Bell of Batoche – aka Frog Lake Bell, on display in Saskatchewan during a celebration of its return to the Metis people in a “Keeper of the Bell” ceremony.
Last month, Mark Starowicz, Order of Canada recipient and award-winning journalist, director and producer was on hand to provide some background on his documentary about a war trophy from the last battle on Canadian Soil: the North-West Rebellion.
The documentary, called The Mystery of the Bell, produced in 2014, traces the history of the “Bell of Batoche,” an item stolen by Ontario soldiers in the 1885 North-west Rebellion. First Nations people cherish the bell and until 2013, its whereabouts were unknown.
The film traces the events leading to the return of the bell in 2013 to Batoche, Saskatchewan, after it was stolen from the Millbrook Legion in 1991.
The bell had been brought here in 1886 as a war trophy by a Millbrook contingent of the Canadian troops sent to quell the Riel Rebellion. The documentary follows the trail to identify the bell and trace its path from the legion to the Festival in Saskatchewan that celebrated its return to its rightful owners, or so they claimed.
It was moving to see images of the late Rob Winslow in the film in a straw hat explaining his findings. His research led him to conclude that the coveted bell was from Frog Lake rather than Batoche. While the film suggests that the mystery of the bell was resolved in 2014, its history is described in some detail by an account written by Ernest Clarry in the 1990 publication, This Green and Pleasant Land. Both accounts conclude that the artifact was in fact from Frog Lake.
As fate would have it, the location of the bell is a mystery. In 2015, members of the Metis Association of Manitoba collected the relic to take it on a tour of Metis communities and it has not been seen since.