Denis Feely: Cobourg’s Irish Revolutionary
Denis Carroll Feely was one of the most notorious Irish revolutionaries in the United States. A leading member of the Clan na Gael, an Irish secret society he helped to organize a bombing campaign in Britain during the 1880s.
Feely lived in Cobourg during the 1860s where he took his law degree at Victoria College, established a successful career as a lawyer and was a leading figure in the town’s St Patrick’s Society while secretly sympathizing with the aims of the Fenian Brotherhood to initiate a revolution in Ireland. In 1866, “Hounded out of Canada by the bigotry of a cowardly herd,” he took the ferry to Rochester, resumed his law practice, and resurfaced as an open supporter of the Fenian Brotherhood.
Dr. David A. Wilson will trace the Cobourg career of a man who would be described as “one of the most prominent and bloodthirsty of rebels in the States,” and suggest ways in which his experiences in Cobourg may have influenced his later radicalism.
Wilson is a Professor in the Celtic Studies Program and History Department at the University of Toronto, and the General Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a winner of the University of Toronto’s Outstanding Teaching Award, he specializes in transatlantic history and has published and edited a dozen books.
Join us on Tuesday, November 18, 2025, for an informative presentation in Cobourg’s Victoria Hall. Doors open at 7:00 pm. All are welcome. There will be coffee/tea and the usual cookies so bring a friend or two! Members free and guests are $5.00.
Note: This meeting will be on the third Tuesday rather than the usual fourth Tuesday.
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