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It’s the Townships. With all the grit you remember from the good old days

I have always been a storyteller. Came from a family of storytellers. Stories are what make us who we are.

And yet, when I looked to the world of stories and books, I rarely saw myself reflected in the stories of others. And when I looked back at what a lot of people think of as “the good old days,” I came to the realization that if I was going to tell stories from an era, I had to be true to that era.

The Eastern Townships of my youth, in the 1970’s and 1980’s, contained all of the bucolic beauty you might expect. But it was also a hardscrabble place, filled with political turmoil, racism, dirt and grit.

Welcome to Townships Noir

On this site you’ll see much more than just me trying to sell books. News, author stuff, local history and folklore, maybe even some fresh short fiction. I plan to be experimenting, so please come back often.

You never know what you’ll find.

The Stacey Letters: A look back at life in the wilds of Ascot Corner

Think your life is tough? Life on the frontier was far from glamorous, and even farther from easy.

            In 1836, young George Stacey was a philandering, irresponsible young man who was running around London and racking up debts he could never repay. His father, an Ordnance Clerk at the Tower of London, and George’s father in-law, decided that the best course of action was to send George to Canada, with his young wife Eliza in tow. The two children, Fred and Louisa, would stay behind.

            The couple settled on a vacant piece of land in what is now Ascot Corner. Being city folk in an alien environment, it would have been a bit like going to Mars. George and Eliza would never see their parents again yet maintained in regular and affectionate contact for the remainder of their lives. And amazingly enough, their correspondence survived until it was found by author and editor Jane Vansittart, who sifted through them and created Lifelines: The Stacey Letters 1836-1858.

            Before we go further, let’s stop for a second to think of Eliza: She marries this carefree young man who promptly gets in trouble. She then sticks dutifully by him while her own father seems good with sending her to the other end of the world with a man who is, by all appearances, a n’er do well. She’s going to spend the rest of her life giving birth to another six children, and have as many miscarriages, struggling, literally, to survive. Yet in her letters she rarely complains about her lot in life, even when her son Albert, born with severe disabilities, dies at the age of seven.

            With little money and surrounded by the boreal forest, city slickers George and Eliza must figure out how to survive, and fast. Pioneer life is hard, and the necessities of life are both hard to come by and expensive. And no one, not even in the nearby settlement of Sherbrooke, has cold hard cash to buy them.

            In the following months and years, the couple faces the near constant threat of starvation, winters colder than anything they’ve ever experienced, and summers hotter than the tropics. Their potato crops mirror that of Ireland, where the great famine results in thousands of deaths and thousands more emigrating to Canada. George writes of the sorry state of these Irish refugees, also sent to the colonies because they were seen, as were the Stacey’s, as a problem to be disposed of.

            And yet, despite his initial lack of knowledge, greenhorn George gets down to work, and even dams up a brook on his property to build a sawmill. Cutting trees, sawing lumber, farming, and trying to prosper. But the lack of cash is a constant problem, and on occasion George spends time in jail in Sherbrooke due to unpaid debts. Eliza, seemingly always with a child on her hip or in her belly (or both), manages to keep the home fires burning.

            In fact, the Stacey’s probably wouldn’t have survived had it not been for dear old dad, who periodically sends what little money he can spare. That and some bits and pieces of inheritances, makes the difference. Bundles of clothes, usually castoffs from family in London, are hydraulically compressed into bales and sent by ship, for a new life in Lower Canada.

            Dad’s letters give insight to events of the time, such as the fire in the Tower of London, in which the Crown Jewels are nearly lost. Or the Great London Exhibition of 1851. And at a time when it took weeks or months for letters to arrive, there’s a commentary on the new trans-Atlantic cable, a revolution that accelerated communications on a scale never seen before. Dad is suspicious of this new-fangled technology.

            Eventually the children, Fred and Louisa, come to live with their parents at Drighlington, the Stacey property across the St. Francis River from modern day Ascot Corner. There are good years and quite a few bad years, all told in typically stoic fashion: Alfred slices the ends of his fingers off on a circular saw but can work again in a few weeks. George has a gigantic boil that is very painful. Or spent days in bed in agony over his sciatica. Eliza is unable to walk because of lumbago, or the aftereffects of the latest miscarriage. Fred got poison ivy, again, and can’t even put his boots on from the pain. Then George tumbled into the basement, dislocating a shoulder and an elbow, but got back to work after a few weeks. Louisa makes observation that the children were shorter, likely due to a diet that consisted mainly of buckwheat, corn and what few potatoes they managed to harvest.

            Eventually, and only after the passing of Eliza, the family begins to do more than survive. George buys more land and builds a grist mill. Louisa takes over as head of the household, raising a few animals and looking after the children. She only marries later, after her father dies in 1862.

            Theirs is a far from unique story, preserved only because someone kept those letters and they finally landed in Vansittart’s capable hands. That and community volunteers like Milt Loomis, a family descendent, who with other volunteers erected a monument to the Stacey’s at the Ascot Corner Pioneer Cemetery. There was even a musical play, Louisa, written by former Record staffer Sunil Mahtani and musician Donald Patriquin in 2005.

            The Stacey’s: Folks who endured extraordinary hardships but kept going. They were tougher, more resilient, than we can ever imagine. When faced with a situation they put their trust in God and carried on. And from people like the Stacey’s, came people like us.

            A reminder that we are tougher than we imagine.

Hilroy Blurt and the Bear

A little light fiction for you folks.

Hilroy Blurt was a crisp, clean-cut young man. Of course, the birds in the tree didn’t know that. They just knew he didn’t belong up there with them. But looking down, they soon figured out why.

Most black bears can climb trees. But the old fellow snuffling around the base of the old pine was past his tree climbing years. The patch of brown fur around his muzzle was flecked with grey, and his shoulders were stiff. Though this bear didn’t have much time left, he decided he’d stick around for awhile. The hips gave way and he plunked down on his haunches, looking up at a week’s supply of food. The food looked back at him.

“Please go away,” Hilroy said softly. Like other animals the old bear had chased down over the years Hilroy’s eyes were wide with fear, the breathing fast and shallow. But those animals rarely had the chance to look him in the face. He found it kind of annoying. He gave a snarl and took a swipe at the trunk of the tree. Hilroy jerked responsively, wanting to climb higher but knowing the smaller branches wouldn’t hold him.

It had all started innocently enough. Hilroy had been out for a walk near the river when he stepped around a rock outcrop and came within six feet of the bear. He turned and ran. As for the bear, he hadn’t had a decent meal in days and was trying to catch some fish. Suddenly a new option appeared, and he gave chase.

The bear’s shoulders slowed him down. Hilroy was surprisingly quick for a human, zig-zagging wildly before launching himself into a pine tree.

At other times in his life the tree would have been an easy climb for the bear. Those damn shoulders again. He’d just have to wait it out.

Looking down from about 15 feet up, Hilroy was breathing heavily. It was a crisp fall afternoon, but beads of sweat were forming on his forehead, rolling down to sting his eyes. He felt dizzy, clutching branches with arms and legs and wishing he had more of each.

“How am I going to get out of this?” Hilroy’s only coherent thought in a swirl of profane internal dialogue.

The bear hadn’t seen many humans in his life. In fact this was the closest he’d ever been to one. It was obviously pretty defenceless and scared. Probably fairly young too. Tender eating, especially after being left in the sun for a few days. Like most bears, he preferred his meat well aged.

Bears don’t think much about life and death, but seeing the young human the bear realized this was one life that would be over before it was fully lived. Years of searching for berries, mating, catching fish and whatever else it was humans did that would never happen.

His own end was not far off, this he knew. It wasn’t that many years ago that he chased down that deer when food was scarce. The deer was fast but he had surprised it, like the human had surprised him. The hunger made him faster, deadlier. Survival of the fittest is a wonderful thing when you’re on top of the food chain.

Now he felt his limitations more and more with each passing day. His shoulders had ached for so long the pain had become a normal part of life. He looked up at the boy, studying him.

Hilroy was also looking back over his life. Though the span of years was the same between the two the outlook was different. Hilroy hadn’t yet risen to the peak of his power, hadn’t yet stood apart from his family to take on the world. He hadn’t even finished Grade 9 yet.

He looked around to consider his options. The idea of climbing into another tree to escape was quickly discounted. Armed only with a pocket-knife he’d bought at a flea market, direct confrontation was also not an option. No sticks, no stones. Nothing.

“Maybe I’ll just have to stay here until he gets sick of things and leaves,” Hilroy muttered to himself, envisioning the prospect of spending days and nights in the tree, unable to sleep for fear of falling into the waiting jaws of the bear.

The bear heard Hilroy’s muttering. He climbed to his feet, pushed up onto his hind legs, and with his yellowed teeth about eight feet from Hilroy’s Keds, let out a roar. Hilroy jerked convulsively, letting out a cry for help, though none was forthcoming.

Hilroy didn’t fall out of the tree as the bear had hoped. The bear settled back down to wait awhile longer. He thought some more about this young human and the life that it was not going to have because it hadn’t been paying attention. Silliness. A bear would never have done such a thing. But young animals did that sometimes. He’d eaten a few of them over the years. A fawn, a fox kit, a calf.

If the human had been paying attention their paths would never have crossed, he thought. The human would have gone back where he came from by now. He glanced to the horizon, which the sun was turning orange in the evening. A faint breeze carried the scents of autumn, the scents of life and death, a mosaic of all that is and was, with just a hint of what will be.

The evening breeze caught his attention again. A new scent in the mosaic he hadn’t noticed before. Dead cow. Hmmm…

As Hilroy continued to go over his options above, the bear considered this new development. Food, lots of it, already aging. And a human up a tree. Life was over for the cow. It wouldn’t last much longer for the bear. If the boy had been smarter it would have been different.

The bear reared up on his back legs, slapping the tree with his front paws. The branches shook. He roared, slapping the tree again and again. The hooked claws dug into the bark, his shoulders screaming out in pain as he pulled himself up, once, twice, three times. The right paw lashed out, catching the sneaker just below the Keds logo. Hilroy cried out, lost his grip and falling, colliding with the bear, the two falling to the ground in a heap.

The bear was old, but still had some speed in him. The faithful right paw lashed out again, claws laying the boys shirt and shoulder open. Hilroy kicked out, thrashing, screaming, squirming away. But the bear was on him again, lowering his face to Hilroy’s. Another roar. Hilroy could smell the yellowed teeth, feel the heat of his breath. His bladder let go. He knew what was next, and was powerless to stop it.

Pausing, the bear looked closely at the boy’s face. Wild-eyed, dirty, bleeding from the nose and a gash on the forehead.

Bears don’t feel pity. Maybe it was the realization that the life in front of him was not his own, but belonged to another. Maybe he didn’t like the smell of human blood. Maybe he was just tired of killing.

He didn’t even put his claws out for the last slap, a parting shot to the head, a final notification of who the winner was. Bleeding and bruised in a dozen different places, Hilroy got his life back.

Three days later a neighboring farmer found the cow he’d been missing, partly eaten. Lying next to it was an old dead black bear, its body bloating in the September sun.

Its shoulders didn’t hurt anymore.

Trashy Reading: Reflections on writing and my unusual career path

From politics to trash removal, I’ve had my fair share of dirty jobs

It’s been on my mind for the last little while: Explaining my career arc. How does a farm kid become a writer, and then how does he support that writing habit when it falls short of being able to put food on the table?
Here’s a hint: At my new job the other day I was hoeing out the back of my recycling truck when out popped a relatively clean copy of Jack Higgins’ Drink With the Devil. Being an avid reader who’s always looking for something new (if not necessarily “fresh,”), and a person who can’t bear to see a book go to waste, I put it aside to air out.


Yes, I am now a garbage truck driver. One who picks books out of the trash, mostly because they are books, and I think they deserve better.
The typical story of the aspiring writer starts with the artist taking any job he or she can find to pay the bills, while toiling away at night to create the next Great Canadian Novel. Typically, there’s a lot of drinking involved, and if the artist aspires to be the next Hunter S. Thompson, a selection of drugs as well. Manuscripts are sent out, rejection letters come back.
In my case it has been somewhat the opposite. With an abiding love of reading and writing, I studied English, but didn’t see a future in it. Then I discovered the world of journalism while at Champlain College, and by the time I was at Bishop’s, I was freelancing for The Sherbrooke Record. My first assignment had me strapped into a T-28 Trojan training plane in Bromont. Next, I was interviewing the likes of Jean Charest, photographing Patrick Swayze.
By the time I got my Political Science degree, I had a full-time job. The salary was minimum wage, but I was on my way to a career that promised upward mobility. Many who had done time in the Record newsroom had gone on to jobs at major national and international news organizations. Why not me?
But circumstances conspired against me: By the time I was getting truly ink stained at the Delorme Street warehouse of words, upward mobility in journalism had pretty much ground to a halt. While previously a year or two under the tutelage of Editor Charles Bury was a springboard to bigger and better things, the industry was starting to contract.
Then there was the fact that I was a Townships farm kid. I had seen the bright lights of the big city and was unimpressed. I was happy right here, and there was no shortage of interesting things to write about. Crime, politics, social issues, human interest, the Townships had it all. Sit at a farmer’s kitchen table with a notepad and a cup of instant coffee and watch the world open before your eyes.
The one thing that didn’t open was the financial floodgates. I got by, but fame and fortune, well, not so much. After 15 years I’d had enough and struck out on my own as a freelance translator and writer. The money was better, but the job was a rollercoaster of feast and famine. Rich one month and starving the next. Even when I took the Editor’s chair at Harrowsmith magazine, writing and producing content for a national audience, the pay was abysmal.
There’s also the fact that I’ve never been at ease in an office setting. Other than writing jobs, all my sources of income had been from manual labour. Throwing hay, shovelling freshly digested hay, fixing cars, cutting trees. Sweat of the brow stuff. So, when my freelance business went into decline, I looked elsewhere. Back to my roots, as it were.
And that’s when I started doing the writing I truly love. At the paper, I simply couldn’t write news all day and then go home and write some more. But after a day digging ditches by hand, I was ready to write.
In the years when I was writing The Granby Liar and Borderline Truths, I was restoring old cars, beating auto body panels out of sheet steel, cutting wood, shovelling snow. I even spent a couple of years as an organic gardener for a member of the local gentry (otherwise known as pulling weeds for rich people). Somewhere in there I started driving a dump truck in a quarry, got my licence, and was set loose on the region’s roads hauling everything from asphalt to tree stumps. For a few of those years I had winters off, time to feed my inner artist. To do the writing I love.
And now to my latest occupation: A town worker driving a garbage and recycling truck. I was a little self-conscious at first. For all that effort, all those experiences, here I was hauling away the stuff nobody wanted anymore.
Q: “What do you call a political science graduate from Bishop’s?”
A: “The garbage man.”
Q: “What’s that smell?”
A: “That’s the spice of life.”
Which brings me back to this slightly battered Jack Higgins novel hanging off the back of my garbage truck. I’m reading it now. It’s not great literature. More of a pulp adventure story. But Higgins wrote some 85 novels and sold over 250 million copies world-wide, an accomplishment that very few have been able to match. I might not place him in my personal pantheon of great writers like John Steinbeck or W. O. Mitchell, but the dude sure got something right.
And I still have a way to go. I guess I’ll have to see where this story takes me. One thing’s for sure. It’s not over yet.

What’s in a name? A look at some of the forgotten places in the Townships

Ever dally in Dunboro? Make it to Manville? Been to Boynton? Lived it up in Lawrence Colony?

One of the things that I love most about the Eastern Townships is how, after living here my entire life, working at jobs that take me all over the region (journalist, truck driver, daytime nomad), I’m still discovering new places. You might think you know the Townships, and you may indeed know a lot of places. But I can pretty much guarantee there are still some undiscovered nooks you’ve yet to see. Like Flodden, or Glen Farnham, or Lineboro to name but three. How about Ticehurst Corners? 

For the early settlers, the region didn’t come with operating instructions, so they pretty much had to make it up as they went along. Moving into country that was for the most part uninhabited and unmapped, these settlers had to make the best of the situation. The discovery of a river might be a barrier, or it might be a good place to establish a mill. Mills attract business, which attracts people, and before long you have houses, and more businesses. Or not. History can be a little finicky that way.

Many of these forgotten locales were named after the local grist or sawmill owner. Call’s Mills, Ladd’s Mills, Hunter’s Mills, Savage Mills. Or the first person to open a post office, a genuine lifeline to the outside world. Places such as Farnboro, Farnam’s Corners or Bolton Forest. Occasionally, the name came from somewhere else entirely.

The 1881 H. Belden Historical Atlas of Quebec Eastern Townships doesn’t cover much east of Sherbrooke but remains a treasure trove of Townships place names and personalities. It was reprinted in the early 1970’s, so you can still find copies floating around here and there.

Take for example the village of Lost Nation in West Bolton. In its day it was a thriving little settlement, complete with a tavern, schoolhouse, general store, and other conveniences of the era. It was even a stop on the Stanstead to Montreal stagecoach line. All based on a thriving lumbering industry that attracted farmers from miles around to make some extra money in the winter, living in bunkhouses while their wives and kids tended the homestead in the quiet, cold months.

The one thing lacking in what those hardworking folks had to that point called Pleasant Valley was a church. Then one day in about 1838 some travelling “preachers” showed up, taking over the schoolhouse for a good old Christian revival. After much preaching and screeching the pastors passed the collection plate. This was followed by more pulpit pontifications, and another round of the collection plate.

By this point the locals, for whom money tended to be in short supply, got suspicious. Things started to get ugly and before long the preachers were being chased out of town, allegedly shouting over their shoulders “Oh what a lost nation of souls is this!”

The name stuck. So did the curse. A few years later a new, faster road bypassed the village, and the railroad line passed through nearby Knowlton, ignoring Lost Nation. The presence or absence of a rail line was, for these tiny settlements, the difference between prosperity or poverty. Today there’s really no sign that Lost Nation ever existed.

A similar fate for Griffin’s Corners in Stanstead Township. It was the first stagecoach stop after the Stanstead Plain border crossing on the way to Copp’s Ferry (now known as Georgeville), for people going to Montreal. In those early years Griffin settlers established a tannery, a blacksmith, a potash works and inns to house travellers. Being on the stagecoach line meant a post office as well. The Methodists, Universalists and Baptists shared one of the region’s first churches, built in 1841.

But with the advent of rail travel, and the lack of a nearby rail line, the settlement began to fade, houses falling into disrepair, businesses closing down. When the church burned in 1933, there wasn’t enough of a congregation to rebuild it. By then, to quote local historian Matthew Farfan, the only thing growing was the cemetery.

In some of these places even the cemetery is barely more than a memory. Back to Flodden, for example. It’s located on a dead-end road of the same name off Route 243 between Richmond and Racine, along what is known as Melbourne Ridge. And yet a person I know who had been there as a kid had to ask directions to find the overgrown graveyard. There’s no ghost town, because even the ghosts have left.

Today, with larger towns and what we might even call small cities well established, these places are fading from the collective memory. Houses fall into disrepair or are replaced. You don’t need a cheese factory at Fordyce Corner anymore because you can get your cheese when you get the rest of your groceries at the IGA in Cowansville, a ten-minute drive away. Same goes for church if you’re so inclined.

I have always loved maps, and the Romantic and Historic Map of the Lake Region of the Eastern Townships is folklore in print, filled with place names, local legends, and historic events.

The names occasionally show up on a map here and there. Or survive as a road name. Or be bandied about when you chat with an old-time Townshipper who likes to tell stories. “So, he come up there past Corry’s Corners, truck all loaded up with…” These are the same storytellers who will reference a location by the name of a farmer who lived there two or three generations ago. I love those stories.

Yet, despite their disappearance, I’d like to think that these place names helped shape who we are and how we view this region we call home. They contributed not just to the early settlement of the region, but to the overall flavour. Something uniquely Townships. Uniquely us.

With a little luck I may squeeze another three or four decades out of this life. And I plan to spend as much of it as I can discovering these little nooks, these out of the way places. Should I be blessed with such longevity, I can almost guarantee I still won’t have seen it all.

And that’s okay with me.

Sherbrooke’s first biker war

The Night of the Long Knives saw gang rivalries played out in public, while authorities, witnesses looked the other way.

As a writer setting my crime novels in the Townships of the 1970’s, I’ve had no shortage of background material to sift through. It was an incredibly rough era for so many reasons, a time when a lot of folks lived life close to the bone. Playing a prominent role were the outlaw bikers, shooting up the streets of Sherbrooke and bringing the city firmly into the fold of organized crime. And the local memory of those times, including an all-out bloody turf war, has been overshadowed by the violence that came later.

In the 1950’s and 60’s lots of folks embraced the post war prosperity and got motorcycles. Little clubs started to pop up, groups of like-minded folks who enjoyed a beverage or two and a ride in the country on the weekend. These were the 99%, the law-abiding bikers who often get overlooked.

Then there was the other 1%. In Sherbrooke in the 1960’s there was a gang known as The Dirty Reich, a group of bad boys who saw the potential in organized crime, with revenue streams from things like drugs, prostitution, and human trafficking. They also did a lot of other violent, cruel, and nasty things, seemingly just to be assholes. If you were “visibly” gay, or not white, or different in any way they might pull over and give you a beating. Despite this, the Dirty Reich even had its own Catholic priest, Father Jean Salvail.

By the early 1970’s the priest had left the scene, and The Dirty Reich had become the Gitans (Gypsies), now locked in an uneasy coexistence with the Atomes (Atoms) for control of Sherbrooke’s illicit trades. In an era where the murder rate in Montreal was roughly three times what it is now, and in which that city was hailed as the bank robbery capital of North America, the Gitans and Atoms were getting rich by filling the void of vice in the Sherbrooke cityscape.

Why were things so rough in the 1970’s? There was a lot of political unrest, from the Front de Liberation du Quebec bombings to the rise of separatism. The economy was slowing, and Sherbrooke was in the midst of transforming from a predominantly English-speaking factory town to predominantly French-speaking one. Sherbrooke was rough, and life less easy than it had been. There’s even an unproven theory that the lead in gasoline car exhausts of the time made folks more aggressive.

The Townships countryside wasn’t immune to the uptick in violence. Members of both gangs would tour about on their motorcycles, striking fear into the locals and bringing the hard drug trade to the smaller towns. On top of their Montreal Street headquarters in Sherbrooke, the Gitans even had clubhouses in Cowansville and Frelighsburg.

For the Gitans and the Atomes things came to a head on the night of March 15, 1974. Three Gitans were having a few beers at the Brasserie La Boustifaille on King East when a half-dozen Atomes showed up. The trash talk began, and before long they collectively decided to take things outside. Next thing you know there are about 20 bikers from the two clubs, armed with firearms, knives, chains, and baseball bats, beating on each other in the parking lot.

In the ensuing rumble, Atome Robert Provencher was shot in the back and fled the scene on foot, while Gitan Jacques Filteau was knifed in the guts. His buddies rushed him to the nearby St. Vincent de Paul hospital emergency room. Provencher staggered as far as Cartier Street before collapsing outside an apartment, begging for an ambulance. The ambulance came and brought him… to the same hospital where Filteau was being treated.

Of course, fellow Gitans came to see Filteau, while Atome members came to see Provencher. Hostilities broke out in the emergency room, and the lone security guard was easily overwhelmed. In the midst of the melee the Sherbrooke Police were called in. They had no sooner restored order than word came that more bikers were on their way, and efforts refocused on keeping them out of the various hospital entrances. They called in the Sûreté du Québec to lend a hand.

Somewhere in all this five Gitans got into a car and left, pursued by six Atomes in another car. At the corner of 12th Avenue and King East the Gitans slammed on the brakes, and the two cars collided. The Gitans got out, surrounded the Atomes car and opened fire. Marc Distefano, 23, was shot in the head and killed. Michel Lamoreux, 19, was hit in the chest and killed, having been inducted into the gang six hours earlier.

Here comes what is perhaps the strangest twist in the entire affair: That summer, after months of seeming police inaction, four people were arrested for the murders of Distefano and Lamoreux. By that fall, all were acquitted. For all the violence in what became known locally as The Night of the Long Knives, not a single person was convicted of a crime. “Les Gitans “blancs comme neige,” declared the headline in La Tribune.

Indeed, despite continued outbreaks of sporadic violence and even a provincial police commission to study the province’s biker gangs, little was done. By 1979, Sherbrooke Record Editor James Duff declared “… we think the age of the gangs has passed.” Meanwhile the Gitans slowly picked off or patched over members of the Atomes, and by 1984 the Gitans themselves were patched over, founding the Sherbrooke chapter of the Hell’s Angels.

Apparently on this prediction, Jim Duff misread his tea leaves. Just over 11 years later, the Sherbrooke chapter of the Hell’s Angels invited in five members of the North Chapter to their Lennoxville clubhouse, and shot them. Setting the early stage for the province-wide biker war of the 1990’s.