A VERY COLD CASE
SOME BACKGROUND
To date I have written over 1000 columns in The Bancroft Times called the Times Traveller. My source is the paper’s archives. Some have credited me with an imagination more vivid than real. I don’t make it up. In 2004 I wrote about a provincial Game Warden that went missing and was eventually found – floating, in 1926. An older trapper friend of mine took me aside one day and said he knew where searchers had found the body and that the Warden’s disappearance and discovery had remained a mystery ever since.
TWELVE YEARS LATER – 2016
I received a call from Al Hawkins, a Times’ subscriber, telling me that his friend, Ted Miller, was looking into the death of his grandfather, Samuel Clark Russell, a Game Warden, in 1926. Did I have any information?
Well, yes, I vaguely recalled but I would have to search my own archives to see what I could offer. And, as is so often the case, at 3:00 a.m. I awoke with a news flash telling me where to search. It’s too bad, I thought, that Ted hadn’t started his investigation a decade earlier for I could have put him in touch with my trapper friend when he was still alive.
To add to the mysterious circumstances surrounding S.C. Russell’s death is the fact that the provincial government had no record of him ever being a Game Warden. Yet Ted still has his grandfather’s badge and copies of newspaper articles mentioning the Warden’s death.
In the meantime, retired and former Algonquin Park Conservation Officer Rick Stankiewicz had been helping Ted with the hope that Russell will be recognized for his service and death while on duty at an annual memorial service to be held in Ottawa in the fall.
According to Stankiewicz’ research Russell was born at home on 18 March 1887 without an attending doctor. Rick explained that birthdays were not a common annual celebration and birth registrations were sometimes inaccurate due to a variety of reasons. Sometimes a father would register three children at once – some 2 or 3 years after their respective births. It was especially common for farm families where the attention was focused on ploughing, planting, and tending crops in addition to the usual general operation of the farm. And so they might not come into contact with the registrar until it was convenient. “It’s not unusual to see a person’s birth date – particularly the year – be misstated later in life. There are reasons this can happen – some accidental and some purposeful.”
Which may explain why Russell stated that he was born in 1886 on his WW1 Attestation Paper which listed “Barber” as his occupation at the time he signed up. Ted, by the way, had no idea what his grandfather did in the First World War other than that he had been posted to Kingston.
Stankiewicz is confident that Russell was born in 1887 – “barring a baptismal record that shows otherwise.”
However, at the St. John’s cemetery in Bancroft, Russell’s gravestone reads “1886” as, coincidentally, does the 1921 census which only adds to the confusion. That census listed Russell as a “Labourer.”
Miller’s archival research revealed that his grandfather lived in Melanchon, Grey East, Canada in 1891; then Osprey, Grey (east/est) in 1901; married in York, Ontario, Canada on 25 April 1911 and then lived in Bancroft in 1916.
The following was published in a Belleville newspaper on May 13, 1926.
GAME WARDEN FOUND DROWNED IN CREEK
Highly-Esteemed Official is Thought to Have Stepped in Deep Hole at Fording Point.
Belleville, May 9 – A party of 75 searchers this afternoon discovered the body of Clarke Russell, game and fish warden, of Bancroft, who had been missing since Monday last, drowned in Deacon’s Creek, about 50 miles south of Bancroft. The body had the appearance of having been in the water for some time, and it is presumed that he was drowned early in the week. His equipment was found with him. As he was not using a boat, it is thought that he was fording the creek and stepped into a deep hole. There is no suggestion of foul play. Whether an inquest will be held is not yet known.
On Thursday last fears were expressed for the safety of the game warden, and parties of searchers were organized. It was feared that as he had not returned by Wednesday, as he promised he would, something might have befallen him. His wife, however, felt that he would return and would not give up hope until Saturday.
Inspector Coffey of Ottawa was in the city yesterday in connection with the search for the missing warden. Clarke Russell was a highly esteemed official of the department.
Al Hawkins couldn’t imagine that anyone would try fording a creek at that time of the year. Ted Miller said his Grandfather couldn’t swim a stroke and he shared the same concerns. He wondered if his Grandfather stepped into a hole “wouldn’t he have picked himself up and out?”
The following appeared in The Bancroft Times, published May 13, 1926.
GAME WARDEN S.C.RUSSELL MISSING SEVERAL DAYS
Body Discovered in Egan Creek
No Suggestions of Foul Play
Through the finding of the body of Game Warden S.C. Russell on Sunday afternoon last, the mystery of his sudden disappearance (for a week) was solved but a sorrow and deep sympathy cast over the village and community. Mr. Russell left his home on Monday morning May 3rd, and journeyed to the home of Elijah Vardy. He left there in the afternoon on duties of his office, saying he would return for supper. When he did not return on Tuesday the alarm was given and provincial police were notified. Two days search were fruitless but on Sunday over one hundred citizens of the village and neighborhood went to the spot where his foot marks had been last seen around Egan Creek and at two o’clock in the afternoon his canoe and cap were located and shortly after the body.
The late Clarke Russell was born in Dufferin County, near Dundalk, coming to Bancroft twelve years ago where he made his home and has lived since. He was appointed as a Provincial Officer of the Game and Fisheries Department over two years ago and very faithfully discharged his duties.
He leaves a wife and four children, the eldest twelve years of age, his father of Dundalk, three sisters, Mrs. F. Towle of Bancroft, Mrs. Fenwick of Maxwell, and Miss Alma of Toronto, four brothers, Robert, Will and Kelburn of Dundalk, and Jack in Saskatoon. Two brothers and his sister came after his death for the funeral.
The deceased was forty years of age and very much respected in the village and by all who knew him. He was an Anglican, a conservative and an Orangeman. The funeral left his late residence Tuesday afternoon at 2:15 for St. John’s Church for service and thence to the Church Cemetery for interment. Members of the L.O.L. No. 624 and R.B.P. No. 614 attended in a body. The L.O.B.A. also attended in a body paying their last respects to a departed brother.
The floral tributes were beautiful and the large numbers who attended to pay their last respects spoke of the respect in which the deceased was held.
LOCAL & PERSONAL
Messrs. Robert and Kilburn Russell of Dundalk Ont., attended the obsequies of their brother, the late Clark Russell, here on Tuesday.
An unidentified newspaper clipping from Belleville, May 6, headlined “Game Warden Missing”, “Fears of Foul Play Follow Sounds of Shooting”, stated that “Fears are held for the safety of Game Warden Clarke Russell of Bancroft, missing since Friday. Shots heard in his district Saturday have given rise to rumours of foul play.”
The now deceased trapper told this writer that S.C. Russell was found near the Laundry Hunt Camp at Flat Rapids, on Egan Creek. He told me that people were still talking about this in the ‘70s, speaking to the power of the white water where S.C. apparently fell in. He added that S.C. was investigating someone who was trapping muskrats out of season. He also said that S.C.’s canoe was on the bank, overturned (gunwales down) so S.C. couldn’t have been using it. The trapper also commented, “that investigations were not the same then as now.” He was also hesitant to name a suspect (“was S.C. pushed in?”) as that individual still had relatives living in the area.
Octogenarian Sandy McGibbon has hunted in the Flat Rapids area for 70 years. He recalls driving logs in the spring, mainly by boat, to Spurr’s Mill. The creek overran its banks flooding “way back into the bush”. Although he was not yet born in 1926 Sandy recalls his father talking about this incident. Coincidentally S.C.’s body was discovered in the vicinity where Russell Creek flows into Egan Creek near Flat Rapids. (In a later conversation Dean Laundry told me that they used to go fishing where the two creeks met because there was a deep hole at that spot.)
Noone seems to know the derivation of the name Russell Creek which, like Egan Creek, according to McGibbon, originates in Wollaston Township.
A major discrepancy is the name of the creek as reported in the papers. There is no record of a Deacon Creek and Egan Creek is certainly not 50 miles south of Bancroft.
On May 11, approximately 90 years from Russell’s disappearance, I made my way to the area in which Russell’s body had been discovered. Lou Freymond was my guide. We travelled in his 4×4 over very rugged terrain, trying to visualize how 100 people managed to gather for a search. Lou, whose grandfather first settled in the area, explained that before the present day’s vast forest much of the land was open fields where a major cattle company used to graze its cattle. Roads that the settlers created simply did now not exist.
The weather in 1926 was 15.6 degrees C, with a low of -1.1C. It was a dry month, the only rain being 15.5 mm on May 1st. By comparison, the maximum temperature on May 11, 2016 was 23.5 degrees C with a low of -2.3C and the month to date was fairly dry. I couldn’t find statistics to indicate what the water levels of 1926 might be but bear in mind that historically Lake Ontario was considerably higher than it is to-day. Beaver dams would also impact water levels. So Russell Creek and Egan Creek may well have been considerably higher in 1926. And, in 2016, I wouldn’t have wanted to attempt a crossing.
Also, the term creek implies a narrow flowing body of water that one might just step across. That is not the case here. I would call it a river. And it was flowing rapidly. I can’t imagine why a non-swimmer like S.C. Russell would have attempted to cross it. More mystery.
With no witnesses we are left with lots of conjecture and speculation as to what really happened. Lots of qustions but no solid answers. And, how ironic and co-incidental that Game Warden Russell was found downstream from Russell Creek.
As mentioned earlier, Ted Miller was hoping that his grandfather would be recognized and honoured on Parliament Hill this fall (2016). However, according to Stankiewicz’ sources that won’t happen until the fall of 2017, due to construction on Parliament Hill and the interim relocation of the Police and Peace Officers Memorial plaques. “The silver lining,” said Stankiewicz, “is that next year is the 125th Anniversary of Conservation Officers in Ontario.” He believes that will be cause for a larger MNRF presence at the ceremony in Ottawa.