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.

The Georgeville plane crash that left observers scratching their heads.

Why would Satan’s Choice be involved the marine salvage business?

Ed note: This originally appeared earlier this year in The Record’s Townships Weekend section

By Maurice Crossfield

Every now and then you come across an oddball story, one that doesn’t make sense and raises more questions than it answers. Like why, when a Royal Canadian Air Force transport plane crashed on Lake Memphremagog in 1968, did it end up being salvaged by a group of outlaw bikers a decade later?

                  On January 7, 1968 (I wasn’t even a month old yet), Flight Lieutenant J. D. Evans and navigator Flight Lieutenant J. F. Morrow of 401 Auxiliary Squadron, based out of St. Hubert, were practicing landings on Lake Memphremagog near Georgeville with a De Havilland Otter. The single engine Otter was used in the RCAF for light transport and search and rescue operations until 1980, and many of them are still in service today, primarily as bush planes serving remote communities. They can be kitted out with conventional landing gear, floats for open water landings, or skis for winter touchdowns.

                  On one of the practice landings the ill-fated aircraft broke through the ice. Then the fuselage sank into the water. The two men managed to scramble out of the downed aircraft, giving their wedding tackle a good chilly soaking in the process.

                  Fortunately, the crash had a witness in the form of 18-year-old Réal Bernais, who had been hanging out on the Georgeville wharf. He was probably watching the plane. Bernais jumped on his snowmobile and raced out to get the two men, bringing them back to Henry McGowan’s boarding house to warm up and dry out. As they sipped hot coffee, they heard an explosion as the airplane caught fire. Within minutes the fire was out, the plane having sunk into 280 feet of water.

                  Over the next decade the wreckage of the ill-fated Otter was the subject of several salvage attempts. Marine Industries of Montreal apparently spent $30,000 to locate and raise the aircraft, but with no success.

                  Then in 1976 Montreal-based Lafitte Salvage purchased the salvage rights for $1,000. Using cutting edge technology such as closed-circuit cameras, they located the plane and managed to haul the tail and fuselage back to the surface, taking the wreckage to dry land in Georgeville, and later Magog. The salvagers refused to comment on rumours that a safe was found on the plane.

                  Here’s where things start to get interesting: It turns out that Lafitte Salvage was never a registered company. But the names of the five-man crew were known to the authorities: Brian Powers, Robert Chou, Michael French, Michel Veillette and Jean-Paul St. Michel. All members of the Satan’s Choice Motorcycle Club. If you start digging around in old newspapers looking for organized crime in the 1970’s, these names come up over and over. There was a gang war that saw Satan’s Choice and the Outlaws shooting it out with the Popeyes and Hell’s Angels. It was a bloody conflict in a particularly bloody era of Quebec history.

                  Powers ended up shot at his home in Montreal’s West Island in 1979. French was gunned down by West End Gang enforcer and hitman Jackie McLaughlin in 1982, his body found near Kahnawake. Chou died in 2018 of liver failure. I’m not sure what became of the others, but as you can see, these weren’t classically trained salvage experts living good, clean lives.

                  There are quite a few aspects of this that don’t add up: Firstly, why did Evans and Morrow try to land on Lake Memphremagog when the ice wasn’t thick enough to support an aircraft of that size? What caused a downed, nearly drowned airplane to explode well after the men were rescued? And then, why was security around the crash site so lax? If a military aircraft goes down, wouldn’t the RCAF have sent its own people to secure the site, and maybe send military divers in to examine the wreckage? I am unsure of the rules back then, but these days there would have been a full Canada Transportation Safety Board or a military investigation, with experts going over every inch of the plane and reporting on their findings. Instead, the armed forces sold off the salvage rights to whoever, with no regard for things like security, crash causes, or who they were giving military property to.

                  And why were a bunch of outlaw bikers doing underwater salvage work? News reports from the time said the skis from the plane were worth a few thousand dollars. The engine still turned freely and the three-bladed propellor was intact. But these guys were more accustomed to making bigger money in other domains, like dealing drugs and pimping out strippers and prostitutes. Stripping crashed planes for parts seems like more actual work than they were used to. How come they managed to raise the plane when the experts at Marine Industries failed?

                  Add to that the rumors of a safe on board. Was there something valuable on the Otter? I doubt it. The 401 Squadron was air reserve. These were part time guys, weekend warriors, who seem to have been practicing landings. Why would they have been carrying anything of value?

                  These are all questions that will remain unanswered. In fact, this story would likely have been forgotten by all but a few people if the late John Allore hadn’t come across it. While John Allore died in an accident nearly a year ago, his website https://theresaallore.com/ lives on. It’s a fascinating archive of true crime in the Eastern Townships and beyond, dedicated to finding who murdered his sister Theresa, when she was a student at Champlain College in November 1978.

                  Hopefully that’s a story we can still find answers to.