Blood in the Water Read online

  So Eugene Landry remains the last person tried for murder in Isle Madame. He was a scary man, very different from the Twin Maggies’ crew. When he returned to the island after a decade or so in prison, he came around to see me. I was president of the local NDP at the time, and he was, he told me, suffering from a terrible injustice: the government wouldn’t grant him a firearms permit. Good for the government, I thought, as I explained that the president of an opposition party’s local constituency association really had no influence whatever over such matters.

  Permit or no, Eugene did get guns, Raymond remembers. The police knew he had them, too, but none were willing to go to his house and confront him. Then, late one night, probably after a dance at the hall, Raymond heard a ruckus outside. He looked out the window and then opened it for a better view. Eugene and his sidekick, Bucky Short, were in a shouting match with a third man, who was bellowing “Murderer! Murderer! Who you going to kill next?” To which Eugene replied, “Follow me home! I’ll show you who’s going to be next!” A Mountie came up the road from the hall and broke it up, with Eugene still threatening to murder the other fellow.

  Eugene and Bucky died together not too long afterwards. One bitter winter night they rode a three-wheel all-terrain vehicle to the Louisdale tavern. On the way home they took a shortcut over the ice of Lennox Passage. The ice gave way, and the two of them drowned. Bucky’s body was found the next day, but Eugene’s wasn’t found for three months. The community reaction was summarized by one of the boys who socialized each evening in Poirier’s Garage.

  “No, sir,” he said, “they ain’t gonna be too many tears shed over that one.”

  Eugene was actually a distant cousin of James Landry’s—and, Raymond thought, also of his. He’d been peppering our conversation with asides that one person after another “is my cousin.”

  “Ray,” I said, “is everyone your cousin?”

  “Well, I got ten uncles and aunts on my mother’s side, and ten more on my father’s. And one of my uncles had twenty-eight kids. I got a lot of cousins.”

  * * *

  —

  Alas, any history of crime on Isle Madame would have to include a chapter on the Roman Catholic Church. Originally, Isle Madame was the seat of the Diocese of Arichat; the soaring wooden church in Arichat, constructed in 1837, was the cathedral, and the imposing building across the road, now a law office, was the bishop’s palace. The palace was also the first campus of what became St. Francis Xavier University. In 1886 the diocese was moved to Antigonish, on the mainland, whereupon all of eastern Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton Island, became the Diocese of Antigonish.

  The diocese has had a noble history. In the 1920s and 1930s, two Cape Breton–born priests spearheaded a powerful self-help movement that gave people throughout the region the tools to get through the Depression. Father Moses Coady was the director of the university’s extension department. His cousin, Father Jimmy Tompkins, also taught at the university before being exiled to parish work. The two of them criss-crossed the Maritimes preaching a gospel of cooperation, showing people how to set up credit unions, co-op stores, co-op industries, consumers’ co-ops, and more. Go into almost any co-op organization in Nova Scotia and you will see a portrait of the revered Father Coady proudly displayed. The Antigonish Movement spread abroad, particularly into the Third World, and to this day students come to Antigonish to study community development and co-op economics at the world-renowned Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier.

  In June 1991, however, two years after the child abuse scandal at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland, four Cape Breton priests were charged with the sexual abuse of children: Father James Mombourquette, Father Dan Doucet, and the twin brothers Fathers Clair and Claude Richard. All but Clair Richard had served in D’Escousse and elsewhere in Isle Madame. Mombourquette and the Richards were convicted. Dan Doucet was acquitted. He was much loved on the island, and several of us testified to his character. Christian theology teaches that we are all sinners, but I am quite sure that whatever Father Dan’s sins may be, they do not include pedophilia or any other abuses of power.

  I was equally sure that the others were guilty—and that the Diocese of Antigonish had a lot to answer for. I’d been told that when parishioners had complained that one of the priests was a child molester, Bishop William Power simply moved the man to a distant parish. When that priest was later assigned to Petit de Grat, where he had served earlier, a delegation from the village told the bishop in no uncertain terms that if he wanted a quiet life he should reconsider that decision. The bishop took the hint—but he didn’t take the matter to the police, and he didn’t take the priest out of parish work. Indeed, Power’s successor, Bishop Colin Campbell, reacted to the Newfoundland scandal by suggesting that the sexual relations were consensual, or that the boys had seduced the Christian Brothers involved. A torrent of outrage, largely from Catholics, soon ended that line of argument.

  These were, of course, only the early tremors of an earthquake that continues to shake the Catholic Church worldwide, not least the Diocese of Antigonish. Over the next two decades, dozens of victims came forward with stories of abuse by numerous priests stretching back more than sixty years. In August 2009 a new bishop, Raymond Lahey, negotiated a $16 million settlement with 125 victims. A month later, when Bishop Lahey was returning from an overseas trip, his laptop was inspected by Canada Border Services and found to contain “disturbing images.” He was charged with possession and importation of child pornography, and was ultimately convicted and defrocked.

  Meanwhile, the diocese had to raise $16 million. How would it do that? By borrowing $6 million and by pillaging its own parishes—the very communities whose children had been violated by the disgraced priests. Parish bank accounts were vacuumed, parish properties were sold, parishes were merged. Isle Madame had four parishes, each with a church and a glebe house. The diocese sold the properties in D’Escousse and West Arichat, adding their parishioners to the congregation in Arichat. Today the gracious old glebe house in D’Escousse belongs to someone in Ontario, and St. Hyacinth’s Church stands deconsecrated and empty.

  I believe I was only the second non-Catholic householder in D’Escousse, but I miss that church very much. Its regular masses were like the heartbeat of village life. The church was the place where we celebrated the great transitions in our lives—marriages, deaths, births, and baptisms. Without it there is something missing at the core of our lives together.

  I also miss the priest who served there for years and years, and who lies in the cemetery up on the hill behind the church. Father John J. Macdonald was a big lumbering Scot from Antigonish County who had a bumper sticker that read “It’s Hard to Be Humble When You’re Scottish.” But he was fluent in French, and he loved Acadians in general and Isle Madame in particular. In canon law, the priest is responsible for all the souls of the parish, whether Catholic or not. I told John J. that it pleased me to think he was therefore my priest too, even though I was an infidel.

  “Oh, hardly an infidel!” he exclaimed. “But I’m glad you feel that way.”

  “Father JJ” could be uncompromising and acerbic, but he was deeply devoted to his people and also to the ideals of the Antigonish Movement. That dedication took him to the highest levels of the credit union movement both nationally and internationally.

  “I loved your article on Lee Cremo and his fiddle music,” he said to me once. “Guess where I read it? On the plane between Geneva and Bologna.”

  I counted on his counsel—and perhaps because I was outside the Church, Father JJ occasionally used me as a sounding board. When the four priests were charged with child abuse, he came to my door looking devastated.

  “I can hardly hold my head up,” he said. “I’m supposed to be the moral leader of this community, but I feel like everyone’s looking at me and asking themselves, What about him?

  “And you know what’s ev
en worse? I went to see one of our oldest parishioners, and he was trying to comfort me. You know what he said? ‘Don’t worry about it, Father, ’s nothin’ new.’ Nothing new? What’s he telling me? Nothing new?

  “Who’ll trust me now?”

  I would, always. And perhaps the finest moment in our friendship came five years later, when my wife, Lulu, was dying. Father JJ drew me aside to say that people understood that Lulu was not a practising Catholic, and were wondering what arrangements would be made for her funeral. She and I had discussed that, I told him, and we wanted an event where friends from a range of spiritual traditions would talk briefly about the meaning of death within their faiths and would share with us an observance that was part of their own ceremonies of farewell—a prayer, some food, the burning of sweetgrass. We would like the pulpit to be shared with friends who were not only Catholic and Protestant but also Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, and Mi’kmaw. I told Father JJ about Lulu’s delight in the idea.

  “It sounds wonderful,” she’d said, grinning. “It seems a shame to miss it.”

  If we possibly could, we’d like to hold the event in the church. And we’d like him to act as host.

  “Of course,” said Father JJ. “It’s the community temple.”

  “Do you have to ask—you know, anyone?”

  “My philosophy,” he said, with a wicked glint in his eye, “is ask not, and thou shalt receive.”

  So that is what we did, and John J. preached about it later. If organized religions had tried to pull off an ecumenical event like Lulu’s funeral, he said, they probably wouldn’t even agree about the shape of the table for their discussions. But look what open hearts can do. Look how easily ordinary people can bridge those same religious divisions when they come together in sorrow and generosity to honour someone they loved.

  I miss that man, and I miss that church. But maybe we see in people like John J. the animating spirit that sustains people’s faith despite scandals, lawsuits, and financial catastrophe. All of which is captured in one parishioner’s reaction when I asked him how he felt about the institutional Church after all the sordid goings-on.

  “Well, we’re not too impressed with the Church,” he said. “But we didn’t give up on God.”

  And God did not give up on any of His children, including Phillip Boudreau, noted Marie-Louise Sampson, an ex-nun who had enjoyed a playful, teasing friendship with Phillip. Writing on Parker Donham’s public affairs site, Contrarian.ca, she reminded readers of the overflow crowd at another unorthodox ceremony, the “Service of Farewell” for Phillip, held on August 9, 2013, just a couple of months after his disappearance. She wanted readers to remember that Phillip had people who loved him, and particularly that “Phillip was a human being, who was created and loved by God as much as you are.”

  The service was indeed remarkable. The church was packed, and the crowd included some surprising people, like Phillip’s parole officer and some of his former cellmates, not to mention a large cross-section of Petit de Grat. Clearly many of those people were not big fans of Phillip, though some were. Many went because attending a village funeral is simply a thing that one does when a member of the community dies. But the event also embodied a need to come together in a moment of shock and regret. In a way, perhaps the huge turnout was the counterpart of the petition presented at Dwayne Samson’s bail hearing. If the petition said “Dwayne is a good man in a bad spot,” then the funeral said “Phillip should not have died.”

  That’s close to Marie-Louise Sampson’s view.

  “Phillip was not always what he had become,” she wrote. “People responsible for this know who they are, many of them who ARE LOSING SLEEP AT NIGHT THROUGH GUILT TRIPS. Society has failed him, at school, he was bullied, he was a child starving for love, expecting that maybe, just maybe, someday someone would have chosen to let him know that in his ‘own little way’, he too was SPECIAL!”

  A human life is an endless process of becoming, a constant dance between character and circumstance. Every funeral is an occasion for reflection. How well did this person play the hand he or she was dealt? And how well did the rest of us manage our evolving relationship with the person we’ve lost? Our communities shape us, and then we shape our communities. Perhaps Brigadoon is less a place than an ambition, a value, a condition we create together.

  * * *

  —

  Peg and Charles Bosdet did return from California. In 2002 they moved to Isle Madame permanently, bringing Peg’s mother with them. Mary Louise Van de Berg, then eighty-two, was a concert pianist by training, a woman of great dignity and refinement. She fit right in, playing at local events and benefit concerts. One of her favourite people was a particularly foul-mouthed workman.

  “That’s all right,” she said, when asked if she was shocked. “That’s his language. That’s how he expresses himself.”

  In trying to explain the move to people in California, Peg said, they would describe the island as “a charming place that’s like fifty years behind the current time. That’s not a negative. What we meant was, they still cherish family, and their extended family as well. Everybody knows everybody. They’re still friendly to strangers, and not afraid of them. The young people are friendly, even to adults. People still don’t lock their doors. They don’t lock their cars. They find it odd that we do.”

  Charles laughed, remembering an island man driving him somewhere on an errand. When they stopped, Charles said, “ ‘Aren’t you going to lock the truck?’ He said no. I said, ‘Aren’t you even going to take the keys out of it?’ He looked at me as if I had an extra head. He said, ‘What if somebody needs to move it?’ ”

  “People here still cooked,” Peg said. “They made their own bread. The last place we lived in California, the lady next door to us—who I only met when she was moving out—she had a beautiful kitchen, and she informed me that she and her husband had never cooked in it once. They ate out twice a day. The kitchen was for the caterers, when they held big parties. That’s not unusual. When Charles and I got together, I was the first woman he’d ever been with who cooked.”

  Not only did Peg cook, she was also an entrepreneur. She had established and operated an import business, bringing products to the United States from India, and she was an award-winning baker, having baked birthday cakes for the likes of Bob Hope, Barbara Eden, and President Gerald Ford (who had the presidential seal in icing on his cake). Isle Madame needed jobs and tourist magnets. While Charles continued to commute to his work in California, Peg astonished the island by opening a chocolaterie. What, in Arichat? A chocolaterie?

  The Candy Shop was an instant hit—bright and airy, decorated in white and crimson, bursting with superb chocolates and whimsical confections. Almost before it opened, Peg had to double its size. It turned out that people would happily drive two hours to buy first-rate chocolates in Isle Madame. Before long the shop and the factory had thirty-two employees. Economic development agencies sat up and took notice. Maybe the business could grow again. National distribution. Export markets. Why not?

  It all crashed on February 5, 2008—Super Tuesday in American politics. The Bosdets had driven three hundred kilometres to the U.S. Consulate in Halifax to cast their primary ballots for an inspiring, improbable presidential candidate named Barack Obama. On the way home, their car skidded off a snowy highway. Peg broke her back. For the next three months she lay flat in a hospital bed, forbidden to move a muscle lest her spine be further damaged. She was bedridden at home for a further six months. She made a good recovery, but she tires easily, and she still uses a cane. And the Candy Shop was gone.

  But what a contribution she had made, and what an important example she had provided.

  A decade earlier, when the island was reinventing itself in the wake of the fisheries collapse, the redevelopment group devised an initiative that we called “Grey Tigers.” Isle Madame is a sailor’s heaven—an archipelago, a stu
nning network of beaches, islets, and inlets—and so we decided to lure early retirees with cruising sailboats and other young seniors who might bring or start businesses. People like the Bosdets, in fact. We had some successes, most notably with a short-lived bilingual call centre, but we never made a sustained effort to market the idea.

  Today, it’s apparent that we didn’t need to; it happened spontaneously. The island is now home to, among others, a book cover designer, potters, consultants, artisanal food producers, a constitutional lawyer (and apiarist) whose legal practice is mainly in Ontario, a solar energy entrepreneur, a graphic designer, and a pair of cruising sailors—one of whom is a nuclear power millwright by trade—who reached the island from British Columbia via Cape Horn and now manufacture wooden bowls. Brigadoon doesn’t need much marketing.

  Peg Bosdet remembers that, in her early years here, she and her mother were sometimes spooked by a superstitious feeling that the island might indeed vanish, that it couldn’t possibly be real.

  “It’s like a magical sort of feeling,” she explains. “You’re afraid that it can’t be what you think, or that you won’t see it again. For the first two years, at least, we’d be away and we’d feel like, ‘What if it’s disappeared? What if it wasn’t real?’ And you know, you come along the highway from Port Hawkesbury, and you come up over this little rise, and all of a sudden you can see the island’s lights. And my mother, because she felt the same way about it, would always say, ‘Oh, it’s still here! Brigadoon is still here!’ ”

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  COURTROOM 3: DELIBERATIONS

  NOVEMBER 28, 2014

  THE EVIDENCE HAS ALL been submitted, the witnesses have all been heard, the lawyers for both sides have made their final arguments. Today the case goes to the jury.