John Ralston Saul pointed out in the inaugural LaFontaine-Baldwin symposium, that “we have killed in political strife among ourselves less than a hundred citizens – most of them on a single day at Batoche,” Saskatchewan, during the Riel Rebellion. “The first measure of any citizen-based culture” he adds, “must not be its rhetoric or myths or leaders or laws but how few of its citizens it kills.” This non-violent tradition we owe to Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, who refused to abandon principle, and who walked away from retribution.