This restored Red River frame building was Louis Riel’s family home, where his descendants lived until 1969. After Louis Riel’s trial in Regina, Saskatchewan and his hanging, he was returned to his family’s home where he lay in state in December 1885 until his burial in the St. Boniface Cathedral cemetery.
Louis Riel Sr., a Métis, was born at Île-à-la-Crosse (present-day northern Saskatchewan) in 1817. His parents were the French-Canadian voyageur Jean-Baptiste Riel and Marguerite Boucher, a French-Dene-Métis. In 1844, Louis Riel Sr. married Julie Lagimodière in Saint Boniface.
Their son, Louis was born the same year in a house on the Lagimodière farm at the confluence of the Red and Seine rivers. Louis Riel was educated in Montréal and when he returned to the Red River Settlement in 1868, he found the community anxious and divided over its political future. After Manitoba became a province in the Dominion of Canada in 1870, Louis Riel became known as Manitoba’s founder. Riel left Manitoba and was residing in the United States until 1884 when a group of Métis, First Nations and white settlers urged him to return to Canada and state their grievances with the government. It would be the start of the end for the territories and the west as it had been.
After Louis Riel’s trial in Regina Saskatchewan and his hanging, Louis Riel was returned to St. Boniface and his family’s home where he laid in state until his burial in the St. Boniface Cathedral cemetery.