Category: Writing

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 13^th, 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.

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.

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 12^th 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.