Category: Writing

Justice served at the end of a noose

The hanging of William Gray was big news in Scotstown – though passed almost unnoticed everywhere else.


It always surprises me how much attitudes on various issues have changed over the years. Like how blasé the wider world was when Scotstown’s William Gray was hanged for murder in 1880.
“Hanged today – William Gray, the murderer of Thomas Mulligan at Scotstown, was hanged at Sherbrooke this morning. He was cool and collected to the last, and died protesting his innocence,” wrote the Quebec Daily Mercury on December 10, 1880.
That’s it. On page three, next to items about how electric lights were being tried out in New York City for the Christmas season, and the completion of the railway link between Sherbrooke and Lévis. Two pages after an ad for Chamberlain’s Eye Ointment.


But you can be sure it was a hot topic of conversation for the people of Scotstown. Life in the tiny, remote, predominantly Scottish settlement was tough, and everyone knew everyone. So, when Mulligan’s remains were found, people took notice.

Maintained his innocence
Here’s what we know from the court’s point of view: Gray, a labourer, went to Mulligan’s house for a drink on December 20, 1879. They probably spoke Gaelic, like many of the 20,000 Scots who lived in that end of the Eastern Townships at the time. Forced off their homeland during the Highland Clearances of the 1830’s and 1840’s, they clung to their language, culture, and each other as they tried to carve out new lives in a harsh environment. While most of those early settlers later moved away, Gaelic could often be heard in that part of the world well into the 20th century.
At some point during the booze-fueled visit things turned ugly, and Gray used an axe to murder Mulligan. Upon sobering up Gray feared he would face a murder charge, so he returned to Mulligan’s house the next day and set it on fire.
It was only on Christmas Day that neighbour Alexander Scott noticed he hadn’t seen Mulligan around, and decided to go check on him. What he found was the burned out remains of the cabin, and a horribly burned human body, apparently Mulligan’s.
Before long the authorities came to suspect Gray. They arrested him and during questioning he let it slip that he knew of Mulligan’s death even before Scott discovered the body. A search of Gray’s house revealed some furniture and personal effects belonging to the victim, total value $34. He couldn’t really explain himself.
The authorities (calling them police might be a bit of a stretch) also received a statement from another nearby resident, a Mr. F. H. White, who claimed that Gray confessed the murder to him.
Throughout all this Gray protested his innocence. His lawyer, Robert Short, alleged there was no legal proof the body was that of the victim, and that the calcified corpse gave no evidence as to cause of death. Crime scene investigation and forensics being what they were in Victorian rural Canada, the circumstantial evidence pointed to murder. A jury returned a guilty verdict on October 6, 1880, and Judge Marcus Doherty handed down the death penalty. Gray was sent to the Winter Street jail in Sherbrooke to await his fate.
He didn’t have long to wait. On December 10, 1880, less than a year after the murder, Gray was led up the stairs of the portable gallows set up at the Winter Street jail for the occasion, and John Robert Radclive, Canada’s first official executioner, carried out the deed. Gray struggled for six minutes, hanging for ten minutes in all, before being declared dead.

Unhappy hangman
While the hanging of a murderer was no more than a curiosity for the average newspaper reader, for Radclive it was serious business. He was known for being a conscientious and kind man in dealing with his subject matter, but there were a few botched jobs in there. Like when he would miscalculate how far the prisoner would have to fall for a quick death, resulting in prolonged choking (up to half an hour) or, in at least one case, ripping a woman’s head off.

Photo: The hanging of Stanislas Lacroix, March 21, 1902 in Hull, Quebec. Note people watching from utility poles. People can be a bit sick sometimes. (Image taken from Wikipedia)


It would be easy to write off Radclive as a state sanctioned murderer. But the fact is he suffered greatly for his chosen profession. He claimed to have overseen more than 200 hangings, and expressed deep remorse for his involvement in so many deaths later in life.
“I had always thought capital punishment was right, but not now. I believe the Almighty will visit the Christian nations with dire calamity if they don’t stop taking the lives of their fellows, no matter how heinous the crime,” he said. “Murderers should be allowed to live as long as possible and work out their salvation on behalf of the State.”
A traumatized Radclive died in Toronto at the age of 55 from alcoholism.

Shifting attitudes
By the time of Gray’s hanging, Canadian opinion on capital punishment had already begun to shift. In 1840 the execution of an innocent man in Windsor, Ontario, resulted in the abolition of the death penalty across the river in Michigan. On the Canadian side the laws were revisited after Confederation, with the offences punishable by death reduced to murder, rape and treason.
The idea of public executions in Canada dropped away as well, with the last public hanging taking place in Goderich, Ontario in 1869. Once again, the evidence could have, by today’s standards, pointed to any one of several people rather than the man who ended up feeling the bite of the noose.
I have never understood the idea of wanting to witness an execution. Yet the appetite remained, and in an archival photo of the execution of Stanislas Lacroix in Hull in March 1902, people can be seen clinging to utility poles, trying to get a view of the event. Human nature is strange sometimes.
The hangings continued, and between 1867 and 1976, some 710 people were executed by hanging in Canada. The last two were carried out at Toronto’s Don Jail in 1962, with most murderers receiving life sentences instead. Shortly afterwards a moratorium was placed on the death penalty, and it would take another 13 years to finally make it a thing of the past.
Today almost no one remembers William Gray, or any of the half dozen other people who were executed at the Winter Street jail over the next century. It was closed in 1990, but remains as an empty, hollow stone monument to the history of crime and punishment in the Eastern Townships.

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.

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.

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.