published in book form as British versus American civilization (1873). He then help to found the Toronto branch of the youth section of the Liberal-Conservative Party in 1876. He found government work in 1873 as secretary to the Royal Commission investigating the Pacific Scandal chaired by Charles Dewey Day and again in 1885 as secretary to the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration. Davin's major early non-fiction work was The Irishman in Canada (1877) a history of the Irish diaspora (mainly, but not only, in Canada) which focused on famous personalities rather than social trends. He asserted that in the New World the division between Catholics and Protestants was irrelevant and the communities would merge into a pan-denominational "Irish" identity. He also wrote poetry and an unpublished novel. The highlight of his legal career was his 1880 defence of George Bennett, who murdered George Brown. Move to 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, which carried his detailed reports of the 1885 trial of Louis Riel. A spellbinding speaker and Conservative MP for Assiniboia West from 1887 to 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. A mercurial personality, he became depressed by the decline of his political and personal fortunes, and he shot himself during a visit to Winnipeg on October 18, 1901. He had an interesting, often-illustrious career and upon his death, he was so well-thought of that his colleagues in Ottawa had his body sent from Winnipeg to Ottawa to be buried in Beechwood National Cemetery. The epitaph, carved in stone beneath a plinth upon which his bust in bronze is ensconced, reads: "This monument has been erected by his former parliamentary associates and other people as a lasting proof of the esteem and affection which they entertained (sic) on one whose character was strongly marked by sincerity and fearlessness, whose mind by vivacity and clearness of comprehension and whose classical scholarship and wide culture united to his brilliant oration and singular wit made him intent in debate and delightful in society." The Davin Report Davin is considered one of the architects of the Canadian Indian residential school system. In 1879, he was