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DCB/DBC News

New Biographies

Minor Corrections

Biography of the Day

ROBINSON, ELIZA ARDEN – Volume XIII (1901-1910)

d. in Victoria 19 March 1906

Confederation

Responsible Government

Sir John A. Macdonald

From the Red River Settlement to Manitoba (1812–70)

Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Sir George-Étienne Cartier

Sports

The Fenians

Women in the DCB/DBC

The Charlottetown and Quebec Conferences of 1864

Introductory Essays of the DCB/DBC

The Acadians

For Educators

The War of 1812 

Canada’s Wartime Prime Ministers

The First World War

Life in Red River
 

The often-difficult living conditions pushed several settlers to voice their discontent to their leaders. Some, like the Swiss painter Peter RINDISBACHER and his family, left the colony permanently:

“Only a few paintings… document the increasingly desperate plight of Rindisbacher’s own people. For the most part artisans, they were totally unfit to face the privations of a farming life at Red River. Man-made and natural disasters mocked their clumsy efforts to eke out a living. They began trickling south. In the spring of 1826 a devastating flood combined with an infestation of grub-worms discouraged the remaining die-hards, among them Pierre Rindisbacher. With his family and other Swiss settlers he left Red River on 11 July 1826 and settled at a place called Gratiot’s Grove (near Darlington, Wis.).”

 

The biographies that appear in the following lists provide additional information on what everyday life in Red River was like between 1812 and 1870.

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