I am in the "Louis Riel--Hero" camp of historians. Therefore, this great bit of poetry by Scofield is a welcome voice. If it were up to me we would read it in its entirety for either ELA A 30 or History 30. Or possibly, both. It covers his life from childhood to hangman's noose and is all the more powerful as a result of Scofield's First Nations' heritage and inclusion of Cree words every now and again. The Orange Poems are intersting as they rife on the Orangman conflict and Thomas Scott. However, the very best work comes from the section that uses excerpts from a Canadian Settler's Almanac. The almanac is legit Canadian history (primary document and all that) and Scofield's poems are responses to those European settlers that rolled on into the Prairies to change everything, forever.
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