Mair reported for the "Montreal Gazette" during the first Riel Rebellion in 1869-70, during which time he was twice imprisoned, and sentenced to execution, but managed to escape that fate in the Spring of 1870. He wrote extensively in opposition to Riel's cause, and his columns incensed the citizenry of Red River. At a dinner given by Alexander Begg; Annie McDermot Bannatyne, the Métis daughter of Andrew McDermot and wife of Andrew Graham Ballenden Bannatyne, reacted to Mair's account of tensions between Métis and white wives with a public slap and horse-whipping, which inspired the first western roman-à-clef, Begg's 1871 "Dot it Down: A Story of Life in the Northwest", presenting "a caricature of Mair as a self-important Upper Canadian flirt who dots down his sneering observations about the west", according to the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography".