Canada, 7 April, 1868.
D'Arcy McGee's career was cut short tragically in his prime. No-one can tell what he might have accomplished, in politics or literature had he lived longer. Yet in the short time permitted him, he made precious contributions to his adopted country. He was one of the founding fathers of Canada as we know it today. He did more, perhaps, to ease the religious and racial strife that had threatened to tear the country apart. To his own Irish people, he gave wise leadership in the painful struggle for what we now call integration. Like Martin Luther King, he shared a passionate concern for a beleagered and suppressed minority. But perhaps his greatest contribution of all was the example he gave, not to Canada, but to all free countries, of a public man prepared to do what he considered right, regardless of unpopularity ad the danger of death.

THE FATES:
The Fates are the goddesses who control the destiny of everyone from the time they were born to the time they die. Even though the other gods were almighty, and supposedly immortal, all were subject to the whims of the Fates. The Fates were often depicted as ugly hags, cold and unmerciful. But the Fates are not always deaf to the pleading of others.

NONA - (Greek Κλωθώ – "spinner") spun the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle. Nona, (the 'Ninth') was originally a goddess called upon in the ninth month of pregnancy. In A Walk with Mr McGee, Nona incarnates John A. MacDonald and Mary McCaffrey.
John A. MacDonald - lawyer, businessman, politician, first prime minister of Canada (b at Glasgow, Scot 10 or 11 Jan 1815; d at Ottawa 6 June 1891). John Alexander Macdonald was the dominant creative mind which produced the BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT and the union of provinces which became Canada. As the first prime minister of Canada, he oversaw the expansion of the Dominion from sea to sea. His government dominated politics for a half century and set policy goals for future generations of political leaders.
Mary McCaffrey - on 13 July 1847 married Thomas D'Arcy McGee. The couple were to have five daughters and one son, but only two daughters survived their father.

DECIMA - (Greek Λάχεσις – "allotter" or drawer of lots) measured the thread of life allotted to each person with her measuring rod. In Latin her name mean the 'Tenth'. In A Walk with Mr McGee, Decima incarnates James Cockburn (The Speaker of the House of Commons) and Alice Freeman.
James Cockburn - lawyer, businessman, and politician; b. 13 Feb. 1819 at Berwick upon Tweed, England, son of James Cockburn, a merchant, and Sarah Turnbull; m. 14 Dec. 1854 Isabella Susan Patterson (d. 1862), and they had three children; d. 14 Aug. 1883 at Ottawa, Ont. Cockburn was elected by acclamation to the first federal parliament in 1867. There was no place for him in the cabinet; as compensation he was chosen speaker of the House of Commons.
Alice Freeman, better known by her pseudonym, Faith Fenton, was a Canadian school teacher and investigative journalist. She became Canada's first female columnist while writing for the Toronto Empire. Freeman wrote under the pseudonym Faith Fenton to keep her job as a teacher, as journalism was seen as an unacceptably disreputable activity for a teacher to be involved in. With the low salary she earned at these jobs, she required both salaries to support herself.

MORTA - Greek Ἄτροπος – "inexorable" or "inevitable", literally "unturning") was the cutter of the thread of life. She chose the manner of each person's death; and when their time was come, she cut their life-thread with "her abhorred shears". Her Roman equivalent is Death. In A Walk With Mr McGee, Morta incarnates George-Étienne Cartier and Father O'Brien.
George-Étienne Cartier - politician, prime minister of the Province of Canada; b. 6 Sept. 1814 at Saint-Antoine-sur-Richelieu (Verchères County, L.C.), son of Jacques Cartier (1774–1841) and Marguerite Paradis; d. 20 May 1873 in London, Eng. From 1867 until his death, Cartier was Macdonald’s principal lieutenant, and often replaced him as prime minister and leader of the government in the House of Commons. He was a kind of co-prime minister, practically the equal of Macdonald. Officially, he was minister of militia, and attached much importance to this task. He proposed, as a Quebec newspaper put it at the time, to take his “revenge for 1862.”
Father O'Brien - Irish Roman Catholic Priest. In Canada, Fenian is used to designate a group of Irish radicals, a.k.a. the American branch of the Fenian Brotherhood in the 1860s. They made several attempts (1866, 1870, etc.) to invade some parts of Province of Canada which were a British dominion at the time. The ultimate goal of the Fenian raids was to hold Canada hostage and therefore be in a position to blackmail the United Kingdom to give Ireland its independence. Because of the invasion attempts, support and/or collaboration for the Fenians in Canada became very rare even among the Irish.

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