Hugh Scott: Casualty of the Red River Troubles of 1869-70

Albert Braz

Sketches of Thomas and Hugh Scott, top and bottom, from Preliminary Investigation and Trial of Ambroise D. Lepine for the Murder of Thomas Scott, Being a full report of the proceedings in this case before the Magistrates’ Court and several Courts of Queen’s Bench in the Province of Manitoba, reported and compiled by [George B.] Elliott and [Frederick] Brokovski (Montréal: Burland-Desbarats Lithographic Company, 1874). Accessed 12 Sept. 2023.

The day after the execution of Thomas Scott, Reverend George Young wrote a letter to Hugh Scott informing him of the tragedy. A Methodist minister who served as the unofficial chaplain of the Canadian counterinsurgents imprisoned by Riel, Young had tended to Thomas in the last days of his life. He had also promised the condemned man that he would provide a “true” account of all the proceedings to his brother Hugh, who lived with his wife in Toronto. Young must have had some impact, for Hugh would soon become passionately involved in the campaign to bring his brother’s “murderers” to justice.

Ulster Immigrants

There is remarkably little information about the Scott brothers, including their exact birth dates and the names of their parents. Thomas and Hugh Scott were born in the north of Ireland, likely at the Clandeboye Estate near Belfast, where their parents were tenant farmers of Frederick Temple Blackwood (Lord Dufferin), later appointed Canada’s third post-Confederation governor general (1872-78). In the early 1860s, they migrated to what is now Ontario. Hugh, who would marry a woman named Annie and have three children, worked as a bookkeeper in the Toronto area. Thomas, who was single, worked as a labourer, and possibly as a gold miner, in the country north of Belleville.

Troubles at Red River

In the summer of 1869, Thomas moved to the Red River Settlement—what became southeastern Manitoba, within an 80-kilometre radius of the current city of Winnipeg. There he joined the Canadian crew building the Dawson Road, linking Red River to Lake of the Woods and, eventually, Canada. He also became involved with an Ontario-centred group of Canadian expansionists called the Canadian Party, led by the medical practitioner, newspaper owner, and land speculator John Christian Schultz. The Canadian Party was fiercely opposed to Riel and his predominantly Franco-Catholic Métis followers, who showed their resistance to the transfer of Red River and the rest of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) to Canada by seizing Upper Fort Garry, forcibly appropriating the HBC’s stores and funds and declaring a provisional government.

Late in 1869, Thomas was among a group of Canadian “loyalists” that Riel had arrested when they attempted to guard the Canadian government’s goods being stored in Schultz’s warehouse. Weeks later, he made a daring escape in the middle of winter, trudging his way through endless snow drifts to Portage la Prairie, an Anglo-Canadian enclave about 100 kilometres west of the then-village of Winnipeg. When Thomas returned to the Settlement as part of a sizable contingent of Portage volunteers determined to free the remaining prisoners, Riel had him arrested again.

Moreover, Riel then subjected Thomas to a court martial headed by his military commander, Ambroise Lépine, which promptly sentenced him to death. The charges against Thomas dealt primarily with his impudent language, but Riel rejected all the pleas for a reprieve by local religious and business leaders. Thus on March 4, 1870, Thomas Scott was executed by a Métis firing squad, some of whose members reportedly were intoxicated. They botched the job, forcing someone to pull out a revolver and put Thomas out of his misery. To further exacerbate matters, Riel and his government then refused to hand the body over (137-40) to Reverend Young so that it could be given a solemn burial.

After the Execution

It was only after Young revealed the particulars about Thomas Scott that it became public knowledge that the deceased was both a Presbyterian and a “loyal to the backbone” member of the Orange Order, a Protestant secret society with a long history of clashing with Catholics. The news that an Orangeman had been killed by the Métis “rebels” was explosive in southern Ontario. This was particularly true among Schultz’s Canada First associates, such as George Taylor Denison, William A. Foster, and Charles Mair—the last of whom (like Schultz) had just fled Red River, where he had been incarcerated with Thomas during his first imprisonment. Canada First had not been very successful at raising the national consciousness during the early part of what became known as the Red River Resistance. But with the ghastly descriptions of Thomas Scott’s shooting, its indignation meetings became increasingly popular throughout Ontario.

Hugh Scott emerged as a key figure in the campaign against Riel and those responsible for the death of his brother. When the provisional government sent three delegates to Ottawa to negotiate Red River’s entry into Confederation, Hugh swore an oath before Toronto’s Police Magistrate, alleging that two of the delegates were complicit in “the murder” of Thomas. The Police Magistrate issued a warrant for their arrest and sent it to Ottawa, where the local police apprehended them. After being released for jurisdictional reasons, the delegates were re-arrested, following another warrant based on Hugh’s allegations (117-21). Even though the two Red River delegates would eventually be freed, Hugh managed to embarrass both the Canadian and Imperial governments, drawing much attention to his brother’s case.

There are suspicions that Hugh was used by Canada First, but he clearly shared their views of the conflict. In a letter to Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, on April 6, 1870, Hugh acknowledged the lack of support in cabinet for prosecuting those who had so brutally killed Thomas. He then closed his missive with a combination of entreaty and veiled warning: “I trust your government will leave nothing undone to meet [sic] out the punishment due those rebels and murderers. If not his blood shall I require at their hands.” All indications are that Hugh was devastated by the fact that he not only lost his beloved brother but did not even know where he was buried or if he was buried at all. Indeed, Hugh would subsequently suffer a mental collapse and be hospitalized at Toronto’s Asylum for the Insane, now the Queen Street Mental Health Centre.

Hugh Scott’s Breakdown

In his 1897 autobiography Manitoba Memories: Leaves from My Life in the Prairie Province, 1868-1884, the most significant repository of information about the Scott brothers, Reverend Young wrote that Hugh Scott “lost his reason after the death of his brother.” He elaborated that, when he visited Hugh in Toronto, “his mind was so wrecked as to forget that he had ever had a brother called Thomas.”

Photo of George Young, from his book Manitoba Memories (1897)

Young did not specify when the meeting between the two men occurred. But according to the archives of the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, Hugh was first admitted to the Toronto Asylum on January 17, 1876. His mental disorder was diagnosed as “Mania,” which was “Not” hereditary, being caused by “shock from murder of brother.” Among his propensities and hallucinations were, “Fears the family will be brought to destitution.” It is further noted that Hugh died at the Asylum on September 27, 1879—three years, eight months, and ten days after entering the institution.[i]

When Thomas and Hugh Scott migrated to Canada, presumably in the hope of building a better life than they had in Ireland, their parents must never have imagined that they would lose not just one son but two to the Red River Troubles.

[i] Archives of Ontario, Queen Street Mental Health Centre fonds, General Register for Hugh Scott, #4351-5575, p. 4442, General Register, 31 May 1875-12 June 1884, Volume 4, and Hugh Scott’s Clinical Case File, RG 10-268 series, file no. 4442.

Albert Braz is a professor emeritus of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Alberta. He is the author of such books as The False Traitor: Louis Riel in Canadian Culture (2003) and The Riel Problem: Canada, the Métis, and a Resistant Hero (2024).