The Bastard of Fort Stikine

by Debra Komar

  Trawling among the pedagogical bottom-feeders, Fraser finally found a willing tutor — a man by the name of Essom — who agreed to take the boy on for a hefty sum. Mr. Essom provided John with room and board, but he left the lad’s instruction to his colleague, Mr. Neagle. John was introduced to the basics of arithmetic and bookkeeping, but soon Neagle “could not go further with him.” Simon Fraser wrote to Dr. McLoughlin, admitting defeat: “I cannot complain of your son tho he is not so much advanced in his education as I expected.…the truth is I was too sanguine, the development of the human mind requires time. Your son is now come to that period when his mind must expand,” although it was painfully obvious to everyone that such expansion would not come through formal education.

  Wednesday, April 20, 1842 — Dusk

  fort stikine

  One by one the men passed through the outpost’s side gate, skin drenched and bone weary. Although John McLoughlin Jr.’s day had scarcely begun, the traders had been hard at work since the gates were unlocked at six that morning. Work went on regardless the weather, and the men toiled in rain or shine, frost or swelter, in sickness or in health. The day’s labour was as backbreaking as it was monotonous: squaring timber to build a new barracks. There was no need for clocks and little sense of time, for the rhythm of their days followed the course of the sun. Now the darkness spread, signalling an end to the ceaseless cycle of work. The air was crisp and cold, and the afternoon’s rain gave way to the promise of a clear moonlit night.

  Back in the fort, lumber continued to dominate the conversation. McLoughlin called for Louis Leclaire and gave him the dimensions of the new house to be built. Mr. John asked him to square its logs the next day, but it was an order masquerading as a request, one met with eye-rolling resignation. William Lasserte joined the discussion as measurements were taken, and a work detail was organized to prepare the foundation.

  The workday was forgettable but the evening proved otherwise. For the past two days, the outpost had played host to “five Indians from Tako,” Stikine’s closest neighbour. Governor Simpson had recently decided that Fort Tako, a failure from its inception, would be closed within a year’s time. The five visitors arrived bearing letters from Tako’s chief trader, Mr. Kennedy, and took up residence in Stikine to await McLoughlin’s reply before setting off on their return voyage. No one seemed to be in a hurry to leave.

  On their second day at Stikine, one of the Tako contingent got into an altercation with McLoughlin after the visitor said something he “considered improper.” A brief dust-up ensued, thanks to Hanega Joe’s clumsy efforts at translation, and ended when McLoughlin beat the impertinent delegate with his fists. The misunderstanding was eventually settled, and to make amends for his hasty use of force, McLoughlin ordered some rum be taken out of stores and given to the visitors as a peace offering. The gesture smacked of guilt, but the liquor placated the men from Tako. McLoughlin’s token gesture did not sit well with his own men, many of whom had been on the receiving end of the chief trader’s fists, with no free booze to show for it.

  One such man was the fort’s cook, Nahua. That afternoon, the cook “went out of the fort for water and Mr. McLoughlin, suspecting that [he] had gone out for some other purpose, struck [him] upon the head and on the arm, with his fist.” Nahua promptly burst into tears, wilting under the assault.McLoughlin never made clear what treasonous offence he suspected Nahua of committing, but then, McLoughlin’s beatings rarely came with an explanation. As the night wore on, Nahua milked his injury for all it was worth, telling everyone within earshot of his unwarranted suffering. Word eventually circled back to McLoughlin, who came to check on his histrionic cook. He asked him to join the men for the evening’s festivities, but Nahua said he was in too much pain to get up. Long accustomed to the cook’s theatrics, McLoughlin told Nahua that the party would go on without him.

  The chief trader then made his way to the front room on the lower level of the fort’s main building, where he found a ceilidh in full swing. The music was simple, catchy, and repetitive, hammered out on anything capable of holding a beat. Despite the hall’s snug dimensions, it was chock-a-block with men and a few of the wives. The gratis liquor was making the rounds, and faces were flushed. A disconcerting number of guns and knives were strewn about, misadventures just waiting to happen. The room was lit by a handful of candles, its furnishings a primitive assortment of filthy tables and chairs. A cloud of blue tobacco smoke momentarily overwhelmed the fort’s baseline tang of wet wool, curing animal hides, and overflowing latrines.

  Despite Nahua’s absence, food still found its way to the table. The evening’s repast bore a striking resemblance to that of the night before, and the night before that. Venison was the fort’s staple, its ubiquity broken only by the occasional appearance of salmon procured from the local tribesmen. To wash down the game, the men had a choice of “brackish water” or hard spirits mixed with brackish water. They inevitably chose the latter.

  Had McLoughlin paid more attention, he would have noticed the free-flowing alcohol greatly exceeded the amount he had authorized, and that the men partaking of it were not all from Fort Tako. One man in particular — Benoni Fleury, McLoughlin’s Metis valet and the fort’s resident spitfire — had overindulged and was growing increasingly sloppy and belligerent. When Fleury could no longer stand or form sentences, McLoughlin carried him to his room with the help of Antoine Kawannassé and William Lasserte.

  Without ceremony they threw him onto the bed, but Fleury did not go quietly. He “became very noisy and troublesome. Mr. John spoke to him kindly and endeavoured to quiet him,” whispering to him and calling him “my lad [mon enfans].” Fleury’s pickled brain was incapable of registering kindness, and he slapped McLoughlin, locking him in a bear hug and accidentally tearing John’s shirt. The tussling continued off and on for almost an hour. Each time Fleury calmed down and the chief trader tried to leave, the shouting would start anew and McLoughlin was sucked into another round of slaps and chokeholds. After five attempts to settle the boisterous drunk, McLoughlin finally conceded defeat and tied Fleury to the bed. Even so, “Mr. John did this without anger and from a kind motive,” but Fleury continued to rage. Exhausted and at the end of his tether, McLoughlin slapped him several times across the face.

  It was a familiar, dysfunctional dance between the two men. In the fall of 1841, the fort’s journal records that Fleury “got intoxicated…by helping himself rather too plentifully without permission out of some spirits remaining in the cupboard, for which he got a few well merited cuffs from Mr. John.” The frequently crapulent Fleury had grown accustomed to the back of McLoughlin’s hand, but his colleagues wanted none of it. When William Lasserte openly criticized the chief trader for striking a drunken man, McLoughlin slapped Lasserte for his insolence. This too was well-trodden ground. McLoughlin once hit Lasserte for “staring him in the face,” demanding to know, “Do you wish to kill me with your eyes?” The room’s only other occupant, Antoine Kawannassé, also had a troubled history with McLoughlin. Kawannassé swore that the only time McLoughlin ever beat him was “fore entering his room with my hat on, which I did inadvertently.” He stood silent, knowing better than to toy with McLoughlin’s hair-trigger, then backed out of the room, hat in hand.

  With the last few ticks of a superfluous clock, it became April 21, 1842. The men continued to party through the early morning hours, blissfully unaware of the violence occurring upstairs. In a curious testament to liquor’s amnesiac powers, one reveller later recalled: “We spent the evening in the utmost harmony, dancing and singing, without an angry word, all parties being in the best possible humour.”

  two

  Reckless Deeds on Distant Shores

  Failure has its own momentum. John McLoughlin Jr. was all of fourteen and had floundered as both a son and a student. He was in dire need of a job, but without family wealth or a proper education, his prospects were limited. Times being what they were, John had little say in his choice of profession a
s tradition held that a father selected his progeny’s career, largely because he was expected to pay for it.

  Dr. McLoughlin did not care to throw good money after bad, having already wasted hundreds of pounds trying to educate the boy. He was also forced to admit he knew little of the interests or abilities of the son he had so long ignored. Thoroughly vexed, he told John, “I have written my friends to consider what Business you are qualifi’d for and to place you accordingly,” but never paused to ask what John’s wishes might be. The elder McLoughlin sought guidance from his uncle Simon, who was the closest thing John Jr. had to a true father figure: “I do not know what to do with my Son — what do you think he is fit for?” Simon Fraser had told McLoughlin Sr. to consider “purchasing an Ensigncy for him. I think he would make a good soldier; he is bold and quick in his motions, a Commission would cost 400£. To make him a Merchant would cost you much more and I think he would not have an equal chance of success.”

  Other suggestions poured in, although none offered much hope for John’s future endeavours. Sister St. Henry cautioned against shipping him off to his grandmother in Rivière-du-Loup, worried that the blind and bedridden Angelique McLoughlin was “too infirm to control the wild youth.” When it came to the question of occupation, the most Sister St. Henry could offer was “I do not expect to see J. McLoughlin as a farmer.” In truth, she feared “he would fall from excesses to excesses, if he does not have a Master.” Dr. Simon Fraser was equally pessimistic: “The best thing that can be done for the young man is to make him an Indian Trader.…I do not think he would succeed as a Physician, he would have to go thro a long course of studies. These boys are remarkable for want of steadiness and application tho by no means deficient in understanding.” Fraser’s derisive use of “these boys” referred to all “boys of mixed blood,” and it was clear John’s heritage had coloured his great-uncle’s opinion of him.

  On February 1, 1830, Dr. McLoughlin drafted letters to Simon Fraser and his son announcing his decision regarding John’s career options, but he was too late. John had set sail for Paris on October 26, 1829, to become ward to his uncle Dr. David McLoughlin. Fraser, who was tired of evading disaster, made the decision. The situation in Montreal had grown so dire, Fraser later told John, he had no choice, for “young as you were when you went to France, your reputation was such that I could find no situation for you in Canada.”

  John McLoughlin Sr. did not learn of his son’s departure until George Simpson told him almost one year later, but Dr. McLoughlin was not the only one wilfully ignorant of his son. Simon Fraser once freely admitted he “did not know John’s age,” despite having cared for the boy for six years. It is safe to assume that, when John was a child, his birthdays passed without celebration or notice.

  §

  Life took a decided upturn for John McLoughlin Jr. as he passed from shore to shore, for his uncle’s reputation as a prominent surgeon admitted McLoughlin into the top tier of Parisian society. Young John could scarcely contain his glee as he recounted his adventures to his cousin John Fraser: “I spent the winter very gay. I have been to balls even where the Royal family was and also I had a moment’s conversation with the Prince and I hope and wish I shall go to the castle.” John’s wish was granted less than one year later, and he boasted, “I have been to the Kings Bals [sic] and have been presented to him.” To hear him tell it, he was now rubbing elbows with the French elite: “I am received in the first society in Paris.”

  Portrait of John McLoughlin Jr., likely painted in Quebec when he was in his late teens.

  John’s braggadocio extended to his gaming pursuits, and he told his family, “I have learned to fence and I am reckoned a good fencer.” Yet his past indiscretions continued to haunt him: “I have been attacked and called out by a school fellow of mine, but never took notice of him, for there is no use of fighting unless there is great offence…perhaps I should have wounded him and it would have served him very much to have done it.” It was this mature and reflective John who wrote, “I shall always endeavour to satisfy everybody, this is if I can. If I fail it will not be by want of hard application.…I regret every moment I lost. I wish I had to begin over again my studies.”

  Not everyone was impressed by the new and improved John McLoughlin. Simon Fraser cut all ties to his young charge the moment he put him on the boat for France. McLoughlin sent many missives from Paris to Dr. Fraser, but his efforts garnered no reply. After more than two years without a word from his guardian, John faced the matter head-on, asking, “Ah what can be the cause of your long silence to me? Am I the cause of it? If so, tell me on what occasion.” The questions were rhetorical, for he already knew the answer: “Alas can I ever cease regretting the loss of your love and regard; no never, I imagine that you must have heard some reports of my conduct.”

  John’s desperation to win Fraser’s affection was palpable in his tales of academic accomplishments: “I have passed the examination of Bechelier en lettres and passed it with credit. As soon as I left the room every gentleman said that it was myself that had passed the best of the whole.…I study from ten in the morning till three and then rest till six and from then I study for three hours more.” In a heartbreaking addendum, John acknowledged his credibility was shot: “I do not like to say much for myself but you ought to ask my Uncle about it, for you might think that I am not telling the truth or I am praising myself too much.” It was a humbling skirmish in a battle long lost.

  John began his fourth year in Paris as he had spent the first three: studying anatomy and medicine under the tutelage of his uncle, and soaking up all the exquisite pleasures of the city. Although his letters to Montreal went unanswered, the self-portrait they paint is of a diligent and thoughtful student, eager to adhere to the straight and narrow. And so, in November 1833, the news that David McLoughlin had ordered his nephew to return home — suddenly and without explanation — was met by all with shock, confusion, and a sinking sense of déjà vu.

  As usual, John McLoughlin Sr. was the last to know, learning of his son’s abrupt banishment in a letter from his brother that complained bitterly of John’s profligate ways. Before it was posted, David had shown the letter to John in the hopes of shocking the boy into proper behaviour, but “the gesture angered John and, within four days, he wilfully committed an act of such nature that Dr. David McLoughlin sent him home at once.” The nature of that wilful act remains a tantalizing mystery. Although a great deal of latter correspondence referenced the scandal, no one described it in any detail, leaving the imaginations of future historians to run riot.

  The tension between the two Paris-based McLoughlins appears to have been financial, namely John Jr.’s sudden extravagant spending. A casual aside, buried deep in a letter John received from his cousin John Fraser, reveals the trigger for this precipitous change. In a missive dated August 1833, Fraser relayed a bit of gossip regarding a voyageur who had recently returned from Fort Vancouver. The man had spent three years working under John McLoughlin Sr. and was telling tales of the doctor’s opulent lifestyle. Apparently the senior McLoughlin’s property was “very considerable” and everyone could see he was now “very very rich.” The story came as a shock to John, whose father had always pled poverty in his all-too-rare letters. John took the news of his family’s wealth to heart, and he began living in a style to which he felt entitled.

  Once he was back in Montreal, McLoughlin’s free-spending ways continued. In the early 1800s, “La Métropole” was a city full of temptation. John began to live a little; soon after, he began to spend a lot. Bills for John’s expenses quickly piled up at the door of Simon Fraser. The first to arrive was a plea from John’s roommate for back rent totalling £30. The next was from a local confectioner, Connet of Montreal, who was owed seven piastres and one shilling, “having been deceived by him as a debt of honor.” It was a hefty bill for a bit of candy, but Connet assured Dr. Fraser that “all expenses made by your nephew at my place were for beverage and pastries and sweets.” Sim
on Fraser ignored these petty extortions, firm in his conviction John was no longer his problem.

  Dr. John McLoughlin was too embarrassed to address his uncle directly and used his nephew John Fraser to send a back-channel apology: “I was much affected on Learning that John has so Misconducted himself that my Brother has been obliged to send him Back to your father, who certainly at this time of life ought not to be harassed with the care of other people’s Children, and what makes it Worse John is no longer a Child and his Errors are the less pardonable.”

  The doctor used the same dispatch to send a second-hand message to his son: “Is Junior so destitute of feeling or have they been Destroyed by his Misconduct that he is not ashamed at his time of life after so much Money has been spent on his Education and having had the Opportunities that he has had to be unable to Earn his food and to be Indebted for his support to the Labour of Another.” Dr. McLoughlin ended his letter with a dramatic postscript: “I respect myself too much to Labour for a person who does not Respect himself.” At least one of the olive branches offered by McLoughlin Sr. reached its intended audience. John Fraser wrote to his father to share Dr. McLoughlin’s mea culpa, but it did little to soften Dr. Fraser’s heart. Tired of all the circuitous communications, Fraser took pen in hand and stabbed it directly into the heart of that most “incorrigible” man-child, John McLoughlin Jr. In a scathing communiqué, Fraser told John precisely what he thought of him: “I am convinced you are depraved beyond any hopes of reform.…I have so bad an opinion of you…you appear to me born to disgrace every being who has the misfortunate to be connected with you. If you have any the least affection for your father, mother or brothers, you will retire to some distant far country that you may never more be heard of.”