Arthur Clifton Tabor played Crib on this board with Riel

In the Louis Riel permanent display at le Musée de Saint-Boniface, kept safe under glass, is an old, slightly battered cribbage board that once belonged to the man himself.

It’s an unprepossessing item, not much to look at, at first glance. But it was a source of comfort to an imprisoned Riel as he faced a date with the hangman’s noose.

Alone in his cell in the weeks after his trial, one in which he was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death by hanging, Riel would pass the time by playing cribbage.

His guard, North West Mounted Police Cpl. Arthur Clifton Tabor, was his opponent, right until that fateful day on Nov. 16 1885, when Riel, walking toward the scaffold where he would meet his death, handed the board to Tabor.

The board remained in Tabor’s family for generations, before making its way to the museum via a family member.

“This larger than life figure… imagine Riel in his jail cell going ‘15-2, 15-4 the rest don’t score,’ playing this all the while knowing death was coming for him… this board, that game, this humanizes him,” says historian Philippe Mailhot, who retired in 2014 after a 25-year tenure as the museum’s director.

It is items like this that give visitors to the Saint Boniface Museum a glimpse into the life of a man whose fight to defend the rights and identity of the Métis people is now etched in the annals of Manitoba history.