Nicholas Flood Davin



Nicholas Flood Davin (January 13, 1840 – October 18, 1901) Nicholas Flood Davin was a lawyer, journalist and politician. The first MP for Assiniboia West (1887-1900), Davin was known as the voice of the North-West. He founded and edited the Regina Leader, the first newspaper in Assiniboia. Davin was also a Canadian author and [[Canadian poetry|Canadian poet. He wrote The Irishman in Canada (1877), as well as poetry and an unpublished novel.

Early life
Davin was born at Kilfinane, Ireland. He was a parliamentary and war correspondent in England before arriving in Toronto in 1872, where he wrote for the Globe and the Mail. Although a fully qualified lawyer, Davin practised little law. The highlight of his legal career was his 1880 defence of George Bennett, who murdered George Brown.

Move West
A chance visit to the West in 1882 determined his future. In 1883, he founded and edited the Regina Leader, the first newspaper in Assiniboia; the paper carried his detailed reports of the 1885 trial of Louis Riel. A spellbinding speaker and Conservative MP for Assiniboia West from 1887-1900, Davin tried to gain provincial status for the territory, economic and property advantages for the new settlers–even the franchise for women–but he never achieved his ambition to be a Cabinet minister.

After being elected, David confined his involvement with the Leader to writing editorials. He sold the paper in 1895. In 1900 he lost his seat in Parliament to the Liberal candidate, the Leader's new owner and editor. A mercurial personality, he became depressed by the decline of his political and personal fortunes and shot himself during a visit to Winnipeg on October 18, 1901.

Writing
Davin used, among others, the literary device of intertextuality to draw upon British canonical writers including Tennyson, Bryon and Shakespeare to connect the associations of empire with his 19th-century audience. In 1876, Davin wrote an adaptation of Shakespeare The Fair Grit; or ''The Advantages of Coalition. A Farce, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet''. The play is a farce on governmental coalitions and the corrupted role of media in Canadian politics.

In 1877 Davin published The Irishman in Canada, a history of the contribution of Irish in the new country, which the Dictionary of Canadian Biography says is "generally acknowledged to be his most important contribution to Canadian letters." In the book he made no distinctions between Irish Catholics and Protestants, arguing that religious distinctions were irrelevant in Canada. John Herd Thompson, "[http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?&id_nbr=6664 Davin, Nicholas Flood,"

In 1879 Davin produced the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, otherwise known as The Davin Report, in which he advised John A. Macdonald’s federal government to institute residential schools for Indigenous youth; a recommendation that decimated Canadian Aboriginal families. (Moll, "The Davin Report: Shakespeare and Canada's Manifest Destiny," Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project, par 2).

In 1884, while visiting Ottawa, Davin wrote Eos – A Prairie Dream (1884), a collection of poems that, in his own words, "strike a true and high note in Canadian politics and literature".