Nicholas Flood Davin, KC (January 13, 1840 – October 18, 1901) was a lawyer, journalist and politician, born at Kilfinane, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom). The first MP for Assiniboia West (1887–1900), Davin was known as the voice of the North-West. Davin founded and edited the Regina Leader, the first newspaper in Assiniboia. He tried to gain provincial status for the territory. Davin is considered one of the architects of the Canadian Indian residential school system. In 1879 he wrote the Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, otherwise known as The Davin Report, in which he advised the federal government to institute residential schools for Indigenous children. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that the assimilation amounted to cultural genocide. Early life in Ireland and England He was the only son of Nicholas Davin, doctor, and Eliza Davin (née Lane). Davin's own telling of his early life is the subject to doubt. It is though he falsified his middle name, the year of his birth, his father’s occupation, and a claimed Catholic background. It believed that his father died young and he was raised as a Protestant by his uncle, an apothecary. He was briefly apprenticed to a ironmonger before being admitted to Queen's College Cork, where he attended for only a year before moving to London. He claimed to have studied at the University of London but there is no record to support this. Davin entered the Middle Temple in London to study law and was called to the bar on January 27, 1868. Despite being trained in law, while in England he mostly work in journalism, as editor of the Monthly Journal, parliamentary reporter for The Star, and war correspondent for the Standard and the Irish Times during the Franco-Prussian War. In 1872 he returned to Ireland to edit the Belfast Times, but was dismissed after five months amid lawsuits and allegations of drunkeness. Toronto years He then move to in Toronto in 1872, where he wrote for The Globe as the literary critic until 1875 when he switched to freelance work, especially for the Mail. He as again called to the bar of Ontario in 1876, but concentrated on his literary career and not the law. He made his reputation in politics by delivering a speech against republicanism and materialism and in defence of order upheld by monarchy; this was later