Village Squire, 1979-02, Page 25More than thrills and chills in Miller's latest book
OF/ ARRC lNt Mit R CASTS FROM CANADA'S PA''
ORLO MILLER
REVIEWED BY
KEITH ROULSTON
Frankly. the idea of reviewing Orlo
Miller's new book "Twenty Mortal
Murders" was not an appealing one. There
was first off. the subject manner. Then
there was the cover illustration, a skull
with two living eyes set against a
background of fire.Ugh!
It was a pleasant surprise then to report
that for the most part the book proved both
enjoyable and informative. There are some
very grisly portions among the 20 stories.
but for the most part the book is no worse
than reading the front page of your daily
newspaper (in fact a few of the happenings
of recent months most of these crimes look
minor.)
Miller, of course is a London resident
and has strong Western Ontario roots. He
was a journalist. dramatist and television
script writer before he turned to the
ministry in 1964. The book covers famous
cases throughout Canada and into the U.S.
and England but a surprising number of
these fascinating cases involve our own
neck of the woods.
There is something here for nearly
everyone. For the student of the occult
there are hints of demonic possession. For
the lover of drama, there is the murder that
took place right on stage at a London opera
house. There is also the famous case of
Ambrose J. Small, the theatre impressario
who built the Grand Theatre in London.
There is politics. intrigue and unsolved
mysteries to puzzle over. And, if you like
such horrors there is cannibalism, mass
murder and necrophilia. Quite a mixed
bag.
The most fascinating portions of the
book for many. however, will be the living
history they reveal. Miller, an expert at
researching and in building a good story
from what limited resourses still remain
from an event, writes fascinating stories.
He begins with the first known murder by a
European in North America. The place of
the murder may be in dispute (it was in the
Norse settlement of Vinland, whose
location still hasn't been absolutely fixed)
but thanks to the Greenland saga the
Flateyjarbok, an amazing number of
details about the murder are known. The
murderer was the half-sister of the famous
explorer Lief the Lucky who proved she
could out do even the legendary
ferociousness of the Norse warriors. She
created the first mass murder in North
America under the Europeans, and a blood
thirsty crime it was.
Miller then moves on to the Quebec of
Champlain's day, the mutiny that lead to
the death of explorer Henry Hudson and to
a mad trapper of Western Ontario who
thought it great sport to kill and scalp
Indians. To prove that Indians aren't all
innocents, however, he follows with the
tale of an Alberta Indian who had his
family for dinner. It's one of the less
appetizing stories in the book.
Religion, politics and secret societies are
studied in the tale of Canada's only
political assassination, that of Thomas
D'Arcy McGee, who began as a rebel in
Ireland, foresook the cause and apparently
paid for it with his life when he moved to
Canada and became part of a government
organized at least in part, to fight the
Fenian raids across the border from the
U.S.
The same themes play through the brief
account of the Donnelly Murders at Lucan.
Miller, of course, is one of the more
knowledgeable persons on the Donnelly
question. He helped popularize the tragedy
first with his non-fiction The Donnellys
Must Die and later with his novelized
treatment Death to the Donnellys. Perhaps
the most interesting portion of this account
is the story of the number of threats he has
had over the years because of his prying
into the case.
Then too there was the case of the trial of
one member of the English gentry for
leading other English gentry to their
deaths in Canada in order to bilk them of
their money.
The thing that makes these early cases
so interesting is what they reveal about the
way people thought and lived in our
country long before any of us were born.
Justice often seems harsh to us by our
standards. Hangings were carried on in
public and people drove for miles with the
whole family to see them. And we thought
our ancestors "civilized" Canada.
There is also little time spent wondering
how these people were "driven" to their
actions as we would do today. They were
accepted simply as bad people and
disposed of accordingly and reading the
cold-blooded details of many of the cases
even a soft-hearted, 20th century liberal is
apt to agree on the course of action taken
by society to rid it of such people.
The book is fascinating and luckily it can
be read in short bursts without losing too
much. Some of the grimmer cases can
prove too much if you read too many in a
sitting.
TWENTY MORTAL MURDERS, by Orlo
Miller. MacMillan of Canada, S12.95.
February 1979, Village Squire 23