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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.

Freedom 1.0: Welcome to Jerico, Sutton

A look at one of the lesser known destinations of the Underground Railroad

We all like to think of history, especially more recent history, as something that has been recorded, documented, indexed, and put on a shelf at the local historical society. But sometimes you come across tidbits that point to something more. Like the settlement of escaped slaves known as Jerico in Sutton.

It’s on my route as one of the town garbage truck drivers. Wednesdays are my Glen Sutton run, which puts me in close contact with the US border in several spots. And there, off Scenic and onto Judd Road, you find Jerico Road. It’s a pretty area, with elegant homes separated by acres of forest and rolling hills. The road got its name in 2001, in tribute to the long-vanished settlement that is believed to have existed there.

Image from Hertiage Sutton Historical Society

Practically nothing is known about the settlement or its people. In fact, if it wasn’t a mention of it on a map from 1865, the late local historian Mark Clerk would likely never have even known to look for it. But there it is, spelled Jerico, and not Jericho. The original Jericho is one of the oldest cities in the Middle East, and as the Old Testament says, the Israelite Joshua had his army march around the walled city for six days. On the seventh day they marched around it and, at a precise moment, blew their trumpets and yelled and shouted, and the walls of the city collapsed.

Much raping, pillaging and murdering ensued, but since it was the good guys doing the defiling, it is seen biblically as a good thing. History is written by the victors, I guess.

From this Israelite victory came the hymn Joshua, Fit the Battle of Jericho, an African American spiritual that was popular amongst enslaved Americans in the 1850’s. This was around the time that slaves began trying to escape their bonds and head north, following the series of roads, waterways and safe houses that became known as the Underground Railroad. In all some 30,000 to 40,000 enslaved Americans are believed to have ventured north, most of them to Canada West, today known as Ontario, or to Nova Scotia.

But a few of them came to Canada East. While the existence of a black community in St. Armand is better known, apparently a few came to the border near Richford, Vermont, and then crossed over into Sutton Township.

Beyond that, the information is practically non-existent. His curiosity piqued by the name on the map, Clerk did some digging around and all he could come up with was an article in a Richford newspaper dating from 1980 that referred to Jerico as a black settlement just across the border. Clerk acknowledges that the writer didn’t provide any source material, but he figured they must have had some kind of source for their story.

It’s understandable, I guess. These folks probably weren’t interested in anything other than keeping a low profile. This was an era when escaped slaves were commonly hunted down in the northern US, to be returned to their owners in the south. Slaves were expensive, and rewards for their return generous. And the northern border was little more than a line on a map. And as black slaves were expressly forbidden from learning how to read and write, we don’t have any diaries or letters or documents. Even over in St. Armand, where we know quite a bit more, we don’t really know much about how they lived.

And life in Jerico would have been tough. Cold winters, hilly terrain covered in rocks and virgin forest, not exactly great farming country. Travel was a slow, difficult process. And probably when they did venture south to Richford or north to Sutton Flats (as the village of Sutton was then known), they weren’t treated very well. Racism was a fact of life. If you lived then, you were almost certainly racist.

Clerk said he thought many Jerico residents returned to the US to fight in the Civil War in the 1860’s or returned once the war was over and slavery was abolished. I tend to agree, the natural human tendency being to return to familiar surroundings. Go home, reconnect with family and close friends that had been left behind on the plantations, farms and factories that had previously depended on slave labour.

Back here in Sutton, at a time when tensions between Canada and the US are higher than they have been in many decades, we are left with little to show of long-lost Jerico. No written accounts, no ruins of settler cabins in the hills of Glen Sutton. No graves or markers. Maybe Jerico never existed at all. How much of our history has been lost to the forces of time?

But when I turn off Judd Road onto Jerico every Wednesday morning, it’s nice to think that this remote corner of Sutton was once a place where a few folks experienced freedom for the first time.

The Marion Affair: Not all injuries are physical

Charles Marion spent 82 days chained up in a hole in the ground in Gould

I have long had an interest in the way violence impacts everyone. Not just the victim, but their family, friends, even their community. And the violence of what became known as the Marion Affair, the longest kidnapping in Canadian history, is no exception.

“For many people, the Marion Affair was a simple news item,” Pierre Marion, son of the kidnap victim, told Radio Canada recently. “But for those of us who lived through it, it upended our lives.”

                  In 1977 Charles Marion was a loan manager at the Caisse Populaire de Sherbrooke Est on King Street East. A longtime employee of the credit union, the 57-year-old lived a fairly typical, quiet life with his wife and kids. And sometimes for a break he would go to his cottage in Stoke, which he named “Mon Repos.”

                  On August 6, 1977, he was taking it easy at Mon Repos when several masked men broke in and grabbed him. They tied up his companion, a female coworker from the Caisse Pop, and locked her in a shed. Then they bundled Charles Marion into his van and left the scene.

                  At first no one knew anything was wrong. But Marion’s wife became suspicious when she couldn’t reach him, so she headed out to Stoke. She found his companion, who by this point had been tied up for 18 hours. The awkward conversation would have to wait. The police were called, and the manhunt began.

                  As for Charles Marion, he was blindfolded and taken to Gould. There his kidnappers had dug a hole in the ground, poured a thin pad of concrete, built some rough wooden walls and a ceiling, and then covered it all with dirt and branches. This would be his home for the next 82 days.

                  To say the man suffered is an understatement. He was chained to a steel rod set in the concrete, with the chains holding him by his arms, legs and neck. The kidnappers rarely fed him, other than gin and tranquilizers to keep him quiet. Most of the time he sat in the dark, fetid hole, with no idea of what lay ahead. Twice he tried to take his own life rather than continue his living hell.

                  Meanwhile the family received a ransom note from a group calling themselves “Les Sept Serpents,” demanding a $1 million ransom (the equivalent of about $5 million today). The local media, including Sherbrooke Record reporters Janet Cotton, Robert MacPherson and photographer Perry Beaton, covered the mayhem.

After the initial search involving some 200 Sûreté du Québec officers turned up nothing, the SQ changed tactics. They agreed to pay the ransom but tried to pass off pieced of cardboard for the cash. When two men tried to pick up the ransom at Belvidere Heights in Lennoxville, they were ambushed by game wardens out looking for poachers. Then the police started shooting. In the resulting confusion and gunfire, the men managed to escape. Meanwhile the game wardens went home to change their underwear.

                  With the Caisse Populaire refusing to pay the $1 million ransom, the family continued to plead with the kidnappers, often through the media. They even got radio station CHLT to broadcast coded messages as a part of the negotiations. Photos of Marion, holding a current issue of the La Tribune newspaper, were released as proof of life.

In the end the family managed to raise $50,000. Far short of the original objective, the kidnappers finally agreed to accept it.        On October 26, Pierre Marion, Charles’ son, accompanied by a police officer took the cash to Sand Hill in Cookshire. There, guided by CB radio, they dropped it off. The following evening Charles Marion, emaciated, bearded but alive, was found near the Sherbrooke Airport in East Angus. He had been delivered there on the back of a motorcycle wearing blacked out goggles.

If this was a movie, everything would wind up very neatly from this point. But real life is messy and doesn’t adhere to convenient timelines. In fact, it was eight months before Michel de Varennes, Claude Valence and his wife Jeanne were arrested. The ransom money had been marked with invisible ink, and the men were, naturally, trying to spend it.

Traumatized by the experience, Charles Marion tried to move on. But in the process the SQ had raised the possibility that Marion had been in on the kidnapping all along. Rumours can spread like wildfire, and soon the Marion family felt they could no longer trust their friends and neighbours.

In the end, Varennes was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and Claude Valence to 6 years. Charges against Jeanne Valence were seemingly dropped, and the other people Marion said took part were never caught. Though the trial revealed Charles Marion was truly the victim, the SQ have never apologized. In 2022 Pierre Marion released a book, 82 jours: l’affaire Charles Marion.

“He wanted to turn the page, but deep down he never managed to turn it,” Pierre Marion said. “He lived with public opinion, which always thought that he was partly responsible for this.”

Charles Marion was never able to return to his old job, and struggled to pick up the pieces. Traumatized by his treatment during and after the kidnapping, alienated from his community, 22 years later he took his own life in 1999 at the cottage where it all began.

And a family continues to try to make sense of it all.

Life On the Edge of 57

Navigating late middle age with one less guardrail.

By Maurice Crossfield

I have a milestone birthday coming up. No, it’s not one of those “new decade” birthdays, or marking a year of something outwardly visible like retirement. No, it’s the rather innocuous looking age of 57. The age my dad was when he died.

                  And within two months of my birthday, I will venture into the undiscovered land where I am older than my dad ever got to be. Undiscovered country, in terms of my own inner life with one less guidepost. A chance to fine tune my personal mythology, devoid of his influence.

                  Here’s the thumbnail sketch, to situate you in terms of my inner experience: When I was eight, and my dad was 49, he had a heart attack. Then another. And another. Eight years and another 6 heart attacks later, and I was standing graveside on a bitterly cold January, Friday the 13th, saying farewell to one of the foundational people in my life. He still had a lot on his life To Do list, but fate determined otherwise.

                  Dear old dad, seen here in his early 50’s.

In the years that followed I drank too much, partied too much, flirted with outlaw bikerdom, and eventually found a sense of purpose in journalism, marriage and parenthood. And as I got older, I often found myself referring to where my dad was at when he was my age. Kind of a “What Would Jesus Do,” but with my dad as the stand in for the saviour. What did he feel, what was he thinking at those times when he, like me, became a dad, bought his first house, lost a loved one? What would he think of the life I had built?

                  And yes, mortality. When you lose a loved one early in life, death is never far from your thoughts. My worries over dad’s health in my youth resulted in a lifelong battle with anxiety. A few months after I had my own first heart attack at age 42, a combination of genetics and stress, I went into a mental spiral that I almost didn’t come out of. My thoughts of how my dad stoically faced his own mortality helped keep me on my feet, like a boxer getting ready for the next round. Despite his own health problems, and the inner turmoil that he undoubtedly faced (but never expressed), he continued to be there for others.

                  I have been blessed with several other foundational personalities in my life. My mom, who was forced to navigate the world as a 47-year-old widow. My Aunt Jean and Uncle Stanley, who lived next door. Aunts and uncles. My self-made community of friends and confidants.

                  Over the decades many of those people have passed on, and new people have filled the void in their own unique ways. It has provided me with a depth of experience that I never knew existed. I continue to learn and evolve as a result.

                  Last month Bruce Mackenzie passed away. When he was 57, he was well known in Knowlton as the guy who pumped gas at Ding’s Garage. And for a significant number of people in the community he was the guy they talked to when they needed to talk to someone. Smart, funny, kind and genuinely concerned for those around him, Bruce helped a lot of people, myself included, navigate life’s trials. He possessed that essential element of wisdom; knowing when to provide sage advice, even when it was difficult, and when to keep his own counsel. It’s an example I have tried to emulate, though I don’t feel I’ve been nearly as good at it.

                  My buddy Bruce.

A few months back I was visiting my mom at the Manoir Lac Brome in Knowlton, and there was new resident Bruce. Like me, Bruce had a varied work life, from running the science labs at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia) to managing fish farms to driving a garbage truck. I commiserated with him on how my Political Science degree had led me down the road to becoming a trash collector. When I asked him how he was doing he leaned forward over his walker and said, “I’d rather be driving a garbage truck.” A life lesson in seven words.

                  I saw him a few times after that, always when I was on my way to see my mom. We would talk for a few minutes, and I could see him appearing to get better. The shaking subsided, the walker was replaced by a cane. Bright as ever, as kind as ever. I promised myself one day soon I’d have a good, long visit with him. Regretfully, that never happened. One more of life’s anchors, pulled up and bound for distant shores.

                  More recently I attended a dance performance at the Brome Lake Theatre by Vicki Tansey. Now 80, she remains able and agile, and most importantly still filled with the creative fire that she has nurtured her entire life. I’m not much of an interpretive dance person, but I found watching her share the stage with some very talented musicians, feeling and acting upon the moment, to be inspiring.

                  Is there an element of self-mythologizing in all of this? Of course. We all have our own mythologies, where the facts of a situation matter less than how that situation made you feel. Feelings shape narratives more than facts.

                  So now I move into the unchartered waters of my future with fewer reference points. But still inspired by those who came before, and those that continue to come into my life. People like my wife Sarah, and my sons Julien and Gabe. Less bound to the past, yet still shaped and inspired by it. Knowing there’s still a lot to do, but aware that random elements can wreak havoc at any time.

                  I am exactly where I need to be.

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.