From: Rough Times 1870-1920 by Bugler Joseph F. Tennant (A Souvenir of the 50th Anniversary of the Red River Expedition and the Formation of the Province of Manitoba)
It's interesting to note, that Joseph married a local girl from Emerson, and was an important member of that community for many years...
1 - Most of the year of 1866 was spent by Father Lacombe on the prairies with his Indians. With a few weeks of rest at St. Albert after his eventful trip to the Blackfeet, he set out by dog-train for St. Paul de Cris. His only companion was a quaint little Irish- American called Jimmy-from-Cork, who had drifted into Fort Edmonton and was now anxious to make his way to the Red River. This man Jimmy McCarthy who was to make himself conspicuous at Fort Garry in 1870 had even then a varied and sombre career behind him.
Sam Livingstone and Jimmy Gibbons, the Forty-Niners, standing on the river-bank near Victoria, one day in January, 1866, as Father Lacombe came trotting behind his dog-train, were astounded to find that the little man snugly wrapped in robes in Father Lacombe's dog-cariole was Jimmy-from-Cork!
The hospitable miners called out an invitation to the travellers to share their mid-day meal with them. Father Lacombe his clumsy soutane tucked up about his leather trousers, as it always was when he traveled behind dogs busied himself first with food for the animals. But his genial little companion, Gibbons recalls, stepped out of the cariole and patting the priest on the shoulder, said airily to his hosts, "We ve had a good trip, boys. Father Lacombe is a damn good runner, and he knows that Jimmy-from-Cork's legs are too short to run."
Assuredly fraternal charity and the frontier brings strange bed-fellows together!
From: Father Lacombe, the Black-Robed Voyegeur
Photograph of the Provisional Government Back row, from left to right: Bonnet Tromage [or Charles Laroque, but apparently François Guilmette], Pierre de Lorme, Thomas Bunn, Xavier Page [Pagée], Baptiste Beauchemin [apparently André Beauchemin], Baptiste Tournond, Joseph [apparently Thomas] Spence. Middle row, left to right: Pierre Poitras, John Bruce, Louis Riel, John O’Donoghue [actually his name was William O'Donoghue], François Dauphinais. Front row, left to right: Hugh F. "Bob" O'Lone, Paul Proulx. |
2 - Another source (the Saint Paul Daily Pioneer) reported it was on March 7, 1871 that Hugh F. "Bob" O'Lone, a former member of the Provisional Government, was killed by a blow to the head from a revolver in early January (at the dance...) He was sometimes referred to as Robert O'Lone, but one source says that's a misnomer - "there was no Robert O'Lone..."
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