If Canada’s past is not to become a pure tool of politics and ideology, we must insist that the facts still matter, including if not especially in controversial areas like Indigenous history. In a meticulously documented essay containing original archival research, Greg Piasetzki chronicles the remarkable career of a late 19th – early 20th century Canadian who embodied many of his era’s signature characteristics – enlightenment rationality, belief in progress, idealism and commitment as well as vanity, opportunism and jarring prejudice. The facts, Piasetzki finds, make for a fascinating though decidedly mixed and at times disturbing story. So why, he asks, do this complicated man’s present-day Indigenous supporters insist on elevating him to near-sainthood?