I dreamed a dream when the woods were green,
And my April heart made an April scene,
In the far, far distant land,
That even I might something do
That would keep my memory for the true,
And my name from the spoiler's hand!
From the summer of 1867, he looked forward to obtaining a commissionership under the government, which would maintain him and his family, while providing leisure for literary work. These were the hopes shattered suddenly by his murder.
During January and February, 1868, McGee was seriously ill in Montreal, but in March he was back in Ottawa for the opening of parliament. The crucial issue of the period was the inclusion of Nova Scotia in the federation. A delegation of Nova Scotians headed by the redoubtable Howe had gone to Britain to obtain the support of British statesmen in the endeavour to release their province from the federation. To neutralize their influence by stating the counter case, the Canadian government in March sent over Tupper. To the Nova Scotian anti-unionists—and they constituted a majority of the representatives of the province—the little energetic doctor was anathema. With painstaking bitterness, they assailed his appointment. On the evening of April 6, Dr. Parker, a Nova Scotian representative, made a personal attack on Tupper, demanding his recall. He declared that he was "utterly disqualified for being a representative of the Dominion, and sending him only deepened the disaffection of the sister province of Nova Scotia".
In reply to Parker, McGee declared that the motion to recall Tupper was delivering Confederation a stab in the dark. "If he had been in earnest in wishing to give the new system a fair trial, he would have said: I do not think Mr. Tupper was the best choice, but since he has gone I wish him all success for the sake of the union." In impassioned words which show how poignantly his own bitter struggle with Fenianism was on his mind, he argued that Tupper should not be judged by the transitory ill-esteem in which he was held by his countrymen. "We should not make a mere local or temporary popularity the test of the qualification of a public servant. He who built on popularity built on a shifting sand. The man who showed he was ready to suffer for his principles as well as triumph with his principles was far beyond comparison with the mere popularity hunter. It would be a base spirit to sacrifice the man who had sacrificed himself for the sake of the union." No attentive parliamentarian who heard these words could have foreseen that in little more than an hour McGee himself was to be sacrificed for his opinions.
No less significant than his defence of Tupper was his plea that Nova Scotia should await the action of time for the consolidation of the provinces into a great nation, all parts of which would find justice. "I have great reliance on the mellowing effects of time. It is not the lime, and the sand, and the hair of the mortar, but the time which has taken to temper it. And if time be so necessary an element in so rudimentary a process as the mixing of mortar, of how much greater importance must it be in the work of consolidating the confederation of these provinces. Time, sir, will heal all existing irritations; time will mellow and refine all points of contrast that seem so harsh to-day; time will come to the aid of the pervading principles of impartial justice, which happily permeate the whole land. By and by time will show the constitution of this Dominion as much cherished in the hearts of the people of all its provinces, not excepting Nova Scotia, as is the British constitution itself." Such was McGee's last confession of faith. It lost none of its force in the grace and beauty of its language.
He spoke at midnight. Shortly after one o'clock on the morning of the 7th, the debate closed. The members, while putting on their coats, commented generally on McGee's speech; some thought that it was the most effective they had ever heard him deliver. He lit his cigar, and in company with Macfarlane, a very intimate friend, went down the board walk towards his lodging. It was an exhilarating night, with a bright full moon and the tonic air of early spring. McGee was in elated spirits. Perhaps part of his light-heartedness was caused by the reflection that on the morrow he would return to Montreal, where his wife and daughters were, within a few days to celebrate his forty-third birthday. Letters from home had informed him of the preparations. At what is now one of Ottawa's busy corners, that of Sparks and Metcalfe Streets, he left his friend, and alone walked to his lodging on Sparks Street. As he endeavoured to open his door with a latch key, a slight figure glided up and at close range fired a bullet into his head. There was no cry, only the deadly crack of the pistol, and McGee pitched forward on his doorstep. His work done, the assassin dashed away in the night, but left tell-tale steps in the snow, later to assist in his conviction. Some inmates of the house, who had not retired, immediately discovered the body, and soon the dreary news was circulating through Ottawa and across the telegraph wires to all parts of the Dominion.
The following afternoon, Sir John Macdonald before a gloomy chamber gave expression to the public sorrow, and in token of it adjourned the House. Meanwhile Ottawa was feverishly searched for the assassin. The prison was soon filled with suspects. The Dominion government offered $5,000 reward for information concerning the culprit or culprits, and the two provinces, Quebec and Ontario, each offered $2,500. Incriminating evidence quickly accumulated against Patrick James Whelan, a comparatively young man, whose trial began on the 17th of the month. From the outset the chain of circumstantial evidence against him was strong. He had long been implicated in the Fenian movement, having been discharged from the army in Quebec for Fenian sentiments. He had but recently come to Ottawa, and on the night of the murder had been seen in the gallery of the house. After his arrest there was found in his possession a revolver, one chamber of which had been recently discharged. But the most conclusive of the many facts of evidence was submitted by a French Canadian, Lacroix, who declared that he saw Whelan commit the deed. Notwithstanding the weighty case relentlessly built up by the prosecuting attorney the trial dragged wearily into the following year. Finally, on February 11, 1869, Whelan, pleading innocence to the end, met his death on the scaffold. It has remained problematical how far he was the fatal instrument of the Fenian brotherhood or how far his action, like that of the man who shot Lincoln, was due merely to personal hate. The evidence would seem to make it clear that Whelan did not receive instructions from a head centre outside the country, but that he performed the deed to satisfy the hatred of himself and a few Canadian Fenians whose identity is uncertain.
McGee died a martyr for the young Dominion. Such was the judgment of contemporaries, and history need not reject it. On the day following the murder, Sir John Macdonald described "how easy it would have been for him, had he chosen, to have sailed along the full tide of popularity with thousands and hundreds of thousands, without the loss of a single plaudit, but he has been slain, and I fear slain because he preferred the path of duty". From the time that he resolved to fight Fenianism, his life was in danger. Had he been more passive, and allowed the movement to wreck itself, he would not have incurred the enmity of Whelan and his associates. But McGee never entered a cause half-heartedly. He had the firm conviction that Fenianism was a menace, not merely to Canada, but to Ireland. It represented an anarchical and revolutionary spirit which long ago he had come to dread. It endeavoured to overthrow the British Empire, which he considered a magnificent instrument in spreading civilization. Hence he fought it with as much intensity as he had formerly struggled for Irish independence, and his guilt, to the minds of his opponents, was that of an apostate as well as of an enemy.
As McGee's last speech was a plea for the conciliation of all members of the new Dominion, so his last letter of public significance was a passionate plea for reform in Ireland. Just two days before his death he had dined with an old Ottawa friend, Alderman Goodwin, and after dinner had excused himself to pen a letter to Lord Mayo, then chief secretary for Ireland, which was described aptly by a contemporary as having "struck the heart of the British nation like a cry for justice from the grave". In a parliamentary speech, Lord Mayo had referred to McGee's loyalty as that of a Canadian Irishman. McGee in his letter endeavoured to make clear why Irishmen like himself were loyal in Canada, and how the loyalty of those in Ireland might be won. Canada did not have the abuses which in Ireland was the prime source of discontent. There was no established church, no system of tenancy at will, no poor laws, nor any need of them. Instead there was the recognition of complete religious equality, a general acquisition of property as the reward of well-directed industry, and the fullest local control of revenues and resources. Such was the head-spring of Irish loyalty in Canada, and "were it otherwise, we would be otherwise". This letter is the best apology for the chequered career of the young Irish rebel of 1848, who died twenty years later the champion of a British American nationality, linked by bonds of sentiment to the Britain across the seas.