Honoré Jaxon - Forgotten Historical Figure in need of a Netflix miniseries

Once upon a time, there was a place called Saskatchewan:

It looks like this.

The man who would later become Honoré Jaxon was born William Henry Jackson in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. When he was 20 he moved to the frontier to make a living, and it was in the town of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan that he first encountered the Métis people.

Unlike his own white Anglo-Saxon Protestant background, the Métis were of mixed white and native blood, spoke predominantly French, and were mostly Catholic. Canada was still dealing with some of the fallout from the 1870 Red River Rebellion, which had been started by Louis Riel and his fellow Métis allies in response to perceived injustices by the Anglophone-dominated government. After the rebellion was quashed, Riel had been forced to flee to America, where he was twice elected to the Canadian federal government by the people of Manitoba but was never allowed to take his seat for fear of being arrested.

Jackson sympathised with the struggles of the "half-caste" Métis under English rule, and when their leader came out of exile in America in 1884, Jackson joined with Louis Riel to fight the Canadians. On the eve of Riel's declaration of provisional government in Saskatchewan, William Henry Jackson was baptised into the Catholic faith under the new name of Honoré Jaxon, thus going native before T.E. Lawrence and Avatar made it cool. 

The North-West Rebellion was the closest thing Canada ever came to a civil war, but it was eventually destroyed by government forces. Riel was tried and hung, and Jaxon was sent to an insane asylum. Once there, he promptly escaped and fled to America, where he became active in the labour and socialist movements, and joined major protests in demand of an eight-hour workday. 

Jaxon eventually moved to New York City where he spent decades collecting the largest library of Métis history ever assembled, with a view to creating a museum of the Métis people. He was evicted from his apartment in 1951 however, and the city destroyed his entire collection, effectively erasing much of this history that was not recorded anywhere else. Jaxon died soon after.

Reasons why his story would make a great Netflix miniseries:

1. The story arc

From a city boy trying to make his way on the frontier, to changing his religion and culture to fight for a cause against overwhelming odds, to being on the forefront of the American labour rights movement and marching in Coxey's Army, to his eventual aspirations of building a museum dedicated to his adoptive people. Here is a man who shows us many different faces, but never seems to be at peace.

2. The colourful characters

If Louis Riel and Jaxon himself aren't colourful enough, there's an entire cast to deal with. Riel's lead commander Gabriel Dumont was a fiercely bearded wilderness crackshot, who fled to America to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show after the rebellion was defeated. Riel's enemies included the legendary Mountie Sam Steele and Charles Dickens' son Francis.

3. The "stranger-in-a-strange-land" trope

It's an apostolic narrative about Louis Riel told through the eyes of his greatest devotee, and since Jaxon begins the story as an outsider it gives plenty of opportunity for plot points to be explained to the audience as they are being explained to Jaxon. 

Since Jaxon's story is ultimately tragic and a little depressing, it can be hard to see it in terms of an ongoing series. So maybe we can look to the words of Ron Howard at the end of Arrested Development Season 3: "I don't see it as a series... maybe a movie."