Patricia Phenix's Private Demons The Tragic Personal Life of John A. Macdonald (2006)
I found it a captivating read, at times touching, at times salacious, and at times derisive to the point of offense.
Before reading this, the limited impressions I have of John A. Macdonald and Isabella Clark's marriage was that of a tragic romance, after reading Private Demons, the impression I came away with was that it was like something out of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, "Even now, I wake up and I think, is Zelda dead yet? Is she?". Still, I don't believe that Isabella Clark's illness belonged within quotations, a mental condition is still an illness, as is the unfortunate opium addiction she has unfortunately enter into.
Ms. Phenix also rose my eyebrows when she referred to Native Canadians first as Indians, and then as Native Indians, this book was published in 2006. I also find offensive her derision of Riel having legitimacy as a representative of his region, "government", Queen Vic did not approve of Riel, but that time that region was in a limbo between being legally owned by Canada and the Hudson Bay, who was granted the rights to that area in spite of that people already having lived there.
In whole, though it was a captivating read, and I will certainly track down the books listed in her sources, I don't find it very respectable at all. The fangirl part of me was most amused when in her Author's Note at the very beginning, Ms. Phenix advertised that she had "uncovered a series of startlingly passionate love letters from Frank Muttart, the teenaged son of Dr.Ephraim Muttart, Conservative member of Parliament from Nova Scotia, to an elderly John A."...in the book, that account amounted to less than two pages in Chapter X: His Final Race, pages 279-280. No mention was made of where she has uncovered those letters in her source notes for that chapter, who kept those letters and was the last one with the disturbing threat even sent?
Before reading this, the limited impressions I have of John A. Macdonald and Isabella Clark's marriage was that of a tragic romance, after reading Private Demons, the impression I came away with was that it was like something out of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, "Even now, I wake up and I think, is Zelda dead yet? Is she?". Still, I don't believe that Isabella Clark's illness belonged within quotations, a mental condition is still an illness, as is the unfortunate opium addiction she has unfortunately enter into.
Ms. Phenix also rose my eyebrows when she referred to Native Canadians first as Indians, and then as Native Indians, this book was published in 2006. I also find offensive her derision of Riel having legitimacy as a representative of his region, "government", Queen Vic did not approve of Riel, but that time that region was in a limbo between being legally owned by Canada and the Hudson Bay, who was granted the rights to that area in spite of that people already having lived there.
In whole, though it was a captivating read, and I will certainly track down the books listed in her sources, I don't find it very respectable at all. The fangirl part of me was most amused when in her Author's Note at the very beginning, Ms. Phenix advertised that she had "uncovered a series of startlingly passionate love letters from Frank Muttart, the teenaged son of Dr.Ephraim Muttart, Conservative member of Parliament from Nova Scotia, to an elderly John A."...in the book, that account amounted to less than two pages in Chapter X: His Final Race, pages 279-280. No mention was made of where she has uncovered those letters in her source notes for that chapter, who kept those letters and was the last one with the disturbing threat even sent?