Carleton Library Series : Life on the Line: Commander Pierre-Etienne Fortin and His Times

Pierre-Étienne Fortin led a life and plied a career at the heart of Canada's early history. He was an adventurer, an amateur scientist, an early (if ambiguous) conservationist and a Conservative politician from 1867 to 1888. He was a doctor on Grosse-Île amid the horrors of the 1847 typhus epidemic, led a mounted police troop during the infamous Montreal riots of 1849 and, as commander of the armed schooner La Canadienne, policed the Gulf of St. Lawrence from 1852 to 1867, when thousands of New Englanders and Nova Scotians swarmed over the fishing grounds. His official life as magistrate and mid-level bureaucrat often exemplified tensions of early nationhood: those between elites and colonists; and those arising from the nationalistic impulse to impose law and order on the wilderness. The interests, issues and sympathies at work on Fortin in the founding period remain compelling today: job creation versus environmental protection, free trade with the U.S., the exploitation of Canadian fisheries, relations with aboriginal peoples, and the political status of Quebec within confederation. Cover Contents List of Illustrations Preface I: The Commander and La Canadienne II: Fortins Ancestors and his Youth III: Fighting Plagues and Mobs IV: The Commander and His Domain V: Sellout of the Gulf VI: Magistrate and Policeman VII: A Company Man? VIII: The War of the Candle Snuffers IX: Naturalist and Conservationist X: Conservation versus Jobs XI: "Our Rivers Taken from Us" XII: Fighting with the Bureaucrats XIII: Fortin, the Conservatives, and Confederation XIV: A Constituency Man XV: Final Days Sources Index PLACES AND TOPICS A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W PERSONS A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W VESSELS A B C D E F G I L M N O P R S T V