Honor Jaxon

Born in 1861 to a Methodist family, William Henry Jackson grew up in Ontario before moving to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where he sympathized with the Mtis and became personal secretary to Louis Riel. After the Mtis defeat a Regina court committed the young English Canadian idealist to the lunatic asylum at Lower Fort Garry. He eventually escaped to the United States, joined the labour union movement, and renounced his race. Self-identifying as Mtis, he changed his name to the French-sounding Honor Jaxon and devoted the remainder of his life to fighting for the working class and the Indigenous peoples of North America. In Honor Jaxon, Donald B. Smith draws on extensive archival research and interviews with family members to present a definitive biography of this complex political man. The book follows Jaxon into the 1940s, where his life mission became the establishment of a library for the First Nations in Saskatchewan, collecting as many books, newspapers, and pamphlets relating to the Mtis people as possible. In 1951, at age ninety, he was evicted from his apartment and his library discarded to the New York City dump. In poor health and broken in spirit, he died one month later. Heavily illustrated, Honor Jaxon recounts the complicated story of a young English Canadian who imagined a society in which English and French, Indigenous and Mtis would be equals.