Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, in an undated photo. NFB/National Archives of Canada
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Commentary
One could contend that a brief skirmish gone wrong on a snowy field near Duck Lake, in present-day central Saskatchewan, helped Canada become a country. This momentous, yet little-known, episode in our history is insightfully chronicled in the book “Sir John A. Macdonald & the Apocalyptic Year 1885“ by Patrice Dutil (Sutherland House), a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Hon. Bronwyn Eyre, LLB, is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, Saskatchewan’s former minister of justice and attorney general—the first female to hold each position—and a former long-serving minister of energy.
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