Thomas D'Arcy McGee's life included interesting contradictions. An Irishman whose most passionate and enduring attachments were to the history and literature of his own country, he was the most ardent Canadian nationalist among the Fathers of Confederation. A man celebrated in Canadian politics and cultural life as the finest public speaker of his day, McGee was by all accounts physically unprepossessing, even an ugly man; it was his voice, and not his appearance, that compelled his audiences. As a teenager, his first celebrated speeches were for temperance; in his adult life he had serious drinking problems. In his early twenties he was a founding member of the revolutionary group known as Young Ireland, participating in the unsuccessful revolt against England in 1848; twenty years later he would repeatedly denounce any Irish plan for armed rebellion as pure folly. As a young man he was attacked by the Irish Catholic...