This Easter Monday marks the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916, an event that many historians hold as seminal in Ireland's progress from colony to free nation. It was the last time a uniformed military resistance challenged the British Empire on its own soil. In what the Irish writer Ruth Dudley Edwards termed The Triumph of Failure, a group of uniformed militia going under the names of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army occupied various key buildings in Dublin and fought British troops for seven days before surrendering.

The Rising had been unpopular with Dubliners, but the mood changed when the British Army began to execute 15 of the leaders by firing squad. As the executions went on day by day, it was said to have been "...like watching blood coming from under a door." Far from killing off the nationalist movement, it was strengthened by the blood sacrifice of the executed men of 1916.

There are parallels between what faces BC nationalists now and what Irish nationalists faced in the 15 years prior to this extraordinary event in the modern history of the English speaking peoples. There is a democratic and constitutional path to pursue, there is the need to instill in the populace a vision of nationhood, there is the almost inevitable confrontation with status quo interests, and there are opportunities and flashpoints as events proceed. In the Irish case, opportunity came in the diversion of the British by World War I, and some nationalists took that opportunity to declare a sovereign Republic and to strike a military blow towards that end.

Over the course of this week, and in commemoration of the Rising, the Cold Eye will publish a number of essays on B.C. nationalism, the first of which will lay out the objectives of nationalism as a new political movement in B.C. and compare it with the Irish situation in the 10 years prior to the Rising. Other topics will be: Going Nationalist; Breaking the Confederation Bargain; The Vichyfication of Canada-The Colonial Option; Who Fears To Speak; Lines in the Sand .

But as a starting point, we invite visitors to take the time to visit the links below. The first is to an excellent BBC site that lays out a wonderful range of short informative pages to visit and learn about the Easter Rising of 1916 and something of the War of Independence that followed. The second is the Irish Times supplement called The 1916 Rising.

BC's Easter 1916

The 1916 Rising