Irish Patriotes

Abstract

This chapter explores how codes of manliness and the culture of masculinity in Lower Canada revealed themselves in the public career of Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, the final editor of The Vindicator newspaper in Montreal and a major figure within the parti patriote on the eve of the 1837 Lower Canadian Rebellion. Using the themes of gender, violence, and loyalty, the chapter analyses O’Callaghan’s fidelity to the patriote cause, his commitment to overthrowing British rule, and his ability to use gendered and inflammatory language in order to qualify what and who was truly ‘Irish’ in the Canadas. Through his Irishness, his radicalism, and his use of gendered language, Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan made the Irish element of the Lower Canadian Rebellion appear absolutely fundamental; in the end, however, appearance was not the same thing as reality.