Find out where I come from

Gotta be real: most February mornings I can barely convince myself to shovel the driveway.

So the idea of rounding up a motley crew of dudes, hitching up sleighs, heading into the cold, and trying to rescue prisoners in the hope of stopping a civil war?

Respectfully, that is a level of “getting involved” I do not currently possess.

And yet, somewhere in my family tree, there they are.

All because I grabbed an old book off eBay.

Someone mentioned it had a bit of my family history in it. I expected the usual stuff: names, dates, maybe some stern-looking ancestor with a beard you could lose a sandwich in.

Instead, I opened it and found my bloodline standing uncomfortably close to some of the biggest fault lines in Canadian history.

Red River. Louis Riel. Thomas Scott. Upper Fort Garry. The founding of Manitoba. The flight west. The founding of Bresaylor. The Battle of Cut Knife. Fort Battleford. The largest mass execution in Canadian history.

So, yeah.

Buckle up.

Do I have a tale for you.

My great-great-uncle John Taylor was a Red River man. Born there. Of that place. He spoke English, French, and Cree. He was part of that complicated Orkney-Scots Métis/Hudson’s Bay Company world where identity does not fit neatly into a modern checkbox.

And that is where the story gets messy.

Because the clean version of history likes to sort people into tidy piles.

Riel: hero or villain. Thomas Scott: martyr or villain. Métis here. Settlers there. Canada arriving with order, paperwork, and the confidence of a man measuring someone else’s kitchen.

But real history is much messier than that.

The French-speaking Métis had every reason to fear Canada’s arrival. Their land, language, religion, and political future were all at risk.

But many English-speaking and Orkney-Scots Métis families were also afraid. They worried that the land they lived on — land tied to the Hudson’s Bay Company system — could be lost, ignored, or rewritten out from under them if the transfer to Canada went sideways.

In short, everyone was afraid of losing home.

And that is when people get dangerous.

John Taylor opposed Riel’s provisional government. Not because he was some random outsider looking for trouble, but because he was a Red River man who believed his community was not being properly represented and that things were starting to spiral.

Then prisoners were taken.

One of them was Thomas Scott.

Scott was not a saint. He was difficult, angry, political, and probably exactly the kind of man you do not want trapped inside an already explosive crisis.

But being difficult is not a capital offence.

John Taylor grabbed his younger bro Sandy (my GGgrandfather) and others joined what became known as the Headingley or Portage Party. They were trying to rescue prisoners and, from what I can understand, stop the situation from tipping into outright civil war.

They moved toward Upper Fort Garry.

They did not simply storm the fort.

They tried to negotiate.

According to the family account, there were assurances the prisoners would be released.

Instead, it was a trap.

The men were surrounded, disarmed, and captured.

John Taylor was put in irons and told he would be shot.

Thomas Scott was executed.

John was spared.

That sentence has been sitting with me.

One man dead. One man alive. A community poisoned. A family marked.

After Scott’s execution, the air changed. And if you have ever lived in a small community, you know exactly what that means. Danger does not always arrive as an official threat. Sometimes it is a look. A silence. A door not opened. A name people suddenly say differently.

So my great-great-grandfather Alexander “Sandy” Taylor, along with the Bremners and Sayers, left Red River.

They were heading west toward the Edmonton area, trying to put distance between themselves and a place where politics had become personal.

Then Saskatchewan weather did what Saskatchewan weather does.

It wrecked the plan.

That summer was stormy. Travel was slow. By the time they were past Fort Battleford, the season was too late. Keep going and prairie winter could kill them. Stop and maybe live.

So they stopped.

Bremner. Sayer. Taylor.

Bresaylor.

Which sounds charming now, but was basically three families saying, “Well, dying on the open prairie seems worse, so I guess this is home.”

For a few years, they tried to do what ordinary people do after chaos.

Build. Farm. Raise kids. Fix fences. Feed animals. Pretend history had moved on.

It had not.

Fourteen years after Thomas Scott was executed at Red River, the old conflict came back across the prairie.

Riel returned from Montana and travelled toward Batoche.

And the families who had fled the first crisis found the second one almost on their doorstep.

According to family history, the Bresaylor families were given an ultimatum: fight with the resistance or be sacked.

And this is where all the neat labels fall apart again.

Because what were they?

Métis? Settlers? Red River people? Riel opponents? Kin? Targets?

Yes.

Also no.

Actual people rarely fit into the folders we make later.

Then came the part of the story I cannot stop thinking about.

A blind Cree woman named Bright Eyes, a friend of Mary Taylor — Sandy’s wife — warned the family only hours before the attack.

She chose friendship over violence.

My family ran.

Their farm was burned to the ground.

Much of the family escaped to Fort Battleford, where they lived for months and would have been present for the largest mass execution in Canadian history.

And that is the part that stops me cold.

They left Red River in the shadow of one execution, only to end up at Fort Battleford in the shadow of another.

Different authority. Different victims. Different explanation.

Same terrifying belief that violence can clean up what politics failed to solve.

So no, I do not think this is a hero story.

Honestly, I trust those less and less.

This is a warning.

Riel was not simply a villain. Thomas Scott was not simply a villain. My family was not floating nobly above the mess. Canada was not simply bringing order.

Everyone had reasons. Everyone had fears. Everyone had blind spots. Everyone was standing too close to the matchbox.

And my family?

They were in it.

Which is worse.

They were trying to protect land, family, and survival in a world being rapidly rewritten around them.

That is what this old eBay book handed me.

Not a badge. Not a grievance. A warning.

Civilization is not held together by speeches, flags, plaques, or whatever bronze man a town council managed to bolt to a rock.

It is held together by land being respected. By neighbours staying human. By governments listening before the shooting starts. By prisoners not becoming symbols. By families not being forced to choose between identity and survival.

And sometimes, when all of that has already failed, it is held together by one person doing the brave, inconvenient thing.

In my family’s case, that person was Bright Eyes — only a few generations ago, chose friendship over violence.

And my family survived because she did.