No fair.

We know everything there is to know about the lifelines that flow through Michael Ignatieff, but not a thing about the blood - ice water, the cruel will say - that flows through the veins of Stephen Harper.

In a country where most people couldn't even name their great-grandparents, Ignatieff has written books about his on both sides of the family. We know, thanks to The Russian Album, that his father's aristocratic family served in the Czar of Russia's last cabinet and held down the highest international diplomatic posts. We know, thanks to the recent True Patriot Love, that his mother's side, the Grants, were the country's first family of "public intellectuals": writers, travellers, philosophers with what he calls "a sustained illusion of self-importance" - but important all the same.

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A semi-royal family for a semi-colonial country. Makes him, of course, wide open to attack ads: imperious, arrogant, elitist, disdainful of the common man and woman, entitled.

But what of the man who actually is Prime Minister of Canada?

What do we know about the lineage of Stephen Joseph Harper?

Not much, but now some, thanks to the industry of a Canadian genealogist and historian who, for family reasons, happened to be researching the Harper origins recently and who, for personal reasons, would rather keep his own identity secret.

Perhaps it's because he feels a bit uneasy being himself related to Christopher Harper.

The original Canadian Harper - born in a small village in Yorkshire in 1730 - emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1774 and moved into a house near Fort Cumberland, only to have the home burned to the ground two years later by rebels. He spent years taking revenge in the courts and slowly rising through the political system.

Harper had risen to the post of justice-of-the-peace by the time a judicial enquiry found him guilty of, as one historian put it, "violent and oppressive measures" - vindictive to a point beyond all reason.

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"An inherited condition?" our genealogy expert wonders, tongue only partly in cheek.

Click through for more on the Original Harper. Historical information, speculation, some silly notions and - happily for the Prime Minister - one very nice bit of genetic news. Readers are asked to join in with a little discussion, a lot of condemnation, perhaps even a small harmless smile.

CHRISTOPHER HARPER AND "THE VIRTUOUS FEW"

Our genealogist researched historical documents, websites and even unpublished university theses before concluding that the current prime minister, as well as parts of his own family, were all descended from Christopher Harper (1730-1820).

The Original Harper was born in a small village in Yorkshire, England, and came over in 1774 to settle in a part of Nova Scotia that is now New Brunswick. He took over a house near Fort Cumberland - there is some thought, but no proof, that it was a home abandoned by an Acadian family during the Dispersal - at a time of enormous local dissension. The locals, many of them former military poorly adjusting to farming, were riled by dwindling economic opportunities and surely inspired by the revolutionary fervor south of the border.

Fort Cumberland, wrote Nova Scotian historian Ernest A. Clarke, was a place "where sedition had raged through the Planter community for the past year and where the fort had been under attack for a month by a band of 180 guerillas led by the self-styled Colonel John Eddy."

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Inside the fort had been a roughly equal number of defenders, plus a number of local inhabitants called "the virtuous few" by the fort commander, Colonel Joseph Goreham. Harper and his family were numbered among those "virtuous few."

The rebels did target a number of homes, Harper's among them, and burned them down before the uprising quickly petered out, with some of the leaders, Eddy included, escaping across the U.S. border.

Harper and the acting chaplain of the fort, John Eagleson, were particularly incensed by this failed uprising and sought reparations through the courts, Harper eventually being awarded the property of one of the rebels, Elijah Ayer, a sea captain, in nearby Sackville.

It's sometimes impossible to nail down every story with historical documentation, but our historian delights all the same in passing along the tale that Ayer, or perhaps a descendent, later returned to Sackville and lobbed a few cannonballs into the town to settle the score with Harper.

HARPER'S - CHRISTOPHER, THAT IS - ABUSE OF OFFICE

In a Master's thesis prepared by James Dean Snowdon at the University of New Brunswick in 1974, and discovered by our helpful historian, specific details were found of the uprising and Harper's role in its aftermath.

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"Two of the most vindictive in their attitude toward the former rebels were Christopher Harper, a Yorkshireman, and parson John Eagleson," writes Snowdon. "With the eruption of hostilities Harper had taken an active and determined stand against the invaders, and on November 7, 1776, had entered the fort with his family. The burning of his house and outbuildings forced him to remain in the fort for two years. While rebuilding, he and his associates had to remain in arms until the end of the war on account of 'the rebels being so much incensed against him.' Harper's unpopularity had arisen from his claims for compensation of his losses."

In the summer of 1780 the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia judged in Harper's favour against Ayer and five other men, awarding him a small fortune and 2,500 acres, including a house, barn, sawmill and grist mill in Sackville.

What particularly irked was that apologies had long before been offered, oaths of allegiance delivered, and widespread pardons given - though not to a handful of ringleaders. Ayer was not listed among the unforgiven, though his house had been burned down by avenging loyalists.

Many of the loyalists had a change of heart concerning treatment of the rebels and their supporters, especially so when women and children turned up at the fort "destitute of every support."

Not Harper and Eagleson, though.

When the various county offices were re-organized, Harper was made Commissioner of Roads and then Justice of the Peace.

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The inhabitants of the area were furious. They complained that he was "exceedingly obnoxious" in his dealings with them.

Historian Clarke writes that Harper was considered to be "falling into a passion" with his endless lawsuits against those who had once risen up but had long since stood down and declared their loyalty to the Crown.

By 1782, matters had deteriorated to a point where a judicial inquiry was set up under Supreme Court justices James Brenton and Isaac Deschamps.

Christopher Harper, writes historian Clarke, "was accused of having abused his office of justice-of-the-peace. He was guilty, found the judges, of violent and oppressive measures and they recommended his removal."

"In order to further the aims of the government in creating a spirit of reconciliation," Snowdon wrote, "Harper was dismissed from 'every judicial power that he [held in order to]quiet the minds of the inhabitants.'"

A SILVER LINING IN THE HARPER BLOOD VEINS

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It is, of course, ridiculously unfair to presume that the small-minded Christopher Harper has returned to life in an ancestor who likely doesn't even know the Original Harper exists - just as it is absurd to accuse Ignatieff of having royal airs before he even reaches the office to which he aspires.

On the other hand, there is one gene Prime Minister Stephen Harper must dearly hope disgraced-justice-of-the-peace Christopher Harper did hand down.

Long life.

Christopher Harper lived to be 90 years of age.