Assassination
On April 7, 1868, McGee participated in a parliamentary debate that went on past midnight. Afterward he walked to his Sparks St. boarding house at 2:00 AM. While trying to enter the boarding house (the door was locked from the inside and McGee was waiting for the landlady to open the door), McGee was purportedly assassinated by Patrick J. Whelan as the door was being opened. He was given a state funeral in Ottawa and interred in a crypt at the Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in Montreal. His funeral procession in Montreal drew an estimated crowd of 80 000 (out of a total city population of 105 000). The government of Canada's Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building stands near the site of the assassination.
Patrick J. Whelan, a Fenian sympathizer and a Catholic, was accused, tried, convicted, and hanged for the crime. Decades later, his guilt was questioned and many people believe that he was a scapegoat for a Protestant plot. His case is dramatized in the Canadian play, Blood on the Moon by Ottawa actor/playwright Pierre Brault. Patrick J. Whelan was hanged with an audience of 5,000 people. This was the last public hanging of Canada. The assassination of McGee is also a major component of Away, a novel about Irish immigration to Canada by Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart.
Read more about this topic: Thomas D'Arcy McGee